Wallingford Athletic Field

An aerial photograph of Wallingford Playfield with Hamilton and Lincoln schools to the left and right respectively.

What is a park? Is it the grass, some trees, a path, a playground? Is it the tennis courts, and the occasional thwap of bright yellow balls? Is it a wading pool, open two days a week, 10 weeks a year? Is it just a set of amenities? Some fraction of our tax dollars?

These questions are important because on September 19, Seattle Public Schools (SPS), in collaboration with Seattle Parks and Recreation, proposed to turn most of Wallingford Playfield into an athletic complex for Lincoln High and Hamilton schools. You can read the details on the project site</a >.

A flyer that came in the mail to local residents from SPS. It reads "We're planning a new athletics field for Lincoln High School students". "Join us in person or online September 19 at 6pm." www.seattleschools.org/lincoln-field

The flier announcing the community meeting arrived only few days before the meeting. Some residents received it after the meeting or not at all.

A diagram from Seattle Public Schools revealed on Sept 19, 2024 that shows Wallingford Playfield taking a huge majority of the park in a east-west orientation. The field would span from the western walking path to the eastern walking path by the tennis courts, and would subsume the playground and bathrooms.

One of the test layouts for Lincoln Field to subsume much of Wallingford Playfield. Existing amenities (playground, bathrooms) would be relocated, but most grass is eliminated.

SPS pitched the proposal as a “win-win”, but I am conflicted.

On the one hand, I believe Lincoln students deserve and ought to have an athletic field. My own children may one day attend Lincoln and benefit from the new field. Of its 1,600 students, it is estimated that 200+ may have hour-long bus rides on some days to alternative athletic sites. This is unacceptable in a great city such as Seattle and we should do better.

On the other hand, this isn’t a simple “win-win” as SPS calls it. SPS would like us to focus on the number of amenities that (supposedly) stay the same, but that isn’t the whole picture. What about the playfield? Their project is titled “Athletic Field for Lincoln High School”, not “Multi-use Field for Wallingford Neighborhood”. They aren’t asking to share the field, residents are being asked to cede 80-90% of Wallingford’s limited open green space to Seattle Public Schools. This is an enormous request, and our community should carefully consider the how this would actually work.

Under the proposal, SPS would exclusively own the field during school days. For half the year, those hours are the only daylight hours. Afterwards, the field will be managed by Seattle Parks and Recreation’s scheduling system until 9:45 p.m. City speakers emphasized that Lower Woodland fields are overbooked and that demand for city athletic fields is very high. It seems very likely that Lincoln’s new field will also become overbooked. Wallingford residents will have to compete with people from all over Seattle to schedule that small slice of field time. These people will drive in and out of Wallingford during peak traffic to use the field. Meanwhile, Wallingford is becoming more dense, with additional row housing and apartment buildings. So more people will have even less greenspace than we have today.

This is the exact opposite direction we should be going in. We need to be adding more playfields, not taking them away. Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment agrees, as stated in its list of goals</a >. Replacing Wallingford Playfield negatively impacts two of these goals: it decreases equitable access (seniors and young children) and reduces walkability for our entire community.

“as our city continues to grow, protecting and enhancing our […] green spaces remains a key priority.”
– Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment

I spent some time in the park this weekend and was amazed by the variety of activities I observed. Picnics, teens throwing Frisbee, grandparents watching kids chase giant bubbles, an RC car, girls soccer practice, seniors taking a slow walk around the trails. It is literally what the name implies: a playfield. Unscheduled, uncoordinated freedom. A space anyone can enjoy.</strong > But with this proposal, those activities will be pushed aside, made much more constrained by intensely competitive scheduling. The playfield will be no more; the park will become a multi-building athletic complex for the exclusive use of able-bodied athletes and organized sports groups. Excluded groups include: seniors, young children, less abled people, private schoolers, anyone with free time that happens during pre-scheduled field time.

So given the realities of what an athletics field is compared to a playfield, what does the community gain? The proposal doesn’t feel like a “win-win” to me. It feels like a huge loss. It seems like the many are being asked to make way for the few.

How Did We Get Here?

A field will not fit on Lincoln campus because the school was expanded and there is now a parking lot where the field used to be.

Some residents may remember that Lincoln used to have a practice field on-site. What happened to that?

