A group of volunteers including TBP’s Marin Bjork led an effort to create five Park(ing) Day
spots along Rainier Ave in Hilman City. Of the five spaces, Marin’s won the “Golden Quarter” award & was featured in the Seattle P.I.; from the article, “On Rainier Avenue South, between South Findlay and Orcas streets in Hillman City, Marin Bjork and others from the neighborhood had the idea of a park that would change during the day. In the morning, Bjork said, there’d only been a small patch of grass and a couple of deck chairs. But then someone brought an old rocking horse that by early afternoon was sitting on the grass. Diana Vergis Vinh hung long strings of hops vines from her yard on a rope between the park and the street.”
Thornton Place model units and “mews” opened on Saturday. While the majority of the project is still in construction, visitors to the sales center can get a taste of what is to come when the full project is done next year. Thornton Place is taking shape where Northgate’s “south lot” used to be home to acres of unused pavement (unless you hit the rare weekend “tent sale” for Car dealers and home electronics!) The new mixed use project that consists of town homes apartments, retail, restaurants and a 16 screen theater, all over a 2 story parking garage including park and ride spaces. The project consists of no less than 9 separate buildings all tied together with a series of pedestrian walkways (or mews) and a large central courtyard mixing cars and people. The first of the mews that opened Saturday represents a small portion of the pedestrian areas that will meander through the project. The projects developer is Lorig Associates and the architect is Mithun.
After years of design and permitting, the Magnuson Phase 2 project is taking form and dramatically changing the landscape of the Sand Point peninsula. Where before there were acres of former airstrip paving and buildings, wetlands, habitat and athletic fields are starting to take on recognizable shape. Excavation of the wetland system ponds on what used to be an essentially flat (and largely paved) site is the most dramatic change. While the park had some functioning wetlands that have been preserved, much or the wetlands in the park were low functioning, and the goal of the design is to provide a broad diversity of high functioning wetlands and habitat. Two large ponds, the Promontory Ponds, are being excavated and are filling with last week’s rains. The ponds are excavated up to 15 feet below the former tarmac elevations, and when complete, will provide significant open-water habitat with a static water level year round. Just upstream, the marsh ponds provide a wetland system that will be ideal amphibian habitat, with a series of ponds ranging in depth from 6 to 18” which will be fully vegetated, filled with water during winter and spring and gradually drying out during the summer months. These ponds work and look like rice paddies, where one pond overtops a weir to a lower pond slightly downhill. The westernmost wetland, the entry ponds, will have fluctuating water levels through the year and wraps it way around a new baseball and Softball fields to its source, a daylighted storm drain system. Also prominent along the sites western edge are multiuse fields, 1 sized for rugby and 2 sized for soccer (both with synthetic turf and lights). While the project will not be complete until mid to late 2009, much of the project will appear complete by the end of this year, with significant wetland and planting work complete.
