TL;DR A survey is being conducted regarding the potential construction of an athletic field at Wallingford Playfield Park. The results will be shared with Seattle Parks and Rec, and Seattle Public Schools. Take the quick Lincoln Athletic Field Location Options Survey.
As a resident of Wallingford, who lives a block from Wallingford Playfield Park with two small children, we rely on this beautiful, local green-space year-round. In fact, when we bought our house, we happily gave up having a backyard knowing that the Wallingford Playground and Park would become our ‘backyard’.
The proposal to turn the park into an athletic field had me feeling as little sad as I heard about the potential redesign that could impact the trees, grassy field, playground, wading pool and more. There didn’t seem to be a great option until the other day when I learned that there are actually several GREAT options! Namely, 3 proposals that take advantage of the vast expanses of oft un-utilized space at the bottom of Lower Woodland Park. If you too were previously unaware of this and/or you care about the outcome of the park, please take the survey. It’s a great way for your voice to be heard. Your opinion counts. Feel free to share the survey with anyone who uses the park, even those beyond the Wallingford neighborhood.
šļø Ā A community meeting on this topic will be held at Lincoln High School Library (enter from Interlake) on Wednesday, November 20 at 6pm.
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Can you provide some transparency as to who is running this survey? The form mentions "We" though it fails to say who that "we" is. To be honest, this feels a bit biased and sneaky.
It would be more transparent to also provide a link to the official survey that went out via SPS and will be provided to both Seattle Parks & Rec and the design group hired for the project. That form is located on the Lincoln Field project page .
Survey link here: https://www.k12insight.com/Lets-Talk/dialogue.aspx?k=PR2F68N4B9LT@WF7G2YLT@MDLT@DY6FXZXLT@LDLT@NDLT
The SPS feedback link you provide is not a survey. It's a free-text feedback form, whose contents will be taken in and interpreted by SPS, who has a clear interest in the outcome. How is that unbiased?
Furthermore anonymous User…there is no "official survey" that went out via SPS! It's a comment form – not a survey. And this survey, as stated by whomever produced it (I also have no idea who it is) will indeed be shared with SPS and SPR. It appears that, unlike the SPS form that is literally the fox reporting on the status of hens in the henhouse, will be a little more trustworthy.
It's funny that you, anonymous User dude, should accuse the survey author of sneaky bias. One should note that this community outreach is being conducted by SPS who has a direct and obvious bias as they benefit from project approval. SPS has been campaigning with school booster groups in meetings not open to the general public.
Why isn't the Park department conducting the community outreach as they're the department that controls the land and has a mission to maintain outdoor amenities for the wider community? The schools are not a neutral party and are trying to rush this proposal and appear to be dismissive of community concerns. They gave extremely short notice for the first meeting (many park neighbors receiving their notice postcard after the meeting date). For the second public meeting, they've scheduled the library instead of the auditorium which constricts attendees to fewer than showed up for the poorly publicized first meeting.
The survey contains inaccuracies in its description of the options the authors chose to present (e.g., the walking times are half of what google maps estimates). I worry that the goal is to get people who oppose the SPS plan to respond and create a non-representative data set to share during the November 20th meeting that the survey authors will then claim represents "the community" when it does not. This is not the right way to bring our community together in the midst of disagreements over the future of the Playfield.
You have some points here, about the walking time. However, I want to say that the way SPS has been handling this is not at all bringing the community together in the midst of disagreements about Wallingford Park. Which is a PARK as much as a playfield, for people who aren't student athletes, too.
If SPS really wanted to support community engagement, they might have given some notice for the first meeting, and be plannign to hold the second meeting in a space large enough for everyone who is interested to attend.
They might also have included nearby apartment buildings for the notice, and the people who live there, who depend on Wallingford Playfield PARK as their backyard. THey haven't been told. They aren't happy about that.
