The fourth meeting for the development of 20 acres of new open space at the West Seattle Reservoir Park at Westcrest was held on Saturday 26 at the Southwest Community Center on at 2801 Thistle Street S.W. The Seattle Parks Department and Site Workshop presented the final design schematic and talked about the features, amenities, artwork and potential uses for the new space.

We've attached two downloadable images of the park design. One low rez at 150 ppi, the other high rez at 300 ppi which is a 7 megabyte image. When you open them they will appear to be quite large. You will need to scroll around to see the features and read the text.
There is also a high resolution aerial photo of the site which is also a large file.
Community ideas and direction were incorporated into the schematic design.

The West Seattle Reservoir is located at 9000 8th Ave SW. This park project is being funded to the tune of $20 million by the Parks and Green Spaces Levy approved by Seattle voters in November 2008. The West Seattle Reservoir will contain 30 million gallons of drinking water.

"The concept itself is a very passive park design that has a range of activities, playground shelters, has new restrooms and additional parking, said Mark Brands of the Site Workshop, "It's very similar to another lidding project like Jefferson Park where you have big open spaces, because of the lidded environment that are very restrictive as to what you can do on them. Because of the depth of the soil, you have two feet depth and only foot of soil over the lid and Parks and Seattle Public Utilities are very sensitive to anything heavy being set on that. There's drinking water below so that's very important for us to acknowledge." Some of that will be accomplished in the design itself with a design feature that echoes the multi-columned water storage below the park, in the form of pavers in a geometric pattern.

Despite the relatively shallow cover, events are still possible from soccer games to disc golf. There will be a hard court area for skaters (though not a full fledged skate park) largely because the design is intended to serve a broader demographic, meeting the needs of "the whole family."

"At this particular site we've got a great deal of topography. We've got a valley and we've got a hill," said Brands, "so the valley offers up a great place to have a concert."

The landscaping is being done with measure of both art and awareness of the plants native to the area. "We're trying to bring back a landscape typology which is called a Garry Oak savannah," Brands explained, "What that means is wildflowers, native grasses and this Garry Oak. That whole habitat community that comes along with it."

This park will contain one of the highest valued forests in the Seattle Parks system with a very high percentage of conifers. "This particular green belt is secondary growth wood that was never cut down. It's one of two or three parks in the system that have this."

Brands acknowledged that "Some negative activity has been happening too. Some cruising through there and illicit activity. To stop that we intend to improve the trails so they are more generous, they have better sight lines when you are in the park. You will have better sight lines from outside the park, especially if you are a police officer driving by. All those things help make the user more comfortable. With more use, studies show that the illicit stuff tends to go away."

"Our Green Seattle Partnership with Cascade Land Conservancy, Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment and Seattle Public Utilities are basically restoring our green belts. So this park is a big target. They go through and pull out invasive weeds and plant back native plant varieties," said Brands.

Artist David Boyer, doing the artwork for the park presented his plans. He has a $120,000 budget that is in addition to the $3 million going into the park. "The park has a very large open sky and open feel to it. The park is very near the airports... and a lot of birds in the area. The artwork I'm proposing is called "Flyers" with a series of 'half bird half airplane' sculputures on poles that are very kinetic, they move around in the wind. And a number of them down on the ground that will look like they've landed. Almost like big a flock of seagulls. Certain elements will have different colors to be representational of the diversity of the neighborhood. You've got this big group of people but they're all kind of flying together," Boyer said. Various sizes of them will create a "forced perspective" by being at different heights on poles.

A new parking area will be added to the west of the park, there will likely be a Pea Patch area though the funding for this is not yet secured. The Westcrest Off Leash dog walking area will essentially be expanded by recognizing an area of trails already being used for this purpose.

The project will now go into design development with a construction schedule to be announced in the fall. They will keep the area fenced off while they establish the grass, and some permanent fencing will remain around SPU facilities on the site. Construction on the park should get underway this time next year.