Organizers planning protests against this week’s 2024 Aerospace and Defense Supplier Summit at Seattle’s downtown convention center say Boeing’s decision to move some of the multi-day event online show their efforts are making an impact.
The City of Seattle sent a bulletin to neighborhood business groups around downtown and Capitol Hill warning about possible protests and unrest related to the summit. “There may be demonstrations and traffic disruptions in your area related to a Seattle Convention Center event taking place 3/12 – 3/14,” the bulletin shared by the Capitol Hill Business Alliance reads. Continue reading →
Seattle’s outdoor movie scene is becoming a year-round thing. Friday night will bring the latest screening in the Autumn Movie Nights series in Freeway Park. Bundle up.
This week’s free classic movie is The Goonies. One benefit to a Seattle November outdoor movie is you don’t have to wait as long for the sun to go down. The screenings begin at 7 PM.
The series isn’t over, either. December 8th will bring a showing of Elf as long as it isn’t raining. Snow? We’ll let the organizers from the Freeway Park Association decide on that.
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On Sunday, Freeway Park turned 45 years old. Seattle’s often overlooked lid over I-5, and the first city park anywhere that was constructed over an existing freeway, always seems to be in a race against time. The Brutalist fountain still carries a heavy air of a different era, thanks largely in part to the fact that maintenance hasn’t quite kept up with need. The nooks and crannies these days are only for the most curious. But the latest attempt to give Freeway Park a new sparkle is moving forward.
The improvements are planned after a cash infusion coming from the expansion of the Washington State Convention Center blocks away. Out of the $10 million coming as part of a public benefits package, only $6 million will be available for construction of physical improvements to the park. The rest will mostly go toward “design and project management, permitting, sales tax and contingencies”, with a $750,000 slice set aside for park activation. A master plan of an estimated $23 million in improvements has been narrowed down to fit inside the $6 million budget. Continue reading →
Jim Ellis, the Washington civic leader and one of the Seattle citizens most responsible for the vision that created First Hill and lower Capitol Hill’s connection to downtown through Freeway Park and the convention center, died last week at the age of 98. A celebration of his life will take place, appropriately enough, at the skybridge connecting the park to the Washington State Convention Centerin December.
With a $10 million boost from the $80 million community benefits package formed to cover the value of public right of way being dedicated to the convention center’s expansion, Seattle Parks is setting about a process to “to repair, restore and possibly enhance” the Jim Ellis Freeway Park.
The process began earlier this week at a Freeway Park Improvements Open House and Panel Discussion. Five experts on Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect behind the design of Seattle’s Freeway Park, the first park in the United States that incorporated a lid over an interstate highway, were gathered at Town Hall to speak about why the park is important to the citizens of Seattle and what can be done to improve it.
The scope of the capital project could include infrastructure upgrades, lighting, wayfinding, and possibly a new restroom. The project team is led by landscape architecture and planning firm Walker Macy for Seattle Parks and Recreation in partnership with the Freeway Park Association.
When it first opened on July 4th, 1976, the park was a busy, open-lighted space. It served as a connector between downtown Seattle and the neighborhoods of Capitol Hill and First Hill. And according to many of the panelists it made art out of the freeway. Continue reading →
No matter how you count them, there are more and more people living unsheltered in Seattle’s core. Friday, one of the group’s trying to help expanded its work to a new location.
Operation Sack Lunch partnered with the Freeway Park Association and Compass Housing Alliance to offer free hot meals in the greenspace between downtown, First Hill, and Capitol Hill Friday afternoon.
The nonprofit OSL has been providing nutritional meals since 1989 and is an advocate for “an equitable food system.”
In addition to the food, Capitol Hill regular Pasquale provided some music on the chilly January day. OSL was also accepting donations for donations to help it acquire a new Mobile Meal Kitchen vehicle.
Freeway Park, the public space connecting Capitol Hill to downtown Seattle and the first piece of what could eventually be a more complete lidding of I-5, will have a little more color come spring thanks to a day of community work this fall.
The Freeway Park Association hosted a fall planting day in Seneca Plaza over the weekend.
“It’s like this little temporary engagement that is going to create a burst of color and activity in the springtime,” executive director Riisa Conklin said. Continue reading →
Sunnier days in the ’70s in Freeway Park (Image: City of Seattle)
(Images: City of Seattle)
The group determined to reclaim and revive the public asset is celebrating Jim Ellis Freeway Park’s 40-year history of bridging the gap and the interstate between Capitol Hill, First Hill, and downtown Seattle.
The park was founded on July 4, 1976, after years of Seattle civic leader Jim Ellis pushing for a park over I-5 to reclaim some of the space taken up by the interstate for community use. This weekend, the Freeway Park Association will celebrate the 40-year anniversary of the park’s opening and the group’s efforts to reclaim the space from decades of neglect.
“Freeway Park was the first park to lid over a freeway to reconnect communities that had been cut by that highway,” said Freeway Park Association’s Riisa Conklin. Conklin said the green-covered 5.2-acre park is essentially a “fertilizer box” situated over the highway.
The park is celebrating its 40th on Sunday, July 3 from 11:30 AM to 2 PM. The festivities will include a bluegrass band, free kettle corn, face painting, and a community kite painting project. All parts of the celebration are free and open to the public. A blues and jazz concert follows starting at 2 PM. Continue reading →
Organizers planning protests against this week’s 2024 Aerospace and Defense Supplier Summit at Seattle’s downtown convention center say Boeing’s decision to move some of the multi-day event online show their efforts are making an impact.
