Building Tomorrow: A Conversation with Dow Constantine on King County's Future

By Riya Debnath

1. What inspired you to run for King County Executive and what are your main priorities for the county?

Born to a long line of devoted Huskies, I graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in political science, MA in Urban Planning, and law degree. I was raised here – so this is my place, this is my home. I have spent a lot of time not just along the city streets, but in the forests, along the shorelines, and in the mountains, and I truly appreciate the length and breadth of King County. And I have always had this desire – this compulsion – to save it, to restore it, and to make it better. That’s true of both the neighborhoods and the city and the natural environment. I got engaged in politics through open space preservation, and the County is a leader in saving the wilderness, the farms, the last best places, and restoring them for all of us to enjoy and appreciate. So that was an inspiration.

2. Could you share your insights on the current state and future vision of regional transportation and evolving land use policy in our area, specifically in response to the growing needs of our communities, and our leadership in developing King County's transit system, particularly with the expansion of light rail, has been transformative. How do you envision these changes shaping the urban landscape and mobility patterns in the coming years?

Our future is transit, and building compact, walkable, transit-oriented communities. When I took office we were way behind on building regional high-capacity transit. I distinctly remember when I was a kid the ballot measures that would have built a regional rail transit system failed. I’ve spent my entire adult life working toward being able to create that network we’ve always needed.

I joined the Sound Transit Board maybe 15 years ago, and in that time have been working to not only get approval for expanding high-capacity rail, which we’ve done twice in my time on the board, but to make the agency one that can deliver that capital program and become better and better at operating a regional system.

Most Sound Transit service is operated under contract by King County’s Metro Transit, which is one of the nation’s leading transit agencies. While we operate many modes, we are making Metro into an agency that can dovetail bus service seamlessly with the Sound Transit rail systems in particular. Through the addition of our RapidRide lines, which are high-capacity bus lines along major corridors, and Sound Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit lines, we are increasing the total capacity of the system, seeking to make service to major destinations across the region so frequent and reliable that you don’t have to plan according to the schedule, but simply show up, board, and arrive at your destination worry-free.

These are the types of transit-oriented communities I mentioned earlier. We cannot successfully build a future based on the low-density development patterns of the past. We have to create land use that allows us to manage the impacts of humans on the natural environment and allows people to move on an efficient transportation system to find opportunity throughout this central Puget Sound region. This new pattern is one of centers and nodes, large and small, where each place is a community unto itself, but all are linked by an efficient, high-capacity, zero-carbon transportation system that allows people to move easily from place to place within neighborhoods and cities. When we can do that, we will be creating a healthier and more equitable region, one where every person has more access to educational and economic opportunities.

3. Addressing the affordable housing crisis has been a key focus of your tenure. What are some innovative strategies King County is implementing to tackle this issue?

I think the most important affordable housing strategy is linking more and more centers, large and small, where people can live and work nearby and walk to transportation. When we go from having a handful of places that are desirable because they’re proximate to opportunity to having dozens and dozens of those places – that will create more affordability.

One specific strategy we have implemented here in King County is our Housing Finance Program, which administers funds for the development and preservation of affordable housing throughout the area, much of which is close to transit lines. For example, in December last year, we broke ground on a project in SeaTac located next to the Angle Lake light rail station which, when completed, will provide 130 more units of permanent affordable housing. Public and private partners joined together to fund this important project. Hats off to Mercy Housing, the city of SeaTac, Sound Transit, the Arc of King County, WA Department of Commerce, King County Housing Authority, Amazon, and Umpqua Bank for their leadership and partnership on that project.

With the Housing Finance Program, we are creating partnerships among local governments, public housing authorities, nonprofit and for-profit housing developers, and service providers to produce the largest number of units for the most reasonable public investment, and when appropriate to provide supportive services to residents who need them.

