One plan from Patano Associates would be 40 acres larger than Freeway Park
Imagine a big, blank lid extending over I-5, connecting Capitol Hill to downtown. How would you fill it in? Trees and green space? Affordable housing? More streets with busses connecting the neighborhoods? A public meeting on Saturday to gather ideas could produce the design groundwork for the real thing.
Over the past several months, members of the Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council have been working to convince policy makers and the public that now is the time to plan for such a project. The reason is that developers for the Washington State Convention Center Addition, planned for the base of Capitol Hill, could kickstart a nearby lid project as part of a required community benefits process. Whether or not that happens may depend on how much the public wants it.
“We’re almost guaranteed to have lids over I-5 given the past precedents,” said PPUNC chair John Feit. “This isn’t just some academic exercise.”
The Lid I-5 campaign’s design charrette will take place at 12th Ave Arts this Saturday, May 7th, from 8 AM to 1 PM (coffee and High 5 Pie provided). Attendees will be armed with markers and tracing paper over a blown up image of the I-5 corridor to draw up their best ideas for a lid. Organizers have also complied packets of materials reviewing existing lids in Seattle and around the U.S., and will have nifty Lid I-5 buttons for anyone who attends.
Pine Street Group developers will next go before the Seattle Design Commission on June 2nd, where public benefits for the WSCC addition will be discussed. Commissioners are not expected to take any action. However, the commission will consider materials submitted by the community ahead of the meeting, creating an ideal opportunity to present the results of Saturday’s charrette.
“We have a chance to influence their decision and say the community is organized and here are some ideas on what we think,” Feit said.
As part of the WSCC addition, Pine Street requested permission to remove portions of three alleys and two streets in the project area — Metro’s soon to be defunct Convention Place Station. In exchange for taking over the streets and alleys, City policy requires the project include improvements to the surrounding area. Typically, the city’s Design Commission looks for long-term community benefits beyond the scope of the project itself, like enhanced sidewalks, street furniture, and public open spaces.
The location of a proposed extension to the Plymouth Pillars Park off-leash area. (Image: CHS)
That’s where Feit and others involved in the Lid I-5 campaign are hoping to convince the developers and the Design Commission that some of that funding should support a feasibility study for an I-5 lid. Lid I-5 is also exploring a more tangible, short-term idea of having developers extend the Plymouth Pillars Park off-leash area to cover up a smaller corner of the I-5 canyon.
Pine Street principal Matt Griffin has said in the past that funding an entire lid project was beyond the purview of the WSCC, but Design Commission officials have appeared receptive to Lid I-5’s proposals.
In a December presentation (see below), PPUNC offered several ideas for a lid that would extend from Madison to Denny. If you need more inspiration for Saturday’s charrette, have a look at the Lid I-5’s promo video.
Never attended a charrette before? Here’s how the 2010 process worked to help shape the community priorities for development around Capitol Hill Station. The concepts that were formed that day in 2010 became the community framework for the City Council’s development agreement for the land around the light rail station.
You can also help the Lid I-5 campaign by donating to the group through the Seattle Parks Foundation.
The Lid I-5 design charrette will be Saturday, May 7th from 8 AM – 1 PM at 12th Avenue Arts, 1620 12th Ave. Visit PPUNC on Facebook for more information.
Keep it simple. Make it a park. Don’t try to do everything on one site.
Do we really need another large green space in the middle of the city to collect needs and such on. Freeway park is a disgusting blight, this will just be an extension of that park and a huge disgusting blight right in the middle of the city. I’d rather see I-5 than anything like this enormous waste of money. Let’s give the money to Seattle Public Schools instead and let them put it to better use.
I think Freeway Park is a bad point of reference.
Something like this with the available breadth of space becoming an open park would be more along the lines of Central Park or Golden Gate Park.
I don’t have that much faith in our governing class to make this anything along the lines of either of those parks. Cal Anderson should be a park along those lines and it’s a needle riddled homeless camp. Why would we expect it to be any different than Freeway Park, which is run by the same people that would run this park? How would it be different? It’s a huge park in the middle of downtown.
Freeway Park used to scare me but in the last couple years it’s gotten a lot better. More other people walking through, more lunchers and walking meetings from the office towers, the Dancing til Dusk events — I don’t know what changed but I’ll happily walk through it now. Handy shortcut to my doctor’s office, as it happens.
Can’t agree more. We underfund schools, but would add yet more property tax burden for a park. I recently visited Lake Washington Middle school – after 50 years they still don’t have an assembly hall.
Cal Anderson has some problems, but is also a great public space.
Volunteer Park has less problems(?) and also fantastic; The Arboretum… etc. Or maybe those are funded/mantained differently?
I-5 is such a blight, way more so than Freeway park anyway. Crossing it on foot sucks and that area around it on both sides could benefit tremendously by potential greenery and ancillary leisure foot traffic.
I agree with ADH, keep things simple and make it a park/public space. I’d rather see some zoning restrictions loosened up to improve housing. I think trying to build on top of the lid would just be a thousand headaches waiting to happen.
To be honest, this city is a filthy mess.
I’d rather we spend money on existing needs such as cleaning up the trash we already have on our existing streets, sidewalks and parks. Then devise a maintenance plan.
How about we remove graffiti, clean our alleys, refurbish landscaping, repair sidewalks before we invest in a shiny new object.
I live right near this area and I love this idea. That I-5 Corridor between Cap Hill and DT is a complete eyesore.
Based on expected crowd sizes and ideas presented, meeting #2, “How to pay for the lid over I-5”; and meeting #3, “How to prevent the green space from tuning into another gigantic outdoor toilet” will be held in significantly smaller meeting rooms.
Meeting #2 will be chaired by Kshama Sawant and will last from 8:00-8:05 pm–just long enough to present the latest property tax levy proposal, scream “Tax the rich!”, and adjourn. Meeting #3 will last from 8:00-8:02 pm and adjourn. No agenda details available.
LOL – So true. Maybe we should move The Jungle up there so the city’s leaders can see the people it thinks should be living in such complete destitution instead of hiding them away.
Lid I-5!! This is a great long term structural investment in the city which will increase green space and improve the pedestrian experience of the city. Yes, please.
Freeway Park has too many nooks and crannies. Keep this open and simple.
Seattle can over process this for years…but it’s just a good idea to lid a major freeway right in the middle of the city.
I’m hoping for P-Patches and playfields — open space, lots of people, not a lot of infrastructure.
If there is a way to do this at minimal cost I support it. How about lid I-5 and sell most of the land space for development? Use the revenue from land sales to build light rail to Ballard and West Seattle faster.
Light rail is more important than a park.
So cap it but why necessarily all with a park? Cap it with sorely needed housing while stitching back together Downtown and Cap Hill. And being something income producing like housing would help offset the construction costs and/or could pay maintenance/operating/programming costs for any public space on the lid.