(Image: @SeattleShines)
A “selfie” with new parks super AP Diaz and the tour members who joined him for a winter walk through Cal Anderson Park (Image: @SeattleShines)
There’s new light shining through Cal Anderson Park with officials planning new ways to improve and support the core public space on Capitol HIll.
The Ribbon of Light illuminated sculpture is now part of the AIDS Memorial Pathway joining the park with Capitol Hill Station. Lights across the park have also been switched to better LED bulbs, the parks department says.
A daytime project is also coming with construction to overhaul the park’s playground.
“The park is such a gem to Capitol Hill and the City and represents so many of the best values of parks — open space, public forum, recreational uses, spaces for reflection on art and water applications and a mix of new and vintage park buildings and amenities,” parks department superintendent AP Diaz said about a tour this winter with neighborhood representatives and members of the Cal Anderson Park Alliance community group that has helped shepherd use and changes to the space.
“I especially enjoyed the lights in the trees and would love to see more as it adds such a sparkle to the night park,” Diaz said. “I loved seeing the memorials on the north side of the park which light up to illuminate important themes of inclusion and which honor our LGBTQ community.”
CAPA’s Don Blakeney and City Councilmember Andrew Lewis, chair of the council’s Public Assets & Homelessness committee, joined Diaz on the tour.
While Diaz’s focus on the park’s lights fits nicely into the new superintendent’s “#SeattleShines” motto for the department, it is also a response to the city’s decision to back away from much larger plans that would have spent at least a million dollars to fully overhaul lighting throughout the park — not just change bulbs — over safety concerns raised in the mid 2010s.
(Image: City of Seattle)
Then came the tumult of the pandemic and the CHOP occupied protest camp and subsequent battles over anti-police protests and major homeless encampments in the park. Parks has been trying to support smaller initiatives to help Cal Anderson recover ever since.
The attention at Cal Anderson also is spurred by renewed concerns about safety after this deadly shooting last August at the park’s basketball court.
A parks department spokesperson tells CHS Diaz’s takeaways from his Cal Anderson tour would inform work “to ensure this park thrives” and remains active as the city “looks at new ways to use spaces and improve adjacent streets.”
A big emphasis, the spokesperson said, will be making sure future “dialogues” about changing the park include “all residents and stakeholders to advance Cal Anderson forward and to ensure our park system continues to shine brightly for Seattle,” a response to criticism that early talks about changing Cal Anderson in the wake of CHOP focused too much on outgrowths of the protests including the possible creation of a permanent Black Lives Memorial Garden in the park.
Developer and property manager Hunters Capital that owns the park adjacent Broadway Building and just ended up on the winning end of the city’s $3.6 million CHOP lawsuit settlement has been active in shaping how Seattle Parks attends to Cal Anderson including working with community group Caring for Capitol Hill to host community clean-ups in the space.
The Cal Anderson Park Alliance has also reestablished its leadership around the park. Last year, CAPA organized public safety meetings about the park that raised issues about everything from rats to off-leash dogs.
Great to be with our Cal Anderson Park Association members tonight and @CMAndrewJLewis for a night walk tour and park activation session! Parks make life better. #SeattleShines on Capitol Hill! @SeattleParks @CityofSeattle pic.twitter.com/9UEsiF0Iit
— AP Diaz (@SeattleShines) January 31, 2023
The park could also end up part of efforts to establish a “Capitol Hill Superblock” area that could be closed to motor vehicles to emphasize pedestrian space and safety.
Meanwhile, Cal Anderson will join other Seattle Parks in hosting the return of City of Seattle park rangers under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s push last year to fund 28 positions to patrol the public spaces “to enhance safety and promote voluntary compliance of park rules.”
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A big emphasis, the spokesperson said, will be making sure future “dialogues” about changing the park include “all residents and stakeholders to advance Cal Anderson forward and to ensure our park system continues to shine brightly for Seattle,” a response to criticism that early talks about changing Cal Anderson in the wake of CHOP focused too much on outgrowths of the protests including the possible creation of a permanent Black Lives Memorial Garden in the park.