Built in 1907, Lincoln’s westward buildings were designated “historical” by the City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board in 2015. That decision would later explode into “significant challenges</a >” threatening the 2017 Lincoln renovation project. Seismic retrofitting, ADA compliance, and the on-site athletic field were all cut due to the costs imposed by the historic designation</strong >.

At the time, the Wallingford neighborhood proposed a public/private partnership in which they would raise funds to support the building of a practice field for Lincoln athletics, but SPS decided to use Lower Woodland fields. The community told them that Woodland was over-scheduled and would be difficult to access, but SPS turned down the offer of funding and decided not to build a practice field.

Let us pause now to ask ourselves: how much daily value do you get out of Lincoln’s historical preservation, compared to Wallingford Playfield?</strong > Personally, I can’t answer this question without a facepalm. This field proposal was a time-bomb manufactured by the City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board and represents a bail-out for SPS management amidst a historic budget shortfall and school closures. Together, the results of their management pits Wallingford community and the athletes of Lincoln against one another, forcing us into a mentality of scarcity.

Part of me wants to just move on from the past and let go of the resentment. Give student athletes the quick fix of a practice field just one block away. But what would that acquiescence accomplish, to condone a bad plan with more bad plans? What precedent does it set, to allow the city to so carelessly take from its people something irreplaceable? For that, I have no answer except a hope that we can learn something from the past. Don’t future residents of our neighborhood deserve more? Don’t we?

A scanned photograph from 1969 showing a dusty blank two blocks where Wallingford Playfield is being constructed after two blocks were merged together.

In 1969, using Forward Thrust Bond, Wallingford Playfield was expanded west between Densmore Ave. N and Woodlawn Ave. N. The city demolished 16 houses and a church, proving that greenspace can be added.

A scanned photograph of Wallingford Playfield's old playground with the gray, dirt playfield in the background.

The old playground, we can see a grassless playfield in the background.

So, What Now?

Personally, my first choice would be that we revisit first principles. Given that this is a problem created by the Landmarks Preservation Board, I think it’s well past time we reevaluate how best to preserve our city’s history without severely damaging broad public interests. A city is not a museum, it is for living people. Treating it like one can have severe consequences, such as our students not having a practice field or our community not having greenspace. I also think SPS should have to reckon with the problems it ignored during Lincoln’s renovation; for example, by using its own land for its own field. Otherwise, I think Seattle ought to do the hard work of expanding greenspace via the legal process of eminent domain. But alas, these ideas are pure fantasy given the glacial pace of responsible government and are probably politically unpopular anyway. So, what now?

A few people have proposed an alternative orientation for the field to spare some of the playfield. This could be a tenable compromise, but still one that comes with many of the negatives mentioned above (loss of free play, loss of walking paths, increased traffic, etc.). And unfortunately, the eastern remnants of the playfield contain a fair amount of sloped area nearly too steep to even sit on. Supposing the field could fit this way, I think the community should at least negotiate that the remaining eastern section of the playfield be regraded level to maximize the playfield remnants.

Another major issue is the schedule. If this new artificial turf is to replace a playfield, it too should primarily be a playfield. Instead of reserving the entire school day, SPS should be contractually limited to only the minimal time required for its athletics programs, in a single predictable block. And the park’s scheduling should be significantly limited, too, in order to make the field maximally available for our community’s free use.

And what about Meridian Park (or Gasworks, or Woodland)? Meridian Park is much bigger than Wallingford Playfield. It has two playfields and enough space to accommodate both an athletic field and free play. It is a 16 minute walk, and student athletes are much more capable of managing that distance than our seniors and young children. I’d bet our top-notch student athletes could run the 0.7 miles in eight minutes or less. So while further away, this site is still better than the current situation, and more fair than subsuming nearly all of Wallingford Playfield.

A map from Open Street Map that shows Gasworks Park with a dotted line rectangle on the north-western side demonstrating that a 120x80 yard field could fit in a vacant field there.

Gasworks Park has a less utilized grassy area that could accommodate a 120×80 yard field. Paths and parking could be relocated.

A map from Open Street Map that shows Woodland Park, demonstrating that a 120x80 yard field will fit easily.

Woodland Park at 50th and Aurora has plenty of space for a field without compromising much.

And finally, what about “no”? If the proposal has no upsides for our community, we should reject it.

If anything I have written here is inaccurate, or you have anything to add, please respond in the comments. My hope is that we all come together and make the best decision for our community that we can be proud of.

Please consider contacting our City officials to see where they stand and let them know how you feel about the project.