New Year – New People – Same Goals

Like the newly elected officials of this year’s election, Betsy Davis and I are looking forward to the next year with anticipation and excitement, and, as to be expected, some nerves. Betsy is the Executive Director of The Center for Wooden Boats and will be taking the reigns on this project from Jake Beattie as he moves on to an executive position of his own elsewhere.

Here’s where we stand today: A unanimous vote by the full Seattle City Council in early October for the non-binding resolution supporting Northlake Community Wharf was a real watershed moment in the history of this project (no pun intended). All sides seem to be increasing their efforts to make this happen. Next, the resolution will move on to the County Council for a similar process, and we’re hoping for similar (if not exactly the same) results.

It’s always nerve-racking to take on the tasks left by someone who was so good at their job. But, like an elected official, we have to ask ourselves, ‘what more can I do?’, ‘how else can I help?’ and ‘what is the next step?’. We will be looking to utilize the support and efforts of the community, the more than 25 organizations who have officially endorsed the project, and anyone who is simply interested in providing a great public maritime space on one of the few remaining waterfront properties in Seattle, as we venture on into the wild blue yonder. If this were a campaign speech, I would close with, “I WANT YOU – to support Northlake Community Wharf.”

- Meg Gilshire, Outreach Coordinator Northlake Community Wharf

See the resolution : action_summary (Northlake Community Wharf is #5)

City Council Parks Committee Passes Resolution Supporting Northlake Community Wharf

On Tuesday, September 29th, Seattle City Council sub-committee on Parks and Seattle Center passed a resolution declaring their support for the Northlake Community Wharf project. Pretty cool! During the public comment period we had great community support with comments and audience members who included Suzie Burke, representatives from Seattle Parks Foundation, 4Culture, Wallingford Community Center and Fremont Chamber of Commerce.

It was a real tour de force for both the project and the organizations of Lake Union in general.

The resolution is non-binding but it provides a great opportunity and motivation for the city and the county to start talking about a potential transfer of the property. The next step is that the resolution goes in front of the full council for a vote, perhaps as early as next Monday.

There will be a parallel process for a resolution at the County Council that will start soon as well.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Check out the proceedings at the link below. The public comment is right at the beginning, our presentation starts 67 minutes in. http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2050925

Northlake Community Wharf Featured on Wallingford KOMO Website

http://wallingford.komonews.com/content/take-park-site-please

This link can also be found in the “More Information” page of this website.

Letter of Endorsement by The Floating Homes Association

We were extremely exited to recieve a letter of support from the Floating Homes Association on August 15th. The letter enthusiastically accolades The Center for Wooden Boats for adding “a dimension that makes a compelling contrast to the experience available at nearby Gasworks Park.”

My favorite line?

     “What’s not to like? Free park. Community center. Public access to boats and the water. Mix a little history with a few good things now, and we give an amazing gift to the future.”

Thank you very much you bouyant home-dwellers you.

Letter of Endorsement from the Floating Homes Association 8/15/09

Charley Royer to put his shoulder to the wheel

Former three-term Seattle mayor Charley Royer has offered a month of his time to help the Northlake Community Wharf project. The Royer Group (more information here: www.theroyergroup.com) has donated a month of pro-bono consulting services to assist with advocacy and navigating the various bureaucracies to make this proposed civic resource a reality. The Royer Group will be invaluable in helping make sure that we are understanding the issues, and then approaching them correctly. Thank you!

Wallingford Community Center focus groups wrap up

The Northlake Community Wharf project wrapped up the last of the Wallingford Community Center focus groups last night. For the past couple of months the good folks at Delridge Neighborhood Development Association have let us tag along as they lead focus groups of Wallingford Neighbors through a visioning exercise on what a community center might look like in Wallingford. It usually similar themes: a swimming pool, a place where the neighborhood can feel centered, a place that is welcoming and multi-generational. Right now they are just at the point where the neighborhood is imagining what it might want if resources become available.

For the last 15 minutes or so of these meeting I’ve been able to explain who we are, and detail the rough concept of what the NCW could be: Active small boat programs and access to the water, an interpretive shipyard for heritage vessels, and a space to serve community needs. I then ask a different question: “Given that The Center for Wooden Boats is pursuing this waterfront property in your neighborhood, how would you use it?”

