Seems like everybody in the civic establishment, and in the just-outside groups lobbying the civic establishment, wants to get rid of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Seattle Times wants it gone. The P-I wants it gone. Allied Arts of Seattle wants it gone. And most influentually, Paul Allen wants it gone.

I want it to stay.

By far, it’s Seattle’s most scenic and romantic higher-speed roadway. Driving north on it at night is a visual definition of coming home to Seattle–the office towers shining to your right, Elliott Bay peacefully slumbering to your left. (And that sudden off-ramp onto Marion Street is always a mini thrill ride.) On the few days a year pedestrians can use it, it becomes a heaven of undiscovered angles and photographic possibilities.

Of course, I know the 51-year-old Viaduct can’t stay, at least not in its current incarnation. It’s not earthquake-safe, it’s built on unstable landfill, and the seawall holding up the landfill is itself old and decaying.

This provides the civic-builder clique with the perfect excuse to demand the viaduct’s replacement–not with another elevated scenic drive but with a tunnel. And on the ground level above the tunnel, the parking lots and low-rent storefronts of today’s Alaskan Way would be tossed aside as an unwanted memory of a working-class past the city’s elite would rather forget. In its place: What Times guest writer and architect Karen DeLucas calls “a great urban oasis” comprising “a rich dynamic series of urban places linked together by a pedestrian promenade that stretches the entire length of the Seattle waterfront.”

Feel free to read that as Seattle Commons II: A squeaky-clean, hyper-bland, fantasy playplace for the upscale and the tourists, openly intended to drive up surrounding property values and drive out any remaining outposts of the non-affluent.

Or, as Times columnist James Vesely writes of today’s waterfront, “The cheesy tourist strip was OK for a different Seattle, but there are grander things that could be done, and why not dream them?”

Well, I’ve got my own dreams on what to do with the waterfront. And keeping the cheesy tourist strip, even expanding it, is #2 or #3 on my list.

The rise of containerized cargo and shipboard fish processing means we can’t return the old stevedore docks to their original uses. But we can preserve their current uses–unpretentiously entertaining the citizenry with fish n’ chips under radiant heating units, ferry rides, ice cream cones, street vendors, sea-otter displays, Imax movies, souvenir-plate stores, Sylvester the Mummy, and the occasional tugboat race or Flaming Lips concert. These fine attractions could be enhanced with selective additions, which might include an amusement park with a kickass roller coaster, a summer-long “street fair,” some more exotic-import shops, some nighttime hot spots, fire eaters, stilt walkers, cabaret acts, and, of course, the Kalakala.

Just up from the water, Alaskan Way and its immediate environs between Spokane and Seneca Streets would become, in my dream, a covered (though not fully rain-protected) year-round anything-goes zone. Bars in this zone would have no mandated closing times. Pedestrians (though not drivers) would be permitted to carry open containers along what would be an all-night party place.

Beneath the street and above a traffic tunnel, a new “underground Seattle” would let grownups play safely out of sight from the family-values types: Casinos, strip clubs, rave clubs, odd performance-art venues, etc. South of Washington Street, it would turn into an “Amsterdam West” district offering red-light experiences for consenting adults of all persuasions.

Above the street, a new and seismically-correct viaduct would offer three or four lanes of slow, scenic traffic on its top tier (everyday traffic would be encouraged to take the tunnel). The new viaduct’s lower tier would be a covered pedestrian and bicycle way, with P-Patch planting boxes and art installations, alongside a monorail branch line.

Yeah, it’d all cost money. (Although my plan has more potentially rentable and taxable aspects than the plan the Times likes.) Yeah, it’d need rezoning. Yeah, it’d face political opposition.

But Vesely says we’ve gotta have big dreams if we want this city to become a better place. And my dreams are bigger, and more fun, than his will ever be.