Putting Parking in its Place II

When was the last time you went somewhere because it had a great parking lot? Unless I'm seriously mistaken, nobody goes to a place just because you can park there. In fact, according to Ethan Kent, the current obsession with parking is one of the biggest obstacles to achieving livable cities and towns, because it usually runs counter to what should be our paramount concern: creating places where people enjoy spending time.

He's found that the hang-up on parking is an indicator that a community has no broader vision for itself.
Come on, Newport Hills! We're better than that! Red Apple, where is thy core??

The problem with the Red Apple is there is no longer a purpose for the parking lot. I know a few skateboarders who would argue this point, but with the loss of a destination like the supermarket, and soon, the drugstore and with it possibly the one remaining gas station, there is a huge hole in the center of our community.

In temporarily abandoned park(ing) spaces, reclaiming them for public use for even one season is a viable alternative, if the owners are willing to work with the residents and city regulations, which typically require a simple temporary use permit and permission from the owner.

How about starting with a few ideas for a sustainable vision for parking lots. Why sustainable? Because right now it's on everyone's radar for a good reason--keeping people in their own communities keeps them out of their cars, and there are grant opportunities out there for neighborhoods to do what they can to help the planet.

Farmers Markets


Who doesn't love a Farmers Market on the weekends?

“Businesses are increasingly cooperative,” according to a recent PI article about the explosion of Farmers Markets in Seattle. "Owners of the Grocery Outlet in Madrona rescued the displaced MadCap (Madison Park/Capitol Hill) Farmers Market by welcoming it to the store parking lot… Year-round market sales were up 300% this year (2008) and the year before. (As well as way up in attendance, even in the wind, rain and snow…)"

A Kiosk


Center a kiosk for community information which could grow into a drop place for CSA Community-Sustained Agriculture produce boxes.

Raised Beds and Victory Gardens

For most residents of Newport Hills, the garden is a low-maintenance landscape, sort of Japanese/Zen and shady. They're beautiful, restful places, but often lacking in adequate sun and warmth for those gorgeous tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and melons we crave. During times of economic hardship, victory gardens are grown in the community's sunniest spots to help offset the high price of fresh produce.

Here's my suggestion. We've already identified a lot of the sunniest spots in the Red Apple core (pun intended!) Take a look at the aerial shots in my previous post "Google Earth". There they are: in the parking lot. For every other parking spot, create a raised bed as the "seed" of a community garden. It's a wonderful way to have residents of all ages share their knowledge and interests. There could be seed give-aways and plant exchanges to raise money for community events.

The water supply is already there, and when it comes time to build something more permanent, the raised beds can be relocated elsewhere. Have the master gardeners set up a display showing water-wise techniques and other ideas for community sustainability.

Xeriscaping

On a similar note, landscaping is a critical component to the livability of any home--just remember--vegetation good;native vegetation better! An example of site sensitive vegetation is xeriscaping, a term coined by the Colorado Water Wise Council and featured in the website Sustainable Design Update here



They recommend these three simple rules for sustainability, whether it's in your own garden, or your community's:

First, make an effort to preserve any existing native plants, as they obviously like where they're living and can be groomed into a low maintenance greenscape.

Second, work with a local gardening supply store (not a Big Box) to help you select plants that will grow best given your local climate and soil conditions, reducing the need for excessive watering.

Third, seek out organic options for fertilizer (manure) and herbicide (vinegar or corn meal) to prevent any long term negative impact in your garden or nearby streams.

Lesson 8: Let sustainability be our watchword

Putting Parking in its Place

Parking spaces usually diminish public spaces -- but it doesn't have to be that way.
according to Ethan Kent , and The Project for Public Spaces.

The real shortage, Kent has found, was of places for people to go, not spaces to park.

"The realization that creating a place where people want to come and spend time is more important than parking unfortunately eludes many municipalities. ...parking is taking over our communities. So how can we put parking in its place and draw people back to public spaces?"

These are pictures of Bothell's Country Village, a minimall with a different sort of "floorplan." It makes room for cars, but the cars are secondary to the buildings and the life that goes on around them.

Time for a Shout-Out

Newport Hills Community Club has just started a blog of their own.