What I’ve learned from this exercise is that because of the limited access to the water, people in Wallingford ( and to a large extent Fremont too) don’t think of Lake Union as being part of their neighborhood. Once the people in these groups started thinking about the possibilities then the ideas and excitement started flowing: What about a fishing pier? Off-boat fish sales? Kayak Storage? Boat rentals? Sailing lessons? Ice cream stand? Water taxi to South Lake Union? BYOB happy hour? It’s been great to see people’s excitement about the possibility of tapping into a neighborhood resource (the lake) that has been there all along but with no real way to access it. Thanks to the Wallingford Community Center planners for letting us play along and we look forward to further collaborations in the future.

What the heck is a ‘charette’?

We wrote our ideas on the back of scrap paper and stuck them up on a board. At the end of the meeting, we picked our six favorite ideas/concepts/descriptive words concerning the future site and put them together.

The third of three design charettes for the Northlake Community Wharf was held on July 18th at the Lake Washington Rowing Club.

This was an exercise where we put colored dots on a site map to show where we thought we would hang out at the Northlake Community Wharf.

On Sunday, July 18^th, the last of three design charettes (brainstorming sessions for those of you who don’t parle francais) for the future Northlake Community Wharf took place at the Lake Washington Rowing Club. What better place to stoke your imagination for a future public waterfront site than at a boat club overlooking the water.At the charettes, we practiced such exercises as visualizing the future site in completion – what do you see? What activities are taking place? What are people doing? We also looked at an existing site map and put colored dots on the areas where we felt people would gather, where they would enter, where the “heart” of the site would be.

What blew me away about all three of these sessions is that attendees seemed to continuously come up with ideas that maintain the values and mission of the existing Center for Wooden Boats philosophy – that hands-on experience can be life-altering and that a welcoming and permeable (isn’t that a great word?!) space is necessary to that experience – while expanding upon the capabilities and uses of the space at the north end of the lake.

These sessions were a great way to not only feel out the community needs and visions for such a site, but also to springboard off of some more obvious ideas into some that are just…cool. Like the idea of a floating farmers market that could make frequent stops at Northlake Community Wharf, or the 8-year-old who thought that a playground made out of boats would be pretty sweet. This might be getting a little ahead of ourselves in practicality, but long ago, long before we had even the tiniest thought that this project might be tangible, the Steering Committee and The Center for Wooden Boats decided that if the Northlake Community Wharf wasn’t going to be relevant to the community, it wasn’t going to be relevant.  

There might not be any more charettes or any other fancy-worded events coming up in the near future, but this blog should serve as a space to tell us your ideas, what you visualize, what you think the community does and does not need, and what crazy things you can come up with that would just be…cool. Like inflatable pontoons that attach onto your bike so you can ride right off of the Burke Gilman and across Lake Union, I love that one.

- Meg Gilshire

Northlake Community Wharf Featured on Fremont Universe Blog

http://www.fremontuniverse.com/2009/07/19/community-center-planned-near-gas-works-park/

Updated dates for NLU design charrettes

Come and give your input on what you would like to see in CWB’s proposed expansion campus at the north end of Lake Union. Would you use a community shop? Launch your kayak? Catch a water taxi to the boathouse? This is the time to learn about what we are doing and make sure this project reflects how you would want to use it. There are three opportunities to participate:

 

Sunday, July 5^th at the Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival- 11am-1pm

Wednesday, July 15^th at the Wallingford Senior Center, 7-9pm

Saturday, July 18^th at the Lake Washington Rowing Club, 10-noon.

 Thanks for participating!

Morning meeting with Larry Phillips

This morning Betsy Davis and I met with King County Councilman (and KC Executive candidate) Larry Phillips to brief him about the project, the progress we have made to date, and how he might be able to help. It was a great meeting, very constructive advice! He was super gracious with his time, I can only imagine how precious 30 minutes is when you are in a hotly contested political campaign.

In the end he said that he would help us out by sending a letter to the current KC Executive to encourage him to meet with us and explore “the art of the possible” around the Northlake site. I’d never heard that before but it’s my new favorite phrase , it has the spirit of “can-do” about it. Thanks Mr Phillips both for the help, and for the catchy phrase.

-Jake