By Torin Record-Sand
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Summer recaps, a look ahead, and an impending farewell headlined last night’s Seattle Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners meeting. We monitored it online for items of potential West Seattle interest.

The farewell was from Senior Deputy Superintendent Christopher Williams (file photo at right), who declared the meeting to be likely his last, as he will soon be retiring after 33 years of service. Through the superintendent changes in recent years, Williams has led the department (and declined offers of the top job, we’ve been told), including more than five years as acting superintendent a decade ago; he is a former West Seattleite and Chief Sealth alum.

He presented the Superintendent’s Report last night; that and the review of the summer season for aquatics and recreation contained a number of highlights for Seattle parks during this summer. This discussion went over the continuing success of the Parks Department’s ongoing efforts to provide a variety of events at parks across the area. His notable examples included the partnership with GreenStage, whose productions of Shakespeare plays saw an attendance of 11,600 people for 53 performances across 17 parks, including their performances this summer at several West Seattle parks, such as Lincoln Park and Camp Long.

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Thanks for the tip! Seattle Parks has been screening the “Twilight” movies – the Northwest-set vampire stories – outdoors and the next one is at Lincoln Park this Wednesday – here’s the Parks announcement:

THIS WEDNESDAY, Sept. 10, come watch Twilight: Eclipse (movie # 3) at Lincoln Park (8011 Fauntleroy Way SW — ballfield # 4). Join fellow Twihards for the next installment of this epic series!

Movie starts at 6:30 p.m. and we recommend getting there early + bringing blankets and chairs (and, ideally, wearing your best Twilight merch!).

Thanks to the 800+ of you who joined us this past Wednesday at Cowen Park for Twilight # 2! Some of you were celebrating birthdays and other special occasions, brought along tiny werewolf friends, and even decorated on-theme cupcakes! We are so happy to share these fan- and fun-filled evenings with you.

Apparently that’s the only one in West Seattle, as Parks says it’s showing movie #4 at Carkeek Park on September 17 and movie #5 at Volunteer Park on September 24.

(WSB photo, last month)

One month ago, after a reader tip via a story comment, we reported on a pathway project at the south end of Fairmount Playground/Playfield that was expected to be complete by Labor Day. It wasn’t. Nearby resident Kevin asked Parks why and cc’d us on the thread. In a reply this morning, a Parks rep explained:

The project was originally scheduled for completion by September 1. However, the concrete sidewalk the contractor installed did not (meet) ADA requirements, we had to request its removal and replacement.

The contractor has been working to correct the grades and complete the project as soon as possible. I have requested an updated schedule from them and want to assure you that this remains a high-priority project for us.

According to our previous story, the contractor is Sunset Grill Construction.

Maybe the most unusual event in our calendar this weekend: Scream Club Seattle. We didn’t get direct notice of this but happened onto it while searching online to be sure we weren’t missing anything major at West Seattle’s biggest parks (sometimes we don’t get word of Lincoln Park or Alki Beach events organized by non-West Seattleites). At 7 pm (corrected) Sunday, at Lincoln Park picnic shelter 4, this new monthly gathering will get together for a cathartic scream. From the RSVP page:

Scream Club™ is a safe, non-judgmental gathering for mental health, connection, and emotional release. We live in a world that tells us to stay quiet, hold it together, and pretend we’re fine, while stress, anger, grief, and even unspoken joy build up inside. Screaming is a release, a reset for the mind and body, and when we do it together, something shifts. You realize you’re not the only one carrying heavy things, and you don’t have to carry them alone.

What to Expect:

A warm, welcoming space
Setting an intention together
A collective scream
A simple closing to ground before heading out

What to Bring:

Weather-appropriate clothing
Water bottle
(Optional) Journal

How to Join:

Free and open to all. RSVP & come as you are.

The RSVP page says they’re planning to do this on first Sundays every month.

We noted here last Thursday that Morgan Community Association president Deb Barker had confirmed work was finally set to resume this week at the long-idle, fenced-off, excavated Morgan Junction Park expansion site north of the original park [map]. We just went by to confirm that crews really did start work today; just before we took our photos, a truckload of fill was dumped into the site from which contaminated soil was removed:

This work, expected to last at least three weeks, will prepare the site for hydroseeding and interim public use before the actual park features are added in about a year – maybe, or maybe not, including a “skate dot.”

