Giant Robot Army, originally
uploaded by prima seadiva.

Thursday night, the committee that will set the course for how money from the next Seattle Parks Levy will be deployed comes to Capitol Hill to hear community feedback on dozens of proposed initiatives including $800,000 for more rangers and staff to help make the central city’s parks safer.

Here’s a note about the meeting from newly re-elected City Council member Sally Bagshaw:

Join Us at the Public Hearing for the Parks Legacy CAC on Thursday, November 7th!

subcommittee_preliminary_prioritization.pdf

Now that most of the election malarkey is wrapped up, we can turn CHS’s attention to coverage that really matters. A Seattle Parks work crew was busy this week preparing the area around Cal Anderson’s southern stairway entry to the Bobby Morris playfield in a project to widen the access point, add a small retaining wall and, Parks hopes, help save a big old tree. Continue reading →

Powered by a parks levy grant, the plan to “pedestrianize” John Street between Olive and Summit adjacent the 2011-built Summit Slope Park is moving into its final planning phase. Wednesday night, city planners will discuss the preferred alternative for the project and its potential changes for the street’s use in a meeting at the Capitol Hill library branch. Details on the final planning meeting and a look at the design alternatives that have been considered are below.

Earlier this week, the city opened the first stretch of a new Broadway bikeway that will accompany the First Hill Streetcar route and has transformed the eastern side of Broadway beyond the traditional auto-focused street and parking layout. In September, Seattle’s first parklet trading street parking for public mini-park space debuted on E Olive Way.

UPDATE: Scott Shinn of the Seattle group Parents for Skateparks is hoping to draw attention to an issue in the design alternatives that he says could make the hard-won Summit Slope Park’s skate dot feature useless for skateboarders.

Continue reading →

Honoring a writer, newspaper editor and leader in Seattle’s black community, the planned public green space for the lot at 19th and Madison will be named Cayton Corner Park.

Susie Revels Cayton, daughter to the first U.S. Senator of African descent, arrived in Seattle in 1896:

Susie Revels Cayton soon became a leader in Seattle’s black community. She was named associate editor of The Seattle Republican and, later, contributing editor of Cayton’s Weekly. She was an active member of cultural and social organizations designed to improve the conditions of African Americans, including the “Sunday Forum,” a group of black Seattleites that met on a regular basis. Along with three other black women, Susie Cayton founded the Dorcus Charity Club in response to an urgent plea to help a set of abandoned twins. The club continued its charitable work for years.

Following a naming process this summer, the community group working to help plan the new park announced the decision earlier this week. If you’d like to get involved, their next meeting is October 8th, 6:30 PM at the Hearing, Speech & Deafness Center adjacent to the park space.

Residents celebrated at the space now known as Cayton Corner on Seattle’s Night Out in August (Image: CHS)

The call for names for a new park at 19th and Madison created a flurry of creativity. Now the community group working to make the park a reality is trying to winnow the list of candidates down to a Top 3. Here are the 15 suggested names for the greenspace that made the cut.

You can weigh in on your top 3 here.

1. Acute Triangle Park: For geometric reasons, a play on words for “A Cute Triangle.”
2. Big Leaf Park: Honoring the preservation of the outstanding maple tree on the property.
3. Cayton Corner Park: Susie Revels was the daughter of Hiram Revels, the first black person elected to the U.S. Senate. She moved to Seattle and in 1896 married Horace Cayton, editor of the Republican Weekly. Together they published the newspaper and had the 2nd highest circulation in Seattle while appealing to both black and white readers. Both graduated from college and promoted education. They were active in the African American community and local politics.
4. Chas Bo Park: Chas Bo’s Milk Palace and Produce Emporium, a milk and vegetable stand was located on this corner from 1977 until 1980.
5. Fratelli’s Cows Park: Fratelli’s Ice Cream headquarters and distribution center were directly north of the park. It’s noted for the cow mural hand painted by one of the owners, which represented cows in different artistic styles that served as a landmark for about twenty years. Fratelli means brother in Italian.
6. Gdynia Park: Seattle’s Polish sister city. The Polish Cultural Center has been in the neighborhood since 1920.
7. Helen Keller Park: Born in Alabama, she lost her sight, speech and hearing at 19 months old. Through the help of Ann Sullivan she transformed from a disruptive child to a highly educated and respected individual. She gave lectures in Seattle in 1914, 1921, 1938 and visited the city briefly while returning from her world tour in 1948.
8. Longlight Park: The traffic light at this corner is just about the longest in Seattle, or at least it was in the ’90s. People used to get out of their cars (north & southbound) to press the “walk” request button to get it to change faster.
9. MadCap Park: Madison Capitol Hill combined.
10. Manuel Lopes Park: Historians consider him to be the first African American in Seattle. Of Portuguese-African descent he worked on whaling ships. In Seattle, he worked as a cook for Dexter Horton, a well-known banker, and was listed in his household in 1860. He also worked as a barber.
11. Mini Grand Central Park: A tiny park with big ideas. Also refers to a busy place.
12. Nexus Park: It’s at the nexus of several neighborhoods and changing history.
13. Octavia Butler: Californian African American science fiction writer, who earned the Nebula Award, Hugo Award and MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. She earned these awards while living in California, she moved to Lake Forest Park in October 1999 and died there five years later in February 2006. She was elected to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.
14. Rising Sun Park: The Rising Sun Fruit, Vegetable and Milk stand stood on this corner from 1981 until 2004. The corner is on the east side of Second or Renton Hill so gets the sunrises.
15. William Renton Park: Captain Renton owned the property in the 1880’s and earned a living through his lumber, coal and shipping operations in the area. He was blind at the time of his death. He employed Native Americans and African Americans at his mill. In 1860, he employed 3 African Americans at a time when only 56 lived in the territory. On early maps of Seattle, this area was known as Renton or Renton Hill.

