While we’re already busy planning where the next park developed on Capitol Hill will go, work is set to begin on a new green space coming to the top of Capitol Hill at 16th and Howell. Celebrate the start of construction with a groundbreaking ceremony and community poetry event this Saturday in the paved parking lot the new park will soon be replacing.
CAPITOL HILL PARK GROUNDBREAKING CELEBRATION
The Friends of Capitol Hill Park and Seattle Parks and Recreation will celebrate the beginning of construction for the new park located at 16th Avenue & E Howell Street on October 3, 2009 from 4 – 5 p.m.
The celebration features poetry from Marion Kimes, Susan Kerry, Ashley Flannagan and Jesse Minkert. Community members are encouraged to bring a 3”x5” card with their favorite word or line from a poem or play to add to the poetry tree
Seattle Parks and Recreation Superintendent Tim Gallagher will be a featured speaker at the event.
Through the Pro Parks Levy, Seattle Parks and Recreation purchased the .21-acre asphalt parking lot. The Levy allocated $545,800 for park planning, design and construction. Mithun Architects is the landscape architect firm in charge of design and construction. Incorporating feedback from community meetings held in 2008, Mithun created a design concept for the park.
The construction contract was awarded on September 24, 2009 to Precision Earthworks. Construction will begin in early October. The awarded contract includes basic park elements such as grading, lawn, pathway, plaza, steps, barbeques and picnic tables and both bid additives. Parks will install benches, bike racks, and the art feature under this contract. Completion is targeted for January 2009.
The Friends of Capitol Hill Park community formed in the summer of 2008 and spearheaded fundraising efforts that enabled a more complete build out of the park.
The 16th and Howell park will be built to its base design leaving community groups to raise funds for things like BBQs and bike racks. You can learn more about how to help raise funds for those elements at Saturday’s event or by checking out http://www.capitolhillpark.org/. For more on the park’s design, check out the Seattle Parks 16th/Howell project page.
We’re also trying to dig into the Seattle Parks naming process to find out what the status is on potential names for this park and the park at Summit/John. Maybe Capitol Hill Park is the official name — we’re looking into it and, if it is, will ask why our suggestions were ignored. CHS Capitol Hill Seattle Blog Park is much more catchy, no?
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Then Mike W. Curls Park it is!
Mike W. Curls Park … has a ring.
Are there buying rights for a park … like a stadium or an arena?
Having just had my vehicle towed for the second time this year last week I – far from celebrating – will be there with a sign and bullhorn protesting this moronic destruction of needed and necessary parking space; the sell-off of practicality for passion spoon-fed by the liberal intelligentsia to their fawning sycophancy of petite bourgeois on The Hill (or, La Colline, as we say on my block).
“HELL NO, DO NOT TOW!”
The posting says completion in January, 2009. I assume it means 2010, but is it actually 2011?
…Next to million dollar condos at that former church? Convenient.
i was commenting to a friend the other day on the space behind starbucks and when we’d get our park there. know when ground breaking is taking place there?
or did i miss a chs post along the way?
Bellevue is calling you darling. Or Northgate, if you can’t afford Bellevue. Or Burien, if you can’t afford Northgate. Plenty of places for you and your car. Say goodbye, now….