It’s Friday. It’s sunny. Let’s talk public spaces. Here are a few notes on parks and green spaces on and around the Hill. Something we missed? Let us know in the comments.

• Renegade parks & recreation: The Renegade Planners Collective continues to find ways to transform the patch of pavement along the E Olive Way/Denny/Summit triangle into a fun and action-packed public space. Thursday night brought tetherball and teeter-totter sofas. The group’s action plan is below. You can keep track of the RPC actions here at facebook.com/rpcollective to find out what’s next.

Change the process: For less than the current price of permit review, we transformed the space. With communally donated parts and labor, we don’t need millions of dollars to make great urban spaces.  The city just needs to designate space and let the neighborhood do the rest.

Change the mindset: We need to ditch the notion that the city is a fixed entity. The life of a city is dynamic and the way in which we plan for and use our public space should reflect that understanding. We need a system that allows for temporary action, for phased development, for experimentation. Maintaining the status quo may be easier and won’t upset anyone, but it’s also inefficient and inequitable. Worst of all, it’s boring.

• New park on First Hill? At a meeting held last month, Seattle Parks discussed its plan to acquire a parcel at 8th and Columbia for a new urban greenspace:

The City has the opportunity to acquire a site through an easement at the corner of 8th Avenue and Columbia Street, to be provided by the developer of an adjacent multifamily project, subject to Parks and Recreation and community involvement in the design. The community is invited to learn more about this site at the public meeting and provide comments and suggestions.

Both the 2000 Pro Parks Levy and the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy targeted this urban village to receive a new park to accommodate the growth in the neighborhood. In November 2008, the Parks and Green Spaces Levy passed by an impressive 59% vote. The Levy provides $146 million over six years, which includes neighborhood and green space acquisitions and over 50 named development projects.  The goal of the acquisition team is to acquire properties in areas that have been identified in the Parks and Recreation 2006 Development Plan and Gap Analysis as being deficient relative to the City’s comprehensive plan. The development projects provide improved playfields, reservoir lid parks, forest and stream restoration, community gardens and renovated playgrounds throughout Seattle.

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• Expanding the Capitol Hill Riviera: Greetings CHS readers enjoying this post while on vacation in lovely Madison Park. Long a getaway for Hillebrities and the rest of us, the brouhaha over opening up the waterfront park property at Madison Park’s North Beach has finally been settled. The parks department says work to remove the fence and open up the rough shoreline should be complete by the end of the month.
• Volunteer Park is busy: Pride picnic on Saturday — and a free history tour. A local candidate’s nominating convention for his run for president, of all things, will be held at the park next weekend. Way to keep active, centenarian.
• Broadway Hill Park progress: While there’s no schedule for construction, Broadway Hill Park’s plan is approaching a final state. Here’s an update from the friends of the park group. You can lear more here. The space was also home to the community lot for the 2012 Capitol Hill Garage Sale Day last weekend.

The seating area along Federal has been changed slightly to encourage more multi-directional seating, to better serve passersby who might not use the rest of the park, and to serve as a “welcome mat” for the park as a whole.

The tool shed has been moved west into the shady part of the garden, so as not to take up valuable sunny space in the upper section.

Two sand areas locations have been proposed for potential children’s play spaces: one along the eastern edge next to the lounge seating, the other is next to the garden. One of these will likely be selected in the final design There was more support for the second option among meeting attendees. There was also a lot of support for a small climbing structure made of natural materials, like the wood piece shown in the image in the upper left.

There was some discussion of the placement of the lounge benches and the tall, “espresso bar” tables on the upper section – we want to make sure that the view looking west from the benches is not interrupted by the tall tables.

The second board to the right shows the elevation of three sections of the park.

The third board to the far right shows a proposal for potential use of the Umpqua donation: to prep the space for the garden and grade and seed the space.

• Cal Anderson work worth it: It appears last summer’s effort to overhaul the Cal Anderson sod has paid off. Things seem in decent shape so far this spring, no? Meanwhile, the infamous power outlet is turned off.