14th Ave NW Visioning Project
Notes from Community Meeting/Workshop July 13th
6:30PM-8:00PM St. Alphonsus School Cafeteria


Peter Locke started the meeting with an introduction and overview of how this project has evolved in just a short year since we became organized. We started out with a Blockwatch meeting where Peter introduced his vision for 14th Ave NW to a few neighbors. These few neighbors then drummed up neighborhood interest by organizing an August Night out Block Party event on 14th Ave NW and held our first community meeting last November. Based on the interest from the community, we felt we had enough momentum to submit a request for a $15,000 matching grant from the city. We received this grant and then conducted very rigorous interviews for an Urban Planner to guide this vision, resulting in the hiring of Carlson Architects (www.carlsonarch.com). Since then, we have held one other community meeting and a lunch for 14th Ave businesses to gather more input as to how the community would like to see 14th Ave NW transformed. During this process, we developed a list of visions that you can find on our home page: http://14avenw.org/. With these visions in mind, the steering committee as since held 2 additional workshops with Carlson Architects to take these visions and all of the input from our neighbors and businesses, and work with Carlson to develop a concept of what our street could evolve into.

Don Carlson, from Carlson Architects presented the concept designs to the neighbors at this meeting and opened up the floor for discussion and questions. I tried to capture as many of these comments as I could. If anyone has any additional items that you would like documented, please contact me and I'll add them to the notes. Please refer to the digital copies of the drawings located on the home page of our website, http://14avenw.org when reading these notes.

