A small electric vehicle charging lot in West Seattle that was supposed to take about three months to build back in 2022 is now not expected to open until September 2027, after Seattle City Light fired its original contractor and spent months untangling a structural design problem that halted construction entirely. The Morgan Junction site, roughly 4,520 square feet on a decommissioned substation property, is intended to host eight paid public chargers once finished.
When City Light first floated the idea in April 2022, the timeline sounded simple. As reported by Westside Seattle, the utility said construction could begin as soon as the fourth quarter of 2022 and take approximately three months to complete. That did not happen. According to The Urbanist, City Light had started planning the Morgan Junction lot in 2022 on a former substation site that had sat decommissioned for 20 years, and an internal City Light memo had set a planned construction start of October 2025 — three years after the original target.
A Contractor Comes and Goes
Construction finally got underway when Zenisco Inc. won the project contract with a bid of $823,250, as West Seattle Blog reported in November 2025, around the same time a project update said work was expected to start that November with pre-construction activities already underway. Zenisco began construction in February 2026, per The Urbanist's reporting, and crews worked at the site for about five months before everything stopped.
In July 2026, City Light told West Seattle Blog that a newly discovered structural design issue required a complete work stoppage. “This required a complete work stoppage and will further delay the project so the project team can develop a solution,” the utility said at the time. City Light added that it would provide an estimated completion date once permitting authorities approved a fix, declining to commit to a new timeline in the meantime. The Urbanist's reporting indicates the problem centered on an east wall redesign needed because of work-quality issues and site conditions.
Engineers Fix the Design, City Fires the Builder
Two months later, the picture got clearer — and more complicated. City Light said in September 2026 that its construction engineers had resolved the structural design issue that stopped work in July. But the same update, reported by the same outlet, revealed the utility had terminated its contract with Zenisco due to performance issues and was bringing on a new contractor. With a new builder needed and a new design in hand, City Light set a fresh completion target: September 2027. The utility said it was waiting on next steps to secure that new contractor, and it is now promising quarterly project updates going forward.
City Light's own project page echoes that September 2027 target, stating plainly that the project has taken longer than planned. “This project has taken longer than we planned, and we understand the frustration that comes with that,” the utility said, according to Seattle City Light. “We're committed to completing this work and opening the station for the Morgan Junction and all who visit.”
Not the First EV Lot to Stall Out
A planned Belltown EV charging lot was canceled too. In December 2022, The Urbanist reported that City Light canceled the Belltown project, citing unforeseen delays and funding constraints, and said it would keep working with community stakeholders to find another way to bring EV fast charging to the neighborhood. Reporting on the proposed lot's size has varied: an earlier Urbanist report described a six-stall surface lot, while the outlet's December 2022 story put the figure at approximately six to eight parking stalls.
City Light Shifts Strategy to Curbside Chargers
While its surface-lot projects have stumbled, the city is expanding curbside charging. The Seattle Department of Transportation said in October that the city is installing up to 200 new curbside Level 2 EV charging stations by 2030, funded in part by the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Levy, according to SDOT.
