The East Ballard Community Association held two public meeting these past few months regarding the design of Ballard's newest park along 14th Avenue N.W. between N.W. 59th and N.W. 61st Street.

The park has been a multi-year project which started when resident and architect Peter Locke moved into the neighborhood and spotted underutilized space along 14th Avenue N.W.

After various studies, community meetings and bouncing around of ideas, the East Ballard Community Association came up with the idea of narrowing 14th Avenue between 59th and 61st street and turn the underutilized space into a Street Boulevard.

The project received funding from a Parks levy and in September of last year, EBCA selected landscape architect firm Mithun to work with neighbors on the design.

The community meetings allowed the designers to address issues such as lighting, loss of parking, limited access to private properties along 14th Avenue NW, and speed reduction.

Speed reduction had been an ongoing challenge due to the street classification. Supporters of the park wanted the current 30 mph speed limited lowered to 25 mph.

EBCA recently announced that in a subsequent meeting between City Chief Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang and the EBCA, an agreement was made to reduce the speed limit to 25 mph along 14th Ave NW between Market and NW 65th.

"This will result in safer multi-modal transportation and reduce the transition from a divided right of way  to side-by-side right of way from
1.5 blocks to 1 block. This means more money spent on park and less on street," according to the EBCA.

More information about the park and the final schematics can be found at http://www.seattle.gov/parks/projects/ballard_hub_uv/