Counterbalance Park could soon come to life with more events and activities, the likes of which will depend on community feedback.
Members of the Uptown Alliance are working on an activation plan for the park — which sits on a quarter-acre at the corner of Queen Anne Avenue North and Roy Street — with the hope that it can become a thriving community gathering space.
Matt Adkins, with Uptown Alliance, said one of the biggest goals of hosting activities and events in the park is to bring people in the neighborhood together to get to know each other and create a true center of community.
Currently, he said, there aren’t many greenspaces in the neighborhood outside of Seattle Center, at a time when the neighborhood “is growing by leaps and bounds.
“I hope that we could have one space in our community [where] we all could get together and maybe put a name to a face,” he said.
Making a ‘very agile’ park
Adkins said efforts have been underway for about a year now, after someone suggested an idea for the park at an Uptown Alliance meeting. Since then, they’ve collected ideas with an eye toward how the park could be energized.
That could entail anything from movie nights, to hosting food trucks, to even adding a p-patch (though Adkins cautioned the latter was the type of idea that would require approval from Seattle Parks and Recreation).
“We’d like to make the park very agile in the events and activities it has there,” Adkins said.
As for other examples around the city, Adkins mentioned Westlake, Pioneer Square and Bell Street parks as similar spaces to launch activation efforts in the last year or two.
“They’re all urban parks in busy areas of the city,” Adkins said, “and they’ve all been able to put on activities and events and really attract a lot of people…. It’s great to just kind of follow their lead.”
In particular, the games at Westlake Park — like giant chess and backgammon — have been a particularly popular idea.
Not just for a ‘few people’
So far, Adkins said there haven’t been many challenges in the planning process, but that he wants to engage with the community more, especially with those who aren’t able to make it to brainstorming events or Uptown Alliance meetings.
“We’d definitely like to spend a lot more time making sure the park doesn’t just fit a few people in the community,” Adkins said, “but many more that haven’t had their chance to suggest ideas yet.”
While continuing to collect ideas, Adkins said the next steps are to determine which concepts are most popular and most feasible and start submitting Neighborhood Matching Grant applications to fund them.
The group will also try to work with Seattle Parks and Recreation to see how the community and the department could work together to improve the space. The hope is that the parks department may be able to reduce the permit fees to allow more people to rent out the space and provide things like games and equipment.
In all, Adkins is hopeful that by activating the park, it can serve a community hub in a quickly growing area.
“I think we all see each other at the grocery store or waiting at the bus stop, and I feel that, at the park, we can get to know each other more and create a sense of a real close community,” he said. “I think that will be a real asset as we go forward and grow as a neighborhood and as a city.”
To learn more about the activation plan or to submit your own ideas, contact Matt Adkins at matthew.t.adkins@gmail.com or like Uptown Alliance on Facebook.
To comment on this story, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.