• The key to the proposed designs is to create structure for the street so that it can evolve in time. The structure needs to be defined well in the beginning to allow for change in the future.
• We looked at different ways to the divide the street and believed that the best use of space would be to create a large, 42
• wide public space on the east side of the street, have 2 way traffic side by side with no median and then a standard sidewalk on the west side. Note, for south of Market St, this would be a 40
• wide space on the east side instead.
• Parking, in general, would be back in angled parking along the east side North of Market and on both sides South of Market.
• We would like to have a bike path along 14th. For right now, the drawings show an off-street bike path on each side of the street.. We would need to consult more with experts to determine the best placement of a bike path. One attendee, who is a bike commuter, advised that having one 2-way bike path on the east side might be the best solution. If we keep the bike path on the west side, having it behind the parked cars as shown in the drawing was advised as preferred by this neighbor..
• Standard curbs would be removed and replaced with bollards. By removing the curbs, you allow rainwater to flow from the street into bioswales that would naturally filter the water before it enters Salmon Bay. Removing curbs south of Market would also provide flexibility for delivery trucks to park close into the pedestrian space when needed.
• To address concerns crossing at intersections, the proposal would be to add traffic circle at 60th. We chose 60th, because this street gets a lot of fast traffic due to cars crossing between 8th and the light at 15th.
• There was a question about the bioswales and whether gutters from the homes along 14th could feed into them. Don Carlson advised that that could be feasible.
• The large 42
• wide space on the east side of the street opens you up to flexibility. Each block could be individually designed, but would still fit into the continuity of the entire street.
• South of Market will be focused more on being business friendly. The businesses would like to see the side streets approaching 14th wider to accommodate the larger vehicles.
• There's also a nice waterfront with potential at the very south end of 14th that we'd also like to address.
• Since this is such a huge vision, the key to success will be to develop a vision that will allow us to make changes over a long period of time and with each change, have it fit into the this bigger vision. The vision also needs to be flexible enough to change with the times.
• Liz Ellis from SDOT advised that we should temper our ideas with the bottom line that we, the community, will be assigned the task of maintaining the public spaces along the street. The city does not have the funds to do this for us. We need to think simple in our design and especially in our choice of plantings so that it looks good with very little maintenance over the years. She also advised that we bring SDOT traffic engineers in at the early stages to review our plans and provide guidance.
• Don Carlson advised that he realizes this will be a long process and will also take a lot of money to implement, however, the key here is to identify a potential and define the roadmap so that when new buildings are proposed (e.g. Ballard Blocks) or opportunities arise, we'll have something from the community to show what the neighborhood desires.
• Someone asked about how we'd address utilities under the street. We don't know exactly where the utilities are located right now, however, this is something that will need to be addressed as we move forward.
• Does taking out the median really slow down traffic? It has been proven that if cars are driving side by side in different directions, that they tend to be more cautious and slow down. The median, as it is today, is promoting faster speeds, because the driver is buffered from oncoming traffic.
• Does this plan have to get approved by a governing body and what is the time frame? Peter advised that this is a vision plan at the concept level. After this concept is agreed upon by the neighborhood, then we will need to get the city to approve the plan. We'll then need to apply for money (public and private grants and/or partnerships) to start implementation. This will take many, many years, but we hope to be able to implement the plan in small pieces. E.g. the Ballard District Council recently approved $20,000 of SDOT discretionary funds for next year to go toward the 14th Ave Vision Project. This is a step in the right direction!
• Concerns were brought up on how this vision would fit in with new construction/townhomes/parking and congestion. These are all things that we need to take into consideration and hopefully we'll be able to work with new construction builders along 14th to encourage them to work within our vision.
• Is this design encouraging or discouraging business use of the street? We need to come up with a consensus. We understand that businesses rely on the median space for parking and this design takes some of this parking away. We want to work with the neighbors and businesses to meet their requirements. (Note: A meeting with the businesses to discuss the concept plan was held on July 14th).
• There a currently only 3 ways to get to I-5 from Ballard. There is no easy way to get to I-5 and the city is not addressing this. Although this is definitely a concern of most Ballard residents, we do not believe the focus of the 14th Ave vision plan really needs to fit into that broader picture since it is not an arterial to I-5.
• We need to make sure we address parking for Ballard High School students south of 65th.
• Are we looking at including 14th into the transit system? This is definitely something we could look at. Just as a little history, 14th Ave NW originally had an electric trolley. We would need to talk to Metro about their plans. It actually may not be a good idea to have buses running up and down the street since one of our visions is to calm the traffic. The fact that buses already run along 15th and 8th, and 14th ends at 65th might make 14th unattractive to Metro.
• We need to consider the transient issue south of Market. Instead of displacing them, could there be a way to make 14th a better place for them, e.g. provide facilities, fire pits, services, etc. This is definitely an issue that is on the radar of most businesses and neighbors along 14th. Any recommendations on how to address this matter would be greatly appreciated.
• Once the vision plan is defined, what's next? We'll probably spend about a year trying to get funding. We plan to have the vision plan available at this year's Seattle Night Out Potluck/block party on August 1st at 6PM. We will be blocking off 14th Ave NW at 59th and at 61st.
• In order to keep momentum, we might be able to do one block at a time as demonstration projects, e.g. we might be able to install the traffic circle at 60th as an early project.
• How do we plan on addressing working with nature? We really need to have a water source to feed the landscaping and gardens. Also, in the event of a natural disaster, it might be a good idea to collect water in cisterns for not only watering use, but also for emergency use.
• Where are the garbage cans in the design? We badly need them on the street! This is definitely a concern and we would need to work with the city to determine if we can do this and who would be responsible for maintaining them.
• How much is this going to cost? We haven't run the numbers yet, however, since the plan is to be flexible, the actual costs could vary greatly. We hope to be able to work with Carlson to a laundry list of costs.
• How much money could we get? Liz Ellis advised that SDOT looks at dovetailing proposed projects with maintenance projects. If we did this all at once, it would need to become a Capital Project and we would need to get grants, possibly impose neighborhood fees, etc). It would be more realistic to develop this project in pieces.
• Where did the C Streets project get their money? From the city's general fund for cleaning water for salmon habitat.
• Would the back-in parking be paved or impervious? We're thinking it would be paved to make it look different from the street.
• What are some examples of how each block could be a different design to fit into the flexibility picture? one block could be a p-patch, another could be a small park, another could be just pavement with driveways. The options are endless and should be flexible to change.
• Could we get away with putting in traffic circles on 14th? Liz advised that it would be possible.
• How about driveway access along 14th? Where does that fit in? All existing driveways would still exist with this plan. The plan is flexible enough that even future driveways could be added if needed.
• Turning left onto14th from 65th causes a bottleneck. Could we address this in the vision plan?
• There is a bush on the corner of 64th going toward 15th that blocks the yield sign. We need to address this and also make sure when choosing future landscaping to make sure it will not block any important signage or create visibility concerns. Perhaps we can get a neighbor with a trimmer to fix the bush in the meantime.
• A neighbor originally from L.A. commented that she doesn't feel safe walking around in Ballard because of the way people drive. She reminded everyone that we need to be more aware of pedestrians when we're driving in our cars.
• Someone commented that we should make the bike lane 2 directional and only on the east side of the street. He advised that it's OK to have the lanes off the street because the bike traffic is going to be more neighborhood traffic and not a major commuter route. The reasoning for the bike path being preferred on the east (non-parked car side) is that the cars would reduce the width of the bike path and there are people crossing the bike path going to and from cars so it is less safe.
• Liz Ellis from SDOT reminded us that we need to remember to water our street trees!
• Liz Ellis was disappointed that the existing utilities (sewer, telephone, pwer, etc) are not shown on the drawings as this will affect how the street is developed
• Someone commented that we should not get rid of the cherry trees
• Someone requested to see a drawing comparing the existing conditions to the proposed
• One possible solution was proposed to address the parking situation on 14th. Would it possible to turn some of the side streets, like NW 60th to one-way and provide angled parking along those streets?
• We need to address how we're going to water the plants and trees, especially in the summer time. We need a long term maintenance plan.