Nearly 60 Queen Anne residents packed the Bayview Retirement Community last Friday to discuss three potential designs for the renovation of Lower Kinnear Park.
The meeting, led by the Friends of Lower Kinnear Park (FOLKpark), was the second community-wide discussion about how to most effectively use a $15,000 grant provided to plan park updates. With applications planned for two major grants in April of this year, there may be a total of around $700,000 to spend on renovations.
Split into four groups, the attendees of the meeting gave input on three plans developed by landscape architect Dean Koontz and his team. A separate group focused on the issue of off-leash dog areas (OLAs) in the park. With only 11 OLAs in the city of Seattle, and none in Queen Anne, the inclusion of such an area was a key issue for many residents.
"I can't say at this point a determination of off-leash or not off-leash until we have a chance to go back and evaluate it all," said Debi Frausto, head of FOLKpark. "But we certainly take the Department of Parks' request that we consider it very seriously."
The three concepts laid out at the meeting differed in various ways, but the major issues involved how to connect the upper and lower portions of the park, make the park more compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and connect to the waterfront.
Concept A's main features included a re-graded slope to create a better trail in the park, with the tennis court removed as a result. The plan includes a plaza space on Mercer Street and stair climbs connecting the upper and lower portions of the park.
Concept B featured an elevated boardwalk that would help link the parks. However, it was the least popular of all the plans because it seemed unnatural and costly.
The third plan, concept C, took a minimal approach that would move the tennis court, filling the area with a rain garden. The plan would also flatten the entrance area to open up sightlines and create a hill climb down to Mercer Place. Overall, the concept received mixed reviews, but the rain garden received a lot of support.
"Integrating rain gardens and doing something sustainable here was a thumbs-up in a lot of different cases," Koontz said.
Along with the park concepts, a North Link Trail was presented by architect Aaron Luoma, which would connect the park with the waterfront. This idea was brought up at the first meeting, and was overwhelmingly supported on Friday.
"Everyone just loved this idea and said, 'Go for it, do it,'" Luoma said. "There's a lot of questions in terms of costs associated with the materials, but they thought the intent and desire to bridge that gap was a great idea."
FOLKpark will return to the Bayview Retirement Community on April 8 for its final meeting, to establish a final conceptual plan for the park. For more information visit www.folkpark.org.[[In-content Ad]]
