Dialogue circles and sticky notes about Seven Hills Park at Wednesday’s meeting (Image: CHS)

Questions from the parks department survey

Seattle Parks officials say they hope to hand off a report to the mayor’s office by the first week of December on plans to reopen Seven Hills Park and bring changes and activities to parks across Capitol Hill to address complaints about homeless encampments and crime.

Wednesday’s meeting to gather feedback about possible activation efforts and safety changes to the parks drew a strong turnout to the Garfield Community Center as officials organized the crowd into three circles — one for Seven Hills, one for Broadway Hill Park, and the smallest circle for the tiny but still loved Tashkent Park along Boylston Ave. The process reached an acceptable volume level when the large Seven Hills group was moved to the adjacent “teen room.”

There were consistent themes from those who raised their hands to speak in the circles including stories from a parent afraid to take their child to the park following encampment violence and witnessing an overdose and assisting in a resuscitation, and a general feeling that safety and maintenance work decayed during the pandemic and never recovered.

Ideas included increased maintenance, forming volunteer and “friends of” groups, and, one attendee suggested, “replacing all the dirt” in Seven Hills after years of camping and drug use.

“I think our park is representative of the city,” one neighbor said about Seven Hills.

Most speakers agreed on one thing above all else — please, no permanent fences.

Opposition to the only specific feature included as a possible addition to the spaces in the city’s surveys on the parks was a unifying force on the night.

The city held Wednesday’s meeting as 16th Ave’s Seven Hills Park has been shuttered and fenced-off since September after “bouts of negative park activity” and as parks officials say Broadway Hill Park and Tashkent Park have also been the source of frequent calls for the Seattle Police Department.

SPD had a strong presence at the Wednesday meeting with an East Precinct officer assigned to each circle to be part of the discussions and answer questions. Their answer to most issues was to contact East Precinct Crime Prevention Coordinator Joe Elenbaas.

Representatives from the city’s Unified Care Team in charge of encampment clearances were also planned to be part of the groups. Joy Hollingsworth, District 3’s representative on the Seattle City Council attended the session, and listened on the edge of the circles.

Parks department officials at Wednesday night’s meeting made it clear that some issues around the process to overhaul the parks are out of their hands. The permanent fencing idea? “That was a decision made above us,” one facilitator said.

With a report due to Mayor Bruce Harrell and SPD Chief Shon Barnes in a few weeks, parks officials gathered feedback on ideas around neighborhood partnerships with businesses and organizations to bring events and clean-ups to the spaces along with possible activity programming.

Some attendees raised frustrations and fears that have built around the challenged parks as department officials said encampments and crime have had a snowballing effect of making maintenance and safety work more difficult and, thus, making the parks more likely to be used for encampments and drug use. More than one Seven Hills neighbor Wednesday night described what they believed to have been dead bodies removed from encampments over the years though King County Medical Examiner records show no deaths recorded at the location.

Surprisingly, Capitol Hill’s most challenged public space is a model for the effort. Cal Anderson Park remains a post-pandemic challenge for the city but officials say the model of partnerships with a strong core community group in the Cal Anderson Park Alliance and events and clean-ups sponsored by area businesses and organizations like Capitol Hill development and real estate firm Hunters Capital have helped improve safety conditions around the neighborhood’s large central park. CHS reported here in 2024 as those efforts around Cal Anderson were ramped up.

Much of what was heard Wednesday about Capitol Hill’s smaller challenged parks was agreement that something needs to be done as the city’s ongoing crisis situation around homelessness and addiction transforms life in Seattle.

“Our commons is being taken over by a small group of people,” one neighbor said.

Another attendee pointed out the irony of any attempt to bring traditional activity programming to Seven Hills, Broadway Hill, or Tashkent, saying they worried “about a tango night in the park” while there are people struggling nearby.

There was also frustration that Seattle Parks and the city have taken almost no action around the park officials decided to fence-off. There has been no work done inside the Seven Hills fences as officials said Wednesday they are waiting for the public process to play out. Problems in the area in the meantime are not getting any better.

“People are still sleeping at Seven Hills Park,” a neighbor said. “They’re just on the sidewalk outside the fence.”

The city has extended the time the fences will remain up at Seven Hills through late December.

You can learn more about the city’s planning and find the parks department’s surveys for the three Capitol Hill parks here. There is no listed cutoff date for the surveys but the parks department plans to report on the process by early December.

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