South Lake Union’s Center for Wooden Boats will be cutting ribbon on their North Lake Union (Wallingford!) expansion next Friday, May 4th:
The Center For Wooden Boats is pleased to announce we will formally open the new CWB North Lake Union Workshop & Warehouse on Friday, May 4, 2012 at 5:30pm. We hope you’ll join us for the opening at the organization’s new second campus on Lake Union. While the facility is land-based for now, over time we hope to build public access to the water to complete our vision for the Northlake Community Wharf. The address is 1475 N Northlake Place, Seattle, WA. We will also have an open house Saturday May 5th from 10am to 2pm for anyone who wants a tour of the facility.
What does that “land-based for now” bit mean? We asked Dan Leach for more info:
As we noted when the agreement with King County was announced back on December 5th, this first lease is just for the land part of this waterfront parcel…..the warehouse and the storage yard. That’s because more than a decade ago King County, the previous owners and the state DOE agreed on, and completed, an environmental clean-up of the warehouse and yard. But they still have work to do on sediment studies in the water, and on top of that the docks are no longer usable.
That is why this initial lease is just for the land side. It gives us a badly needed spot where we can work on and store some of our historic boats….and it gives us time to sit down with Metro, King County and our other partners to work on longer term arrangements that will allow the use of the waterfront so we can offer things like row boat and sailboat rental as well as restoration projects on larger historic vessels, such as the V5, Arthur Foss, Adventuress and so on.
As we start operations at the new CWB: North Lake Union Workshop & Warehouse you’ll see boats on site, volunteers and staff working to restore them, you’ll see sail making volunteers working to keep our boats in proper sails, and we’ll start experimenting to see when it makes sense to hold a workshop that might have been scheduled at South Lake Union up at the North end of the lake instead. Bottom line, there will be lots of activity, and we encourage Wallingford residents who want to help us to become CWB volunteers.
I hope you guys can join us for the opening at 5:30pm on the 4th. It should be fun. And to wet your whistle….here’s a picture of the site that I took yesterday. Not done yet, but getting close.
YAY!
This is stupendous news.. Ive waited for 4 years!
It will be helpful to have a more clear timeline of when operations here will be completely open. How will CWB volunteers be informed of the jobs and needs which are at this north facility? If someone signs up to be a volunteer can that person volunteer ONLY for north site? The south site. as vibrant as it is, has a parking transportation situation which detracts from volunteering for some people.
@coolio, those are questions better posed to CWB than here, I would guess.