(WSB photos by Tracy Record)

After a shutdown now in its sixth year, Hiawatha Community Center is on track to reopen early next year. We got a look inside during an informal tour earlier this week with two community advocates and Seattle Parks project leader Morteza Behrooz. From the exterior, you can only see a bit of what’s been done during what began as a strengthening and stabilization project and expanded to, among other things, make Hiawatha the city’s first fully electric community center; part of its energy-efficiency upgrades includes new windows – see some of those above. The accessibility includes this new stairway, with railing, on the north side:

Other accessibility features include railings elsewhere as well as restroom work. So let’s go inside. On the east side of the building, here’s the gym:

A big part of the strengthening/stabilization work involves braces and beams – the masonry no longer has to hold up the building without reinforcement:

Going further into the building, we got a look at the lobby and programming areas:

The new windows are in evidence everywhere, letting in lots of light:

In non-public areas below, like equipment and laundry spaces, new piping and wiring is in view:

Upstairs, we peeked into the room with the stage:

At the rear of this room is the kitchen space, where appliances will be moved into place in the next week or so:

Optimus Construction is the general contractor for the project. One manager we saw briefly remarked that the building had posed a lot of challenges – “threw everything at us” – not originally in the plans and expectations; for example, once old windows were removed, they discovered larger cavities, rot, other issues. The project’s price tag has tripled over the years and is now $6.5 million, Behrooz said. Work began early last year, four years after the center closed; what had been a pandemic closure was extended because the project was considered imminent – but ultimately wasn’t.

P.S. The work isn’t all construction – Behrooz said Parks programming staff is busy discussing and planning what programs can be reintroduced and when. Day care will return, for example, but it might not re-start immediately after the center reopens.

One more note: The Hiawatha play area project is under different management, so he didn’t have an update on that, but we’ll be pursuing a separate update.

Last month, we reported on the still-idle Morgan Junction Park expansion site on California between Graham and Fauntleroy, a fenced-off pit awaiting the resumption of cleanup work so it can have an interim use before park development. Deb Barker, president of the Morgan Community Association, reports tonight – with the photo above – that signage has gone up indicating that the work is finally about to resume. The signs announce parking restrictions from next Monday (August 25) through September 19, for construction staging by Holt Services. Barker tells WSB that the company confirmed to her that the window is so it can finish Phase 1 work at the site: “This includes backfilling the hole to grade, removing the top four feet of the steel and wood from the shoring support, removing all of the remaining hard surfaces, installing erosion control as needed, bringing in topsoil and blowing in grass seed. The site will remain fenced during and after the work.” The work to actually turn the site into a park isn’t expected to start before late next year, and the issue of whether it will include a community-requested “all-wheels area” has yet to be settled. The city bought the expansion site, which previously held a market and dry cleaners, 11 years ago.

Signups are now open for fall programs at Seattle Parks community centers and other facilities – that includes Camp Long environmental-education programs, which carry on despite the unavailability of the fire-gutted lodge. You can find the brochure links here; West Seattle is home to Delridge Community Center and High Point Community Center; renovations are still under way at Hiawatha CC, but its programs are offered at Alki Bathhouse and Dakota Place Park. Programs are for all ages, from tot gyms for the littlest ones to Lifelong Recreation for elders, and specialized programs for people living with disabilities are available too. Find the brochure links in this Parks announcement about registration.

(File photo, Lincoln Park wading pool)

The short season for Seattle Parks-operated wading pools is ending this week for all but a few around the city. Three of West Seattle’s four wading pools have their final days this week – Delridge on Friday, Hiawatha on Saturday, and EC Hughes on Sunday. But as usual, the Lincoln Park wading pool and Highland Park spraypark will continue daily operation through Labor Day. Locations and schedules are all listed here.

A commenter wondered about that fence blocking access to the south play structure – which is only three years old – at Fairmount Playground. We went over for a look today and noted that not only is the play structure fenced off, so is the entire south-side pathway leading to it from Fauntleroy Way SW. At the street end, notices say it’s a “tree protection” zone, and allude to construction, but no further details, and as the commenter noted, the project to install turf on the nearby ballfield is nowhere near construction-ready. So we inquired with Seattle Parks. Spokesperson Karen O’Connor says it’s for a pathway-paving project that “came up quickly” and was announced along with two non-WS projects for which a contract was awarded to Sunset Grill Construction. Here’s the info about this one:

Fairmount Park in West Seattle: Schedule and Closure: July 31 – September 1

Scope: Installation of new ADA-compliant sidewalks around the playground at Fairmount Park. This includes demolition of existing pathways and construction of new concrete and asphalt pavement in compliance with ADA standards. The contractor will need to close the play area to complete this work and will work to minimize impacts to the remainder of the park.

O’Connor says they’ll get explanatory signage so no one else is left to wonder why.

