The Cross Kirkland Corridor Reopened in February. The Project Underneath It Didn't.

If you've walked or ridden the Cross Kirkland Corridor near Feriton Spur Park anytime this year, you've probably asked yourself some version of the same question: why is there still a length of steel plating and orange fencing running along the west side of the trail, months after the news said it reopened?

The honest answer is that the trail and the project are two different things, and only one of them is finished.

What actually reopened in February

The Cross Kirkland Corridor sits on top of a King County sewer line called Eastside Interceptor Section 14, or ESI-14. It's a seven-foot-diameter pipe that carries an average of 10 million gallons of wastewater a day during dry weather, all the way from Kirkland down to King County's South Treatment Plant in Renton. In late July 2025, county and city crews found that pipe leaking into Kirkland's piped stream. Public health officials looked at it and found no public health risk, but the leak was serious enough that King County's Department of Natural Resources and Parks issued a Declaration of Urgency that September, and the City of Kirkland issued its own Proclamation of Emergency to speed the repair work along.

To keep sewer service running while crews worked on the pipe, they installed a temporary above-ground line: 3,000 feet of 18-inch pipe laid along the west side of the trail between Northeast 52nd Street and 108th Avenue Northeast. The corridor closed in that stretch around January 5, 2026, wastewater was diverted into the temporary pipe on January 13, and the permanent joint repairs were finished in time for the trail to reopen on February 23, 2026.

That reopening is the part that made the rounds. What didn't get the same attention is what King County said in the same announcement: the temporary pipe, the steel plates, and the fencing around the excavated access points weren't going anywhere yet.

Some equipment will remain along the trail side for summer repair work.

The part of the project that's still queued up

The February announcement described a second phase: stabilizing and repairing a rockery wall and culvert underneath the pipe, work the county described as happening "this summer." A one-day closure on March 24 let crews test soil conditions ahead of that work. Since then, the timeline has moved slower than the original language suggested.

King County's Wastewater Treatment Division issued a State Environmental Policy Act Determination of Nonsignificance for the full ESI-14 Joint Repairs and Culvert Rehabilitation project on July 17, 2026, with the public comment period on that determination staying open through August 3. That's a normal, procedural step for a public infrastructure project, not a sign anything went wrong. But it does mean the actual culvert and rockery construction was still clearing environmental review well past the point most people would consider "summer" over, which lines up with why the temporary pipe, the plates, and the fencing are still sitting trailside if you're walking that stretch this month.

None of this is neglect. The county has been explicit that the equipment stays until the culvert work is actually done, and that new trees get planted once it wraps. It's a project moving through its required steps in the right order. It's just a longer order than the February headline implied.

Here's the sequence, laid out in the order it happened:

• July 2025: Crews detect a leak in the ESI-14 pipe entering Kirkland's piped stream.
• September 2025: King County issues a Declaration of Urgency; the City of Kirkland issues a Proclamation of Emergency.
• January 5, 2026: The trail closes between NE 52nd Street and 108th Avenue NE for pipe repair.
• February 23, 2026: The trail reopens after the permanent joint repairs are complete.
• March 24, 2026: A one-day closure for soil testing ahead of the culvert and rockery work.
• July 17, 2026: King County issues its environmental determination for the culvert rehabilitation, with public comments accepted through August 3.

If you've been wondering whether you missed an announcement that the whole thing wrapped, you didn't. The pipe repair is done. The culvert and rockery work that the equipment is staged for isn't, at least not according to anything the county has published since.

The walk itself hasn't changed

None of this touches the parts of the corridor that make it worth using in the first place. The 5.75-mile trail still runs from the South Kirkland Park and Ride north through the Totem Lake Business District, and the stretch most residents know best still has the same landmarks it always did.

• Feriton Spur Park, built through a public-private partnership between the city and Google, sits roughly halfway along the corridor, wrapped by one of Google's Kirkland campuses.
• The Spikes, a set of three welded columns made from recycled railroad spikes, was installed on the corridor in 2017, the work of a welding student at Lake Washington Institute of Technology named Merrily Dicks.
• Chainline Brewing Co. sits directly on the trail, close enough that more than one regular has mentioned turning a straight walk into a loop just to end up there.

The construction gear is confined to the fenced section on the west side between NE 52nd and 108th. Everywhere else, the crushed gravel, the tree cover, the glimpses of Lake Washington, all of it is exactly as it's been.

What to watch for before the fencing comes down

Given how the last year has gone, the safest assumption is that the temporary pipe and the plates stay up until King County actually starts and finishes the culvert and rockery rehabilitation, and that timeline is tied to environmental review steps that only cleared in early August. That doesn't mean another closure is coming. It does mean the trail's current in-between state, walkable but visibly under construction along one stretch, is more likely to persist into fall than to resolve on its own.

If you live near the corridor and use it the way a lot of Kirkland residents do, as a daily stretch of legs before work or a Saturday morning loop, the practical takeaway is simple. The trail works. The project underneath it is still open. Watching for the county's next update is a better bet than watching for the fencing to quietly disappear.

If you're a longtime Eastside resident who's curious what any of this, or anything else changing in Kirkland, might mean down the road for your own home or your next move, Deborah Song is always happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.