Memorial Park Benches

Recently a controversy erupted in the Carleton Park neighborhood, near 37th Avenue W. and W. McGraw, over the siting of park benches on a median that is maintained by the City’s Parks Department (see Magnolia News article). As part of the Parks Department’s memorial benches program, where donors pay to have a park bench installed at a City park, three benches were in the process of being installed on a median in the neighborhood, with little thought given to the implications for the neighbors, much less to the suitability of the site for such an installation.

The Friends of Ursula Judkins Viewpoint/Smith Cove stepped in to offer a solution—they have two parks that they are stewards of—why not locate the benches at one of “their” parks? That offer was considered, but Parks has decided to go ahead anyway and put two of the benches in at the “island in the crossroads” location. However, at the same time the Friends of UJV/Smith Cove is on the radar of the Seattle Parks Foundation, and the Parks Department so that when future requests for a park bench site come up, the two parks that the Friends oversees, Ursula Judkins Viewpoint and Lower Smith Cove Park, will be considered as possible sites to locate the benches.

As a follow-up, the Magnolia Neighborhood Planning Council’s chair, Elizabeth Campbell, sent a letter to Parks Department director Ken Bounds about the process that led to the controversy. The letter pointed out that the better course of action in this matter (and in the future) would have been to work with the Carleton Park neighborhood to put establish a plan and vision for the area in question. The sentiments of the letter were subsequently printed in the Magnolia News recently.

The median location for the park benches.

Picture published in Magnolia News; taken by Russ Zabel