They actually listened? I’m starting to feel hopeful that the park won’t be turned into a vehicle for CHOP activist agenda as first planned. Feeling optimistic we dodged that bullet. Was infuriating to see my neighborhood park hijacked by people with little to no pre-CHOP history. It felt like our park was colonized by anti-colonization activists. A lot of irony there.
Can we sign something that bans dogs, leash or not, from Cal Anderson? I am so tired of dog owners leaving their dog’s sh** all over the field.
Hate to tell you this it isn’t all from the doggies!
Only if we sign something banning humans shitting there, doing drugs there, leaving paraphernalia there, etc.
Equating homeless people to dogs… only in the Capitol Hill blog comments. You guys try that in real life and would get your *** kicked.
Derek, no they were equating human shit to dog shit. Stop being such a whiny bitch ass rabble rouser all the time.
Derek, we are equating human behaviors here. As you said, you’re tired of the dog owners leaving dog crap in the park. That is a complaint about the human’s behavior, not the dog’s. And I am complaining about human behavior as well, people doing illegal and disgusting things in the park. So, I am not equating people to dogs, and neither are you. I guess the butt kicking will have to wait.
If they are on the playfield, they are already banned… it just needs to be enforced. Go to the animal control web site and report it, and when/ if they have the resources, they’ll do emphasis patrols and give tickets.
If you are talking about the big grassy area, report it anyway… report the off leash dogs and unscooped poop, and they’ll do the same.
Remove all tents.
Ensure no hard drugs are done in public.
Ensure no trash (esp no needles)
The rest will be awesome, city is resilient.
No.
Ensure no NIMBY weirdos ever step foot on The Hill again.
Ensure anti-homeless spouting nonsense is banned everywhere.
This is fun…
So drugs in parks are a good thing? Ok junior.
Most people don’t want Sh** whether by people or dogs, used needles, people using hard drugs or trash in their back yard. That’s not anti homeless, that is against uncivil behavior. The nation’s homeless issues are mainly due to drug use and the more we accept that drug use is acceptable the more people will suffer. I’d be OK with every park having a drug rehabilitation center and help people recover and have a decent life.
The nations homeless issues are not mainly due to drug use, try more research and less baseless facts… Studies often show the reverse, homelessness leads to drug use.
I spent quite a bit of time discussing this with a former CEO of a local homeless advocacy group. Your point is valid but it’s a which came first the chicken of the egg question. Even though 2/3 of the homeless interviewed said that addiction lead to their becoming homeless the bottom line is whether addiction was the cause of becoming homeless or becoming homeless caused the addiction the result is the same, addiction is a huge factor. The point is that anyone addicted needs treatment to get back to leading a decent life. It’s extremely hard to find housing for people in the throes of addiction even if it’s available.
It benefits no one, except perhaps your feeling of righteousness, to make the statement that anything is “mainly due to” whatever claim you are making. Homelessness, mental health issues and drug addictions are woven together in a sea of gray. Of course we would all love for there to be “one bad guy” in this debate so a solution would be easy to find. Unfortunately that is that the situation we find ourselves in. The world is a wee bit more complicated than that. My two cents.
Righteousness? come on. I mourn friends who didn’t get help for their addictions and am happy for those that thankfully did and lost a relative due to mental health issues and didn’t make it living on the street. Yeah I get it and I’ve seen it up close and personal. There are solutions but it means facing ALL the issues and acting them.
Landlords “beautifying” public spaces to increase their property values is something the government will help subsidize but turning public parks into access points for health and shelter services during a national homeless and drug crisis, far more needed than a place to stroll with your $15 coffee while you pretend you don’t live in a prison, is all part of us getting back to normal. Nothing to see here. Turn that frown upside down. Just work harder. Stonks thrive on our public complicity with private enterprises while society burns as a waste product of industrial consumer capitalism.
