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Parkways

Seattle Parks and Recreation news and events

Nature Nurtures: The Benefits of Urban Parks

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Intuitively, we know that time spent outdoors in nature is beneficial. Stressed out? A walk in the park might be just what you need. Given a choice between a jog in a park or a run around an indoor track, most will choose to be outdoors. Add in a pandemic to the mix, and spending time in our public parks is one of the best options for exercise, connecting with friends, finding peace and quiet, and recreating.

Now we can prove it. Recent studies over the last several years have quantified and documented the benefits of time spent outdoors. Right here in Seattle, the University of Washington’s Nature and Health Program creates an academic space for research into these benefits for children, veterans, and many others.

The Children and Nature Network, a national organization founded by Richard Louv (author of Last Child in the Woods and Vitamin N) and others, has collected over a thousand peer-reviewed articles in their Research Library describing the benefits of nature. Exposure to nature improves children’s health, social-emotional well-being, and academic outcomes, as shown in the graphics below from C&NN.

The benefits of nature are so established now that there is a growing movement of pediatricians and other health care providers giving Park Prescriptions to improve physical, mental, and emotional health. Project Nature, a program of pediatrician organization BestStart Washington, aims to bring these benefits to children through their health care providers by providing developmentally appropriate resources to families. Seattle Parks and Recreation partners with Project Nature by advertising our recreation programs.

But you don’t need a doctor to tell you that a walk in the park is a good idea anymore. The proof is in, and the parks are waiting for you. So next time you are looking to boost your mood or your mental clarity, head to one of Seattle’s 485+ parks and get your Vitamin N.

Seattle Parks and Recreation Seeks Input on South Lake Union Community Center Design Concepts

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Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) is excited to work with the community on planning for a new community center in the South Lake Union neighborhood. Please visit the Online Open House from March 11 through March 31, 2021 and join us at the Online Meeting on March 16, 2021 at noon. Both events can be found at slucc.infocommunity.org. Please participate to learn more about this project, meet the design team and provide feedback on the design concepts for the new South Lake Union Community Center.

Located at the corner of Mercer Street and Dexter Ave., the center will be a private-public partnership operated by SPR but located on the ground floor of a private development project. The new center will be a welcoming space for all and visible from the street with easy access for pedestrians, cyclists and people traveling by mass transit.

SPR and the design team from NBBJ created the layout with input gathered from the first Online Open House held earlier this year. Your input will further help the design team create a successful center for all.

Key features of the center include a full-size basketball court, fitness area/multi-purpose room, and childcare. The community will be asked to share additional recreation priorities to help the design team design the look and feel of the spaces within the community center.

For more information please visit www.seattle.gov/parks/about-us/current-projects/south-lake-union-community-center or contact David Graves at david.graves@seattle.gov or 206-684-7048.

Seattle Parks and Recreation needs input on final design for Spruce Street Mini Park Play Area

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Spruce St Mini Park Play Area survey closes on March 14, 2021. Seattle Parks and Recreation(SPR) encourages the neighborhood to participate in the short survey https://seattle.surveymonkey.com/r/sprucestpa to provide input on the final design and play area equipment selection. 

SPR would like to thank everyone who participated in the Online Open House on February 27.  To review the Online Open House please visit https://youtu.be/HuibspZsKt8 and then take the survey.  The Online Open House provides the community an opportunity to learn about the project, hear from the design team and provide input on the preferred schematic design and the three play equipment options.

We wanted to thank you in advance for contributing your thoughts on what is most important to you as we move forward with this project. The design team incorporated previous community input into the play area schematic design, and we are excited to share it with you along with the play equipment options.

As part of the play area renovation project, SPR is partnering with the Office of Arts & Culture and will collaborate with the community on public art. Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Planning Artists (Damon Brown & Hasaan Kirkland), and a small team of community members are looking to commission an artist or artist team of two, to collaborate with and install a mural project for the Spruce St Mini Park Play Area Renovation. The selected artist/artist team will be asked to develop an artwork that reflects the history and diversity of the Central Area community. Please watch for information about the Call for Artists coming out next month and contact Jason Huff (jason.huff@seattle.gov) for more information about the art project at Spruce St Park.

Spruce Street Mini Park is located at 160 21st Ave, Seattle, WA 98112  in the Central Area  at the corner of 21st Ave. and E Fir St. For more information on the project, to review the Online Open House and find the survey link please visit http://www.seattle.gov/parks/about-us/current-projects/spruce-street-mini-park-play-area-renovation. If you have any questions about the project please contact Janice Liang at Janice.liang@seattle.gov or 206-507-3058.

(Virtually) Walk Through (History at) Seward Park

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Two people walk with a stroller around the Seward Park northern waterfront loop.

