Dear Diary,
Last week through yesterday, I worked on the spreadsheet mentioned in your previous page, but yesterday I got a little more focused on this downtown project. I'd found that it'll take weeks to get the spreadsheet to where I want it before I publish it at Google Drive, so in the meantime I wanted results I could use sooner.
Meanwhile, the simple fact is that I don't really like the parks of Belltown - the north-central part of downtown Seattle as I've defined those things for these pages, part VI - all that much, which makes it hard to motivate myself to hike to them on the few dry-ish days to photograph them. I'll try to do that next weekend, weather allowing. My current temporary job is apparently to continue the rest of this month, so I remain constrained by that.
Still, today, with actual dry weather, I wanted something more challenging and perhaps enjoyable. My goals for today were to visit all the places the spreadsheet had told me about, which should've been covered in the existing parts of this series, and to trace the Elliott Bay Trail from its southern end to the part I told you about already. I got to, for some definition of "got to", seven of the nine places, although I'll put off telling you, dear Diary, about one, because it fits into central downtown, and I have an errand at the Central Library soon which I might as well expand into taking some photos. Today's parks and similar places turn out to be hard to like too. Three were closed to the public when I visited today, and one probably never fully existed. But at least they were mostly new to me, and I hope they'll interest you and anyone who reads you.
(Various agencies) The Elliott Bay Trail
Pages around the Web claim that this trail starts at Broad St, or at Lumen Field, which is more or less between S Royal Brougham Way and the line of S Lane St. The Broad St claim sort of makes sense, as we'll see, but the Lumen Field one doesn't. A current version of the Seattle Bike Map gets it right.
South of S Atlantic St, Alaskan Way S has bike lanes on each side of the road, physically separated from the traffic only by those flimsy-looking stick-like things. North of Atlantic, where Alaskan rises and then descends, there's a relatively wide trail separate from the traffic, which doesn't rise and descend. This trail, like much of the trail between W Garfield St and Smith Cove Park, is sandwiched between fences, although here there's Port of Seattle property on only one side, railroad tracks on the other. The main reward for taking this part of the trail is the view ahead, of downtown:
The Port is the trail's lead agency, and I assume it owns this segment. The main thing enlivening it, besides the view, is a series of markers attesting bits of nautical history.
At S King St, this part of the trail emerges on the west side of Alaskan Way S and ends, and another part starts, which is much more like the Burke-Gilman Trail: no fence, cyclists and walkers separated, the cyclists getting smooth pavement, the walkers regular sidewalk. There's also some landscaping. I suspect the part the Seattle Department of Transportation reports owning in the 2020 Real Property Report actually starts here.
At S Main St, the sidewalk, which had been to the trail's east, switches to the west, towards the buildings, and gets much wider, essentially becoming the sidewalk of the popular parts of Seattle's downtown waterfront.
And then two blocks later, at Yesler Way, the sidewalk continues, but the bike trail is just cut off.
It's cut off by construction. From here all the way to Broad St, the prior existence of the Elliott Bay Trail is not proven by facts now on the ground. I'm pretty sure, in fact, that from Bell St to Broad St it never did exist, or at best merged with the sidewalk on the west side of Alaskan Way. But I'll take this segment by segment.
The construction barricades block mostly the west side of Alaskan Way from Yesler to Marion St. They curve between Marion and Madison St, and then from Madison St to Pine St they block mostly the east side of Alaskan Way. My hypothesis is that the Elliott Bay Trail did exist before the construction began, and that it crossed the street somewhere between Marion and Madison. My evidence is pretty scanty.
For the first part, Yesler to Marion, it's mostly the way the trail suddenly stops. I don't believe it was originally built that way.
Counter-evidence: Much of the road on the west side of Alaskan between Marion and Madison looks pre-construction in age to me, and shows no trail markings. So unless the crossing was at or near Marion, there may not have been a trail on that block.
For the second part, Madison to Pine, I have two bits of evidence. First, the SDOT listing in the Real Property Report gives 1100 Alaskan Way as the address of the part of the trail it owns. This is Alaskan and Spring St, a block north of Madison.
Second, something that looks a great deal like parts of the Burke-Gilman Trail exists, a few yards from the east side of Alaskan Way, right up against the buildings there, from Pine St to a few yards south of Bell St. Where it actually does just stop:
I saw no cyclists on this segment tonight, but did see a whole lot of people riding scooters, or whatever those things are called. There are a couple of directional signs similar to those on the BGT on this segment of whatever-it-is, too.
From Bell to Broad: I found nothing. The pavement of the wide sidewalk on the west side of Alaskan there is continuous, much more amenable to cycling than the pavement further south, and I suspect cyclists are meant to cross again, although there were still a lot of pedestrians that far north. But there are no trail markings and no directional signs on this segment.
What I actually saw half a dozen cyclists leaving the Elliott Bay Trail at Broad St do, though, was take to the streets - most to Alaskan, one to Broad. I also saw a group of at least half a dozen cyclists heading north on Alaskan in the street.
So although the bike map is right about the trail beginning at Atlantic, it's wrong that it exists continuously from there to Broad. I seriously doubt it really ever has.
