[Editor’s note: The author is a neighbor who attended the November 20 meeting. Readers are invited to share their thoughts either in the comments below or by emailing us at Wallyhood about submitting their own article.]
There was a strong turnout at last week’s hearing on the future of Wallingford playfield. Both sides spoke well; the problem was no one was listening. Side A’s supporters burst in to wild applause while Side B sat arms folded in stony silence. When Side B spoke, the favor was returned.
A missed opportunity for sure but not surprising given the “don’t give an inch” ethos so many of us have adopted since the dispiriting national elections. But we can’t stay there. We are all still going to be home/work/school neighbors when this is all over—neighbors who will need each other as the rapidly approaching issues resulting from greater density roll our way.
But more immediately, absent a unified community response the District and the Parks will point to whatever testimony they choose to justify doing whatever they want. Remember: the levy gave them the funds and the funds are burning a hole in their pocket. Maybe your side (A or B) will win but what the enormous turnout to the Hamilton Commons suggested is the issue is too important to leave to a coin flip.
So let’s talk to each other. Empathy has been in short supply lately but it’s the only game in town.
There is general consensus the play area needs to remain untouched. We all want access for preschoolers. A track around the perimeter? A better picnic area? Of course.
The problem that has torn us asunder is the playfield itself. It’s a mess the parks department has tried twice in the past decade to fix with better drainage. The schools and their supporters want a turf field. The Save the Park contingent is leery—is more than leery—that a new field will take a neighborhood resource and turn it into a regional rental. Other issues that have been enumerated before in this blog also need discussion. All of them can be negotiated successfully.
But only if we look together for common ground.
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Seems like there has already been some compromise with the reduction in size of turfed area, no lights, no trees removed, and no impact to the playground and tennis court areas.
We probably all know this so maybe it’s flogging a dead horse, but I must object to the continued Orwellian use of the term “turf” for what they want to install. As this is my key objection – half an acre of plastic – I think it’s no small point.
turf: Surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and grass roots.
The parks department has over the years made great efforts to keep the grass on the field alive. An artificial surface makes organized and unorganized sporting activities possible.
Hi Henry, it is not quite accurate that Parks has struggled to keep the field maintained per their own standards. I was involved in the late 1990s when the sand-based drainage and irrigation project was performed. Parks’ field designers indicated that, as a sand-based natural grass field, the grass clippings should be picked up when mowing. It is my understanding that the Seahawks field is similar. If not collected, the decaying grass eventually plugs the sand and drainage ceases. This was confirmed when Hamilton was remodeled in 2008 and the School District consultant reportedly took core samples of the soil, proving to be the case.
The field has not been maintained since Hamilton reopened. As a natural grass field, it is essential that the field be closed after soccer season ends (and for ALL users to respect the closure signs). In the Spring, the field needs to be thatched (if clippings not gathered), top-dressed, seeded, and sanded. This, too, ceased once Hamilton reopened.
The endless complaints that the field is mud somehow imply that this is in surmountable. As with most public agencies, it seems, money is available for capital projects, but then soon falters because maintenance lacks funding and, apparently, lack of initiative, or some other reason.
Fix the existing field, respect the closures, treat WP as the wonderful resource that it is by paying attention to the impacts of your use… and create an all-weather field on the north lot at Lincoln, where a half-size field can fit, despite the misleading graphics displayed by the consultant at the meeting. This can be a win for Parks, a win for the neighborhood, and a win for the schools by realizing an INCREASE in community open space, rather than kicking out drop-in and neighborhood uses in favor of a very limited use by a well-connnected agency that has typically treated many neighborhoods as insignificant and that often behaves in a bullying manner.
If my side loses, I will still claim victory.
