Comments on From the Folks Who Brought You University Village...

Your categories are off I think. Weinstein wasn't really "behind" University Village in its fancy stage and didn't "bring" it to us. They were architects or planners. Stuart Sloan and Matt Griffin were the owners and developers. I can see how the City might have hired Weinstein AU to plan and/or design the Fun Forest site, but I doubt it's correct to say they're going to "develop" it.

It's about time that Seattle Center got a Pottery Barn and Anthropologie.

I want a new Taco Bell.

So, a 60's era vintage amusement park is corny, but "Old classy" (translation=fake Victorian) carousel would be A-OK? Give me a break.

This town has no imagination and is chronically insecure. It's the Jan Brady of west coast cities. San Francisco is Marsha, and Portland is Cindy.

(LA is Carol Brady, of course)

Biergarten!

NO NO NO! Just as the show My Two Dads is my high water mark for BAD 80's design (over sized purple '57 Chevy-themed couch anyone?); the U-Village is Seattle's original, certified piece-of-shit, oft referenced ("what's up with the new opera house being all U-Village-style gross looking?") 90's-style nouveau Inland Empire stripmall clone.

These people are monsters I tell you!

#4. Holy shit, that's perfect.

But Catalina, the Fun Forest is not "a 60's era vintage amusement park." It's a bunch of rusty 80's era rides plopped down between the Space Needle and Memorial Stadium. The Fun Forest got de-kitsched when they removed the miniature golf course and remodeled the food concession.

As long as it's a still a good place to smoke pot, I could care less what they turn it in to.

I'm just wondering if the place is going to be interactive...

Does that mean we will be able to touch stuff? I mean.. I wouldn't want the "fun" place to be like the new Park with rent-a-guards chasing me around for touching the carousel..

I'm just saying

Petting zoo. No doubt.

They've already got a quaint, cutesy carousel there, don't they? Or is that just a Christmas thing? And there's a fancy one crapping up the zoo, too. Say no.

What might be cool, except the site is shitty, is something like a big camera obscura, like they have at Cliff House in SF, and an arcade of REALLY old penny games -- not video arcade stuff, but drop a penny to see a 30-second flick sort of thing. They used to have one at Cliff House but moved it to Fisherman's Wharf, I think. Something like that might be cool.

Jesus, Fnarf. I feel about a million years older just from having read that. Will they sell penny candy and moon pies at your imaginary olde timey amusement park?

stop thinking outside the box.
Think Jardin du Luxemburg, Central Park Bethesda Fountain and boat pools. Those big mushroom Alice in Wonderland sculptures.

What Seattle needs is good public places. We don't have hardly any.
Just make nice outdoor living rooms and hopefully we the people can add the activities.
Don't dictate the activities in advance.
The good stuff is all over Central Park, SF, Spain, France, Italy etc.

NOT fake salmon streams, boxy transparent glass buildings to "reflect our inner values," not cold modern architecture rectangles.

A monument atop a fountain pool with a nice little wall to sit on (think, the opening of Friends) surrounded by circular benches. (Central Park). Steps and walls to frame publci living rooms.

Walkways (some with perogalas; it does rain a lot) to other "public living rooms."

A place for spontaneous roller disco.

A plaza, a super play ground for kids to play, a place with an outdoor cafe, tables you can move around and sit and drink coffee at, enjoy wifi, lots of benches around curving walkways, a place where 3 card monte folks can set up, a place with a few chess tables over there. Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen.

An outside beer garden. A real cafe. Shocking -- commercial use. But we like to eat and drink and be comfortable.

We tend to either overemphasize fake nature (Myrtle Edwards Park is basically empty and a failure) or "groovy" modern architecture that is cold and unhospitable (Freeway Park, EMP grounds, also devoid of people hanging out).

By starting with an assumption we must be *different* than *every other* tried 'n' true successful public outdoors space -- we only guarantee failure.

@4, shouldn't Mr. Brady be San Francisco?

Anything resembling a mini-Central Park would make me happy. The outdoor ice rink and a lake for toy motor boats would be nice. A petting zoo can be a little nasty, but if it mimicked the design of CP's zoo that might be cute.

How about a park? Only one with no sculptures, fences, amphitheaters, fountains, or homeless. Just some nice grass, benches, and picnic tables. A few vendor stands selling nice lunch food would be welcome.

Jonathan,

Weinstein A U is, as the "A" and "U" imply, and architecture and urban design firm. I imagine they were commissioned to study the site and propose uses for it. They are not developers. A correction is needed.

Supermoto!

I'm sorry to have made you feel old, Jonah. Next time we meet I'll break your kneecaps so you know what you have to look forward to as an old, old, old, man.

So, fuck the penny arcade. UnPC is on the right track. Jardin du Luxembourg is perfect -- there isn't a park as pleasant in the United States. Beer garden and cafe, movable chairs, a boat pond, some hoops.

The problem is, that belongs out in the main part of the park, not off to the side in a really awkward spot like the Fun Forest. They'd have to move a lot of earth. I assume they're knocking down the indoor part as well as the outdoor rides? They're not knocking down the Center House, though, are they? Are they going to move the monorail again? The whole place is laid out so badly, I don't know they're going to make anything useful of it.

Supermoto is HUGE in France you know. It's not some redneck thing.

@20, Europe has rednecks too, its not all high fashion and class.

@20, just read the Wiki "Supermotard" is an awesome word I must say. Ok, I'm on bored.

@20, just read the Wiki "Supermotard" is an awesome word I must say. Ok, I'm on bored.

Left Coast, Sacramento is Mr Brady.

