Milestone for Junction Plaza Park: $98,000 city matching grant

| Junction Plaza Park | West Seattle news | West Seattle parks

Days after West Seattle’s newest park was dedicated in Morgan Junction, there’s big news for the push to finish the long-awaited park in The (Alaska) Junction: Susan Melrose of the West Seattle Junction Association tells WSB they’ve just received word they’re getting the $98,000 city Neighborhood Matching Fund grant sought to help complete Junction Plaza Park. That brings the money gathered for the project (updated)to $295,000 – the current design will cost about $350,000 to build. (For comparison, the just-finished Morgan Junction Park cost almost half a million dollars.) Another major fundraising push will come during next month’s West Seattle Summer Fest (WSB sponsor), with a beer garden set up at the site, proceeds benefiting Friends of Junction Plaza Park. The group also will be participating in this Saturday’s Junction Clean and Green event, which will be centered at the new Genesee P-Patch (as reported here last month) — with Mayor Nickels scheduled to appear — but also will include a Junction Adopt-A-Street cleanup with work at the 42nd/Alaska park site (just a few blocks south of the P-Patch). It’s hoped that the park project will be ready for groundbreaking this fall. It’ll also be a beneficiary of the West Seattle Garden Tour coming up July 19 (tickets on sale now). ADDED 4:09 PM: A Friends of Junction Place Park meeting also has been announced, for 6 pm July 6, Senior Center of West Seattle.

MargL June 16, 2009 (1:24 pm)

Hope the design budget includes a line-item for those little aluminum ‘skateboard deterrents’ for the edges of the concrete seat benches that they’ve already had to install in the new Morgan Junction park.

Amy June 16, 2009 (2:33 pm)

Looks like another skate park with all that concrete. How about we build an ACTUAL skate park and plant some greenery in the other parks.

Seems like we’re paving over everything, and then adding a tree or two as an afterthought, rather than actually inserting GREEN areas into our concrete landscapes.

ljd June 16, 2009 (2:44 pm)

is anyone else shocked by the cost of these micro parks!?! trees cost about $8 each and concrete is what, $20 bucks a square foot? that leaves about $283,000 left over for what?

s June 16, 2009 (3:27 pm)

wow wonder where all this money goes. seems an awful lot to spend on these parks considering that there is no standing BUILDING!

jwws June 16, 2009 (3:57 pm)

ljd,

I’d like to know where you can get a tree (that isn’t a twig) for $8 -especially since we deal with many wholesale nurseries so I am familiar with costs. Also it looks like there’s a little more than just concrete in the park – looks like stone work and art and even if it were only concrete there’s the cost of labor to excavate/level, frame/place rebar, pour/finish and seal the concrete – doubt that $20/sq ft would cover that. Although I agree the price tag is high for a park, especially when so many are in need, a lot of the money is coming from fund raising benefits and from non-profits like the West Seattle Garden Tour.

WSB June 16, 2009 (4:11 pm)

Re: pavement vs. green – As I understand it from having covered many of these projects, design meetings and beyond, pavement is actually somewhat cheaper because it doesn’t require so much irrigation piping and water … TR

KT June 16, 2009 (4:14 pm)

I am one who is also concerned about the costs for these teeny “parks”. This says “the current design will cost about $350,000 to build”. I would like to know how much has been spent to date in buying the land, etc… And wow, is that artist’s rendition misleading as to the size of this “park”!

MLJ June 16, 2009 (4:57 pm)

If you don’t want to allow skateboarding (which makes sense in this case because the park is so small and adjacent to so many residences), working with low-maintenance semi-porous surfaces, and not using solid concrete on the surface areas as Amy’s suggesting, can really help deter skating. The solution is good design not retrofitting the fixtures with ugly skatestoppers.

But you never know, if it becomes a transient hangout or a drug zone, you may be wishing the skaters were there instead.

ljd June 16, 2009 (5:59 pm)

trees range from $4.50 (for members) to $8.50 for non-members at: http://www.arborday.org/shop/index.cfm

yes, they come as saplings, but surely the city has some place to grow them between the time they are babies until they are ready to go out and live on their own in the city!

there are a ton of great gardeners in west seattle who have amazing park-like yards… surely they’re not spending $350,000. it is sad to see such waste, not matter who is paying the bill. this project will probably be really expensive and wind up looking just like another McPark.

chas redmond June 16, 2009 (9:38 pm)

To all who have commented about the cost and design or other elements – would that you had been at any of the multiple and well-announced and widely-known design meetings about not just this park but all the other parks. Were you at the Myrtle Reservoir Park meetings arguing for skate parks there or did you pass that one by. Were you at the Morgan one the first or second or third time to discuss the hard versus soft surface ratio? Were you at the Junction Plaza’s many design discussions? If you were and you’re still unhappy, there’s always the various City Council members and their committees and the departments themselves. Don’t sit and complain on the West Seattle Blog – do something about the conditions you don’t like. And, when there’s something you do like, you should compliment the folks involved with that. Cheers – I kinda like both park concepts and feel really bad that the skaters still are being ignored and bear the brunt of ill thoughts.

MargL June 17, 2009 (10:56 am)

I’m not saying I don’t like skateboarding but everything in it’s place. A new skatepark is a good idea. I hope folks who really want one will get one. Sure, I’ll pay my taxes to help it get built.
When you go to a park that’s -just- been completed and you see scrapes and damage from ‘grinding’ it’s a little sad. The kids were at it -during- the Morgan Junction festival, grinding and flipping their boards with small children walking around… Do we really have to turn every place with an edge into a skate park?
The Junction Plaza park will be a nice little place, too. A balance of green and hard-scaping and hopefully there will be good use of it and maybe even a ‘concert in the park’ series. That would be cool! But -not- if it has to compete with skateboarders doing tricks while I’m trying to listen to music!

tucker June 18, 2009 (5:53 am)

The cost of the “park” is ridiculous!!this is state inflation at it’s worst. Give me a freakin break-the materials don’t cost that much..!!!!!!!And plant some trees and bushes please..i’m so sick of concrete overload. As you can tell by our townhouse designers lately they don’t seem to have a clue about style..the park won’t be much better. As far as the skateboarders go, a good deterent would be to pump some classical music through the trees..they wouldn’t last too long.

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