The community project to develop a park at 19th and Madison has their preliminary landscape design completed. Now the park is waiting on two things: funding, and a name.

The city is currently soliciting suggestions for the park’s name — community members with ideas can email paula.hoff@seattle.gov or fill out the survey here.

The final design sketches include a plan to replace the concrete wall on Madison Street with a terraced amphitheater and a slide. The design features a large concrete path which will run through the middle of the park.

“A lot of people use it as a cut through, which we were cognizant of for our design,” said park steering committee member Tomilyn Rupert.

Because grass has high maintenance costs, there will be no grass field at the new park. Instead, the steering committee has formed a partnership with nonprofit Seattle Works to maintain the park’s plantings.

The city has final say on the park’s name, but they will likely listen to community input. The committee hopes to assemble a list of several names to present to the city group in charge of the decisions. Suggestions so far include:

• Diverse City Park
• Cascade View Park
• Chestnut Park/Mystique Park (in reference to the historical street names of the corner where the park stands)
• Nexus Park (“We’re at the convergence of Capitol Hill and the Central District,” Rupert said).

Once a name is selected, the next step for the 19th and Madison Park will be making the design a reality by bringing in volunteers and securing grant funding. Getting the community involved in the park’s development will be crucial, Rupert said.

“There’s a wide range of opportunities and time commitments available,” said committee member Stephanie Henning.

The park stands in the shadows of the Hearing, Speech and Deafness Center building and across the street from the Lawrence Lofts building that replaced the old Fratelli Brothers site.

Henning said the park will host a community party at this year’s Capitol Hill Night Out, including lawn games and possibly a barbeque.

Community members looking to get involved with the park’s development can attend the monthly general meeting on the 2^nd Tuesday of every month at 6:30 on the 2^nd floor of the Hearing, Speech and Deafness Center or email the organizers at parkat19thandmadison (at) gmail.com.

The planned design for the park at 19th and Madison will include a terraced stone or concrete amphitheater and will retain the maple tree on the 19th Avenue sidewalk.

(Image: FoBHP)

Broadway Hill Park, Capitol Hill’s next public green-space project, has been selected for a big injection of cash thanks to the Seattle Parks and Recreation Opportunity Fund. The Friends of Broadway Hill Park group shares the good news, below. By the way, you can join them in celebrating the funding as the lot at Federal and Republican again hosts the community spaces for Capitol Hill Garage Sale Day on Saturday, June 8th. Sign up for the big day here… now!

Broadway Hill Park has been recommended to receive $750,000 from the Opportunity Fund by the Parks and Green Spaces Levy Oversight Committee!!  Assuming that the City Council and Mayor approve the committee’s recommendations, the park’s construction WILL BE FULLY FUNDED and will very likely begin next year!!
Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this a reality.  The impact of this funding is huge — it changes the course of this project and means that our neighborhood park will be constructed several years in advance of when it would have been, had we been forced to raise the funding ourselves.

We were only a competitive applicant for the Opportunity Fund because of all the people who volunteered their time over the past few years.  Please take a moment to congratulate yourself and your neighbors, and see the final list for yourself below!