By Scott Eisen
UW News Lab
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

A unique public-private partnership between Seattle Parks and Recreation and West Seattle Little League was on display during tonight’s public meeting at Alki Community Center discussing plans for building new concession stands, a restaurant and storage facilities at Bar-S Playfield.

Using funding from a $100,000 Mariners/Boeing grant announced in 2007, the new facilities will require no government funding and will be maintained by West Seattle Little League. In the works for decades, the Bar-S improvements are still awaiting final approval from several government agencies, but the hope is to finish the project by the start of Little League season.

“Baseball season for us starts in a couple months,” said Mark Terao, WSLL president. “My goal was to have it done by the opening jamboree, but it’s not realistic as to if that is going to happen.”

The designs for the new facilities were created by Rich Murakami, an architect who lives right next to the fields and donated his services.

After seeing plans for a two-story facility on the playfields, Murakami took the reins and created the blueprints for a one-story concessions/restroom building and a separate storage facility (as seen above in sketches from the project website).

The concessions stand will face west toward the middle of the two baseball fields, with two restrooms facing north and south respectively connected to the same building. The parks and Little League representatives see this as a major improvement from the small snack shack and portable toilets used in the past.

Maintenance of the facilities was a key concern brought up at the meeting, with graffiti being the major issue.

Preventive measures are not fully determined, but the materials used for the new buildings may help deal with it in the future.

“The materials for the building will be concrete block, “Murakami said. “It will be a pigmented block so it will have an integral color, preferably charcoal, so it will be a dark grained color with a ground face.”

After many years of trying to get money to improve the playfield, West Seattle Little League finally got the money in the form of a donation from the Seattle Mariners and Boeing. It came at a good time, with budget cuts to local government agencies making public financing unlikely.

“This is kind of a unique situation, where there is a new agreement signed between the Parks Department and West Seattle Little League,” Joe Neiford, a parks landscape architect, said. “[West Seattle Little League] will be paying for the building of this building [using the grant funding] and it will basically be a donation to the city.”

The donation, however, was not easy to come by. With the Mariners and Boeing only giving out about one grant a year, Terao said the West Seattle Little League is grateful to finally receive one after years of trying.

“It’s very competitive, they get a lot of requests,” former West Seattle Little League president Harvey Bauer said. “I think West Seattle Little League applied three or four specific years before receiving the grant in 2007.”

Upon confirmation from the city, construction should begin to take place relatively soon. Look for the progress on the improvements to the Bar-S fields as the Little League season kicks off with its jamboree on March 27; find out more at westseattlelittleleague.com; the city project page is here.

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(SCOTT EISEN is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.)