(Photo courtesy Seattle Parks)

That’s a photo of Camp Long‘s famous Schurman Rock, where you are invited to climb for free on Tuesday nights all this month! Camp Long’s Matt Kostle explains:

We will have staff and volunteers from the Camp Long Climbing Corps out to help participants get geared up and climb on the historic Schurman Rock! We will open sessions from 5 pm to 6 pm and 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm. You can come up to a half an hour early and it will be first come, first served. We will have to manage the number of people climbing and therefore will only have so many slots available at a given moment but will try to get as many people out climbing as possible! All gear will be provided (and you must use our harnesses and helmets as we inspect them periodically for safety and know their conditions). Open to all ages including quite little ones – as we say around here, if you are old enough to walk, you can rock!

Matt also wants you to know that the aftermath of last week’s brush fire on the eastern slope of the park has not affected park operations; “At this time, unknown cause, and thanks to the efforts of staff on site and the Fire Department, there was minimal damage to the forest.” (We’re working on a separate update about the lodge’s status.)

(WSB photo, park addition site, last month)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Last month, as reported here, the Morgan Community Association and Morgan Junction All-Wheels Association sent a long list of questions to Seattle Parks. The questions were largely generated by an unsatisfying briefing at the quarterly MoCA meeting regarding the long-in-the-works Morgan Junction Park Addition project.

Backstory: After community sentiment swelled for adding a skatable “all-wheels” feature to the plan – aka a skatedot – the city said that could be done, and MJAWA formed to do what its community volunteers could to help make it happen. Then recently the city said it didn’t have money after all to include that in the project, so MJAWA would have to lead community fundraising to pay for it – and at a much higher price than skating infrastructure experts had said it would take. All this happened against the backdrop of interdepartmental trouble over finishing the process of cleaning up the site, which currently is pretty much a giant fenced-off hole.

So the questions had to do with clarity about the budget and the project status. The Morgan Community Association received a document today with at least some of the replies. Here’s the document; following are a few key points:

*Project budget: $7,560,000, including acquisition costs more than a decade ago. We were told at the time that the purchase price was just under $1.9 million, but the Parks document lists “acquisiion cost” as $2.7 million, without a breakdown.

*Spent so far: $5.7 million, including the aforementioned acquisition costs and $1.6 million described as “construction” though nothing’s been built at the site (Parks says cleanup work done so far is part of this).

*Remaining money: $1.8 million

*What they expect to need: The entire $1.8 million (more than half of that for the actual park construction – not including a skateable feature – $900,000 construction contract, $300,000 expenses such as sales tax and “escalation”)

But the most significant numbers differential is between what renowned skatepark builders at Grindline, who have worked with MJAWA on a design, believe it would cost, and what Parks says it would cost. In the new document, Parks says:

The cost estimate provided by Grindline varies from the cost estimate provided by SPR for the following reasons:

Grindline’s estimate EXCLUDES a number of critical items: Design/Design review support (geotech/structural/civil/larch, etc.), SPR Labor (inspections and PM), Contractor labor, escalation (estimate is from 2024), survey, demo/disposal, earthwork, drainage, supporting sitework outside the feature (concrete/plantings, etc.) contractor mobilization/markup, sales tax, and design/construction contingency. It also excludes the cost to address improvements associated with the skatedot but not within the footprint.

SPR numbers include estimates for these items at a schematic level and are comprehensive of the total project cost. These costs will be refined as we move forward and the design becomes more detailed.
Skatedot Cost Estimate Overview:
Grindline’s 2024 estimate: $160,000 (w/o tax)
Design team’s 2024 professional cost estimator for skatedot materials and labor
only: $300,000 (w/o tax)
SPR’s escalated hard cost estimate (incl tax, contingency, and anticipated
supporting site work): $700,000
Additional Design fees anticipated: $150,000
Total cost:~$850,000

Once again, this estimate will likely be reduced as the project moves through the design process and uncertainties are resolved. SPR is committed to working with MJAWA to refine the design, hone in on cost, and try to find a path forward that works best for the park and community.

More followups to come, but for those interested in the ongoing saga, we published the questions so wanted you to have the chance to read the first round of answers. (The document also has some information on what’s next and when, saying most of the project site should be ready for hydroseeding next month – once the hole is filled – to grow grass that would enable temporarily reopening the site to public use.)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

The Morgan Junction Park expansion site, bought by the city 11 years ago, remains a fenced hole in the ground. And the matter of what will ultimately be built on it still isn’t settled.

The “all-wheels area” that seemed like a promising addition for so long is up in the air, since Seattle Parks now insists there’s not enough funding to include it in the project. Community supporters, who coalesced as MJAWA (Morgan Junction All-Wheels Area), just got word this week that their part of the project didn’t receive a $250,000 King County grant they were hoping would help cover the cost, so they say this means Parks will tell them to raise “$700,000 for a 1,500-sf skateable area.” They’re now looking ahead to conversations with Parks in the coming weeks.

