Uptown gardeners met Wednesday night to
plot next steps for pressuring Seattle Center leadership to ditch
plans to close the UpGarden P-Patch.
The UpGarden was constructed on top of
the Mercer Street Garage in 2012 through a memorandum of agreement
reached between Seattle Center and the Department of Neighborhoods
and was part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Seattle
World’s Fair. The memorandum states that the P-Patch was to be
temporary, and would eventually be replaced with mixed-use
development as envisioned in the Seattle Center Century 21 Master
Plan.
Gardeners were surprised to learn in late October that the P-Patch would have just one more season before
Seattle Center reclaimed the space to add back parking for roughly
100 vehicles.
UpGarden is slated to close next
November.
Gardeners strategized how best to
convince Seattle Center and city leadership to allow UpGarden to
continue during an end-of-season meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 13. An
online petition started earlier this month has more than 700
signatures currently.
District 7 Seattle City
Councilmember-elect Andrew Lewis pledged his support during the
UpGarden meeting.
“I am happy to be a resource for it,
write any letters that you need, talk to any department heads about
it,” Lewis said, adding his term doesn’t start until January.
“Right now, I’m just a guy who won an election last week.”
Once he has staff in his District 7
office, Lewis said, he will assign someone to focus on preserving
UpGarden.
Oak View Group, which is spending more
than $900 million rebuilding the Seattle Center arena, takes over
operation of the First Avenue North garage and its revenue under its
development agreement with the City of Seattle. OVG also plans to
construct 850 parking stalls under the new arena.
But Seattle Center argues parking
demand once the arena reopens will require increasing capacity in the
Mercer Garage, which is currently being seismically retrofit. Parking
demand is supposed to drop once light rail expands to Seattle Center
in 2035, but the passage of Initiative 976 has placed a question mark
on future funding for Sound Transit 3 projects.
Lewis said he wants to speak to
representatives with Oak View Group and the Department of
Neighborhoods, as well as seek legal guidance from the city about
whether UpGarden could be spared by way of an ordinance.
The Department of Neighborhoods (DON)
manages the city’s P-Patch program, which has long struggled with
high demand for garden plots and a lack of space. UpGardeners were
upset that DON had not been actively looking for a new P-Patch space
over the years, knowing that the Mercer Garage was temporary.
“I would say within two weeks of us
knowing, you knew,” said DON Community Garden coordinator Sandy
Pernitz during the Nov. 13 meeting.
Pernitz encouraged UpGardeners to
continue organizing, but she also stressed that they should apply to
be transferred to another P-Patch. There are about 85 gardeners using
UpGarden.
“I’m not going to be able to place
you all, that’s a truth,” Pernitz said. “You’ll be on a
waiting list.”
A lot of gardeners have asked to
transfer to the Queen Anne P-Patch, she said, but turnover is not
very high.
Kristina Westbrook was able to join
UpGarden in 2013, and said she’d also signed up for the Queen Anne
waitlist. Several years later a spot opened up in Queen Anne, she
said.
Seattle Public Schools and the City of
Seattle entered a public process partnership agreement in late 2017,
which anticipated school-related uses at Fort Lawton and Seattle
Center. The school district had considered rebuilding Memorial
Stadium and constructing a new high school at Seattle Center. When
Westbrook learned last spring that SPS had made no progress on that
front, she requested to remain on the waitlist for the Queen Anne
P-Patch, she said.
Westbrook is the Area 3 lead for the
UpGarden. She said she had several new gardeners join her section
last year who will be on the bottom of the list for transfers.
Westbrook was one of the gardeners
upset DON had not been proactive in finding a future site for
UpGarden since its opening seven years ago.
Gardener Gerry Kuaimoku said the garage
transfer agreement between the city and Oak View Group had been
discussed back in 2017, so planning for the loss of UpGarden should
have started then.
Pernitz said senior leadership from
Seattle Center and DON have met.
“They told me they are looking at
other site options,” she said.
The city’s budget for P-Patches would
need additional funding for a relocation to happen, she said.
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2020 budget
proposes using $3 million in sweetened-beverage tax revenue for
garden relocation assistance and maintenance.
UpGarden lead coordinator Robert Grubbs
said he went to a city council budget session, where Councilmember
Mike O’Brien said he didn’t believe the tax revenue should go
toward P-Patches.
The city council created a dedicated fund for all sweetened-beverage tax revenue in July, after Durkan
used additional revenue from it to supplant general fund dollars for
certain human services programs in her 2019-20 biennial budget.
O’Brien sponsored the legislation,
which he said would preserve tax revenue for its original purpose,
which includes expanding food security and nutritional health
education programs for low-income people and communities of color
most impacted by the soda tax.
Lewis said he think P-Patches should
qualify for that tax revenue, and he believes he’ll find support
with Dan Strauss and Alex Pedersen when they join him on the council
next year.
The Ballard P-Patch, which is in
jeopardy of closing due to redevelopment, is attempting to raise $2
million in funds to save its space. Our Redeemer's Lutheran Church,
which owns the parcel where the P-Patch is located, is selling the
land to cover a needed renovation.
UpGarden has no immediate plans to
begin fundraising to cover its likely relocation, said Stephanie
Krimmel, UpGarden communications coordinator, and the group is
currently focusing on educating people in the community about the
P-Patch and increasing support for its preservation. Responding to
gardeners who said the campaign should also focus on the general lack
of P-Patch space in Seattle, Grubbs said he would reach out to GROW,
which serves as the fiscal sponsor and advocacy arm for community
gardens in Seattle.
While Pernitz is unable to help
UpGardeners with their advocacy work, she encouraged them to keep
fighting.
“You’re not just displacing a
garden,” she said. “I feel like you’re displacing a community.”