After a going-on-two-years process of nominations and opinion-soliciting, Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation superintendent Ken Bounds has settled on a name for the park located on the northeast corner of the intersection at Queen Anne Ave. N and Roy St. in Uptown: Counterbalance Square "An Urban Oasis."
The announcement doesn't specify whether a comma, a dash or perhaps a colon should precede the part in quotation marks, but we assume that will get sorted out in the sands of time.
The .28-acre vacant lot, once the petro-fragrant site of a Unocal gas station, was purchased by Parks in 2004 after an extensive community process. The 2000 Pro Parks Levy and King County Conservation Futures Tax provided $1.7 million to pay for the property. The levy will also fund development of the site, with design concepts including benches, tables, trees and "a unique lighting feature."
Construction is expected to take place in 2007.
In opting for the part of the name that does not tempt the eyebrows to lift a millimeter or two, Bounds has honored the will of the neighborhood activist group, the Uptown Alliance, which voted formally in January to give the place the interim name of Counterbalance Square. The UA's aim was, of course, to commemorate the counterbalance trolley system, an exotic feature of Seattle history unique to Uptown.
We thought that was a swell idea then. We still do.
Thanks, Mr. Bounds. We'll get back to you about that urban oasis bit.[[In-content Ad]]