Henry, thank you for writing. You said: "But more immediately, absent a unified community response the District and the Parks will point to whatever testimony they choose to justify doing whatever they want." I'm not sure this is supported by SPS's recent actions. The community response is clearly not unified, and yet SPS has listened to feedback and changed their proposal. It doesn't appear that they are cherry picking testimony to do "whatever they want" – to me it seems that they are trying to be responsive to multiple legitimate community use cases for this important public space. I applaud your suggestion that we all do a little more empathizing on this issue, and I think you could have embodied that mindset a bit more when characterizing our city agencies and their employees.
Your perspective on my comment vis a vis city staff is completely valid.
I think it would be great to remove the high-school entirely and create a fully wilded Olmsted like actual park.
same with the current park.
more actual, park. I'll say it, no so called sport. None. No city. No mixed use.
an unadulterated place. A place to contemplate. Imagine. Ponder. Recharge. Without Roman's countering around.
Chundering
not
countering
Most discussions here involve a lot of countering.
There can't be a real conversation about this for three reasons:
1. Both side A and side B believe they must give up something important if the other side gets what they want.
2. A compromise is seen as "splitting the baby", by both sides.
3. Neither side is clearly right or wrong.
While I 100% support schools and athletics, the assumption and attitude here that a football team should just be able to "have" a beloved neighborhood resource, is beyond presumptuous and also a very bad lesson to teach kids about being a "community member". When the Lincoln president spoke, he did not even acknowledge the needs of the community beyond saying the school was part of the community and they "deserved" to have their needs met. The schools have presented themselves as against the community, rather than compassionately using this as an example to teach kids that they are part of something, and a need they have may not be "best" in the eyes of others, and the extended community they exist in. People who do not support the turf field have been bullied by football parents in the Hamilton and Lincoln Facebook pages. The insults about older people, dog owners, and NIMBYism are embarrassing to see from students, staff, parents and PTA members, and not at all how the wider community has been acknowledging the children who DO need more resources.
The school district made a significant mistake by proposing a football field that will be used by only a very small proportion of one gender. This decision undermines the chances of building a facility that could support other sports with much higher participation from all genders.
However, no matter what the school district proposed, and whichever way they proposed it, it would have met with significant opposition. So, I find it hard to see what lesson the kids could learn, except to anticipate pushback when advocating for something.
There has been a lot of bullying and name-calling on all sides.
Talking is hard work. A future of the park discussion without the participation of the schools and the parks department very well could yield nothing but it could also find more points of unity than we saw at the group meeting. My hope is the Save the Park folks will invite the PTA to give that approach a try. —Henry Gordon
Yes, it is important to work toward a solution. Please understand that this issue is arising primarily due to very poor choices.
Who in their right mind would build the largest high school on the smallest site with no athletic field? The District minimum standard is 17 acres for a high school. Lincoln is 6.7 acres. This has existed since Lincoln opened back in 1906. Nothing new. The substandard size of the site is one reason that the School District Facilities Master Plan had Lincoln as a Middle School for 20 years.
Understand, too, that Parks stopped maintaining the field once Hamilton reopened and Hamilton continued to use the field in winter, accelerating its degradation.
Before Hamilton, Parks used to close the field in winter and top-dress, seed, and sand the field in Spring. Also, Parks designers indicated that, as a sand-based field, the clippings should be picked up to avoid plugging up the drainage. This was confirmed by the School District during the Hamilton design via core sample that showed a poorly perking layer on top of sand.
It is possible to fix the field with just a little more TLC. It is not necessary to spend $5 million. Alternatives exist. It is not necessary for the School District to take our tiny park. They COULD have designed for this circumstance, but the School District CHOSE not to… repeatedly, over the last nearly 30 years, since Ballard first was INVITED by Wallingford to use Lincoln in 1996.
Having both a high school and middle school in Wallingford is an enormous benefit to everyone in the neighborhood—children, parents, and the community as a whole.
It would have been better if the district had included a sports field when Lincoln reopened, but they didn’t have the funding at that time. Regardless of when the district proposed a sports field, Wallingford Park was always going to be the top suggestion, given its proximity to the school.
