Columbia Citizens

So Genesee Park: it's really big (almost 60 acres, maybe more, as I'm not sure what the technical boundaries are)

http://www.seattle.gov/parks/park_detail.asp?ID=409

and yet most of the time most of it goes unused. The high-grass meadow is nice habitat for birds, so let's call that a use. The community center is fairly busy most of the time it's open, the dog park's a hit and the playfields get good use in nice weather, but, still, at least half of the total land there is unused essentially all the time. And there's a lot of parking that goes unused most of the time as well. (It's instructive to check out the Google map.)

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=4316+S+Genesee+St.&near=Seattle,+WA&fb=1&cid=47564080,-122279289,15345889203522211485&li=lmd&t=h&om=1&ll=47.564191,-122.279291&spn=0.009107,0.016265&z=16&iwloc=A

Without taking away anyone's existing uses — keeping the playfields, dog park, community center and habitat — couldn't we find some ways of designing the rest of that open space in ways that serve the community better? Can't we imagine a much cooler, more vital park, with more attractions for kids and adults alike?

Someone on this site mentioned a skate park. What else might be cool to see added to the park? Let's just imagine, for a moment, that the city would pay for any sane plan we came up with: what would we want to see?

What kind of a future do we want for our neighborhood park?

Part of what I like about Genesee Park is that is relatively uncrowded — it's a great place to walk and see a wide open space down to the lake — as opposed to walking in the forest in Seward Park.

Ditto. I think it's undeveloped in a way that makes it so much more usable and appealing than lots of other parks. Great place for big picnics, gatherings, etc. I see folks using the large grassy areas to train dogs and have informal "pee wee" soccer practice all the time, regardless of the season/weather. The fact that it is a less crowded park also makes it a great habitat (grassy wetland area) for wildlife. I would hate to see it change in any way.

I think what is most fascinating about the park is that is once was the
"Wetmore Slough". It was like a swamp, creating a kind of peninsula of the land east of it, I think it even had a bridge that you had to cross to get to what is get from 46th Ave. to what is that road that runs along the park, 43rd? Then, they drained Lake Washington of 9 ft or so of water. They it was used as a "sanitary" landfill kind of thing. I think some old timers here told me it used to stink! My facts may be off here, but I'm thinking any kind of solid structure built on that piece of land that runs from the Lake could be an earthquake hazard? That area used to be on seismic maps as a "liquifaction zone".

Here's the historylink page on Lakewood neighborhood which covers the history of Genesee Park (once the Wetmore slough) The 1913 map shows Lakewood neighborhood as a peninsula and a great old photo of Lake Washington Blvd. being a bridge over the slough. I also love the story that the once thought it could be nifty to cut a canal from the slough (through Beacon Hill) to Elliott Bay.
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3140

Interesting thoughts all around! Thanks for lots of good ideas and view points.

Does more usage have to equal crowding out the less informal "uncrowded" uses on a park this big, though?