Walking through South Lake Union, you feel a kind of urban bounce in your step. Mothers with strollers, joggers, and cyclists move along the tree-lined streets. A phalanx of new high-rise apartments faces a gorgeous new Central Park that stretches along the Westlake corridor. A community that was once a low-rise industrial area is now an urban magnet, and not just for people who live here: families come from all over the city to enjoy this 60-acre green sanctuary that has made this park boulevard one of the most desirable addresses in the city.

Then you snap out of it. It turns out to be a reverie as you dodge packs of Amazonians heading for Whole Foods for some quick takeout. The neighborhood is a hodgepodge of cranes, construction, chain restaurants, and bad traffic. It feels suburban and center-less. And it might have been so different.

Dial back to the 1990s when Seattle citizens were presented with the idea of the Commons, a plan transforming South Lake Union in a bio-tech and tech mecca by adding an amenity many believed Seattle long needed: a large, centralized urban park.

The proposal — first advanced by Seattle Times columnist John Hinterberger — would have seen this park plunked into the middle of the burgeoning district north of Denny along Westlake. Paul Allen’s Vulcan, the University of Washington and other players saw the opportunity to convert a largely low-rise, light industrial, low-income residential area into mixed-use a high-rise community that could be our New York neighborhood. Tech, research and telecommunication outfits could build vertical campuses, with skinny towers housing their “knowledge” workers.

The Commons — right in the middle — would be the great public amenity and help drive the conversion of the area. Supporters argued that it would attract the best and the brightest and fix a longstanding Seattle problem: the city has no large, central metropolitan park. San Francisco has Golden Gate Park, Vancouver has Stanley Park—but Seattle’s parks are far-flung and smaller.

Seattle’s downtown also lacks open space. Westlake Park is small and was opened-up with mixed success. Seattle Center was located too far from the real city center and shaded more to amusement park than park. Attempts to create other civic centers had also been shot down, including the ambitious European-style Bogue Plan of 1911. The current post-Alaskan Way Viaduct waterfront plan, with its wide walkways and water features (maybe even a floating pool), is the latest attempt to resolve this, though like the Commons it is more real estate redevelopment ploy than pure park.

In the '90s, the Commons seemed like an idea whose time had come. Except that it hadn’t. Businesses and low-income housing advocates objected to displacement, many people didn’t like the price tag– around $300 million when that was real money. Others disliked that it was a public subsidy for private developers and affluent residents. South Seattle needs parks, so why prioritize the well-off techies at SLU? Some argued that Seattle, set within Columbia Tower-sight of three national parks, was already situated amidst nature—who needs a 19th century urban park? If any city could live without one, it was us.

A Commons committee formed, Paul Allen loaned it money over $20 million to buy property which would be donated if the public approved the project, large donors like Allen and Bruce McCaw kicked in. But the largest share of the cost, $100 million, would come via property taxes. Today Seattle has all the restraint of a sex-addict when it comes to self-taxation. But in the ‘90s, voters were a little more skeptical of spendy projects, especially things like stadiums or other baubles for millionaires. Timothy Egan reporting for the New York Times wrote, “To opponents, it is seen as a bulldozer attack that would level a perfectly good neighborhood to make way for a ‘yuppie ghetto.’”

We’ve had big decision moments like this before. The prime example of the post-World’s Fair era was turning down, twice, mass transit as part of the Forward Thrust regional package of improvements in the 1960s and ’70s. Yes, we could have had region-wide mass transit 90 percent paid for by the federal government, but we chose to stick with highways. That failure is cited frequently today as an epic lost opportunity to guide more sustainable urban development.