What happens when city government tries to:
- Gather feedback from a neighborhood dominated by mobile apartment dwellers
- Cleve an area into government defined geographies
- Prioritize a process that City Hall itself has for the most part de-emphasized over the years
?
Hi Pike/Pine Neighborhood Folks,We have had very little participation from the Pike/Pine Community on this so we are hoping you can get the word out. No one attended the meeting and breakout session for the Pike/Pine neighborhood.
We understand that people in your community have been very engaged in the Overlay work but please take a moment to answer the questionnaire yourself and pass it on to your various lists, list serves, blogs, friends, family members, neighbors, co-workers, etc. We are really working on making sure Pike/Pine is represented.Your assistance is most appreciated.Thanks!!!Barb Wilson, Director
Seattle Planning Commission
‘This’ is the neighborhood plan update process we told you about recently — Vision for development: 9 strategies to drive what comes next on Capitol Hill. And, despite CHS’s attempt to put the whole thing in the most digestible, interesting context possible, your apathy isn’t surprising. If the neighborhood plans are so important, why does the attention on their update now feel like a panicked flurry of attention?
Other neighborhoods, Wilson tells us, do seem to care. Or, at least, care more than Pike/Pine. Here’s a handy bar chart the city has provided to help you measure your apathy.
Apathetic to the right, all hot and bothered to the left
There are 4 Pike/Pine responses on the online survey about the status updates so far, according to the city. Or are there? Here’s the first question of the survey:
Seems possible a few Pike/Piners might have selected the home they most identify with — Capitol Hill — vs. the government issued geographic designation. The rest of the survey includes questions like this:
Ponder those check boxes for awhile. If you’d like to weigh in on the topics, here is a direct link to the survey. For more on the process and to review the neighborhood status reports (think of them as rough drafts for the plan updates), go here: http://www.cityofseattle.net/planningcommission/
There may be apathy as demonstrated by turnout to this planning meeting (which the survey is now being used to combat), but I really beg to differ when it comes to Pike-Pine planning in general. Case in point is the recently amended Pike-Pine overlay, which yielded a lot of community involvement, and disagreement. The meeting that was scheduled to “check-in” with Pike-Pine was planned with only a couple weeks notice and was in South Lake Union and was the night of the overlay hearing at Council. Not ideal at all for those active in the community. I am not making excuses, but it is just more complicated than people being “apathetic”.
I added the ‘neighborhood plans’ caveat just for you Kate!
I tried to take the survey, but I had to check out the overview first. It disgusts me that the neighborhood plan is so restrictive in area. There’s a sign at the intersection of 23rd and Aloha that says “Welcome to Capitol Hill,” but according to their map, a whole bunch of residents, students, and businesspeople live and work in some kind of uninteresting hinterland.
Little outreach, or, meetings on the Hill scheduled at NIGHT.
Also, people on the Hill are very engaged in the over all civic life of the city, we are the bedroom and worker colony for Downtown.
Also, fair statement, younger folks engage as they approach 30 – so age can matter.
both times, honestly, I got bored. The questions are boring. They feel like a way to praise or vent, but not enough questions that help you think about things in new ways.
i’ll try again, but then that’s IT!
Also, I did not attend the plan update meeting because the armory is a stupid place to get to without a car.
It is a very big deal, since I gave up my cars, now I feel the anger at all these event not on bus lines. It is a real bummer to do a cab and spend ten bucks cause some bureaucrat is so stupid….but, they are Blanche, they are …
I lived at the corner of Olive st. and Belmont for seven wonderful years. During that time, I was oblivious to any sort of neighborhood planning process: I was young, and working at the Olympic Hotel, and partying my then skinny butt off.
Granted, those were the day when you could get a studio, or even a one bedroom, apartment on a desk clerk or waiter’s wages. But those were also the days – in my humble opinion – when the neighborhood was at its best.
Further, as the author alluded to, the Pike/Pine table at the meeting (all the way down in SLU) was separated from the Cap Hill table. Couldn’t quite understand why. We talked to the Pike/Pine corridor at the Cap Hill table to make up for the lack of participation at that other table.
Really? C’mon; could you be more mellow dramatic? You act like we live in NY: a cockroach infested room without a kitchen nor bathroom will cost you $1200 a month. That is not how it is and please stop spreading that rumor. Sure, a barista is not likely going to buy in the brix, but that does not mean there aren’t other options.
And just because you weren’t an active part of civic life in your “skinny butt” days, does not mean the same is true for all skinny butts. Like others have expressed here, the online survey is boring. I barely made it through and I already have all my opinionated critiques lined up and ready to go.
Maybe instead of blaming hard working people in the community and calling them apathetic, you might question the methods of gathering input. Clearly, they don’t work. Sorry, despite your enthusiasm for planning meetings, most people simply don’t have time to figure out what they’re talking about. And besides, what’s the point of giving input when there’s no promise that our input will be put in?
so tables were based on the existence of neighborhood plans. cap hill and pike/pine have different and distinct plans (and stewardship groups for these plans), even though they are clearly overlapping in so many ways and both are part of the larger capitol hill community.
this distinction is not the result of a casual and arbitrary line drawn by some city planner. the distinction is/was driven by the neighborhood and the different character of the built environment and culture of these areas. pike/pine has a well articulated historic “character” in its old auto row buildings, as discussed and debated here on CHS many times over the last year in regards to the Pike-Pine Overlay that was just amended by Council.
however, this does not mean that there should not be recognition of where there is overlap, because there certainly is. it would be great to see the cap hill and pike/pine communities working together to address things that are coming down the pike (no pun intended) in the near future: streetcar, sound transit, etc. etc.
“We don’t want condo developers running amok, but we don’t want you self appointed hipster idiots and your ‘committee’ cocking up the place either.”