(Image: Friends of Madison Park)

By Cormac Wolf, CHS Intern

Friends of Madison Park, the area’s nascent community council, has been hard at work since its founding in April. In their first months, the group has focused on filling the community’s event calendar and their fledgling committees have proven a great alliance between local businesses and Seattle Police.

Vice-chair Mary Beth McAteer says Friends of Madison Park has revived community events such as the children’s bike parade and weekly live music in the park. Other events include a wine fundraiser and weekly TED talks; their website has events scheduled as far out as next spring.

“We think of ourselves as a start-up,” says McAteer, describing the fervor the board brings to event planning and neighborhood organization. McAteer works as a Virginia Mason medical librarian when not working on the board. Her husband owns the Hillside bar on E Olive Way.

The success of this group in one of the wealthiest areas of the city and an area mostly dominated by single family-style homes is a contrast with E Olive Way and Capitol Hill where community councils have faded away and neighborhood chambers of commerce, disintegrated. It also is taking shape after Seattle’s big push away from neighborhood councils over concerns about representation and equity at City Hall.

The Madison Park group was founded after the pandemic decimated the area’s existing community groups. Erik Wicklund, the group’s communications director, describes them as a merger of two pre-existing Madison Park institutions: the business association, which organized events, and the community council, which handled administrative matters. Wicklund owns a real estate firm headquartered in Madison Park’s central retail strip.

(Image: Friends of Madison Park)

Octavia Chambliss, the group’s founder and chair, wrote a piece in the Madison Park Times laying out the group’s origin and mission. Chambliss is a landscape designer who creates custom gardens. She was out of town and could not be reached for an interview.

Capitol Hill has been without a central community group since its community council faded away during the pandemic. Seattle community organizations have been declining in popularity and sway since Mayor Ed Murray did away with the 13-council city neighborhood council system. Meanwhile, in 2019, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce shuttered amid a financial implosion.

One of Friends of Madison Park’s first actions was establishing committees in charge of, among other things, safety and development. A 2021 public safety survey finds that 44.2% of Madison Park respondents had a fear of crime generally, compared to 35% in Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill has had 1,613 violent and nonviolent offenses reported so far this year, the highest of any neighborhood, compared to 147 in Madison Park.

(Image: Friends of Madison Park)

Grace Preston, development committee co-chair, describes her role as “fundraising and budgeting.” Cam Preston, safety committee co-chair and Grace’s spouse, says his committee’s goal is to teach emergency preparedness and help the community react to crime. While not serving as committee chairs, The Prestons work as a project manager at Amazon, and training content designer at REI, respectively.

Several businesses on Madison Park’s retail strip were recently broken into, and the public safety committee has since pivoted to protecting storefronts. Their solution, in addition to training and resources, is to keep the decorative holiday lights in the trees around as long as possible so as to deny would-be burglars the element of darkness.

The organization’s hegemony has allowed them to quickly marshal support from the mayor and SPD. After the break-ins, the group met with a community outreach officer, a precinct liaison, and a public safety liaison representing the mayor’s office.

The group’s close ties with business and police are in line with the perception that community councils are dominated by white homeowners, though board members said that they, unlike their predecessors, were not interested in creating or enforcing zoning restrictions.

And politics, also, aren’t on the agenda.

Asked whether they planned to get involved in local politics or endorse a candidate in the upcoming District 3 race for the Seattle City Council, McAteer was adamant that the group had no such plans, and that the group was never intended to be political.

Friends of Madison Park meets the last Monday of each month from 6:30 to 8:00 PM at the neighborhood’s park bathhouse. They invite members of the community to give feedback and volunteer their time. Learn more at friendsofmadisonpark.com.

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