Sunnier days in the ’70s in Freeway Park (Image: City of Seattle)
The group determined to reclaim and revive the public asset is celebrating Jim Ellis Freeway Park’s 40-year history of bridging the gap and the interstate between Capitol Hill, First Hill, and downtown Seattle.
The park was founded on July 4, 1976, after years of Seattle civic leader Jim Ellis pushing for a park over I-5 to reclaim some of the space taken up by the interstate for community use. This weekend, the Freeway Park Association will celebrate the 40-year anniversary of the park’s opening and the group’s efforts to reclaim the space from decades of neglect.
“Freeway Park was the first park to lid over a freeway to reconnect communities that had been cut by that highway,” said Freeway Park Association’s Riisa Conklin. Conklin said the green-covered 5.2-acre park is essentially a “fertilizer box” situated over the highway.
The park is celebrating its 40th on Sunday, July 3 from 11:30 AM to 2 PM. The festivities will include a bluegrass band, free kettle corn, face painting, and a community kite painting project. All parts of the celebration are free and open to the public. A blues and jazz concert follows starting at 2 PM.
After a sunny start in the ’70s, the park is emerging from decades of spooky shadows and empty pathways. When it was created in the ‘70s, parks were not required to have maintenance plans. As a result, Conklin said the park became heavily overgrown, and high profile crimes like a murder in the park’s restroom in 2002 cast a pall over the space in the mind of the public.
Conklin and the Freeway Park Association are working to combat that image. A 2010 park renovation focused on cutting back or removing some vegetation to brighten and open up the space, and Conklin said the park’s current challenge is to create programming that will attract people and keep them coming back. So far the most successful approach has been to do series of events like the free gardening classes offered weekly in June and July or the dance lessons that will be coming to the park in August.
The park may eventually also be part of something bigger. The planned expansion of the Convention Center has revived interest in more lidding of I-5. Freeway Park’s challenges — and opportunities — could surely present a few lessons for what comes next.
A concerted effort to bring more people into the park occasionally draws a crowd (Image: City of Seattle)
For now, Conklin said Freeway Park also just signed a contract with the Seattle Parks Department for an Urban Parks Partnership and will be dedicating its resources to community outreach. The park association has been conducting a survey to determine where people are coming from and what attracted them to the park. The survey results will be compiled in the fall and used to determine what changes need to be made to the park and its programming in the future.
“We have a lot of work to do this summer,” said Conklin. “We’re hoping that people find Freeway Park and love it as much as we do.”
You can learn more about the upcoming 40th anniversary celebration and other Freeway Park events at the park association’s website.
I sure hope they can revitalize this park. Back in the 80’s, it was wonderful to walk through it to and from work. Of course, back then all the fountains worked, no one lived in the park, and it was a beautiful oasis over I-5. Although I agree cutting back the overgrowth will help, all too often beautiful grounds in our city are cut back way too much. So striking a good balance, rather than butchering the gardens would be great. I also think planning more community events in the park would bring a greater degree of safety. Freeway Park was once a fabulous resource, and with some planning and effort, it can be again.
This article prompted me to search for aerial views of the park prior to the lid, and before I-5 was built. I didn’t find the pre-I5 pix, but it was interesting to see how the city’s changed since the 60’s. Let’s hope we lid the rest of it and add welcoming space in that area.
Freeway Park was recently featured in a really cool PBS show called “10 Parks that Changed America.”
http://www.pbs.org/program/ten-that-changed-america/10-parks-changed-america/
This is cool, thanks for posting the link!
Yes, thank you, I’m about to watch it.
The dance lessons are great — live music! a surprisingly pleasant portable dance floor! lots of styles!
As a kid growing up in Seattle in the 70s and 80s, I remember my dad taking me and my sister down to Freeway Park to hang out and splash around in the fountains and waterfalls. There were always lots of other folks there, including plenty of families. One of my favorite things was going behind one of the waterfalls to look through a window through which you could see traffic whizzing by on I-5. I wonder if that window is still there?