By Todd Burley

Seward Park, the largest park in Southeast Seattle at 277 acres, is a rare gem of waterfront wildness in the midst of the Northwest’s largest city. Since it was purchased by the city in 1911, this peninsula in Lake Washington has meant many things to many cultures in our community. And it continues to provide connection to nature and each other.

Isthmus at Seward Park, 1926 (Seattle Municipal Archives)

This regional park has another distinction – a virtual historical tour was created as part of the mitigation work completed by Seattle Public Utilities for the CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) system installed under the tennis courts. Check out the Seward Park Story Map created by Monica Hall (SPU), Nate Smith (SPR), Patrick Morgan (Seattle IT) and supported by Libby Hudson (SPR). It is a visually stunning experience that uncovers the many layers to this majestic park.

If you want to go even deeper into the history of Seward Park, check out Paul Talbert’s new book Wild Isle in the City.

And for those who really wish they had a naturalist in their pocket when walking through the park, the Seward Park Audubon Center has developed two “Smart Walks” on ferns and evergreens that are accessible via your smart phone at this link.

Enjoy your walk, virtual or in person, at Seward Park!

Arial view of Seward Park looking down on Andrews Bay.

Seattle Japanese Garden Reopens Saturday March 6 with Timed Ticketing Reservations

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We’re all more than ready for spring this year, and no doubt many of us will greet the seasonal opening of the Seattle Japanese Garden with more joy than usual. Before you go, be sure to read up on the new reservation system, buy tickets online, and get familiar with the guidelines for visiting.

There is timed ticketing, with pre-purchase on the home page of the Garden’s website required for entry.

  • Tickets purchased online are valid for the time slot purchased. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded.
  • Walk-ups will be available on a first come, first-served basis on weekdays. Please be aware that if the garden is at capacity, walk-up entry may not be available. For visits Friday – Sunday and holidays, we encourage purchasing tickets in advance to secure a spot.
  • Ticket reservations cut off 24 hours in advance of a visit. Tickets must be purchased for every person, including children under 5. Additional people may not be admitted due to limited capacity. The current group size allowed during this phase of the pandemic is 5.

One way-paths and limited access to some garden areas.

  • The Tateuchi Community Room, the Shoseian Teahouse, and the azumaya are closed, as well as some of the bridges and platforms in the central area of the garden. Please see map provided on this page for more information on one-way paths and closures.

Required face coverings for all visitors and staff.

  • Informed by Governor Inslee’s mandate, Seattle Japanese Garden requires all guests over 5 years old to wear face masks while visiting the garden.

On March 7, a Shinto blessing to celebrate the opening of the Seattle Japanese Garden will be conducted online from Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America in Granite Falls, WA. It will be available for a live-viewing via Zoom. More info and registration for the blessing here.

Join us in ushering in a successful new year by celebrating and giving gratitude to the Divine Nature that surrounds us and the Seattle Japanese Garden.

Support youth recreation scholarships with Seattle Kraken announcer Everett Fitzhugh

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Here’s an opportunity to help our neighbors in need and virtually meet The Kraken’s Everett Fitzhugh. The only Black play-by-play announcer in professional North American hockey, “Fitz” will give the keynote speech at the third annual Fund the Fun Breakfast, hosted by Seattle Parks and Recreation and the Associated Recreation Council. The event is virtual this year and takes place on Wednesday, March 24th from 9 to 9:30 am.  

This yearly event raises money for youth sports and recreation scholarships to help families in need. This year more than any other, we need to make sure all the youth in our community have access to quality recreation and sports programs to keep them healthy and strong, regardless of their family’s ability to pay.

There’s no cost to attend the breakfast. At the end of this inspiring program, guests will be asked to make a gift that’s meaningful to them. Every gift, no matter what the amount, will make a positive impact on a child in our community.

Click here to register. If you’re not able to join us this year, click here to make your donation. Your support will make a difference!

If you’d like more information or have additional questions, contact Robin Slutsky, ARC’s Grants and Sponsorship Administrator, at robin.slutsky@seattle.gov or at 206-245-6524.

Green Lake Bathhouse Theater Electrical Upgrade Project Begins

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Seattle Parks and Recreation is happy to announce we awarded the project for the Green Lake Bathhouse Electrical Improvement project to Brink Electric LLC.  This project will increase energy efficiency and will make much needed electrical improvements at the bathhouse building including the aquatics area, theater, and restrooms. Work includes new electrical service from W. Green Lake Drive N. to the bathhouse along the park’s primary path.

Construction will last from March 2021 to September 2021. Construction activities will cause temporary revisions to trail use. Thank you in advance for your patience and cooperation during construction.  We will work with the contractor to minimize trail interruption.