I didn't write that survey, and I don't know how the minutes of walking were determined, but it's probably pretty close. I just walked it this morning, and it was about 10 minutes, and I am not a student athlete going to a game. AND it was raining. š
Lincoln has historically always used Lower Woodland for football and track, with mentions in the records going back to 1924. Football players would walk-jog to Lower Woodland, practice, then walk-jog back to Lincoln. The School District, in their usual wisdom <s>, paved the field the used to be on the north lot. They also refused to take the advice of community members on the SDT to restore the field when Lincoln was redone. They also pledged, many times, in the meetings with the Lincoln Liason Committee, in meetings with the community during the Hamilton redesign, and multiple times during the Lincoln design process, that they had no need and no plans to use Wallingford Playfield for either program.
fortyfort…I did the same walk time as the authors of the survey did…and got the EXACT same estimate on google maps. Sometimes, depending on the time of day I selected it (I did it at 3pm, 4pm, 5pm and 6pm) it was a minute or two longer, and sometimes it was a minute or two shorter! My guess is that the traffic lights are timed differently during peak traffic hours. And you can be sure that SPS is presenting non-representative data. And you are 100% right…'This' (SPS coming to the community with a pre-determined decision to consume the last corner of open natural park space in a growing urban community (village/center, whatever) is NOT the right way to bring our community together. SPS and SPR should have asked the community to work TOGETHER in ADVANCE of these proposals…neighbors who are landscape architects, lawyers, community leaders, coaches, sports leagues…people who live, work and play in Wallingford! The way SPS did this is shameful.
Catherine, Google Maps does not adjust walking time by time of day (they do for driving), so perhaps you were looking at the wrong information.
Personally, I think there are great arguments to be made on both sides of this issue. The tone of some of these replies from the folks that oppose the SPS plan is frankly quite off-putting though.
That's interesting. I think it might be because it feels a little bit David v. Goliath. SPS has a project manager, a built in constituency that's easy to contact through pre-established communication channels (school emails, etc..), resources, and ongoing project meetings. Community members are just a loosely assembled group of people scrapping to get information, stay in the loop, figure out who to talk to and how, and volunteer time to make sure the voices of those who will be most impacted by changes to the park get to have their voices heard. So maybe our tone reflects how challenging that has been over the last two months, with apologies. I think we feel like we have to yell to be heard since we're not affiliated with any institutional group, and that might also be part of it. We can do better.
I appreciate that sentiment, and I empathize with the feeling that you may be David to the city's Goliath. My own feeling is that sometimes the city engages in too much outreach and other times too little when it's contemplating important changes – it's a hard balance to strike, and the city employees that run these processes are just people like the rest of us and don't deserve to be vilified. SPS wants good facilities so that its middle school and high school students can use them for PE and their athletes can use them for sports teams, and I think that's reasonable. Youth sports are great and they build community. As a frequent user of the Playfield our family also understands the objections and finds some of them (aesthetics, a loss of unstructured open space) more persuasive than others (less space for unleashed dogs). I hope that we all take a moment to think about what kind of meeting we want to have on the 20th. Do we want to listen, hear the different perspectives, and stay open, or do we want to foment outrage, claim to speak for others that we don't speak for, and talk over our neighbors? The unfortunate reality is that the outrage strategy can work, but it would be a sad outcome for our community. Thanks for your thoughtful response.
"(less space for unleashed dogs)"
Not once has anyone in the Wallingford Park Alliance group which has organized opposition to this project suggested that unleashed dog access was a legitimate use for the park. Yeah, some facebook wags have accused us of just sneakily being unleashed dog advocates, but if you read our website, our fliers, or our email or written letters, we have never suggested this. Some of us own dogs, but we all understand that some neighbors having turned the park into an unofficial unleashed dog area is a problem and not a use to be defended. We could probably fund quite a bit of park maintenance if Animal Control would start writing some citations.
Understand that the plan for nearly 30 years was for the Hamilton program to move to Lincoln. Per District guidelines, the minimum site size for a middle school is 12-acres. High school is 17-acres. The Hamilton site is 2-acres and Lincoln is 6.7-acres.
The Facilities Master Plan recommended Hamilton-at-Lincoln as the preferred option at least thru 2010. Funding for the project was approved by voters in the BEX I, BEX II, and BEX III levies. A review of the BEX program by the District just two years prior to Facilities telling Hamilton parents that Hamikton-at-Hamilton was their only choice, strongly recommended that Lincoln be used as a middle school and Hamilton be used as an elementary or K-8.
