Community meeting dates have been set for the 14th Ave NW Park

The first interdeparmental meeting between Parks, SDOT, SPU, EBCA, and consultants

Happy New Year and a big year this is going to be for the East Ballard neighborhood! This is the year YOU will help design a park along 14th Ave NW between NW 59th and NW 61st. Not just on paper, but one for REAL! This is going to be a park designed the way the community wants it, because YOU are going to mark your calendar and participate in 2 upcoming community meetings!

At Meeting #1, Seattle Parks Dept, the EBCA, and Mithun, the design consultant, will present the history of the project, site analysis and three design options. These park and street options will incorporate parking, traffic and safety, and water treatment strategies. The goal of this stage of the project is to create a schematic design and cost estimate to present at Meeting #2.

Meeting #1
TUESDAY JANUARY 24, 2012
7-9 p.m ST. ALPHONSHUS PARISH SCHOOL
5816 15TH Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107

Meeting #2
WEDNESDAY MARCH 7, 2012
7-9 p.m ST. ALPHONSHUS PARISH SCHOOL
5816 15TH Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107

If all goes as planned, City Council and Seattle Dept of Transportation will give us approval by the end of March and we could be breaking ground by late Summer!

Update from the walking audit on 14th

Last Wednesday, Nov 30, was a particularly cold morning, but untypically clear, which made for a great day for a walking audit along 14th. This day felt like the unofficial kickoff for the 14th Ave NW park boulevard. This was the first time the stakeholders came together to talk ‘Park’. Representatives  from the EBCA, Parks, Dept of Transportation, Mithun, Fehr and Peers and Mayfly met bright and early at the library at St. Alphonsus school for a quick Transportation 101 lesson, facilitated by Kendra from Fehr & Peers Traffic Engineering firm and followed up by an overview by Peter Locke on the history of the 14th Ave NW park boulevard community project. We then bundled up and headed out to walk together along 14th while being filmed and discuss topics of multi-modal transportation and possible treatments that could be applied along the corridor and intersections toward the goal of making 14th both safe and inviting.

We then headed over to the Ridgeback Cafe where they kindly accommodated us with a very large row of tables so we could lay out our map and further discuss the conditions of the corridor and Park elements in a warm setting with hot coffee in hand! The next step is for Fehr & Peers to put together notes and share them with the team to be used to  determine what types of traffic studies need to be performed and to be used when designing the park boulevard. We”ll share these notes on the 14th Ave NW Park Boulevard Page when we  get them. Interim notes on discussion topics recorded by the EBCA are here. Thanks to everyone who dedicated their morning to making this Park happen!

November 30, 2011 – Walking Audit on 14th Notes

These notes were taken by Dawn Hemminger and do not completely or  accurately convey exactly what was discussed during the walking audit along 14th Ave NW on November 30, 2011. These are Dawn’s impressions that the EBCA would like to capture for future reference. Official notes from Fehr & Peers should be following shortly.

See blog post for a summary of the event. The following are some specific topics that were discussed:

• Parking – If the right of way merges into 2 lanes side-by-side between NW 60th and 61st with the space used for the median moved to the east side for use in the Park, then what would happen to parking spaces? Is there sufficient side street parking potential? What type of on-street parking is most efficient for this section (angled or parallel)? Parking studies are definitely planned for this project.
• Trees – Go big if we can, but we first need to determine what we want to achieve in this corridor so that we can thoughtfully select trees and landscaping.
• Intersection treatments – The intersection at NW 60th feels to be the heart of the park (right in the middle of it). This is also a busy corridor for cross traffic between 8th and 15th. Note that NW 62nd may get a light at 15th one day as a push to connect East Ballard with Ballard Corners Park at 17th and 62nd. This is something to take into consideration as well. Since 14th is a collector arterial, there is concern that many considered intersection treatments, like an elevated crosswalk, different street material or piazza-style crossing (diagonal pedestrian crossing) may not be allowed. It sounds like SDOT may be amenable to these types of treatment for this situation. To slow down vehicle speed on NW 60th, there were discussions about potentially closing off NW 60th on the east side of 14th at the intersection.
• Bike traffic – 14th is on the city’s bicycle master plan for designated bike lanes in each direction. Could we have a dedicated lane on the east side going up hill and a sharrow on the west side going down hill? Today, the gravel from the medians, poor road conditions, and dangerous intersections are an impediment to recreational and commuter bicyclists.
• Existing planters – We would like to incorporate the existing planters that are in the median into the park design. Another possible alternative could be to move the planters to the medians south of Market to get neighbors in that area interested in caring for the street and to start work on extending the park boulevard further south.

Nov 30th walking audit on 14th Ave NW

Mithun and Fehr and Peers, the Landscape Architecture firm and Transportation Consultants for the 14th Ave NW Park Boulevard will be conducting a 4 hour walking audit along 14th Ave NW the morning of November 30. Representatives from the Seattle Parks Dept, Seattle Department of Transportation and the East Ballard Community will be attending. This will be the first time these groups will be getting together to talk about the park. We currently have 4 representatives from the East Ballard Community that are planning to attend. If you are interested in attending, please contact Dawn Hemminger at eastballard@gmail.com. Please note there will be opportunities in the near future to provide input on design at public community meetings.  We will continue to keep the community up to date via this blog. You can also provide constructive feedback via this blog.

Do you have a favorite tree on 14th?

Last week, a few members of the EBCA steering committee met with Pam Kliment from the Parks Dept to start an early discussion about trees on 14th (specifically those along the planting strip on the east and west side between NW 59th and NW 61st where the first phase of the 14th Ave NW Park Boulevard will begin).

