McGinn said that people want more parks and safer walking places, and it looks like SDOT is listening—at least a little.
All puns aside, Seattle welcomes its first parklet on Wednesday. What is a parklet? It’s a mini 24-hour public park that takes up the place of otherwise usable parking spaces.
The pilot program is in the first stage of its three-fold trial run (Belltown and International District, you’re next), and if people like what they see, we can expect more to pop up all over town. The construction for the first of the park babies began on Monday, and yes, already by Wednesday we’ll see the beginning of these tiny, shiny park benches and foliage, with this one on East Olive Way, between East Howell and East Denny. Specifically, right in front of Montana Bar.
The idea comes from San Francisco circa 2009, a city that now has 40 functioning parklets since they began, with more being constructed every year. The phenomenon has gone global at this point, and if Seattle follows suit after our first three, we might start seeing a lot more of these.
The SDOT are behind Seattle on this, but it’s worth mentioning that every iParkMini is privately funded (Montana Bar’s got this one), so there’s no telling what design angle private funders might take. Costs hover around the $10,000-$15,000 range, excluding expensive liability insurances and annual permits, but some have taken to Kickstarter to get parklets up and running and have done so successfully.
To be able to apply to be a parklet, your space has to be and do a number of things:
- Accomodate drainage
- Be smoke-free and booze-free, of course
- Comply with all specs from the Americans with Disabilities Act
- Have some barrier between traffic and park users
- Not be higher than 8 feel tall
- Be on streets where traffic doesn’t exceed 30 mph
- Be on streets with existing permanent parking lanes
All we know right now on the East Olive location is that there is a ramp, stairs, “landscaping” that needs to be done, and that it’s open for business tomorrow night.
Swing by East Olive at 5 pm tomorrow and see the smallest park in Seattle for yourself. Here’s hoping Leslie Knope approves. What about you?
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