The Wallingford Community Council chastised District representatives to 1) truly evaluate Lincoln for use by Hamilton and 2) allow Hamilton staff and parents the option of the long-held plan for Hamilton at Lincoln. Reportedly, the District reps told Hamilton parents that if they did not accept Hamilton-at-Hamilton, Facilities could not guarantee that Hamilton would EVER be updated. All this, while District documents recommended Hamilton-at-Lincoln.
I am bringing this up to demonstrate the prior duplicitous nature of School District Facilities and to note that none of this conflict would exist had the District followed its own planning process of 25 years and the recommendations of the Lincoln Liason Committee and the Wallingford Neighborhood Plan. The School District did it to themselves and now expect our neighborhood to give up our only open space in the Wallingford Urban Villageā¦ which is supposed to realize an INCREASE in amenities to help mitigate issues of increased density. Many folks now do not have yards or even living rooms! Where will the children and families play or meet?
Greg – that is all fascinating history and I appreciate that you have taken the time to chronicle it. But as a matter of public policyĀ I don't think we should be decidingĀ how to adapt and evolve our public spaces based on whether a governmentĀ agency's land use plans changed over the past several decades and that you and perhaps others feel misled by that change.Ā
I think it is an incredible asset to our community that we have a large public Middle School and High School in the heart of our neighborhood – it is great for many of our local businesses, creates community, and enhances walkability. I'm pleased that the city changed their approach and chose to locate both schools where they did.
Our family includes seniors and multiple children and we use the Playfield regularly, but we don't find much utility in the grassy/muddy field, which can be quite uninviting with all the unleashed dogs. It does have some aestheticĀ value though. We often meet at the playground and we picnic and chat with friends at the picnic tables,Ā neither of which would go away in the SPS plan. Parks come in all shapes, sizes, and configurations.
It's a mistake to focus, as so many have in these comments, on SPS and set them up as the villain. Instead, focus on the users of the park — both those who use it today, and those who would use it in a different future configuration. Then it becomes clear that there are legitimate reasons for people to want the status quo as you appear to, and there are legitimate reasons for people to want a change to support youth sports. Neither one of those groups has exclusive rights to the moral high ground, and everyone in the community deserves to be heard.
All well and good, but it makes no sense to me to displace the current neighborhood users of the park, of which there are many, with a single, dominant user. It seems far more wise to develop a plan that GAINS open space for our neighborhood by placing a practice field on the north lot at Lincoln, where a field once existed.
Yes, there are impacts of the site that require the District to sacrifice some width to a practice field if it is placed on the north lot at Lincoln, but that is one of the choices that the School District made when they elected to place a large school on a tiny lot in an extremely dense (and getting denser) neighborhood.
Just a year prior to changing the long-held plan for Hamilton-at-Lincoln, the School District's own reviewers recommended that Lincoln be a middle school and that Hamilton be a K-8 or elementary. That plan was still in the BEX levies approved by voters even after Facilities abruptly changed course and they reportedly told Hamilton parents that if they did not support Hamilton remaining at Hamilton, that Hamilton might never be updated.
It also seems unwise to throw away the years of planning and investment of over $2 million in the park (let alone the thousands of hours that the community volunteers have invested in the park) over the last twenty years.
Alternatives exist that do not have the adverse impacts of the current District proposal on residents of Wallingford. We should be pressing designers to think outside the box the District has placed them in.
Past experience with District Facilities claims and public pronouncements over the years leads one to be skeptical of what they are claiming. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical of a public agency with an agenda. Please be skeptical and check the facts rather than rely on what District representatives feed the public. Good luck!
Greg – I appreciate your ideas. Swapping out the parking lot for a new field is a creativeĀ concept, but I worry that the removal of so much parking for teachers and staff renders it a political non-starter. Unfortunately, parking is one of the all-time great third rails of American urban politics, and electeds tip-toe around it accordingly. You and I can wish that were not the case until the cows come home, but it won't change the fact that it's not a tenable alternative. I hope ideasĀ like yours becomeĀ more tenable in the future, but many things will need to happen in our transportationĀ system and urban fabric for that to come to pass.Ā
I don't agree with your characterization that the new users are one "dominant" group in contrast to the existing users which are more varied. The student populations of Lincoln and Hamilton are not a monolith, and they will all benefit from better facilities for their P.E. coursework. People who play and/or watch sports are similarly not a monolith. I'm at the playfield regularly as I'm sure you are as well, and I have observed that for the bulk of the year, the primary users of the field are dog owners who enjoy playing with their unleashed dogs. I get it, but we shouldn't expect Parks and Rec to prioritize that use case which is of course not a legally sanctioned one.Ā
Finally, I also appreciate that you have put so many hours into the Playfield and the field in particular. I can imagine that it would be tough to reckon with the possibility that those years of work might feel wasted as theĀ park is pulled in a new direction that is not to your liking. If the SPS plan does move forward, I hope that you'll stay invested in making that public space a vibrant one, and that you'll come and cheer for Lincoln and Hamilton and meet some new friends along the way.
