Occidental Park - Seattle: What’s Up?
Friday February 17 was one of those sunny Seattle days when you just can’t stay inside. I set out on a spur-of-the-moment walk around First Hill then to downtown and Pioneer Square. I thought I was going to continue on to Tacoma to take some pictures there, but the sun and temperature were dropping fast. I ended up walking through Occidental Park. Accidentally? I don’t think so.
Just so happens that a fence along with some nicely hole-punched and strong-tied protest flyers had gone up earlier in the day. Mayor Greg Nickels — who worked to kill the Green Line monorail transit project and is working hard to find money for an automobile bypass tunnel at the downtown waterfront — and the city parks department are trying to chop down the trees and repave over the old cobble-stones to make the park “safer”. Appeal made to halt cutting of city trees
It’s sad that the trees are almost always first to go when people are on a “safety” crusade. The city has already de-evergreened its core, now even non-evergreen trees are removed. We have leaders who suffer from a failure of positive imagination. There are other things the city can do before rushing forward with this environmentally unfriendly plan:
1) Thin out the tree branches
2) Setup police satalite spot in or near the park. These can serve as a pit-stops for offers walking the street or on bikes.
3) Lights and cameras
4) Pipe in music that the riff-raff cround hates
5) Enable high-activity mixed-use development where the surface parking lot now sits.
Seattleites, once again, our city officials are on the wrong path and making the wrong choice here. We must save Occidental Park and make our officials do what is right or be removed from office.
Phone Numbers
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Greg Nickels - 206-684-2489
City Council members:
Jim Compton: 206-684-8802
Richard Conlin: 206-684-8805
David Della: 206-684-8806
Jan Drago: 206-684-8801
Jean Godden: 206-684-8807
Nick Licata: 206-684-8803
Richard McIver: 206-684-8800
Tom Rasmussen: 206-684-8808
Peter Steinbrueck: 206-684-8804
Seattle Parks
Board of Park Commissioners: 206-684-5066
Superentendent: 206-684-8022
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