Below I-5, new park awakens

Water is shooting from overhead sprinklers, irrigating a palm tree that stands out among hundreds of massive concrete pillars holding up Interstate 5.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Public art is illuminated with spotlights as mist is sprinkled on the trees below.

"It's like a movie set, isn't it?" said Sheffer, a city parks employee, pondering the public art project. "It looks stormy now. It looks like 'Gilligan's Island.' "

With lights that mimic the sun and moon, the sculpture will re-create daily weather patterns in 1960, before the highway project destroyed Eastlake homes and divided neighborhoods.

A small part of that damage will be repaired today as the city dedicates one of its largest and most unusual parks in years: the I-5 Colonnade.

The new 7.5-acre gathering place north of the Lakeview Boulevard offramp and underneath the freeway deck features an off-leash dog park, two landscaped picnic areas and dramatic views of Lake Union.

Another unique feature -- an urban mountain-biking course being built with volunteer labor -- is expected to open next fall.

Other trails underneath the freeway are finished, including an extension of a popular bicycling and jogging route, a path for wheelchairs that switchbacks down a steep slope and a new staircase uniting Capitol Hill and Eastlake.

Some have questioned the wisdom of spending $1.8 million to improve such a seemingly inhospitable environment. Others contend that as Seattle grows, any remaining chunks of undeveloped land are precious.

Local residents, who have long wanted to make better use of a space once infested with blackberry bushes and drug dealers, wanted stronger connections between their neighborhoods, said Chris Leman, secretary of the Eastlake Community Council.

"This was an unfortunate instance where the freeway disconnected neighborhoods and destroyed pedestrian and bicycle routes," he said. "We, in a sense, have been trying to sew back a rent in the city's fabric."

Richard Haag, the landscape architect who founded that department at the University of Washington, has long dreamed of transforming the oddly grand space, which has invited speculation for decades.

In the 1960s, someone proposed an industrial park where people could build boats or learn blacksmithing. Another idea was to park all the cars belonging to Bellevue commuters -- about 3,000 at the time -- and build a monorail spur to bring them into downtown, Haag said.

The retired professor, who designed Gas Works Park and Bainbridge Island's Bloedel Reserve, used the under-the-freeway space as a creative challenge for his students.

"I used to show on one screen pictures of the Karnak Temple in Egypt and pictures of this on another and say, 'Look ... this is waiting to be discovered, this space.' It has a great monumentality about it."

The open-space project fits with the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's mission to forge better links across the city, said Sheffer, the department's senior capital project coordinator. Plus, there aren't many large undeveloped properties left here.

"As the city gets more developed, you've got to work with every resource you have."

It's far from a typical park -- with lots of bare dirt and a starkly alien feel. Wire baskets filled with rocks line the staircase and provide structure for drought-tolerant plants.

Because it's completely dry under the freeway, the off-leash dog park presented certain difficulties. The Parks Department had to line it with impervious plastic and install an irrigation system to flush the urine each night into a sewer drain -- like a giant pet toilet.

Voters approved the project as part of a 2000 parks levy. The $1.8 million was largely spent on basic infrastructure, such as electricity, plumbing and lighting. The city will manage the site, which is owned by the state Department of Transportation.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Andy Sheffer of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department jogs along a trail at I-5 Colonnade Park under the freeway in Eastlake.

The $85,000 sculpture that includes four diverse tree species planted together, designed by San Francisco artist John Roloff, was financed separately through the city's "1 percent for public art" program.

There's plenty of room for neighborhood groups to create their own projects, such as a P-patch with grow lights or an expanded sculpture garden, Sheffer said.

Already, mountain bikers armed with shovels and wheelbarrows are carving a 2-acre course out of the hillside. They're seeking public grants and private donations for that $260,000 project.

The trail, which may be the first of its kind in the country, will compress all the turns, switchbacks, logs and boulders one might encounter in the mountains into an urban obstacle course. For, years they've coveted the site under I-5 -- which has an abundance of dirt to work with.

"It's just plain different, and there are a couple of things that work very well for us," said Justin Vander Pol, executive director of the Backcountry Bicycle Trails Club.

"It's available, but the other thing is that the terrain is ideal. What else are you going to do with a pretty good side slope?"

PARK OPENING

You can celebrate the opening of the I-5 Colonnade today at noon in the Eastlake neighborhood, south of Newton Street and just north of northbound Interstate 5 exit 168A.

Neighbors are looking for volunteers to adopt and help maintain the open space. Anyone interested should e-mail Chris Leman at cleman@oo.net.

P-I reporter Jennifer Langston can be reached at 206-448-8130 or jenniferlangston@seattlepi.com.

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