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News & ArtsTuesday, August 10, 2010
City Parks Secures Last Million Needed to Revitalize Belltown's Bell Street
Posted by Cienna Madrid on Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 3:27 PM
The Seattle Parks Department has secured the last $1 million needed to fully fund the Bell Street improvement project in Belltown. The $3.5 million revitalization plan will transform Bell Street from 1st Avenue to 5th Avenue by reducing car capacity, expanding sidewalks, and adding more trees, public art, and large gathering spaces, among other things.
"Belltown is this incredibly dense neighborhood without a lot of park space, and it’s been really difficult for us to acquire property because it's so expensive," explains Joelle Hammerstad, spokeswoman for the parks department. "So we’re converting Bell Street into a park-like environment in the absence of more land."
Bell Street will still accommodate traffic traveling westbound, Hammerstad says, but the road be reduced to one lane instead of two, with parallel parking available on the north side only. In exchange, the street will feature a 30-foot-wide sidewalk along the north side of the street with drinking fountains, bike racks, and pedestrian friendly lighting (positioned at hip-height instead of looming overhead). A large gathering space is slated between 2nd and 3rd Avenue—perfect for a farmer's market or street fair—and the street will have smaller, more intimate gathering spaces elsewhere. It will also feature textured sidewalks and public art created by Sheila Klein, Hammerstad says.
The turnaround for this project is quick: Belltown residents should be enjoying a beautiful new park-like Bell Street roughly a year from now. The last million needed for this project came from the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy.
3
just what we need in belltown, it's own farmer's market, a wider textured sidewalk and less street parking... ftw
4
@3, huh? You've already got the biggest permanent farmer's market in the country five blocks from there. Wide sidewalks, whoopdie whoop. Hip-height streetlights? What are hip-height streetlights good for? Blinding you if you look down? Are the lights in your house hip-height? Are they for people sitting on the sidewalk to read by? This doesn't make any sense at all; it goes against everything we know about good urban design and is just $3.5 mil poured down the drain.
This is exactly the kind of brain-dead suburbanization they've got planned for the ID next.
This is exactly the kind of brain-dead suburbanization they've got planned for the ID next.
5
@4, Fnarf, for years Belltown residents and councils and whatnot have argued that their tiny slice of the Parks levy pie should go for a real park. Fuck you, said the city, you'll fill it with your crackheads and hookers, no way. Fine, said Belltowners, use the money to put in a motherfucking community center like other neighborhoods. Fuck you twice, said the city, how about we widen your fucking street, take it or leave it?
And here we are.
And here we are.
7
@5, you've got a park. It used to be full of crackheads and hookers; now it's full of dogs crapping. Isn't that enough?
8
I would love to see Fnarf and Will in Seattle play Simcity together. 100 story tall condo buildings surrounded by mile long parks, 2 foot wide sidewalks cluttered with sandwichboards, and 16 lane wide boulevards. All the Sims would sit at home stuck in their 97th story condos, angrily insulting each other on their Simputers all day long.
9
@3 im with you.... just sarcasm
and remember "the street will have smaller, more intimate gathering spaces" great for 3am gatherings
...lets all rejoice...
and remember "the street will have smaller, more intimate gathering spaces" great for 3am gatherings
...lets all rejoice...
10
@8, my city would be pretty spectacular, actually, resembling as it would the West Village or Seven Dials or the food-heaven streets of the 6th Arrondissement in Paris, with no resident living more than 500 yards from a grocery store, a hardware store, a newsstand, at least two Metro lines, a dry cleaners, a quiet pub, and a cheap cafe with outdoor seating.
Will's would resemble nothing so much as Clichy-sous-Bois during the riots, all crumbling concrete towers and burning police cars.
Will's would resemble nothing so much as Clichy-sous-Bois during the riots, all crumbling concrete towers and burning police cars.
12
I've actually been in a few riots in France, they're kind of fun to watch.
Small changes can have dramatic effects, but so long as the Belltown millionaires don't take ownership, it won't matter.
Small changes can have dramatic effects, but so long as the Belltown millionaires don't take ownership, it won't matter.
13
Sure you have, Will. That was back when you were banging Mrs. Sarkozy, right? Right after you won the Nobel Prize for film criticism.
14
As long as people don't keep referring to parts of the Denny Regrade and Downtown as Belltown, whatever.
15
@13, after his post-Nobel Sarkozi banging, Will cleared the sidewalks of dogshit throughout the 6th.
17
@16, that is awesome.
