Walk down Lakeside Avenue this month and the patio at BluWater Bistro looks like nothing happened. Tables are full. The parking lot across from Leschi Market has cars in it again. If you only half-followed the news back in the spring, you could be forgiven for assuming the fight over the marina construction wrapped up when the fencing came down before Mother's Day.
It didn't wrap up. It paused. And the phase that was always supposed to be the disruptive one, the one involving heavy equipment in the water instead of trenching in a parking lot, was never touched by that pause. It was penciled in for fall from the start. Fall is now.
What actually happened in April and May
The project is the South Leschi Marina Wave Attenuator and Facility Improvements job, a roughly $7.9 million effort by Seattle Parks and Recreation to replace an aging timber pier and pipe-pile breakwater that no longer protects the marina from wave action. The existing dock also isn't accessible to all ages and abilities, which is part of why the city wants a new floating breakwater with a boat sewage pump-out station, a relocated kayak rack, and benches along the water.
Underwater cleanup and shoreline restoration wrapped up in September 2025 with little fanfare. The next phase, upland utility work to run electrical, sewer, and water lines for the new facility, was supposed to be the quiet part. Contractor Harkness Construction mobilized starting April 22, 2026. Then on Monday, May 5, business owners arrived to find fencing and heavy equipment blocking roughly 140 parking spaces across two lots and the street parking on Lakeside Avenue, with no warning.
Yousef Shulman, the fourth-generation owner of Leschi Market, which has operated in the neighborhood since 1948, said the timing caught everyone off guard even though the broader project had been discussed for years. "This was not just an inconvenience," he told local radio. Bart Evans, who owns BluWater Bistro next door, put the stakes in blunter terms as the clock ticked down to the restaurant industry's busiest weekend of the year: "We've got a gun to our heads here."
The backlash was fast. Leschi Market said the city received over 900 emails in a matter of days. Seattle City Council President Joy Hollingsworth showed up in person, and by Thursday the city agreed to pull Harkness Construction off the site and reopen most of the parking before Mother's Day. Hollingsworth called the lack of notice "definitely a mistake." Construction paused, with the city saying work would not resume until August.
That's the version of the story that made the rounds in May, and it's a fair one. What most coverage did not dwell on is what the pause actually covered, and what it didn't.
The part the pause didn't touch
The project has always run in four stages, laid out on the city's own project page:
- Underwater cleanup, September 2025, complete
- Shoreline restoration, September 2025, complete
- Upland utility infrastructure, spring 2026, the phase that triggered the parking fight
- Breakwater and moorage construction, anticipated fall 2026
That last line is the one worth sitting with. The breakwater and moorage phase is where crews pull out the old timber pier and the pipe-pile breakwater and float in the new structure. That's in-water work, heavier equipment, and by nature closer to the docks, the swim areas, and the boat traffic that Leschi residents actually use in August and September. The utility trenching that shut down the parking lots in May was, in the scheme of the full project, the smaller disruption. The fall phase was never delayed by the spring backlash. It was simply next in line, and next in line means now.
None of the coverage from May promised this was finished. Officials said work would resume in "late August or early September," and additional meetings with business owners were expected in July specifically to work out a mitigation plan before that resumption. If you haven't seen a public notice yet about lane closures on Lakeside Avenue or restricted dock access, that's worth watching for over the next several weeks, not assuming won't come.
What stays normal, and what to expect near the water
It's worth separating the marina itself from the rest of Leschi Park, because the two get conflated. The playground, the tennis court, the grassy hillside under the willows, and the paths connecting to Frink Park aren't part of this construction footprint. Those are still the same spots they've always been for an evening walk or a weekend picnic.
The marina and its immediate dock area are where the fall work will concentrate. If you swim off the dock, launch a kayak from the rack near the market, or count on the boat ramp for a summer outing, this is the stretch of the year to check for updated signage before you go, especially once breakwater work is underway and the old pier starts coming out. The city's project page is the place to watch for dated updates rather than relying on whatever headline circulated back in May.
For the businesses, the stakes are similar to what they were in spring, just compressed into a shorter and more technical phase. Shulman was clear that Leschi Market isn't opposed to the work itself. "We understand the work needs to happen," he said at the time. What business owners pushed for, and what the July meetings were meant to produce, was an actual written schedule and a traffic and access plan, something more specific than "the work will happen at some point in the fall."
Why this matters if you live here
The instinct after a loud news cycle is to assume resolution once the cameras leave. Leschi's marina story is a good example of why that instinct can be wrong. The parking fight in May was real, and the city's response, pulling a contractor within days of sustained community pressure, was unusually fast for a municipal project. But the fight was over the smaller of two disruptive phases. The bigger one was on the calendar the entire time, described in plain language on the same city project page that reported the pause everyone was celebrating.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks these things because you use the dock, the market, or the bistro patio regularly, the practical move is simple: check the project page before you plan a weekend around the water this month, and don't assume August quiet means the work is done. It likely means it's about to start.
Diane Tien lives and works in these lake-adjacent Seattle neighborhoods, and pieces like this one come out of the same habit that serves her clients well: reading past the headline to what a project actually means for daily life nearby. If you're weighing a move to the Lake Washington side of Seattle, or just want a second opinion on how a neighborhood like Leschi actually functions week to week, Diane Tien is a resource worth having. Schedule a strategic consultation whenever the timing is right.
