Parks levy Opportunity Fund: South Park, Genesee Hill rate highly in staff review

Along the road to winning funding from the Seattle Parks and Green Spaces Levy Opportunity Fund, community-generated proposals from around the city have now been rated by Parks staffers. The levy’s Oversight Committee (which is chaired by West Seattleite Pete Spalding) heard the staff’s recommendations when its members met Monday night. In this region of the city, the two top-rated proposals were the South Park Plaza and Genesee Hill Park projects – the former recommended for its full funding request of $669,000, the latter recommended for $650,000 of its $750,000 request. The Genesee Hill project would develop a neighborhood park for the area, which currently doesn’t have one, and is blocked from using much of the currently vacant (but soon to be built on) Genesee Hill Elementary site; the South Park project involves creating a public park/plaza in the downtown area by the river and new bridge (scheduled to open in early 2014). This doesn’t mean other proposals are completely ruled out, nor does it mean these two are shoo-ins; as laid out in the timeline on the right side of this city webpage, presentations are planned in January, and the committee discusses prioritizations in February, with a public hearing in March and recommendations made to the City Council in April.

Trying! November 28, 2012 (5:24 pm)

Such great news! The neighborhood has done the best they can to try to keep up the Genesee Hill property and keep it available to the many people that use the grounds. Many have put in 100’s of hours of work, both fund raising and with their sweat. I’m sure there will be a host of volunteers to help if this property is choosen.

JayDee November 28, 2012 (6:02 pm)

Living on the fringe of Genesee Hill, I was trying to picture where the park could be put. Does anyone know where the proposed parcels are? The only ones I can imagine is the informal pea patch/dog park at Charlestown and 47th and a lot at the SW end of a Charlestown cul-de-sac at Hillcrest (Assessor says with “view”) there are not too many vacant lots in Genessee Hill.

WSB November 28, 2012 (6:03 pm)

I’m trying to find the full application on this – there were a couple of different Genesee Hill proposals – this was #103. The Parks website only had the proposal letter summaries, and a location wasn’t summarized.

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