By Justin Bennett, UW News Lab student

Fourteenth Avenue Northwest was a particularly colorful sight on Saturday, April 16th. Led by the East Ballard Community Association (EBCA), a parade of fish was guided from 59th street to 63rd street to mark the culmination of 14th Avenue's planter project, which was started three years ago by the EBCA.

Students at St. Alphonsus School made aquatic creatures of recycled blinds from the school’s old blinds to be installed in the planters along 14th Avenue.

The school-wide project took nearly 100 hours to complete, said art teacher Susan Ozubko. Students took the school's old blinds, cut them into fish-like shapes of varying sizes, painted them, and attached them to recycled plastic tubing. Then, the fish were weather-coated and prepared for installation.

The completion of this project is a small stepping stone in a six-year vision of the EBCA to turn 14th Avenue into a park boulevard.

"[This] area is certainly deficient in parks, and it doesn't have a public-space focal point," said Zachary Thomas, a landscape architect who has been working with the EBCA. "There is not a lot of land or really any land that's available for that."

Shannon Dunn, co-coordinator of the EBCA, concurred.

"Ballard is particularly deficient in open space," she said. "We have the lowest green space per capita in the city of Seattle, and probably one of the faster growing communities as well."

In addition, 14th Avenue Northwest is dangerous as well. Three years ago Agnes Meserole, an active community member and teacher assistant at St Alphonsus, was hit and killed by a car while attempting to cross the street in front of her home at Northwest 58th Street and 14th Avenue Northwest. Her death spurred the community into action, according to Dawn Hemminger, co-coordinator of the EBCA.

After Meserole’s death, Dunn and Hemminger used grant money from the city's neighborhood project funds to increase the overall safety of 14th Avenue N.W. and liven it up. They used the grant to put in an elevated crosswalk at N.W. 58th Street and 14th Avenue N.W. and build the planters stretching from 59th to 63rd streets.

With that portion of the project complete, EBCA is now pushing for the city council to accept their park boulevard proposal and select a design firm to begin the project. A decision is expected to be reached sometime in late May or early June, according to Thomas.

The project "has to build some momentum," Thomas said. "It was nice to be able to come in for the last year or two and help push it over the hill. Everyone was rolling this boulder up the hill and it feels like, last year, we got to the top and now it's rolling on its own."