In advance of that, MJAWA and the Morgan Community Association got a somewhat convoluted update last week from two Seattle Parks managers who came to MoCA’s quarterly meeting to provide a status update. MoCA has since sent the city a list of questions to be answered.

First – here’s what they did hear about the status of the site, where a jurisdictional conflict between Parks and SDOT has idled the soil-cleanup process – required because of contaminated soil from the site’s history (including time as a dry cleaner) – for many months. Parks’ Olivia Reed told MoCA that the cleanup should finally be complete “late this fall” – now that SDOT and Parks have reached an agreement about transferring some of the property – and they’re still planning to open the expansion site as a grassy public area after that.

(Schematic for ‘skate dot’ that MJAWA got Grindline to design for Morgan Junction Park site)

Will the final version of the site have an all-wheels area, aka “skate dot”? That would require added community funding, Reed reiterated, though MJAWA already has brought a lot of contributions to the project, from volunteer expertise to a grant. During the MoCA discussion, the project’s funding and price tag reained unclear, with the Parks reps saying the “total budget” is $1.2 million, as well as saying that amount had been “added” to the project this year. But, Parks’ Andy Sheffler insisted, “We have a commitment to get the project done” and he insisted they are “moving forward diligently now.”

That “moving forward” includes taking the plan back to a committee of the city Design Commission – the plan for what the site will look like when Phase 1, remediation and hydroseeding, is complete this fall. MoCA president Deb Barker expressed disappointment that the committee will end up seeing that plan before the community.

This was all largely a continuation of a similarly disappointing discussion with a different Parks official at the previous MoCA meeting in April, at which the $1.2 million budget and skate-dot skepticism were cited, while MJAWA pointed out that the budget seemed to be “missing a million” after previous citations of a $2.2 million budget. The $1.2 million apparently is only expected to cover some pathways and seating on the expansion site. Community fundraising could put the “all-wheels area” into the plan, but otherwise it would be “decoupled” for some possible future phase. Parks is focused on finishing the cleanup and settling the right-of-way issue with SDOT, which won’t be finalized until the City Council approves transferring SW Eddy Street right-of-way to Parks.

After the MoCA meeting, these questions were sent to the Parks reps, taking them up on a suggestion they made during the meeting:Read More

3:26 PM: As discussed here Wednesday, some were concerned about a commercial film crew using part of the lot at Don Armeni Boat Ramp today when boaters were allowed to head out for chinook salmon. So WSB’s Anne Higuera went there this afternoon to see how things were going.

She noted at least a dozen vehicles associated with the production, which she was told is for a Ford commercial. One person returning from fishing told her he had been able to get in and out without a problem, although, in a side note, he said the biggest hassle of the day had been dealing with a new app for procuring permits. Meantime, a (corrected) Parks employee on duty told Anne that things had been moving quickly as most people were hitting their limit soon after going out, so they returned to shore before long. All the while, the production crew continued its work on the south side of the lot, with lots of gear including a wardrobe rack.

Their permit is for work that could run as late as 1 am tonight.

(Added: Photo by Doug Eglington)

7:23 PM: Doug Eglington, who sent the photo above, just sent this one showing drones awaiting their role in the shoot:

ADDED 11:50 PM: Doug sent later photos of the drones, illuminated:

(WSB photo)

4:30 PM: Thanks for the tips on this. Don Armeni Boat Ramp is festooned with a sizable amount of “no parking” signs that will be in effect 11 am tomorrow (Thursday, July 17) to 1 am Friday. The supplementary-info sheet on some of the signs attributes it to “filming,” which happens at the park from time to time given its incredibly scenic skyline backdrop. We asked Seattle Parks for information before we knew that, as one reader was particularly concerned, saying that tomorrow is a major fishing day. Parks tells WSB, after asking the city Film and Special Events Office, “It looks like the boat ramp will NOT be closed, nor will the ramp itself be impacted. The impacts are only to the southern portion of the lot where parking will be reserved, and that portion of the lot being fully closed after 7 pm. There will be police on site to direct traffic where needed and inform folks about what is going on. Additionally, the impacts are ONLY tomorrow. The reason the 18th is on the signage is because they are filming until 1 am.” (The contact on the signage is for a regional location scout.)

6:21 PM: A few additions directly from the Special Events Office:

-This is a commercial film production.
-The production is working in the south end of the parking lot.
-The boat ramp, north entrance, and north-end parking will be open and unimpacted, and access to launch from the ramp will be maintained all day.
-Work in the south-end of the lot includes parking space restrictions from 11:00AM Thursday to 1:00AM Friday, and through-traffic restrictions from 7:00 PM Thursday to 1:00 AM Friday.
-The production is aware of the opening of chinook salmon season and will be communicating on the day with boaters and park visitors to the nature of the parking space and access restrictions and timing.