Park eyed to replace park and ride lot at Northgate

For more than a decade, Northgate residents have wanted to see parks, a healthier creek and pedestrian-friendly streets gain a toehold against the area's domineering asphalt.

Now, with a development-stifling logjam blown apart and apartments, condos and retail stores on the way, the city is aiming to create a 3.75-acre community park to balance that urban growth.

Mayor Greg Nickels will announce plans today to buy the park site -- the county park and ride lot north of the Target store on Northeast Northgate Way. The price has not been made final, but the project will be included in his proposed budget for next year, officials said.

King County, which wants to consolidate its park and ride spaces closer to the Transit Center and potential light rail station south of Northgate Mall, plans to replace the 481 spaces by renting stalls in private garages planned for the area.

"It's fantastic news," said Velva Maye, an 81-year-old Haller Lake resident who has lobbied for years for a park there. "We desperately need more green space, and especially since the density is going to be higher at Northgate."

Maye said she has seen the neighborhood change from a one-stop shopping hub to a place where one must drive to grocery and hardware stores. She hopes the hundreds of thousands of square feet of planned retail stores, restaurants and a movie theater will restore incentives to walk by clustering shops.

"The community has been reflecting the desire to take Northgate out of 1950 and bring it into a modern urban center," said Jackie Krolopp Kirn, a senior policy adviser for Nickels.

After years of controversy over traffic and the fate of Thornton Creek, which slices through the neighborhood, a compromise reached two years ago cleared the way for development to proceed with comment from a broad part of the community.

The city is building a new library, a community center and a 1.67-acre park east of the mall. It is widening sidewalks and adding trees along Fifth Avenue Northeast, as well as working on a coordinated plan to handle significant increases in traffic.


		Dan DeLong / P-I
	Construction continues Tuesday on the Northgate Library and community center on Fifth Avenue Northeast, part of a neighborhood revitalization that will include new parks.

In addition to a planned expansion of Northgate Mall, four private developers and the county have expressed interest in redeveloping nearby properties. Altogether, those could add more than 1,800 apartments, condos and senior housing units.

Incorporating green space alone isn't enough to create a thriving urban village, said Jim Potter, chairman of Kauri Investments, which owns an apartment building and a parking lot across from the proposed park.

The city needs to simplify its zoning codes and allow taller buildings to achieve its vision, he said.

City officials said it will be several years before the park is built, since King County needs to secure replacement parking.

Janet Way, an activist with the Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund, which successfully fought to rescue that urban creek from an underground pipe, said the paved park and ride covers the creek's headwaters. She'd like to see some portion of the park restored as wetlands, which could filter polluted stormwater and provide animal habitat.

Shawn Olesen, a general contractor and Victory Heights resident who also serves on the Northgate stakeholder board, said the neighborhood needs a place for people to meet and relax and enjoy breathing room.

He said residents he represents have been pleasantly surprised that the once-contentious planning for the area has been so collaborative and well-thought-out.

"Northgate in many ways has been a stepchild of the neighborhoods ... it's been this blight, this sore, this ugly asphalt for so many years," he said. "Now that it's finally happening, people are like, wow, this really is going to happen."

More headlines and info from Northgate.