This Saturday at 10am at the Laurelhust Community Center, the public is invited to give input on what you would like to see at the new Laurelhurst Park playground.
This is the first and most important meeting in the process of bringing a new playground to our park. The community's participation is integral to determining what children will enjoy there for years to come. Everyone is encouraged to give opinions, offer feedback, and come up with some ideas for the new playground.
Karina, who has volunteered her time in spearheadung the playground renovation project, tells us that this first meeting is impactful as it is the design meeting to "to create an imaginative, creative, and functional new public playground for all of us at Laurelhurst Park."
Kids are invited as well to give their important input, too. And there will be fun activities for the kids during the meeting including a bouncy house.
The community design meeting will be hosted by Barker Landscape Architects, who was chosen bythe volunteer hiring committee of Laurelhurst neighbors who chose the firm after an extensive public RFQ and finalist interview process. Some of the firm's past projects are Carkeek and Meridian Park playgrounds.
In 2008, the “Play It Safe at Laurelhurst Park” neighborhood group organized themselves to bring about playground equipment specifically for 2-5 year olds, of which their was none for that age group. The group group self-fundraised and worked in partnership with Seattle Parks to install a few new pieces of equipment that is very popular among kids.
It was during that process, the group found out that most of the other Laurelhurst playground equipment was over 20 years old and needed to be replaced. And through the voter-approved 2008 Seattle Parks and Green Spaces Levy, Seattle Parks has allocated $400,000 to upgrade both the equipment and the space itself.
Karina says that the way the grant works is that the specific grant is for construction, and not design. So in order to get access to the levy grant, "the community needs to self-organize and self-fundraise and/or apply for and secure a separate Seattle “Small and Simple” matching grant in order to create an approved design."
Karina explains that the rationale for this is simple, in that "the neighborhoods who are proactive and provide their own volunteer effort and community involvement earn the right to get access to Levy funds more quickly, and in the ways that match the community’s wishes."
So, as a result, Karina and the group have been working hard over the past 9 months to secure volunteer hour commitment signatures from dozens of local neighbors and businesses and as a result have been awarded a $15,000 “Small and Simple” matching grant to design the new playground.
The group also formed a 6-member hiring committee to select a landscape architect and put together and posted a formal RFQ and selection criteria. Twenty firms showed interested, and 7 responded with detailed responses of which 3 were chosen as finalists to interview. And the committee then selected Barker.
Between now and November there will be three public design meetings where the committee will work with Barker to "envision and refine a plan for the upgraded park that reflects the best of our community’s ideas, while being
firmly grounded in staying on budget" Karina says.
Karina stronly encourages everyone to come to the meeting on Saturday morning as the grant funds doled out soley depend on community participation and support, which is measured by the number of people (and corresponding hours) who come to the meetings and help with various tasks, such posting flyers, etc.
She says, "We’re so excited, and have a unique opportunity to help design something special. The design meetings are as much about community building and spending time with neighbors on a joint activity that helps all of us, as they are about creating a fun, imaginative, and lasting place for our children and families to gather, forge, and deepen relationships. When our children in this community go to so many different schools (private and public), it’s doubly important to have one place where they can all get to know one another and play."
For more information visit the Facebook page or email karinagriffith@hotmail.com.
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