The Green Lake Bathhouse Theatre is located on the northwest side of the lake at 7312 W. Green Lake Dr. N.

More information visit http://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/green-lake-park or contact Seattle Parks and Recreation Project Manager, Katie Bang, at Katie.Bang@seattle.gov or 206-684-9286.

Creating a Healthy Environment Amidst a Pandemic

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By Todd Burley

Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) supports Healthy People, a Healthy Environment, and Strong Communities through all our work. In 2020 this effort took on a whole new meaning, as the benefits of parks became even more evident and Seattleites looked to our public open spaces to seek connection and respite. We shifted our resources to support our residents during the COVID-19 pandemic while also making real progress on our Healthy Environment goals. Here are some of the ways we did so.

Access to Parks
Equitable access to parks is an ongoing priority for SPR, as shown by the fact that 94% of households live within a 10-minute walk to an access point at one of our parks. For people living in dense urban settings, having public open space nearby is crucial to health and well-being. We opened one new park, Fritz Hedges Park, expanded three others, and also held 67 work parties to complete 25 trail projects, increasing access to our natural areas and the benefits that connection to nature provides.

Sustainable Management
As part of the Green Seattle Partnership, SPR added 64 new acres to our urban forest restoration program and planted 57,568 native plants, including over 12,000 trees! We also used 45% less water than we estimated we would need on our irrigated land while maintaining the health of our turf, a great example of how we are supporting the three aspects of sustainability – economic, social, and environmental considerations.

Environmental Operations
With more than 485 parks, SPR is responsible for many day-to-day environmental matters. For example, we inspected 4,515 storm drains and cleaned the 1,359 that needed it. We also continue to promote recycling and compost in our facilities and parks, diverting over 45,000 cubic yards from the landfill in 2020 (that’s 14 Olympic size swimming pools!). And as technology improves, we are increasing the number of battery-powered tools in our small equipment inventory such as leaf blowers and chain saws, including 45 new ones in 2020. Our staff work daily to ensure our parks are not just healthy for people, but for the environment we depend on as well.

Energy Efficiency
Recognizing the importance of reducing energy use from our buildings as part of Seattle’s commitment to reduce our carbon emissions, SPR implements energy efficiency projects every year. In 2020, we completed efficiency projects in nine buildings, reducing their energy consumption by 30%. In addition, with our partners at Seattle City Light and the Office of Sustainability and the Environment, we completed a 30 KW solar energy project on the roof of Magnuson Park’s “Brig” building, providing 30,000 KWH of carbon-free electricity each year. Our community, and the world, tell us that we cannot wait to address climate change, and we agree.

New Opportunities
2020 created new ways of helping create a healthy environment, too. When our grounds crews were shifted to support other needs, much of our turf grew higher than usual. In some areas of passive use, they turned into impromptu meadows in time to support pollinators and other wildlife. This created pleasing areas to walk through and opened up the possibilities to keep some passive turf areas in a more natural state in the future. We are currently seeing where this is possible as we update our Turf Best Management Practices.

Staff adjusted to remote working, too. During 2020, many SPR employees worked from home; in fact, we had 56,143 staff days of teleworking, reducing our carbon emissions while continuing to serve the public. Also, since our environmental education staff could no longer provide programs to the public in person, they shifted to videos, creating 19 videos that received 864 views last year. They also went out to eight parks throughout Seattle and safely handed out Nature Kits to 374 children to take home as part of our Summer in the Parks program.

2020 was not a typical year, yet Seattle Parks and Recreation continues to be committed to creating a healthy environment. We will learn from both the challenges and the opportunities this last year provided, and always welcome your input and ideas. If you have any ideas, or have questions about these metrics, send a note to our Sustainability Advisor at todd.burley@seattle.gov. Learn more about SPR’s Healthy Environment Initiative on our website.

#healthyenvironment

Walk a (Half) Mile in My Shoes – Equitable Access to Seattle’s Parks

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By Todd Burley and Kathleen Conner

The ideal of being able to walk to the grocery store, library, school, barber shop, and park is not just a throwback to the past, but a value that the City of Seattle holds today. Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan, a long-term planning document, seeks to intentionally create just that sort of a community. But how do you measure it?

Real estate companies use Walk Scores to assess this “walkability” access to services from a home. And organizations like the Trust for Public Land (TPL) have developed the 10-Minute Walk to a Park metric for cities across the country.

Seattle is blessed with a great parks and recreation system of over 485 parks encompassing 6,423 acres. According to TPL, 96% of Seattle’s households live within a 10-minute walk to a park, or about a half-mile. Their figure includes all publicly accessible open space, such as Seattle Center or SDOT’s street ends, in addition to Seattle Parks and Recreation’s property. Future figures may be higher, since they will include all public schoolgrounds, which are open to the public outside of school hours.

Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) has used a narrower set of requirements to measure walkability. In the adopted 2017 Parks and Open Space Plan, SPR determined that 94% of households in Seattle live within a 10-minute walk to a SPR-owned park or open space. Much of the same considerations as TPL’s figure are included, such as a 10,000 square foot minimum for parks.

To incorporate equity and access into planning decisions, Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) created the Outside Citywide interactive map tool. It examines how well different areas of the city are being served by our current system based on the quantity, sizes, types, features, and walking distances of nearby public spaces. Outside Citywide creates a “public space access score” based on six different factors, including SPR’s walkability metric.

In 2020, SPR and OPCD collaborated to align our analyses to create two standard citywide walkability metrics:

  1. Walkability to SPR-owned land
    This analysis uses the adopted 2017 Parks and Open Space Plan that identifies a walkability metric to SPR-owned land only. This is currently the data used in the Comprehensive Plan and is what Seattle reports on to Washington State in accordance with the Growth Management Act.
  2. Walkability to all public outdoor spaces. Recognizing there are other publicly-owned open spaces not owned by SPR, we are also developing a new citywide walkability metric for the Equitable Development Monitoring Program. This metric will include all publicly-owned, accessible, and free land. OPCD and SPR will refine this metric for the Mayor’s Performance Seattle dashboard and the updates to the Comprehensive Plan and the Parks and Open Spaces Plan in 2023.

The goal of both metrics is not to achieve 100% walkability, but rather to identify where to invest public resources to ensure those in our community that are disproportionately impacted by lack of nearby parks and open space and environmental injustices receive the additional investments that will benefit their health and well-being.

Seattle is dedicated to setting the bar high for equitable access to parks and open spaces in our city. We are committed to reducing disparities in our community, which means we may not get to a 100% walkability figure. However, these maps and tools will allow decision makers in our city to make informed decisions based on equity, and that is our true goal.

Article written by Todd Burley, Sustainability Advisor and Kathleen Conner, Planning Manager.

Renovated First Hill Park Opens

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Go visit the new bears on First Hill!

Seattle Parks and Recreation encourages the neighborhood to go discover the two new bronze bear cubs named Johnnie and Irish at the newly renovated First Hill park. The community-initiated park renovations re-opened in late January 2021. First Hill Park is a .25-acre urban park located along University St. and Minor St. immediately north of the Stimson-Green Mansion in a densely populated residential neighborhood. It features a custom bronze sculpture of an Edwardian chair, ottoman, and two bear cubs.

The new design seeks to create a more open and flexible space allowing for performance and passive activities to occur, while retaining an intimate garden feel, an important characteristic of the First Hill Neighborhood. Seating areas are interspersed among lushly planted beds, and a curvilinear seat step meanders through the park and frames the lawn suited for small events and gatherings. In a nod to the previous brick paving, the new park features permeable pavers laid in a herringbone pattern that also act as a sieve that treats and percolates storm water into the ground below. New barbeque and picnic benches are available for neighbors to enjoy in this dense urban environment.

The bronze sculpture by artist Georgia Gerber sits near the entrance along University and recalls the history of the Stimson Green Mansion family’s adoption and care for the young bears until their transfer to the Woodland Park Zoo. The two black bear cubs were orphaned due to logging in the area in 1906, but they were promptly adopted by 8-year-old Dorothy Stimson, who lived in the Stimson-Green Mansion at the time.

In 2016, the First Hill Improvement Association (FHIA) engaged the community to reimagine and update First Hill Park as a vibrant, welcoming, and safe open space for the neighborhood where people of all ages and abilities can relax and play. FHIA hired the landscape architecture firm, Site Workshop, to guide First Hill neighbors through a community visioning and design process. SPR awarded the construction contract to GreenTech in early 2020. The protective fencing around the grass will be removed once the turf establishes.

“We look forward to celebrating with the community, hopefully, sometime this summer when it will be safer to gather,”  said Doug Holtom, Executive Director of the First Hill Improvement Association. “Thank you to everyone who participated in the public process and provided invaluable input to get us where we are today. A special thanks to the Seattle Parks Department, the Department of Neighborhoods, and Swedish Medical Center. We encourage you to visit the park, take some pictures and hashtag #FirstHillPark. We are thrilled at how the renovation turned out for our neighborhood backyard!”

The project was made possible by funding from the Department of Neighborhoods, Swedish Health Services and the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy. The artwork was funded separately through a FHIA led art committee with the generous contributions of the Peach Foundation, the Committee of 33, the Seattle Parks Foundation, Suzanne Hittman, and Harriet Bullitt.