Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 4, April 2004

Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

City to remake Lake City Mini-Park

to deter homeless

By JAMES BUSH

Dedicated in 1981 as the symbolic heart of the neighborhood commercial area, the Lake City Mini-Park will soon become just a wide spot in the sidewalk. Actually, a public plaza might be a better descriptive term.

The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation plans to remove a concrete wall, a non-operating fountain, several benches and a protective canopy, and install decorative pavement and a small stand of trees on the 0.2-acre park on the southwest corner of the intersection of Lake City Way NE and NE 125th Street.

The changes are mainly a response to the park's almost constant occupation by a colony of homeless people "to the point where people don't use it," said David Goldberg, project manager. Goldberg led a March 3 public meeting on the park design at the Lake City Community Center.

The "introverted" design of the Lake City Mini-Park was probably a good design when it was created, but times change, said Dave McNeal of JGM Landscape Architects. The walled portion of the park not only creates a windbreak attractive to homeless people seeking shelter, but also conceals illegal activities.

"If a police officer drives by to check it, he has to literally park his car and get out and look," Officer Jack Napolitano of the North Precinct community police team said in a later interview. Removing the wall to open up sight lines seems a reasonable solution, he added. If the interior of the park can be seen, "it'll cut down a lot of the drinking and the drug use."

The single major element of the current park to be retained is the archway from the former Seattle First National Bank building on the site. The plan for renovating the Lake City Mini-Park doesn't include formal benches, but seating walls, which are designed with a varied edge to discourage skateboarding.

"In many ways this is going to be a glorified sidewalk," said McNeal. "I think a lot of people will use this park by simply walking through it."

Maureen O'Neill, Northeast operations manager for Seattle Parks and Recreation, likens it to a mini-version of downtown's Westlake Park. That space is largely a paved plaza, but is livened by concerts and other activities. "I'm hoping that once the park is finished, the community will use the park more and organizations might plan activities," she said. But removing the walls will also expose the mini-park to additional traffic noise: it's bordered by arterial streets on three sides. Like other city parks, the Lake City Mini-Park will be officially closed from 11:30 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Tony Del Mastro, who was president of the Lake City Chamber of Commerce when the mini-park was created, says the space worked better when there was a restaurant in the Lake City Way building bordering the park. The restaurant's windows provided informal supervision, while some people would order food to go and eat in the park, Del Mastro said. While he appreciates City's efforts to address the park's problems, Del Mastro says he isn't sure if removing so many elements of the original design is the best solution.

"I would hate to see that park end up being unusable," Del Mastro said.

But any initial neighborhood opposition to the plan to renovate the park seems to have turned to resignation: only six neighborhood residents attended the meeting and none raised serious objections to the design.