The city is considering a new plan for parks: Rather than purchasing expensive private parcels of land, some of which remain as parking lots for years without funding to complete parks, the city would save money by converting streets, which the city already owns. Tonight, the parks department’s board of commissioners will hear a plan to tear up five blocks of Bell Street, between First and Fifth Avenues, whittling traffic down to one lane, and replacing the other lanes with lawns, trees, shrubs, and the like. Here’s a cross section:

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And here’s a pigeon’s-eye view:

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The project would create about 17,000 square feet of green space, says Donald Harris, the parks department’s Property and Acquisition Services Manager. "Given the high cost of land in the downtown area, more creative ways of providing park space need to be found, particularly taking advantage of already owned City infrastructure," he wrote in a letter to the parks board of commissioners on May 20. Recent purchases of private land for parks, he notes, have cost the city from $300 to $350 per square foot. By that metric, a project of this size on a city street would save about $5 million in land costs. The city would also realize savings by coinciding park construction with work by Seattle City Light, which needs to replace electrical utilities on Bell Street, and by partnering with developers, who were planning to spend money on street improvements on Bell Street anyway. The project would cost about $2.5 million, funded by last November’s pro-parks levy.

Here's how Bell Street looks now:

Harris will present his ideas to the city council’s parks committee tomorrow morning; he hopes the public can begin shaping the design of the project by July.

"Hopefully this is the first of several park boulevards downtown, providing linkages to the waterfront, downtown, and South Lake Union," Harris says. He says that some community groups have already begin clamoring for a park in their neighborhoods, including in the Pike-Pine corridor downtown.

And Gary Johnson, a planner for the Department of Planning and Development, says that there has been interest in a similar park in Ballard. "We are interested in making this happen on a much broader scale," he says.