02/28/02

Ravenna Creek Daylighting Project

Ravenna Creek will be reconnected physically in 2003 and
will again flow into Union Bay in northeast Seattle. The
creek will be daylighted to the south edge of Ravenna Park.
Elsewhere, the physical connection will occur via new or
existing pipes. Art is being commissioned to represent the
community's vision of a surface creek.

Peggy Gaynor, a local landscape architect, leads the design
team for the Parks Department. This team will design the
new section of creek. The design team will be part of the
workshops below, as will Mark Brest van Kempen, the
environmental artist chosen through the Seattle Arts
Commission. The design team and the artist are
enthusiastic, committed to the project and very capable.
The Creek is in good hands.

You are invited to a series of community workshops to help
define and choose options and opportunities for the creek
in the park and for the art that will memorialize the
daylighting vision.

March 14 is the date for the first of these meetings, at
6:30 pm at Roosevelt High School, 1410 NE 66th Street. It
will focus on problem-solving and identification of
opportunities. The other workshops are also on Thursday
evenings, same time and place: April 18 and May 16. At
the second, the design team will present conceptual
alternatives; at the third, in May, they will present the
preferred alternative.

The design phase is funded by the ProParks levy and these
workshops are organized by the Parks Department. King
County is funding construction of the daylighted creek
segment and the artwork(s) during its 2003 construction of
the new pipeline to carry the Creek to University Slough.

Additional information will be posted on the Ravenna Creek
Alliance website:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ravennacreek.
If you would like your name added [or subtracted] from
future email notices, please send a message to
ravennacreek@earthlink.net.

We look forward to seeing you at the workshops this spring.
Your input to the workshops is extremely valuable, to make
this project, although of reduced scope, the best it can
be.

Background Information - more is available from
http://home.earthlink.net/~ravennacreek/general.htm

Not so very long ago, Ravenna Creek ran from Green Lake
through the Ravenna ravine and into a wetland where
University Village is now. From there it flowed into Lake
Washington. Habitat for salmon and trout, the Creek
wandered through an old-growth forest as recently as the
1920s. The trees were so large then that sight-seers paid a
quarter to come see them. Ravenna Creek was culverted,
diverted, and finally disconnected in order to accommodate
new development. The stream was channeled into a grate at
the south end of Ravenna Park, where it has been sent
underground to the sewage treatment plant; it is not
cost-effective to pump and treat the clean spring waters of
the creek.

Ravenna Creek Alliance, a community group based in
northeast Seattle, is incorporated as a tax-exempt
nonprofit organization. One of its goals is to reconnect
Ravenna Creek to its former receiving waters in Union Bay.

Kit O'Neill
President, Ravenna Creek Alliance