Ingesting hard drugs in, or expelling human waste onto, the park cannot be tolerated. Let’s just start with this basic tenet and the rest will mostly take care of itself. No planning, capital money, or focus groups necessary.
No narcotics, no human waste.
Otherwise this is just another “we can’t have nice things” moment.
The Seattle hard left’s reflexive answer to crime and extreme anti-social behavior in public spaces is always “activation”. Activation is only part of the solution. In addition we obviously need to enforce basic standards of a civil society to keep public spaces safe, clean and accessible to all. It should go without saying that “All” does not include those that privatize and destroy public spaces for everyone else, but this is Seattle.
In the industrial consumer capitalist wasteland, we cannot have nice things. Some pretend they alone can hunker down with their own personal nice things while many others languish in the apocalyptic reality. But that’s about as close as we’ll ever get to the computer renderings of a modern utopia being spoon fed to us on our screens all day. Think Plato’s Cave but in an $4800 a month apartment.
It’s sad what the area north of the turf has turned into. A decaying “community garden (we already have many of those around much better tended!, a grassless mud slide where a picnic area once was (thanks to all the tents that were camped there) and other lingering damage from the lunacy of 2020.
I have no concrete concept of how you apply “equity” to a public park. By definition it’s a public park. How is it “equitable” to degrade the public space in order to cater to one group?
If you go down to Cal Anderson on almost any random night you will see amazing diversity, maybe the only area in the city that is similar to what you’d see in a Lower Manhattan or Queens or Brooklyn park of similar size. The park has always been a melting pot and prior to 2020 was used by everybody of every background without dedicating space to one thing or another.
There is perhaps an argument for the Aids monuments given the history of the neighborhood (if they should encroach on limited green space is another), but a “BIPOC” garden (on land that doesn’t have drainage!) taking up that space makes absolutely zero sense.
but a “BIPOC” garden (on land that doesn’t have drainage!) taking up that space makes absolutely zero sense.
Park and Rec. website said that they were working to make Cal Anderson welcoming and accessible to all. So having a garden that discriminates and is used for political and racial nationalist ideology makes zero sense. I saw that Capitol Hill Ecodistrict threw their weight behind it, writing a letter to the city that they supported it due to past redlining. Maybe the writers of that letter can give away their own backyard not a public space meant for all.
Sounds like a dogwhistle to hate on BIPOC. That space wasn’t used for anything of substance anyways! I see no problems with this in a progressive neighborhood of the city.
It was used for movies. There are plenty of areas in this park, and others, that aren’t “used for anything of substance anyways” but no one would allow me to claim the land for myself and my pet projects. The founder of this project has zero pre-CHOP history at Cal Anderson. Not interested in being lectured about colonialism and gentrification from someone who marches into a neighborhood they don’t live in and has no history in and declares land for himself and tells longtime community members they are unwelcome.
Except it looks like shit.
I struggle with the work the city has done on the parks and the city generally. Don’t get me started on the ribbon aids memorial. As a gay guy I look at those sculptures and cannot determine what they are for and only see them as targets for taggers.
The city can’t expect to make something nice, then walk away and expect it to stay that way. They have to daily maintain it. That is through security. That is through city workers scrubbing the city down daily.
We have a city littered with garbage all over and so people will treat the city how they see others treating it.
Seattle has some deep rooted cultural issues that is clashing against the wealthier folks that want nice things. Seattle isn’t the city that culturally can have nice things. Seattle might have a few areas that are a little better but culturally the city has a huge tolerance for mess and a huge tolerance for mental illness in the streets. Until that tolerance is broken down and cleaned up the city will continue to be this way regardless of the well meaning but very disconnected from reality effort anyone makes. Seattle is a mess.
I agree with alot of what you say, but I disagree that Seattleites are “tolerant” for the social issues you mention. I just think that many of us are extremely disappointed/angry at the City’s inability to address those issues in any meaningful way, such as trash and graffiti cleanups. The only bright spot is Mayor Harrell’s effort to clear homeless camps….there were at least 6 large camps on Capitol Hill alone which are now gone.