But subsidizing housing for people with limited incomes is just one strategy. We need to incent developers to build more housing for people of all incomes. We know that there’s just no way we could raise enough public money to house everybody who can’t afford to live here, so we have to find market-driven mechanisms that make it worth people’s while to include affordable housing in larger developments and focus on creating mixed-income projects and communities. That will allow people who have historically been excluded from opportunity to better achieve economic security.

4.  How do you collaborate with other regional partners, such as Sound Transit, Metro, Seattle City Council, and Washington State Legislature, to advance your policy agenda?

We work closely with these partners to move forward key policies. To start, Metro is owned and operated by King County, so I ultimately oversee and approve all policy decisions made for the agency. Currently, I am the Board Chair for Sound Transit and in my role as King County Executive I appoint 10 of the 18 Board members – so this connection to our work and policies is a very close one and I am able – with some success – to help move the agency toward our ultimate goals for the region.

The City of Seattle is the largest of the county’s 39 cities, so we work closely with them daily on a lot of issues that we share. But we also have a different set of duties than Seattle – for example, we are the transit agency that runs the buses and other means of transportation, we are the public health agency that provides a range of population health services, we’re the wastewater treatment agency that handles billions of gallons of sewage, and we are responsible for the Superior Court, District Court, prosecutor, public defender, and detention. All of this requires us to work together to be successful, as is the case for all of our cities, and a lot of which comes down to direct working relationships between our staff and city staff.

Regarding the Washington State Legislature, I was a member of both the House and the Senate and, although it was a while ago, I do know how the institutions work and how best to engage. We have an ongoing dialogue with our King County legislators and state legislative leadership about the needs of King County, which is by far the state’s largest county. That makes our reality very different than that of small or rural counties, and state law and legislation that works for most counties isn’t always a good fit for ours. But we continue to work with our legislators because we’re the ones who deliver the state-mandated services to their constituents and we always need to be successful in that.

5. Considering your initiatives for youth and families, what role do you see for younger generations in shaping the future of urban planning in our region?

Young people are inheriting a world that is rapidly changing, much quicker than it did for those who went before them. It’s a world where a lot of folks are farther from opportunity than the last generation. And a lot of that has to do with the physical world. Place matters. People need to be able to live close to opportunity. I believe young people are much more cognizant of the interconnectedness between that physical world and the cultural and ecological systems that exist around us. So, they are the voices we need to bring new ideas and energy to help shape the communities we live in – particularly for urban planning.  

6. What are some long-term projects or plans that you're particularly excited about?

One of the biggest projects is building out the Sound Transit 3 light rail expansion that I helped to plan and get passed at the polls in 2016. This is a huge priority for me. That is the blueprint, the framework for our region’s growth in the future.

I also announced last year our project to redevelop seven blocks of county-owned land in downtown Seattle. This area around our historic courthouse has enormous potential to become a great urban neighborhood with thousands of units of mixed-income housing, with a coherent ground plane organized around City Hall Park and spanning multiple square blocks of the center of the city. It can be a space with restaurants and coffee shops and bars and gathering places where people from all backgrounds can be in community. We can design this purposefully and intentionally to be a great neighborhood – one that reflects our core commitment that this will be a welcoming community where every person has the opportunity to thrive.

Another major undertaking is our Land Conservation Initiative, which is a critical component of our work to preserve what’s best about this place we call home. We were able to pass the proposal to restore funding for the local Conservation Futures Program in 2022 thanks to overwhelming voter support. This funding makes it possible for King County to maintain the accelerated pace of land conservation to protect the last, best 65,000 acres of forests, farmlands, trails, river corridors, natural areas, and urban greenspace, and to do it in a single generation.

And lastly, I am looking forward to implementing our plan to rebuild and expand King County’s Harborview Medical Center campus – our public health hospital and the state’s only Level One trauma center, operated in partnership with the University of Washington.  

7. On a lighter note, if you could have any superpower to help you in your role as Executive, what would it be and why?

Infinite patience. The patience to navigate all the ups and downs, the delays and disappointments, and to just keep pushing forward to deliver the programs, services, and infrastructure that ensures we are indeed making King County a welcoming community where every person can thrive.