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Garfield Super Block project seeks to fulfill broken promises in the Central District

(Image: Garfield Super Block)

By Ryan Packer

The Garfield Super Block is unfinished business. At least, that’s how members of the coalition seeking to improve the public space around Garfield High School and the adjacent Garfield Community Center see it.

Robert Stephens, Jr. has been one of the voices pushing the public agencies who each control a section of the Garfield High School campus, Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department, to fulfil a promise made back when the school was undergoing a major renovation that opened in 2008 that cost the district over $100 million.

As part of the public process to approve building a new Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, Seattle Public Schools had to be approved to get a variance in order to build fewer than the required number of off-street parking stalls. As part of that process, the district was required to provide a public benefit as a mitigation.

That project was the Super Block improvement project. “The community was just forgotten about,” Stephens tells CHS.

The “Super Block” label may cause confusion around the goals of this project, in contrast with proposals in recent years to create more pedestrian friendly areas by limiting vehicle traffic where it’s currently allowed. Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda has proposed creating a “super block” on Capitol Hill in the Pike Pine Corridor. Here the Super Block already exists, with 24th Ave and E Jefferson having been subsumed by the Garfield campus. Pedestrian connectivity within the campus would be restored and enhanced.

The project seeks to acknowledge what Stephens described as the Central District’s “little city hall,” a major center of the political universe in the neighborhood for the past century. It also seeks to shore up historical memory of the neighborhood at large during an era of continued gentrification.

 

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A center of these improvements is the Legacy and Promise Promenade. This pathway would fulfill the long-envisioned goal of connecting Horace Mann School, now home to Nova High School, just on the other side of Cherry Street, with the Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center in the center of the campus. Along the promenade would be artwork that represents and honors eight cultural groups whose history is integral to the Central District: the Duwamish people, the Jewish community, the African-American community, the Japanese community, the Chinese community, the Fillipino community, and the Italian community.

A new fully accessible pathway that completely encircles the baseball field will combine the planned artwork with physical improvements like new play areas, renovated restrooms and major seating upgrades. The new pathway will connect to the existing crosswalk across Cherry to the Horace Mann building.

Now, Councilmember Kshama Sawant has taken on the Garfield Super Block cause, signaling her intent to get the city council to allocate a half million dollars to the project in a budget update that’s occurring this month.

According to Super Block coalition members, that money will allow the group to get the project to complete design and become much more competitive for construction grants. The Councilmember’s office has created a petition to sign on in favor of this budget add; the petition states that the requested source of funds is $5.4 million that previously had been earmarked for Seattle Police Department overtime. “Without this critical funding now, this project could come to a complete halt,” the petition reads.

Current estimates of the full cost for the Super Block project are $6 to $7 million; the coalition says they are expecting the school district to contribute around one million to the project. The project has been broken into phases if full construction funds aren’t available, but actually expect a phased approach to add more than one million dollars to the project rather than tackling it all at once.

This Wednesday, July 14th, the Super Block coalition is hosting a community gathering at the playfields from 5-8pm, which will feature parkour, food trucks, and music.

Stephens, who has been fighting to ensure that voices representing the Central District don’t get erased for over fifty years, says that pushing to get the Super Block project is his way of continuing the legacy of political action that makes the Garfield campus so significant. The Super Block, he says, is “my way of marching, my way of protesting.” This time, it looks like there is a better chance the promise will be fulfilled.

You can learn more and get involved at garfieldsuperblock.org.

 

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4 Comments
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Jansen
Jansen
2 years ago

Is this coalition largely POCs to reflect the roots of the CD and it’s African American legacy?

Jake
Jake
2 years ago
Reply to  Jansen

No, this is about the students of Garfield High, all races and creeds.

Jake
Jake
2 years ago

…..and the students of Horace Mann, too.

RentersRUs
RentersRUs
2 years ago

How about focusing on the needles and broken glass found around the park areas every weekend?