An arborist study will be part of the park-making process and the city wants to know early on if there are any existing trees along this corridor that are of particular interest to the community.

The EBCA has provided input, but more importantly, we want serious consideration and thoughtful input from you.  We encourage you to provide constructive feedback via the comments section for this post or contact Dawn Hemminger at eastballard@gmail.com.

Some things to think about:

1. Do you have a favorite tree or trees on 14th?
2. What kind of trees would you like to see along the park boulevard and why?

Recommendations made by the EBCA Steering Committee

• The cherry trees are important – Many people in the community enjoy the white blossoms of the cherry trees in Spring. There are some cherry trees that have been pruned very poorly or are poorly located. We recommend that it would be OK to remove some cherry trees if necessary for park design purposes and/or health, but at least one or two significant cherry trees should remain per block on each side of the street for heritage sake.
• Existing large trees should remain if healthy and are not a nuisance - There was a discussion about large trees, e.g. the 2 very large trees between 59th and 60th on the east side. We agreed that there are some benefits of large trees in that they can provide a privacy screen and shade. The benefits should, however, not be at the cost of displacing the walkways due to roots or interfering with the utility lines. Large trees should be proportionate to the scale of the neighborhood.
• A variety of complementing trees are preferred – A variety of different trees and shrubs that complement each other instead of a single specimen along the boulevard is preferred in order to prevent the spread of disease and provide different interests along the way.

Overall, the EBCA believes that it’s really too early to say which trees should stay and which should go until the park has been designed. We appreciate the Parks Dept thinking about this issue early in the process and we want to continue this open conversation throughout the design process. We will be keeping the community posted through this blog on further topics of discussion and will continue to value your thoughtful input.

Thanks for cleaning up our neighborhood!

18 neighbors of all ages gathered along 14th Ave NW yesterday for a bit a of fun and to do something good for the neighborhood. We’ve been doing this for so many years now, that it’s become an event to look forward to and a chance to catch up on what everyone’s been up to. We spent the morning picking up trash, digging weeds and sweeping gravel off the street to make our street safer and more beautiful  for all who use it. It’s amazing what just a small group of dedicated people can accomplish in 3 hours. Imagine what we’d be able to do if everyone else in the neighborhood found out how much fun this event is and shows up for our next cleanup event on April 21! The EBCA is counting on you! Check out the flickr photos for more scenes from this event.

14th Ave NW Rain Garden Project selected for EPA national rulemaking program

photo by Ed Sozinho

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently initiated a national rulemaking to establish a comprehensive program to reduce stormwater runoff from new development and redevelopment and make other improvements to strengthen its stormwater program.  The EPA asked The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) to collect case studies on projects that successfully and sustainably manage stormwater.

Jennifer Britton, formerly from SDOT and now Assistant Professor at Montana State University, submitted a case study for our bioswale and pedestrian safety improvement project at 14th Ave NW and NW 58th to ASLA for consideration. We just learned today that our project was selected as one of 479 case studies from 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada!

This is very exciting news to learn that our efforts to improve our quality of life in the East Ballard neighborhood are now being given national attention. Thank-you to  everyone that helped with this project and to those who continue to take care of this site today.

Consultant selected for the 14th Ave NW Park Blvd

We’ve been sitting on pins and needles these past few weeks while awaiting an announcement from the Parks Dept on their approval for a Landscape Architect firm that will work with our community to design the 14th Ave NW Park Boulevard. At last, we got the word from Parks this week, and I’m happy to announce that Mithun has been selected and they have accepted! We’re very excited about the team that Mithun has put together for our project and we can’t wait to roll up our sleeves and get to work!

This Spring/Summer, the park boulevard steering committee worked closely with Parks to assemble a list of 5 very highly qualified and talented consultants to interview. These groups were Kenneth Philp, KPG, Mithun,  Otak, and Swift.  Sadly, Swift declined to go for the job, but they did offer to provide us with some pro bono work which we greatly appreciate.

Our committee painstakingly pored over presentation materials from the 4 remaining consultants and took our job very seriously in scoring their work. Peter was selected as our representative on the interview panel that was shared with members from the Parks Dept and Seattle Dept of Transportation. The day was spent listening to presentations from these talented firms and then going over notes/scores,  and developing a consensus on who to recommend. We really appreciate the thoughtfulness of the interview committee, because this was not an easy decision.

On behalf of our steering committee, I want to express our most sincere thanks to those at Kenneth Philp, KPG and Otak who showed such incredible enthusiasm for our park and who took the time and effort to get to know us and our project a little better. I hope that our paths will cross again one day.

14th Ave NW Park Boulevard is now an official Seattle parks project

The sign went up on Aug 12th in the median on 14th Ave NW at NW 60th. Now that the sign is up, it’s starting to feel very real that this park is going to happen! Interviews for a Landscape Design Consultants are scheduled for August 17th. Once we get a consultant on board, stay tuned for invites to design meetings. You’re also welcome to provide comment at any time to our project manager at Parks (contact info below).  Stay tuned to this site  for future updates! There will be many to come!

Seattle Parks Program Manager
Pam Kliment
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 300
Seattle, WA 98134
206-684-7556
pamela.kliment@seattle.gov

What’s a block party without a bouncy house?

IMG_7425, a photo by eastballard on Flickr.

Thanks to everyone that helped make this year’s East Ballard August Night Out event such a big hit! 14th Ave NW and NW 60th was where the big party was. Shelby and Peter outdid themselves this year with a bouncy house, BBQ and a live band! Check out the flickr site for more pics from the evening.