Ahhh… but the whole point of SEPA and written Facilities Master Plans is to identify and address the adverse impacts to the community of proposed projects. That the School District acts as its own SEPA agent to review and act on its own projects creates conflicts when their review says one thing and the actions are the opposite.
Alternatives exist that do not create the severe adverse impacts to recreational opportunity in Wallingford. If the District is satisfied with a half-field at Wallingford Park, they can be just as happy with a half-field on the north lot or elsewhere.
Any proposal to remove parking spaces from the north lot would face much more community opposition than using Wallingford Park. There are no good options for moving the parking spaces elsewhere. Therefore, the north lot is not an option.
There is plenty of space to include both a half-field and parking on the north lot. Remember, the parking for Common Ground is owned by the School District. A consolidated lot at the east end of the north lot can be created in order to open up the west end of the lot for a field.
It is difficult to understand how Parks would allow another entity to build and own facilities on Parks property, and why the public would want this.
Greg, can you explain what the "severe adverse impacts" are with the scaled-back half-pitch plan that SPS has put forward after incorporating community feedback?
I can see a wide range of use cases that aren't possible without a new pitch, but I'm not clear on the specific use cases that wouldn't be possible under the SPS plan, and I haven't seen that clearly articulated elsewhere, so perhaps you can help to add clarity there.
I don't mean to answer for Greg, but I can share what i think adverse impacts would be in the interest of further conversation. My step daughter has played club soccer for years, so I've spent a lot of time on fake turf. It's typically fenced in, very hot when in summer months and leaves some sort of detritus on things that come into contact with it. Probably depending on what it's made from, but I've mostly seen rubber pellets and pieces of plastic around it, which some how always wind up in the car.
One of my concerns is that once the field is covered and fenced, it will become available for use for all the teams/activities in and outside of our community. This means people driving and parking to use it and it being in use consistently, and not available for our community.
Another concern of mine is that once that half field is in place, it may become so convenient that the decision is made to expand the field to full-size, taking the entire park. Paige showed two renderings at the meeting on the 20th. One vertical and one horizontal, the horizontal layout could then be extended into the rest of the park.
I'm also concerned about the loss of any green space. A quick google search found this piece that represents well my reasons for being pro-park: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/why-we-need-green-spaces-in-cities.html .
At the meeting on the 20th, one of our neighbors also raised that the city is rezoning Wallingford Ave and some surrounding streets to allow for up to 5 story buildings. That's more cars and people and less space for yards and nature. We need the housing, but I'm concerned about losing green space with the changes coming to the neighborhood.
I would like to understand more about your wide range of use cases that aren't possible without the athletic field.
Hi Neighbor – Thanks for taking the time to put those thoughts together. I know what you're talking about with the rubber pellets – they do get everywhere. SPS said in their FAQ that they are using cork, which is more expensive but also more sustainable and cooler. We'll see how adhesive it is – presumably less so than mud.
I suspect that the top users of the half-pitch will be the middle and high school students who will use it daily for PE, and get a big upgrade over the current wintery mud pit. As for after school when sports teams book the half field for practice, I see that as a good thing – the Playfield will almost certainly get more use, and I'm sure many of the kids playing on those teams will be part of our community. Youth sports facilities are in high demand in Seattle and if more people are using and enjoying our parks, I think that's great.
I'm still not quite sure what activities other park visitors won't be able to engage in when that 4pm ultimate frisbee practice is underway. To me it looks like there is plenty of space available for everyone to do their thing under the revised SPS plan. It may be that for some people their opposition to the half-pitch is not about a specific use case that is lost, but rather a sense that the park is better when it's more serene and, perhaps by extension also more devoid of other people. I empathize with that sentiment, and also feel that it's an unrealistic expectation if you're living in a city, particularly one that wants to keep growing at such a rapid rate as Seattle does.
