Bell Street Park

Project Title: Bell Street Park
Landscape Architect: MIG|SvR
Category: Category I - General Design over $500,000 Construction Budget
Location: Seattle, WA
Description: Bell Street Park is a hybrid of park spirit and street function. When rising land values made acquiring sufficient parkland difficult in the Belltown neighborhood, community leaders and City officials turned to the public right-of-way to address open space needs. This project broke new ground: necessitating City departments to work together to own, build, and maintain the streetscape in an innovative and overtly collaborative way. Bell Street Park now offers an outdoor living room for park experiences; strolling, gathering, perching, playing and eating, while retaining its mobility function for pedestrians, cars, bikes, buses and emergency vehicles. Built in a rapidly densifying area, this project has paved the way for a new type of urban open space. Equally important, it warranted new models for funding and managing projects with diverse programmatic needs by establishing policies and procedures that did not previously exist. The design and permitting process lasted from 2009 to 2013, proving that change is not easy. With a budget of approximately $3 million, construction began in March 2013 and was completed in March 2014.

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