It looks fantastic, and will be a great place for our community to bat ideas around in. Cheers to Grace and everybody else who had a hand in it.
Julie has already said some wonderful things about this blog:

Are you sad to see the Red Apple gone? So is Robin.
Robin, an
urban planner/designer resident of the neighborhood, has created a fascinating blog to share
her concerns about the now vacant Red Apple store.
The blog is a
wonderful place to share ideas of what you would like to see in the space.
Please check out Robin’s work, as she has been studying “third places” and
checking out other neighborhood friendly shops. What makes a shopping
center successful and more people friendly? Robin can tell you, along with
beautiful snap shots and great commentary. Go find out what a “third
place” is and why we need one in Newport Hills.

Thanks Julie!

Pacific NW Flower and Garden Show

They are the mascots of Newport Hills--those Japanese maples which sit at the bottom of every driveway. Were they standard issue with each new home in the 1960s? When I first arrived here 15 years ago everyone let theirs "go flop" and unpruned--the lacy fine cut leaves hanging to the ground and creating an excellent shade umbrella for cats, small dogs and children in mid-summer. It got to looking like everyone had their own Cousin Itt with red-highlights stationed to keep guard over their front yard.

Now the trees are getting older, bigger, and we're getting much more sophisticated in our pruning techniques. As you can see, this did not escape the eye of one of the major contributors to the PNW Flower and Garden Show last weekend.

Gorgeous Diamonds

Check out the diamonds mined right here in Newport Hills by eff-stop http://eff-stoplocal.blogspot.com/

Mother (and father) of All Puffballs

Flanking the entrance to the Newport Hills Chevron station we discovered a possible source of the puffball population explosion in the Red Apple parking lot. Birth control measures are being studied and we will be covering this story as it unfolds. Octuplets, anyone?

Weekly Typo

In this week's Bellevue Reporter...

NH Drug Latest Victim

Newport Hills Drug has succumbed, according to sources at the NH Community Club meeting last night. Plunged back into mourning. Where will my daughter buy her webkins she wants to know? Where will the people who depend on George find him in the future? Very sad.

Along these lines why hasn't Mojo Espresso re-opened? Have they given up on us as well?

Third Places: Learning from the Neighbors

Caffe Lento, a wonderful addition to Lake Hills Shopping Center, has found room for itself between the vacuum repair clinic and the drycleaners. They wisely picked a sunny spot. Welcome! Wish you were here!

In many ways our neighbors to the north, Lake Hills Shopping Center on 156th in Bellevue (not to be confused with our nearer neighbors to the north, Lake Heights) is under the same pressures as the Newport Hills Shopping Center:

Same age
Competition with Crossroads, Factoria nearby
Failed supermarket

According to the sign posted at Lake Hills, the proposed land use plan for the neighborhood center includes:
90 residential units
44,800 square feet of office space
69,200 square feet of retail space
10,000 square feet library and additional underground parking provided for the commercial and residential uses

This sounds like a great mixed use development ideally suited to the neighborhood. It's sustainable, and provides a "third place" in the form of a library. In other words, people can choose to live near where they work, and have a "third place" which provides space separate from living and working spaces. In future entries I hope to offer more examples of mixed use and third spaces.

In Newport Hills, we're already ahead of the game in a couple of ways: there is already existing density in the form of apartments, condos and townhomes in the center that can support a center like that on offer at Lake Hills. The more density the easier it is to draw on a local customer base--people don't have to drive so far to shop.

Another distinct difference is the appearance of solidity that NH projects through its solid brick structures. All the different storefronts are unified with the use of this brick in the facade and planters.

A Good Place to Start

One place to start making our neighborhood center a vibrant, sustainable, place is to edit or remove all threatening signs: do they really work in the first place, and in the second place you feel as though it may be illegal to so much as draw a breath here. So unfriendly, and this is supposed to be the center of our neighborhood? CLICK TO ENLARGE ON SIGN FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT!!


I especially like "not gathering in groups that block vehicle or pedestrian traffic"--if only there were pedestrian traffic! Isn't that what killed Red Apple in the first place?

Valentines Day in Seattle

Dancing huckleberries (harvested by hand) in a Kir Champagne Magnifique



Madison Park




"Mad(ison) P(ark)" pea patch climbs up a hill.





A Mom and Pop market in the heart of the Madison Valley neighborhood.






Restaurant door fronts all had a painted heart created by local children.
After an exquisite brunch at Cafe Flora we walked Stellarondo in the Arboretum where she cavorted up steps through the hybrid rhodies and even took a dip in the waterlily pond.




