Seattle Seeks Designer for New Belltown Park

A new park space in the heart of one of Seattle's densest neighborhoods became one step closer to a reality in April, with Seattle Parks and Recreation officially soliciting bids for a landscape architect to design a future park on the former Battery Street tunnel portal property. Located at Western Avenue and Battery Street, the site used carry cars between Aurora Avenue and the waterfront as part of State Route 99. The property has been envisioned as getting a second life for a long time, but still sits inaccessible behind a fence.

Though the neighborhood is relatively close to the new waterfront park and other swaths of open space like Seattle Center, much of Belltown lacks direct access to park space. City officials and community members anticipated that the Battery Street portal property could help fix that, even going back to the development of the waterfront project over a decade ago. Its redevelopment was a key component of a concept for a "Belltown bluff" presented during that project's early stages, something that never really materialized.

In 2021, the portal site was considered for a potential downtown Seattle Public School (SPS) location, with a park element expected to be included in any final design. Despite a letter of intent signed between the City and the District that year, that idea appears dead, as SPS faces significant budget issues.

Sitting on a steep slope, most of the nearly 70,000-square-foot site is owned by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) after a transfer from the state. The City of Seattle is now exploring another property transfer that would hand the site over to Seattle Parks, with creating open space a priority for both Belltown community advocates and District 7 Councilmember Bob Kettle.

https://www.theurbanist.org/seattle-seeks-designer-for-new-belltown-park/