Is a proposed light rail station in the Chinatown-International District good news or bad?

New Sound Transit light rail lines are on the way — connecting to Ballard and West Seattle — thanks to a ballot measure voters approved in 2016.

But plans for a new station in the neighborhood of Chinatown-International District have raised alarm with community groups and local businesses.

The Chinatown-International District is one of the few predominantly POC neighborhoods left in Seattle.

And the community is bracing for a new highly disruptive construction project — a second Sound Transit light rail station. It's part of a future line connecting Ballard and West Seattle.

The ST3 project is still in the planning phases, but the proposals on the table so far leave two main options — a Fourth Avenue stop or a Fifth Avenue stop. Local businesses and community groups are watching the process closely.

International Examiner Reporter Chetanya Robinson says that's because they're worried one of those potential locations could have a devastating impact on the neighborhood.

"In general, most organizations in the Chinatown-International District agree that it would be unacceptable to build the station under Fifth Avenue, which is near the historic Chinatown gate," Robinson said. "That could lead to displacement of important cultural businesses, nonprofits and low-income residents who might have to move elsewhere."

The state-created agency, Historic South Downtown, is one of those organizations. It focuses on community preservation in the Chinatown-International District and Pioneer Square. Executive Director Kathleen Barry Johnson said the city also has a history of large, obstructive construction projects in the area.

"With each of these large projects, the promise is you as a local neighborhood will have to put up with all of this, but there'll be increased economic opportunity, better parks, better access to the waterfront, better transportation," Barry Johnson said. "And in each case, those promises seem to fall flat."

More outreach to the community won't solve the problem, Barry Johnson said, because the idea of building under Fifth Avenue is in and of itself a bad idea. Instead, Historic South Downtown wants Sound Transit to create a station on Fourth Avenue, near Union Station.

But there are drawbacks to that plan, one of them being that people living in the Icon apartment building nearby would have to be temporarily displaced to allow construction to go forward. There is also a cost issue — the Fourth Avenue option would cost between $1.7 and $1.8 billion, about half a billion dollars more than the Fifth Avenue option.

Soundside also reached out to officials with Sound Transit. They weren't able to provide a spokesperson in time for our story, but they did provide this statement: "The 90-day Draft Environmental Impact Statement comment period wrapped up at the end of April. We received more than 5,000 comments. An overview of these comments will be presented to the System Expansion Committee of the Sound Transit Board at their meeting on June 9."

The statement also said Sound Transit's board will review the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and public comments, likely at its upcoming July meeting, before it confirms or modifies the preferred station locations. A Final Environmental Impact Statement is scheduled to be published next year. Then the Sound Transit Board will choose the project to be built and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will release a Record of Decision.

Construction is expected to begin in 2026.

Correction: a previous version of this story named the district the "International District". This has been revised to correctly reflect the name of the neighborhood - the Chinatown-International District.