With King County Metro Transit and Sound Transit on board as partners, in 2016 twelve artists produced nine murals, including Mary Iverson’s multi-colored shipping containers set against Mount Rainier, Drew Merritt’s floating-upside-down woman and Joram Roukes’ human-rooster collage. “After the pilot, we were all hooked,” Goodman says.

Portland-based muralist Gage Hamilton was brought on as curator from the get-go. “Gage started out doing boots-on-the-ground inventory,” says Benzikry, “taking stock of buildings’ surface quality, thinking about what materials would be needed, surveying murals in other cities and considering appropriate artists.”

Hamilton’s “boots-on-the-ground” role also led to how SODO Track got its name. “I was walking on train tracks the whole time, hearing the ding-ding-ding of the warning bell,” Hamilton recalls. “But I also liked the idea of this transit corridor as a race track.”

Designed to be seen from a moving bus or train (or while biking or walking along the paved trail), the murals are painted on a huge scale for greater graspability as people whizz by. Some pull the eyeballs along via bright bursts of repeating geometry, flora and fauna. Others feature text, such as Zack Yarrington’s tricky faux-palindrome “EVLOVE” and Georgia Hill’s black-and-white promise, “I’LL BE THERE SOON.”

“From the start we wanted SODO Track to be part of the international street art conversation, but also something particular to Seattle,” Benzikry says. While many other cities have thriving mural scenes, Seattle’s is the only one that now boasts a linear parade of murals by an array of different artists. And while in other places, murals can be harbingers of urban renewal, and all that comes with it (“one person’s revitalization is another’s gentrification,” Benzikry notes), because of the industrial zoning in SODO, that is not at issue here. “These buildings will never be turned into condos,” Hamilton says. “It’s not zoned residential.”

But as Hamilton is well aware, that doesn’t mean people aren’t living there. He encountered many homeless people while working on the murals, many of whom, he says, voiced interest and enthusiasm about SODO Track. “It seemed to give them some pride in their area,” Hamilton says. “Some of the guys offered to watch over the murals.” Members of SODO BIA, 4Culture and Urban Artworks (which helped execute many of murals) will also be on watch, using a maintenance endowment fund to buff out defacement within 24 hours.

There are still a couple hold-outs along the SODO Track — businesses that didn’t participate for various reasons. But organizers are confident now that the corridor is a striking success, they’ll join in too. “It might be piecemeal, but the goal is to get the whole corridor covered,” Benzikry says. Calling herself “thrilled and amazed” by the full effect, Goodman agrees. “We haven’t given up on the ones that haven’t said yes yet,” she says. “We are not stopping.”