While the fun forest has been decimated (I'm still not over the destruction of "Rocket to Mars") there are still kitschy elements. Mostly the arcade games that run alongside the east side of the Center House. Unless those are gone now also, but they were still there just a few months ago.

I assume it's pronounced with the stress on "TARD", in a hick accent, and refers to an aficionado?

"If my employers really love love love your idea - they might want to meet you or something."

Can we say spec work? How about some actual credit or payment?

I hope this means I can pick up a used Hydro Thunder machine for cheap.

@25, pretty much, or really anyone for that matter. "Oh Michael, your such a supermotard."-said in a fake British accent-

But wait! you say. Isn't supermoto bad for the planet? Mais non! BIODIESEL!

I have no idea how they pronounce supermotard. Do I look fucking French?

Isn't anyone else hoping for an apartment complex with rent low enough so one doesn't need room mates? Or is that just me?

Yeah, that's just you. It's a PARK.

@30 Pretty sure apartments in the Seattle Center would have the unique combination of being ridiculously expensive, and horribly undesirable.

@29 - Sue PEAR Moe Tard. Stress the Pear.

De nada.

I'm looking forward to yet another playground for the ultra-rich, given the proximity of the Gates Foundation and the Allen EMP.

No, I'm not joking.

Actually Fnarf, several of the design proposals for the Center DO include tearing down the Centerhouse...

I'll vote for anything supermoto related, but I'd like to see some open spaces that don't limit it's use very much. If there is too much nature/grooming then it makes things like bumbershoot a hassle.

I'd like a bunch of smaller spaces that could be a beer garden, dance floor, sculptures that you can climb on...

That said, I would also like to see an old school croquet sized mini golf course. Something light hearted that isn't a video game.

I like it, drew. Mini golf and skateboards. Cool!

Well, the Center House has been mangled beyond recognition already, so I guess it's no huge loss. It's a very popular building, though, and some of the functions probably wouldn't survive into whatever replaces it -- like the swing dancing (do they still do that there?)

But including it in the plan certainly opens up a much more usable space, one that's actually sort of three-dimensional -- and connects to the main lawn. It's such a disorganized, disorienting space now.

Frankly, I don't see what's so great, or even so different, beyond a couple of new buildings out in what used to be the far corners of the parking lot, about their 2003 U Village job. The main open courtyard space is pretty much the same. The design standard is atrocious -- how many different kinds of faux-European villa stylings can you glom onto the front of prefab slab buildings? I visit U Village fairly often, and it's not terrible by mall standards but it's not something I want to see in the Center. Of course, their biggest handicap there is that it is basically a vast parking lot with walkways.

Then there's the big groups like Bumbershoot, that like it the way it is -- they NEED lots of blacktop and paved walks for food carts and so forth.

So that's my biggest fear: the esthetic skill and judgement to make a good job of this simply doesn't exist on the face of the earth, and all the halfway decent park designers died fifty years ago or more. I would send the Weinstein people to Paris to refresh their memories of what a valuable and usable park actually looks like. Something that visually ties the Space Needle to the central fountain, that allows the Pacific Science arches to be visible from far away, and that has that sort of multipurpose thing.

With an outdoor cafe that serves beer and wine. It's difficult to emphasize this enough: you MUST SERVE BEER AND WINE IN A MIXED SETTING IN PUBLIC to be civilized. I'm thinking of the cafe in the Botanical Gardens in Sydney here. Nothing fancy, just chairs that move freely. Absolutely no roping off, wristbands, any of that kind of bullshit.

Oh, and the world's largest burlap bag to throw over the EMP would help too. Is Christo still alive? Talk about eyesores taking up valuable park land for nothing. Is it too early to implode it?

I just want the fuckin pink elephant swilling a giant martini to be restored. Fun Forest lost its soul when they deemed a martini-drinkin' elephant was unfit for kiddies. Bastards.

A nice cafebar opening up to a wintertime ice skating rink and tons of open greenspace would be fine with me.

That and serious residential/hotel development around the park to get some foot traffic and people who care deeply about keeping it a viable and people-friendly park.

Seattle Center's main problem is fences. There are too many "you aren't welcome past this point" places in Seattle Center. A park should have no fences if at all possible. People should feel like they can go anywhere. That is a warm and inviting park.

I would like to see the Seattle Center become much more like Millennium Park, Central Park, or the Boston Commons. Even Manito Park in Spokane provides a small piece of what could be.

Pedant alert: Boston Common, not Commons. Pretty boring park, too. The Public Garden would be a more attractive model (less duck and swan shit would be nice, though).

What other cities that are above freezing all winter have outdoor ice rinks? How expensive is outdoor ice to maintain in 40-50 degree weather?

A warm inviting park in a place where we're underwater 70% of the year?

Keep the Center House. And bring back the big walls that used to surround the center. And yes, bring back that pink elephant with the martini glass. And put some gin in it.

Oh, don't mind me. I'm just cranky this evening. But still - you know that whatever they do, it will end up some dumbass thing. We. Can't. Do. Good. Public. Spaces. In. Seattle. We're too worried about being "world class"

so, how about that skate park?

Or, maybe a nice garden where people can hang out.

maybe a pub. or a cafe. or both.

how about all of the above?

Wow. Check your facts, Jonah.

I know the work of Weinstein A|U (architects, not developers); their work is excellent and Seattle is lucky to have them on board as consultants. I am familiar with their work on U VIllage, which was limited to the parking garage design, and it did not include the ugly Crate and Barrel built into it, which was designed by another firm.

If they really want something that is "easy on the eyes" they'll have to put a tarp over the EMP.