The Bell Street project is going to be a big fucking failure. I worked in Belltown for years and walked that street almost daily. It's a stretch of empty lots and apartment buildings - go ahead and look it up on Google Street View, and take a stroll from 5th down to Western. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to hang out there in a "park". There are no amenities - no cafes, bars, restaurants or shops, and there NEVER will be, because most of the street-level architecture is comprised of apartments. There is simply no room for businesses, unless you gut the main floors and daylight basements for shops and restaurants. This will be yet another empty urban wasteland. The hobos will love it, and the people who live in the apartments facing the street will probably hate it, because it will be overrun with vagrants. Seriously, Seattle has its head up it's ass when it comes to urban planning. It's not that fucking hard - there are thousands of brilliant examples from around the globe, and yet we consistently come up with big piles of dogshit for our urban development.
The Bell Street project is going to be a big fucking failure. I worked in Belltown for years and walked that street almost daily. It's a stretch of empty lots and apartment buildings - go ahead and look it up on Google Street View, and take a stroll from 5th down to Western. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to hang out there in a "park". There are no amenities - no cafes, bars, restaurants or shops, and there NEVER will be, because most of the street-level architecture is comprised of apartments. There is simply no room for businesses, unless you gut the main floors and daylight basements for shops and restaurants. This will be yet another empty urban wasteland. The hobos will love it, and the people who live in the apartments facing the street will probably hate it, because it will be overrun with vagrants. Seriously, Seattle has its head up it's ass when it comes to urban planning. It's not that fucking hard - there are thousands of brilliant examples from around the globe, and yet we consistently come up with big piles of dogshit for our urban development.
18
I am never voting for another "sidewalks" tax again. Fuck Belltown, and fuck the city twice for not policing the area as they should. Throwing infrastructure and "programming" at 3x the price of just hiring a couple beat cops is just shitty policy.
A 30-foot-wide crack park, or dogshit collector wasn't how this was described on the ballot a couple years ago.
A 30-foot-wide crack park, or dogshit collector wasn't how this was described on the ballot a couple years ago.
19
@18, you're right, it wasn't, but I hope you won't blame Belltown for accepting the only compromise the City offered for their rightful share of the levy money. I haven't lived there for years but friends still do, of modest means, elderly, and in some cases both. It's something, so better than nothing, in their view.
20
Gee, how about you report where in the world they "found" 1 million dollars to finish funding the project in this economy . . . inquiring minds want to know (etc). "Oh gee, we found a million dollar bill on the sidewalk, so now we can finish the project, look look at the shiny park we will be building!"
21
How have the parking space cafes worked out in other cities?is it viable with the loss of parking, and tables so close to the traffic? It sounds like a great idea, but does it work?
22
I have the same West Village/West London/South End Boston bias (scale, true density w/true street frontage, diverse yet complementary architecture, street life) as Fnarf @10. Perhaps even more strongly than he.
Unfortunately, even architects who share my bias are in agreement that the building codes, regulatory hurdles, accessibility requirements, and financing challenges of the present make small-scale urban construction projects of the quality seen in those places flatly infeasible.
A runner-up model of success that has quite a different physical shape: Vancouver's large-scale downtown and West End residential projects -- individually as ugly as anything built in Belltown or SLU -- have been relatively well-regulated at street level, ensuring an urban continuity, pedestrian supremacy, and accessibility to neighborhood services as good as anything you're likely to find in a "new" city.
Thanks to Seattle's back-asswards development strategies, the new Belltown wealthy all drive into giant garages beneath high-rises with hostile street frontage. They don't walk at night (because it's sketchy). They don't use Metro (because it sucks). And they're not going to hang out on a Bell Street bench any more than their LQA brethren hang out in "Counterbalance Park" or SLUers on "Whole Foods Plaza."
Unfortunately, even architects who share my bias are in agreement that the building codes, regulatory hurdles, accessibility requirements, and financing challenges of the present make small-scale urban construction projects of the quality seen in those places flatly infeasible.
A runner-up model of success that has quite a different physical shape: Vancouver's large-scale downtown and West End residential projects -- individually as ugly as anything built in Belltown or SLU -- have been relatively well-regulated at street level, ensuring an urban continuity, pedestrian supremacy, and accessibility to neighborhood services as good as anything you're likely to find in a "new" city.
Thanks to Seattle's back-asswards development strategies, the new Belltown wealthy all drive into giant garages beneath high-rises with hostile street frontage. They don't walk at night (because it's sketchy). They don't use Metro (because it sucks). And they're not going to hang out on a Bell Street bench any more than their LQA brethren hang out in "Counterbalance Park" or SLUers on "Whole Foods Plaza."
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