At the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park. Beautiful Mughal paintings in four or five rooms. Borrow a magnifying glass. Afterwards had an iced tea in the light-filled central space and noticed that every one of those gorgeous art deco windows in these front doorways OPEN! I counted over 40 handles. None of them were open but just the thought of what that would do for the space made me giddy. Look closely and you'll see some of them. Well worth the trip over, and the Conservatory next door is full of gorgeous orchids.

Weekly Mailbox

Up Periscope!
A photo of a Newport Hills mailbox appearing weekly. Photo by Sean Bentley

Birthday Party in Newport Hills

Piper turned 12 last weekend and we celebrated the same place we did last year--up the street--at the Newport Hills Swim and Tennis Club.






If I could share a lesson from this it would be:

Lesson 7
Celebrate locally and bake plenty of extra cupcakes

Google Earth

Here it is Valentine's Day morning and I'm lying in bed next to my husband thinking about the Red Apple. What I'm wondering is...not what you may be thinking...but do I think of it (the Red Apple, that is) as a lost supermarket or a blog? Has the blog become bigger than the supermarket or is it all the same thing? Is the Red Apple simply a symbol for something else (or the lack of it) in my life? Do other bloggers have an identity crisis from time to time?

I find that looking at Google Earth helps me out during such moments--a bit like contemplating the moon in days of yore. As always, click on photo to enlarge.

My Wish List

1. New grocery store
2. Fruit and produce stand (formerly Chevron)
3. Neighborhood kiosk at drive-thru for bank (always closed)
4. New site of Mojo Espresso stand
5. Farmer's market
6. Community garden

Here is the Newcastle Fruit and Produce Stand. If they ever decide to open a Newport Hills branch I think we have room for them.

We all need aerial photographs for dreaming purposes. They let the sun in on a cloudy day--every one of the areas I circled above gets full sun for most of the day, even while leaving plenty of spaces for parking. I always wondered as I parked my car near Pike Place Market or at the top of a parking garage why my car was getting a better view than I was.

Another way to look at these photos is to see the number of spaces we provide for our cars: then imagine exchanging one parking space for a raised garden bed. One little island of 20 spaces could provide a lot of space for a community garden.

Mailboxes

Check out Sean's beautiful and humorous photo essay on the mailboxes of Newport Hills at Eff-Stop Local.

In Honor of Imbolc

Last week we celebrated Imbolc, the beginning of the Celtic spring. Up until twelve years ago we would have a big party to celebrate the earth's rebirth. Christmas by now was a distant memory and plans for the garden would start heating up. My daughter Piper's birth on February 10 twelve years ago gave us even more of a reason to celebrate. And isn't she glad we didn't call her Imbolc?


In fact, we no longer need to celebrate Imbolc or St Brigid's Day (as it is also known) or even Groundhog's Day because our daughter's birthday party is now the focus for much celebration. But I can't help putting pictures of my garden here to remind me of the beginning of spring and gardens to come. Happy Spring everyone!

To get you in the mood I highly recommend Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden by Diane Ackerman. The following is her invocation for spring:

I want time to pool, not race, but tonight I’m madly impatient for the growing season to begin, and the garden, which is a different Eden for every gardener, to reinvent itself as a renewable paradise, if not a permanent one. I don’t
believe in garden gods, but I do believe in the power of invocation to stir the
spirit

.



Garden of growth, garden of green blood,
garden where dappled light and water mix in the trees,
crow garden, beetle garden, garden of dreams, garden on
the oasis of a life-drenched planet, garden where desire finds form, garden of
floral architecture and speckled fawns,

garden where wonder is incised on a
pebble millions of years old, garden visibly and invisibly teeming, garden of
beds and seed parlors, garden of dew and overdue, garden where we plight our
troth and ply our trade, garden that tilts the mind into the sacred, fleeting
garden, memorial garden, garden abuzz and atwitter, garden where toxins and

tonics both thrive, pool garden, cloud garden, garden that’s an urn for the
soul, garden of roll calls and lists where life tests different recipes, garden
where rain falls like manna, garden whose perennial borders are infinite, garden
whose customs and taboos make mischief in the mind, garden of snow, mind garden
garden of quartz crystal and siren light.



Moss has laid down a welcome mat, and red-capped fungi are mustering like
British soldiers in a rum confusion of sun and ice.
Spring is unlatching its heavy doors, rousting old
dusty hibernators from their sleep, and beginning a quiet fumbling with buttons,
knots and nubbins, and the bolting ribbons of time, light, and gore.
As I walk down to the mailbox, enveloped in mist, birds snitch on twitchy feet in the
aspens, morning ghosts between the houses, and the air tastes green at last.”