City officials have made it clear: They want to continue last year’s experiment of using Pike/Pine’s streets in new and creative ways. Funding is available — albeit still not secured — and eager public right-of-way wonks and private consultants are at the ready to make your wildest street and sidewalk use dreams come true. What they need is direction.

With the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict taking a sideline role after leading last year’s pedestrian zone pilot, city officials say they are listening for a unified neighborhood voice to steer the next round of street use projects.

On Tuesday evening, officials from the Seattle Department of Transportation held a community feedback session at the 11th Ave V2 art space to take another wide survey of what residents and business owners want. It was also an invitation for people to get organized.

“Maybe if there was some ‘Friends of E Pike’ that wanted to come forward,” SDOT’s Seth Geiser told CHS.

Short of an uprising in demand for one specific project, there will be no pedestrian-only zones in Pike/Pine this summer. Instead, SDOT is planning to take a more granular approach to experimenting with street and sidewalk projects starting in September.

After presentations from city officials and a consultant hired to work on the project, participants broke out into groups to draw up their ideas on large Pike/Pine maps. Feedback from Tuesday night’s meeting will be pulled into a report, cut with SDOT’s best practices for street use design, and developed into a series of recommendations.

Last year, the EcoDistrict experimented with programmed and non-programmed street closures. Most participants in Tuesday night’s meeting focused on programming. Here are a few of their ideas:

• A huge, three block-long communal table
• Wine and cheese market
• Public restrooms
• Neighborhood potlucks
• Oversized chess
• Flea market in the street
• Live performances

Whether it is SDOT or Friends of E Pike, daytime business owners in the area will still need to be convinced a project that restricts car traffic and reduces parking is worth their while. After last year’s experiment, Geiser said some business owners felt inundated with street closures amid the constant construction and three-day Capitol Hill Block Party.

The 2015 the E Pike street closure between Broadway and 12th Ave was an attempt to address issues of crowd control, sidewalk congestion, and LGBTQ visibility and accessibility in the rambunctious Pike/Pine nightlife core of Capitol Hill, and the results indicated overwhelming support by participants for a more pedestrian-friendly corridor, city officials say.

To help with this year’s street-use experiments, SDOT is working with the Capitol Hill consultant company Framework. Speaking at Tuesday’s event, co-founder Lesley Bain raised the idea of leveraging local businesses to direct street programming, like a fashion show put on by clothing shops or a board game tournament run by Gamma Ray Games.

“We’ve let traffic engineers design (streets) for a long time … but it’s very much a people place,” she said.

17 things CHS heard

1. “We are committed to doing something,” said Kate Becker of the city’s Office of Film and Music.
2. Becker: “We want this neighborhood to feel safe and for people to feel like it is their neighborhood and their concerns are being heard.”
3. 27% of the city is public right of way.
4. A handful of participants said they wanted the city to loosen regulations prohibiting businesses from selling products or food in the street.
5. When Seattle built sidewalks and streets, Geiser said, “they weren’t envisioning this intensity of use we see in Pike/Pine 2016”
6. Regarding the scope of this year’s pedestrian zone, Geiser said, “It’s Pike centric, but it’s a whole network.”
7. SDOT would consider turning a Pike/Pine street one way, but Geiser cautioned that “any scheme has to take into account how people get to their properties.”
8. “I’d personally like to see the street closed day and night, 24 hours a day.”
9. Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce director Sierra Hansen said last summer some business owners were concerned about an uptick in drinking and smoking marijuana in the street.
10. “It would be rad to do one long table along the entire strip.”
11. “Sunday supper at the big table!”
12. Bain: “Soul is not lost, but under threat.”
13. Bain: “It’s not just for people that are using the neighborhood and not of the neighborhood.”
14. Bain: “We’ve done some dog things and I’m happy to say the dogs have been well behaved.”
15. Innovation is one of SDOT’s goals when it comes to right of way policy, Geiser said.
16. “It needs money to do it well.”
17. “We still need to figure out the money.”

Want to get involved? Contact Seth Geiser at [email protected].