PARK(ing) Day is a city-wide event where folks get the chance to turn a parking space into a little work of art. Best of my knowledge, nobody from Wallingford participated last year (please correct me if I’m wrong). I’d love to see that change. Here’s the deets on the upcoming deadline:
Just a reminder that you have one week to submit your applications for PARK(ing) Day 2015! Applications are due on Friday, August 28. Don’t delay—the application is quick, easy, and free!
On September 18, PARK(ing) Day will provide an opportunity for you to create fun and interactive public spaces to engage with local communities. Groups from all around Seattle will be designing and installing temporary on-street pop-up parks to help generate a conversation about healthy, sustainable, and livable cities. This year, event hours will be extended from 10am until 7pm to give people more time to enjoy the spaces. What’s not to like?
To apply, just pick the parking space you’d like to use and then fill out the simple, FREE application available on our website. Check out SDOT’s guidelines for easy-to-follow tips about planning your pop-up park. Be sure to get your applications turned in to [email protected] by Friday, August 28.
For additional information about Seattle PARK(ing) Day, including application requirements, please visit http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/seattleparkingday.htm.
There’s a good reason why no one from Wallingford participates in this knuckleheaded “happening”-parking is tough enough here and where is everyone supposed to park during this temporary park pop-up? And this year there is the “opportunity” to extend the experiment for a second day. Again I ask, where are people supposed to park for those two days? Is the idea to encourage taking away more parking (a la Molly Moon absconding with parking spots in a busy shopping area so people can eat ice cream; so glad Fainting Goat doesn’t seem to need to accommodate their customers that way) on a permanent basis? This is a bad idea.
Lisa, maybe we should get coffee and talk about this in person. I’m a little confused. Are you saying you’d rather see someone else’s privately owned parked car parked on your public property instead of people happily enjoying ice cream in your neighborhood? This can’t be true.
I love PARK(ing) Day. I think it’d a fabulous way to remind people of how we’re currently using public right of way…and show them how we COULD be using it.
I want to live in a community where my neighbors are able to sit outside of their favorite restaurants on a sunny (or not so sunny) day in a parklet like one of these: http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2011/10/Parklet-Program-slideshow.asp?slide=1 and eat their sandwiches while I walk by on my way to the grocery store.
I want to live in a community that supports local businesses by providing enjoyable spaces for their patrons, huge amount of bicycle parking right outside their doors, and some nice scenery to look out while they work. Way better than filling that space with one parked car, that most likely carried one human being in it. This it what it could look like outside of Chocolatie or Fuel everyday: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyashaw/4567757229/ – that could be the sidewalk that I get to walk my kids down. You don’t really want to just stick with this: http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/parking.jpg do you?
I want to live in a city that makes investments in people – my neighbors, my family, your family, friends, visitors, strangers – not cars.
Molly moon never even fill it with seating. Who wants to sit in a little pen on AstroTurf that is covered in the inevitable sticky ice cream from prior drips, all while being eye level with the traffic? Nice intention, poor execution.
You must not get out much. I live one block away, and my family and I walk in front of Molly Moons daily. It’s always packed. People are so happy. They’re talking with strangers, swinging on the little swing, eating their ice cream, laughing, and being a part of the community.
Note that the “eat outside their favorite restaurants” is talking about the restaurant acquiring extended space in the public right of way.
It isn’t supposed to be that way. In principle, it should be the same when you’re sitting outside a restaurant you don’t care about at all, maybe eating ice cream from their competitors up the street.
I am not talking about the restaurant acquiring the space. I am talking about the people, doing what they choose to do, acquiring the space. They can be eating food from wherever, playing a chess set they brought from home, knitting a scarf for their granddaughter – whatever. But not leaving their car there, for free, for hours and taking that space away from others.
I’ve sat at Molly Moon’s parklet a number of times with Zev. He loves the little swings, and we’ve struck up conversations with the other people there, building community. There’s almost always someone in there and enjoying it when we’ve been by. So much more awesome than a car sitting there.
It feels like this is a surreptitious plan for the government to force us to give up our cars and walk everywhere. Why can’t we park wherever we want?
It is true! Obama is assembling boxcars full of special forces just over the Canadian border, and is planning to swoop in and confiscate our cars. Owning cars is our constitutional right! Do not let the libtards turn this into a fascist state like Holland!