I hear you on the concern of SPS wanting the full field. I'm not sure that's a big risk for two reasons. First, SPS has capital funds allocated for this project, and once they spend that money they'll move on to other schools that need capital improvements. Second, it's pretty clear that the community is split and quite vocal on this issue. SPS determined that their original full field plan was politically untenable and scaled it back in response to feedback. I doubt that SPS will come back to try for more anytime soon, particularly when a half-field solves for so many of their PE and practice needs.
On green space, I think we agree more than disagree and thanks for sharing the link. I wish there were a zero-plastic solution that could support high use youth sports fields in our climate, but I'm not aware of one. More plastics isn't great, but lower rates of youth sports participation isn't great for public health outcomes either. To me, the park remains a park, it's adding new facilities that are in high demand, and sacrificing some aesthetics along the way, which I think is a reasonable tradeoff.
As for zoning and the environment, the research I've seen is pretty clear that carbon footprint per person declines with higher density. Some research indicates that the sweet spot on carbon footprint reduction is in moderate density neighborhoods (i.e., the 5-6 story buildings that you describe). We are fortunate in Wallingford to have so many great parks in our neighborhood. If you're curious, I found these maps interesting – they show how the city analyzes which neighborhoods have the greatest need for public space improvements (see all the maps under "Priority Areas for Future Public Space Improvements").
My two cents – I appreciate the respectful dialogue.
Nobody in this comment section has ever been to Wallingford Park. I used to bring my daughter here every weekend until we made the awful mistake of walking past the picnic table area. It was filled with needles and beer cans. I am never letting my daughter play at this disgusting park ever again. If this park was to be turned into a lovely sports field, my family could finally enjoy the park while watching my son play football for Lincoln High School. Go Lynx!!
I've been going to Wallingford Playfield since the 1980's, lady. And now I walk my kids there regularly (we just avoid the 'picnic' area). You can clean up the park and improve drainage without turning it into another ugly, flat, lifeless, artificial turf field that can only really be enjoyed by a minority of potential users. But you're right about the state of many of the city's parks. It's just that there are other solutions to destroying and paving the Playfield, which is not even guaranteed to solve the problems you describe.
That is a completely inaccurate description. Also, the problems you described in this city are not solved by covering public parks in plastic. It's sad to me, but also not surprising, that those who want to bully their way into ownership of a public space are proponents of violent sports like football – historically the epitome of toxic masculinity in high school sports. Football players aren't the only community members that matter.
Helena's tone may be a little harsh, but her description is not that far off. She is not trying to bully her way into ownership of a public space. She is doing the same thing as everyone else here. Everyone is arguing that space should be dedicated to the use most important to them, be it high school football, dog running, or relaxing in a grass (or mud) field.
Thank you Henry for writing this. I was at the meeting on the 20th and have been thinking a lot about that and the discourse I've seen online. Two things that struck me most from the meeting were:
1) How the meeting was set up. SPS/SP didn't take questions or allow conversation, just comments and often those comments were assumptions about people with differing viewpoints, like what happens on social media. People are also blaming SPS/SP for the division in the community on this topic, when we're actually doing it to ourselves. They set up the framework, but we're getting on board, as with the person who posted a video taken at 1pm on Wednesday sarcastically asking where all the people from the meeting who said they use the park were.
2) Another thing that struck me at the meeting was that there were 3 LHS students there out of hundreds of people. Two of them spoke. My step daughter is a sophmore at lincoln and I know they announced that meeting during school that day, meaning the school itself expected students to show up and that they believed it was an appropriate thing for students to do. There has been a lot of conversation by adults about what the kids need. A lot of talk about how 2500 students need that field. And we heard from .08% of them at the meeting. The rest of the conversation has been from adults around them. It seems like a great opportunity, particularly given where society is right now, to teach these kids to advocate for themselves. If something is important to them, show up and tell people why.
I have been thinking about the need to convene a meeting at the park of the people from both sides, without anyone from SPS/SP. To have actual face to face discussions. To facilitate what you suggest Henry, that we actually talk to each other.
