The Sustainable Sites Initiative announced the selection of Ballard's forthcoming Ninth Avenue Park as one of the first sites to participate in a new program testing the nation’s first rating system for green landscape design, construction and maintenance.

The Ninth Avenue Park, which will be located on Ninth Avenue Northwest between Northwest 70th Street and Northwest 73rd Street, will join more than 150 other projects from 34 states and from Canada, Iceland and Spain as part of an international pilot project program to evaluate the new Sustainable Sites Initiative rating system for sustainable landscapes.

Sustainable landscapes can clean water, reduce pollution and restore habitats while providing significant economic and social benefits to land owners and municipalities, according to a Seattle Parks and Recreation press release.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative selected the Ninth Avenue Park
based on its extensive environmentally friendly elements, including preservation and restoration of soil conditions, management of storm water on site, use of native vegetation, creation of community food gardens and use of recycled content and regional materials.

The future Ninth Avenue Park was designed by Site Workshop and developed through three community workshops. The one-acre site lies mid-block and is surrounded on three sides by single family residences. Originally, this site was home to a church group, and the compound sat vacant prior to acquisition by Parks, who opened it up for public use.

A community garden will continue the site’s history of food production, while many site relics will be reused within the park design.

At the street edge, unnecessary paving is reclaimed for use as rain gardens. These gardens will buffer the park from the road and clean and store stormwater taken directly from the street. This will benefit King County’s combined sewer system, which will improve Puget Sound water quality, according to the Parks press release.

Like the other pilot projects, this site will test the point system for achieving different levels of site sustainability on a 250-point scale, and the performance benchmarks associated with specific credits within the Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative will use feedback from this and the other selected projects during the pilot phase, which runs through June 2012, to revise the final rating system and reference guide by early 2013.