Clear skies, a crowd of eager well-wishers and the UW Marching Band set the mood for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the University Link light rail construction that took place at Husky Stadium last Friday.

The event was attended by Sen. Patty Murray, UW President Mark Emmert and several others important to the development of the project. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was present as the master of ceremonies.

“Even if it were raining cats and dogs,” Nickels said, “I would still consider this a great day.”

The first stage of construction for the Sound Transit: University Link project will move underground utilities — water and sewer lines — away from the planned sites for the station and tunnels.

The University Link will be a light rail system that takes riders from downtown Seattle through Capitol Hill and directly to a station beneath Husky Stadium. Construction efforts formally started last Friday, and the project is scheduled to be completed and ready to service more than 70,000 daily riders in 2016.

“We’re going to be disturbing a fair amount of real estate for some time,” Nickels said.

Construction of the Husky Stadium station and the tunnels it connects to will take place in the parking lots adjacent to the stadium. The construction will begin at the end of the 2009 football season and will render hundreds of parking spaces unusable for years.

However, University Link Project Director John Harrison said the project is not allowed to displace any more than 600 parking spaces. This means the UW has been compensated for the disruption of 600 parking spaces for the duration of the construction, and the funds have already been put to use expanding the West Campus Parking Garage to the corner of 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Pacific Street. That project is expected to be completed long before the Husky Stadium parking spaces become occupied by construction crews.

The University Link project is budgeted at $1.9 billion and will be paid for from a number of sources. The local funding was secured in 1996 by tax increases approved by voters, and the project has also recently been awarded an $813 million full-funding grant agreement from the Federal Transit Administration.

Murray said in her brief address to the crowd that the spending bill currently being considered by the U.S. Senate could contain somewhere in the vicinity of $50 million in additional funding for the University Link project and the Central Link, which opens this July and will run between downtown Seattle and the Sea-Tac Airport.

This will mark the first time since 1940 that the UW has been served directly by a non-bus system. The last time was before the Seattle Transit System retired the city’s streetcar line.

Although the light rail system has been in development in some form since 1996, speakers at the ceremony highlighted the importance that the project is being implemented now, creating jobs in a tough economic climate.

The construction project alone will create 2,900 new jobs. That fact was noted several times over the course of the ceremony, but none spoke about it with more pride than Lee Newgent, executive secretary for the Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council.

“Not only are they working here,” Newgent said, “They know that they’re working on something for the public good.”

Reach contributing writer Morgan Gard at news@dailyuw.com.