A redeveloped field at Wallingford Park could be used for a variety of sports and physical education, as you point out. However, as currently proposed, it would primarily be a football field. While it may include markings for other sports, if it's built as a football field, the Lincoln boys' football team will have priority access for much of the year. This makes the proposal both expensive and divisive, as it will primarily benefit a small group of athletes from one gender.
If the proposal were for a multi-sport fieldāsuitable for soccer, ultimate frisbee, PE classes, and other activities, but not footballāit could serve a broader range of students from Lincoln and Hamilton, as well as the surrounding neighborhood.
I agree that the way that field time is allocated across sports and community activities is very important. SPS's FAQ says "This field will be for all of Lincoln HS Athletics Program. The football program will not have priority." It would be interesting to learn more about what guardrails SPS plans to put in place to ensure that their scheduling backs up that claim.
Actually, much of the uses you describe WOULD go away; If you look closely at the designs there is almost no fully accessible space for community once the field takes 85% of the footprint of the park, and those open spaces that remain directly abut the field (ie – the field runs through the playground on one of the designs) so they can't be used simultaneously while kids are playing and practicing unless a tall fence is erected, which would take away more accessible space. Further, the field will be restricted to school use from 9-3:30, then school athletics from 3:45-7, and then rented to community teams from 7-10pm (See SPR FAQs; see also SPR 2023 Athletic Field report). So while the field will no longer be muddy, it will also no longer be available.
Lastly, re "moral high ground" or "policy" interests, this city guarantees ALL residents who live in an Urban Village a 5 minute walk shed to accessible open space (See SPR 2024 Parks and Open Space Plan). Wallingford Park is that 5 minute walk shed park for approximately 5,000 people (per the 2020 census) most of whom live in apartments without access to any private open space. With the continued upzoning, that number will grow to 7,000 in the coming 2-3 years. It does seem morally problematic to guarantee an amenity to ALL residents but then decide that in this particular Urban Village there is no need to continue to provide this particular amenity despite the growing population. To add insult to injury, Wallingford does not have another amenity guaranteed to all Seattle citizens – a Community Center (see SPR Community Center plan, page 44, to see that we are the only neighborhood without adequate access to the community center). As you note, Hamilton and Lincoln are great central points of our community, but they are not accessible to all people. Wallingford Park is the primary publicly available gathering space for folks in Wallingford. Even our library, the second smallest in the city, does not have a public gathering space. Wallingford Park is all there is, so restricting its use has really problematic impacts.
There are legitimate reasons to support youth sports, and I am a whole hearted supporter of youth sports; however, I don't support them over the guaranteed rights and interests of all other residents' needs, and I believe the people in Wallingford should have access to the recreational spaces guaranteed to them by the city.
āWhere will the children and families play or meet?ā
The Wallingford Park playground, which will remain, and Meridian Park.
As families grow up in Wallingford, they will be delighted to have an elementary school, middle school, and high school all in the neighborhood.
If SPS and SPR had provided this information to the community, we wouldn't have to rely on community volunteers to do their due diligence for them. Instead, SPR gave SPS the role of doing "community engagement" which has so far looked like their consultant having clandestine meetings with the PTAs of the schools and the rest of us being kept in the dark about the process. I am thankful that some community members care enough about BOTH Wallingford Park and the student athletes that they spent their own time and resources to scope out a wide range of options and make them visible to the public.