Places For People, it sounds like you have drunk a very large glass of the Koolaid as I read your description of a carless, walk-everywhere neighborhood where no one needs to park a car. Guess what? In the real world, cars exist, much to the chagrin of our mayor and others on this thread. And Molly Moon should do what other countless businesses do and put a bench or chairs on the sidewalk, not take parking spaces out of commission on a public street. You can still enjoy your ice cream and visit with your neighbors, but you aren’t taking away parking. And I did ask the question twice, but got no answer: where are people supposed to park on the “parklet” days? Why shouldn’t we be able to park where we live? I do pay property taxes and gas taxes and levies up the wazoo to pay for all this stuff. And don’t forget, we’re all jockeying with the supposed carless apodment dwellers and other high density housing denizens.
Lisa, I can answer the question: as there are typically 1 – 2 “parklets” per neighborhood on PARK(ing) day, displacing a total of 1 – 2 cars across all of Wallingford, I imagine you could park 10′ – 15′ from where you would park otherwise, if you, by some stroke of luck, happened to be the one car in all of Wallingford negatively impacted by this lovely project. But because you just want to park where you live, why not just not convert the parking space in front of your house to a parklet, and park there?
One parking space for a car versus someone’s art project? For one day? Do you really want to be that person that grumbles about your neighbors having some fun and making art because you’re so angry about someone taking your parking space for a day? I’m glad I don’t think that way.
Yes, Jordan, I’m happy to be that person that grumbles when someone impacts my parking. If someone parks “inefficiently” (leaving several feet between their car and the one in front of or behind them) or we get some homeless RV parking in my ‘hood, we instantly lose several spots. Or we get bus commuters parking in on our street and take the bus to work and there are another several spots gone. Yes, it’s a public street, but using it for commuter parking when there is only parking allowed on one side of the street exacerbates the existing lack of parking. It’s a big issue for my street. So handing over valuable real estate for two days for a “parklet” doesn’t thrill me. And I don’t understand your comment that if I’m so concerned about parking why I don’t turn the space in front of my house into a parklet so I have a place to park?
I said why don’t you NOT convert the parking space in front of your house into a parklet. You said “why shouldn’t we be able to park where we live?” I’m saying: “you can. Nobody is making you take your parking space and do anything with it. This is about your neighbors being given the chance to use THEIR parking space in front of their own home or business for art for one day instead of for parking a single car.
You were going to park down by waterfront where the RV”s were until those RV’s showed up? There are lots of spaces available down there, with or without the RV’s. Sounds to me like you’re not really looking at the facts, just at a gut-level “parking spaces for cars uber alles” knee-jerk response.
Well, to be fair …
– The point is to “help generate a conversation about healthy, sustainable, and livable cities.”
– The city has in effect opened that conversation with the proposition that this street right of way is blighted by parked cars.
– Lisa participates in the conversation. My impression is that she doesn’t see parked cars as detrimental in any way to healthy, sustainable, and livable cities.
Personally, I think it’s too little. Let’s take out the whole street, down to its compacted foundations and replace it with healthy earth and plants, from one end of the block to the other.
Jeepers!
So far no one has mentioned any ideas of what to have. I had one but with animosity and my own concerns re parking I abstain.
So far no has commented on the fact that Seattle teachers went to a huge meeting with Seattle Schools with NO contract offer mutually decided on.. nothing from the district. Voting is happening now. When will school start? What shall kids and parents do if school begins late/
I agree, Donn!
Uh, no, Eric, we weren’t planning on parking down at the RV “camp”. We live far from the waterfront, but when the homeless RV nation gets rousted on occasion from that location, they start to invade our neighborhoods north and hog two to three scarce parking spaces for several days until we can get the SPD to roust them from OUR street.
Jeepers- my wife is at that meeting right now. I’ll see what she has to say when she gets home and look to write something up for tomorrow…
I chose to not go as these things can get very heated. I am also aware through reading all the emails we get from SSD and SEA that each side seems to overlook some things and state others in wys which can sway people emotionally.
There are not many options for action plans when there is no contract paperwork to vote on. It is scary.
I honestly don’t see what the problem is. I very rarely have any problem finding parking on or near 45th at any time other than “QFC rush hour”.