By NICK SLEPKO

After basing their neighborhood plan around, attending numerous public meetings about, and repeated, never-ending bureaucracy navigation since 1993 to ensure an underground alignment from the U-District to Northgate, the affected communities are not pleased with an abrupt change of suggested alignment. The currently favored option by Sound Transit staffers is an aerial alignment which would rise up over 20 feet above the freeway. Organizers have taken to affectionately referring to it as the "concrete rainbow" or the "Berlin Wall."

Members of the Roosevelt Chamber of Commerce, Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, and the Roosevelt Neighbors Alliance have formed a coalition group called "Save Our Neighborhoods" in order to present a coherent message to the Sound Transit Board and to keep their respective constituents informed of the major developments and their impacts.

Since almost the very beginning of the light rail crusade, Roosevelt neighborhood residents have been strong supporters of underground alignments. In fact, after the first Regional Transit Proposition failed in a special March 1995 election, planners revised their proposal to include the underground rail option.

Then in 1996, the measure passed with the narrowest of margins - most of that support coming from the Northeast Seattle area.

"You would think that in compiling 20 volumes on the subject of the proposed rail alignments, (Sound Transit) would have at least mentioned that they were strongly considering something totally different than what had been said since they began working with us," says Daniel Vaughn, a local resident (who says he is still plowing through volume 12).

In December, Sound Transit released for public consumption the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Giving less than three months for public response, the thousands of pages of materials were a bit much for even die-hard neighborhood activists to digest.

However, according to neighbors who have been in contact with County Councilwoman Cynthia Sullivan's office (a member of the Sound Transit Board), they are particularly vexed by the response.

"We have been told to our face at numerous public meetings by one public official after another that our area would have an underground alignment," says Jacqui Silvio-Barnes, resident and an owner of a Roosevelt neighborhood business, Bus Stop Espresso. "Our business would actually benefit from the current option, but we'd be the only ones. This is about sticking to what we as a community have been working on for over eight years and that's (an) underground (tunnel)."

One major structure that sits right next to (and possibly in the way of) the aerial alignment is Calvary Temple Seattle, a historic church that was forced to move to its current location in the Roosevelt neighborhood when I-5 was built several decades ago.

"We're part of this community and we want to stay here. I don't think that Sound Transit has factored in the cost of our $14 million facility into their cost projections. If the aerial alignment is selected we will seek full compensation for mitigation and possible relocation," writes Pastor Mark Nordtvedt in yet another letter to the Sound Transit Board.

As one local business reader board stated: "No matter what you call it, it's still a railroad."

In more ways than one that's for sure.

Nick Slepko is associate editor of the Jet City Maven and a resident of the Roosevelt neighborhood.