(SDOT) Habitat Bench on Seattle Waterfront
The Port of Seattle has a fence along the trail all the way from Atlantic to S Jackson St; it calls that entire area "Pier 46". When I showed up too close to the fence at Atlantic, a guy came out to warn me away. Most addresses south of Jackson are in the 400s S (the Port claims that everything behind that fence, all the way down to Atlantic, is at 401, but OpenStreetMap makes the falsehood of that plain), and most addresses north of Atlantic are in the 1200s S. So SDOT's property at 601 Alaskan Way S, almost an acre in size, is somewhere behind that fence. It's meant as "Wildlife/Fish Habitat", and my guess is that curious visitors might conflict with that.
(SDOT) Washington St Boat Landing
This is one of SDOT's few parks to have been blest with its own Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation web page. That page's text is an exemplar of the decay happening to many public things along the waterfront, not least, but also not limited to, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the old Waterfront Park:
"No boats land here any more. At this site just south of the Washington State Ferry Terminal, you'll find only a historic pergola built for the long-defunct Seattle Harbor Department in 1920, and views of Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains. Note particularly the truncated ships' prows decorating the pergola high in front. Out in the water, you can still see the upright posts delineating the pier that was originally attached to the site. Immediately adjacent, the Port of Seattle's small Alaska Square has been closed to public access because its concrete has collapsed in places."
Well, actually, though, it's worse than that:
The whole park is closed by very sturdy fences, obviously for the long haul.
Someone is paying for a "sanican", not one of the two brands the city uses, in a parking lot adjacent to the south:
(The Anne E. Casey Foundation) Waterfall Garden Park
The Anne E. Casey Foundation was funded by the family of UPS's founder, and although I'm not sure what this park has to do with the foundation's mission, it was built on the site of UPS's first headquarters for the company's seventieth anniversary, in 1977. And at the company's centenary, some of its employees participated in a United Way Day of Giving, or some such, by working on the park. They hired some temps to help, of whom I was one (it's one of my few weird temp jobs), and I still have a T-shirt commemorating the event:
I rarely wear that shirt, not liking to advertise big corporations on my clothing, and so it survived my years of homelessness much more intact than shirts I'd preferred, and I wore it today.
Unfortunately, the park didn't co-operate with this bit of sentimentality. Its signage indicates its short hours, maintained, so it's said, in order to keep homeless people from camping there.
But at 3:18 P.M., on a Sunday, this is what I found:
Speaking of sturdy fences. Also, the waterfall about which the Alliance for Pioneer Square, another outfit that doesn't much like homeless people, brags - well, I didn't catch as much of it as I'd hoped (i.e., any of it) in that photo, but those rocks sure looked dry to me.
So I have no idea whether the park was closed because it's Sunday and that kind of thing happens, or because of COVID-19, or because it's winter, or because UPS, no longer headquartered here, maybe thinks Seattle is overrun with homeless people, or maybe because AECF is having hard times, or what. I only know that it was closed, and I wasn't the only person who knew the time and noticed, while I was there.
The amenities I saw through the fence included benches and trash cans, which latter put them one up on Sound Transit, anyway.
Previously mentioned
I found a street fountain running, as it should be, in Pioneer Square.
The affordable housing project being built near or in part of Fortson Square is being built for the main agency in town that helps American Indian homeless people. Their fences are covered with quotations from old anti-Indian laws.
City Hall Park, though as far as I know no longer city-owned, still has the city's "Temporarily Closed" signs up. Nope, now it's "Permanently Closed", as far as the parks department is concerned, anyhow.
Terrace St starts at City Hall Park, and I took it to my next destination.
(?) Goat Hill
This is a name I like for three more or less linked bits of land that all have grass (two also have trees) and are all on steep parts of First Hill. Two are separated by 6th Ave; the western of those is separated from one to its northwest by a private office building. I don't know who owns the land. The easternmost part has signs barring camping from the City of Seattle, but the Goat Hill Parking Garage east of the northernmost is entirely for King County employees. Anyway, I'm pretty sure none of these three is privately owned.
The northernmost, northeast (actually north) from 5th Ave & Terrace St, was on my list as a separate destination, because OpenStreetMap puts a "Goat Hill P-Patch" there. It certainly isn't an official Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch (and King County runs none, any more than any parks, within Seattle city limits), but it certainly is some sort of P-Patch. Look:
They've got raised beds, and a lockbox, and a hose, and a shelter (that blue thing).
The other two are ones I remember walking past many times to get to various downtown destinations. This one, west (southwest) of 6th Ave between Yesler and that garage, is largely trees:
I found evidence that someone had recently been swept from there (a pile of trash that included packaging for a mattress), which means that for whatever reason - because it's not an official park, because they've become too busy, or because they've gotten lazy - the current sweepers didn't leave this place as clean as I've seen them leave parks earlier this year.
The easternmost parcel, east (northeast) of 6th Ave, is grassier:
That's where I found the no-camping signs.
There are gravelled trails through each parcel, and connecting the two that are west of 6th Ave. So I have at least that much justification for treating them as parks here - someone has put at least some money into their parkishness - besides the obvious fact that they offer trees and grass just a couple of blocks from City Hall Park as was.
I considered putting them into southeast - that easternmost one is across the street from the trail to Kobe Terrace - but they were the only thing I'd have had to add to that set, so it made more sense to group them with this one, about as close.
Well, all for now, dear Diary. Good night, and good days until we meet again, which should be soon after I get to Central Library.
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