"People are also blaming SPS/SP for the division in the community on this topic, when we're actually doing it to ourselves."
hear, hear
It's really hard to see kids caring about this kind of thing. Typically decisions made when kids are in school would only be fully executed after they leave.
Also decisions on this really impacts very limited amount of people in the student body. Kids can waive PE with the right criteria including having outside athletic teams, and many kids do the bare minimum in PE. Even for those into PE may already have the current setup sufficient for them. The school also doesn't really have a football tradition.
Maybe 5% of the kids care about this topic. Why would they waste time advocating something they don't care? I guess some of them can be enticed to form a advocacy group for this to pad their college applications?
It’s not accurate to say that the kids don’t care or that only 5% of them will benefit. If the schedule is not dominated by boys' football, the field could be available for boys’ and girls’ soccer, ultimate frisbee, the marching band, cheerleading, etc. That’s much more than 5%. I think kids aren’t involved because they’re usually don't see how they can have much influence over the running of the school. Kids do care about what happens after they leave school, but they’d likely be very frustrated by how slow adult decision-making is. Also, the adults on all sides show much less respect for each other than this generation of kids would tolerate.
I may be bias in the sense that my kids genuinely didn't care about this kind of stuff. People vaping in the restroom was a way bigger deal for them.
Our neighborhood is full of relatively rich kids that has tons of resources and don't really rely on the school resources that much. They have soccer teams, ski lessons, boating lessons, and all that instead of the boring school PE. If you think about it, most school kids from the neighborhood today most likely moved here after housing price all got above $1m. My kids used to talk about how half of the class went to Hawaii for spring break.
A significant proportion of families in Wallingford and Queen Anne with high school-aged kids moved here during the financial crisis when they could purchase a home for much less than $1,000,000. Additionally, some students from further afield attend the school due to rules related to pathways from option schools.
Because many kids at the school can afford extracurricular activities outside the school system, it’s even more important to ensure that every child attending the school has access to quality sports facilities.
Even wealthier kids appreciate the camaraderie and learn valuable lessons about community through school sports, rather than participating exclusively in sports with other kids from similar backgrounds.
Also, I thought the school authorities turned a blind eye to vaping in the restrooms.
I agree with what you are saying, just trying to explain why the student body would have a low percentage of people interested in this specific topic.
And school sport is also way smaller a thing in Seattle schools in general, with this neighborhood more so than many. I am not sure if it's not obvious enough for you all already that there isn't much "traditional American" atmosphere in these neighborhoods. If you have coworkers that are die hard sports fans ( other than the one time hip thing to support Sounders a few years ago and then a shorter boom of Kraken), they probably live in the suburbs, especially south of Seattle. Even the suburban Bellevue High had most students and parents not caring of their football scandal thing and just want it to go away because it's really cared by some local old money. There the student body is dominated by Asian immigrants that believe only in academics. In general, the Christmas decoration and Halloween things are dying off around here also.
"Valuable lessons about community through school sports" is such a non-globalist suburban/rural thing to say in that regard, since it's really only believed by people with certain value sets and not a thing in most of the world. Really "valuable resume padding item for college application" is a better sales pitch. With the prominence of school sports in the US in general, Americans are somehow the most individualists so maybe you can say school sports is the only last thread of preventing the society from completely falling apart? I wouldn't know enough to say.
Remember how serious the protest against the Pledge a few years ago in local schools? It was quite legit even in the narrowest sense considering how a lot of student body are actually not American, but those with highly educated international professional parents here for UW or the tech jobs?
All these just means this field is really not that important for the student body in general.
And this is not quite different for some other Seattle schools with totally different settings. Look at some South Seattle schools where nearly half of the student body is with African students ( 1st generation or 2nd generation East African, not African American), you think American football would really be something resonating with them, unless some coach told some kids that it may help them get to college?