fortyfort, Could you be so kind as to help me out with a bit of tech trouble I'm having? When I ask google maps to give me the walk distance from LHS entrance to the (current) Lower Woodland set of 4 tennis courts…(the siting for two of the survey's LWP proposals), for some reason it forces the path west to the intersection of 45th and Stone (where you must wait for traffic lights, including left turn arrows)…then takes the path NE along Stone, rather than walking straight up Interlake (across the crosswalk at 45th at 206 Burger) and then up to the intersection at 50th & Stone. I think all of us who are residents of Wallingford would just walk straight north on Interlake, right? I've had several in my household (more tech-savvy than I) try to get around this apparent glitch in the software, but even if I try to insert a 'stop' destination on the more direct walk up Interlake (like Seattle Pops or the Post Office), the google walk path takes (one) up Stone. Clearly, the path from LHS to these Lower Woodland locations would be safer and quicker … and faster along Interlake than going to Stone & 45th. Even with this un-necessary detour to Stone and 45th, Google maps claims the walk time to be 15 mins (0.7 mi) to the SE corner of the 'gravel lot' site and 13 min walk (0.6 mi) to the SE corner of the 'tennis court relocation' siting. The survey "ESTIMATED travel time: 12 min walk; or 7 min run" to gravel lot (btw, I removed some of the cap letters from the survey to tone it down a bit). If the google route had actually gone north on Interlake, I would guess the google maps would be a minute or two less, and the survey's author's would have been spot-on. However, the survey creators cannot be accused of "providing non-representative" or "inaccuracies" like you are suggesting "(e.g., the walking times are half of what google maps estimates)"….it is not a 24 min walk for a teenager in a sport or even in gym class. At most, according to google, it is a 15 min walk…and that's if you are new to Wallingford (or directionally challenged) and decide to take a detour to Stone & 45th. Again, thank you for any technical assistance you can provide for my trouble with google maps so that we can assess this walk down to the most accurate and objective time measurement.
I want to vote for a full-size, all-weather field for soccer, ultimate, PE classes, and other sports, except football. The field should be at Wallingford Park because that is where the high-school is located. This would give many kids at Lincoln convenient access to a sports facility without the schedule being taken over boys' football. How do I vote for that on the survey you linked?
Did you even look? To support that you click "This is the best option" on Wally Park option, and similarly on the "Do you prefer Wallingford Park for a full athletic field or another option above?" question.
Did you even read my comment? How does doing this say that I oppose using Wallingford Park to build a football field?
Mea culpa. I completely missed the word "except" after your list of activities, but before football.
OTOH, it's hard to design a survey that's completely general to all possible inputs, especially so if you want it simple enough to not overwhelm or confuse people.
The survey linked does not even include placing a practice field on the North lot at Lincoln as an option, which can accommodate a full-length, but slightly less than full-width football field. Soccer is more flexible dimensions and can fit. As a result of apparent bias in the survey questions, please be skeptical about how your answers will be used, especially since the authors are not specified.
As one who helped usher in the improvements at the park over the last 25 years, I find the proposed waste of taxpayer dollars without any increase in Parksā inventory of open space to be unconscionable. Placing a field at the park only displaces many current uses for a āgorillaā (the School District) that will deprive those who cannot afford or do not wish to participate in organized sports access to open space. The field project would also rip out over $2 million of work done at the park over the last 25 years. What a waste!
There are many benefits to restoring the field that used to be on the north lot at Lincoln, including being close enough to Hamilton to allow an all-weather field at Lincoln to be used by Hamilton in the winter, when the grass field at the park should be (and used to be) closed. Understand that Parks stopped the winter closures and maintaining the field after Hamilton was remodeled. The grass field is in poor shape due to lack of maintenance by Parks and the refusal of Hamilton to be a good neighbor and stop using the field in winter and early Spring.
Folks need to honor the closure signs and, if you witness clods of turf flying up in your wake due to your choice of activity, then stop your activity, for heavens sake. A grass field has many benefits, including being more climate and environmentally-friendly, but also requires a little TLC. Artificial turf fields also require special care and limits to use.
Increase our inventory of open space by creating a NEW field that does not simply displace current users, who are many and diverse. Protect our neighborhood āliving roomā and do not waste the millions of dollars already invested in the park. Are the School District and Parks really that flush with money to be throwing away millions?
Finally, be skeptical of District Facilitiesā actions and information. I served on the School Design Team for the Hamilton remodel and the information provided was often slanted or just plain wrong. The lead for the District lost his job for his poor choices in behavior and for his misrepresentations to the community and to the School Board.