In late May, Seattle’s Mayor Greg Nickels unveiled a new idea for Bell Street between 1st and 5th Avenue, the idea for a transformation into an urban park boulevard. While the street currently carries the city’s green street designation, it isn’t much of a green street at all as it is under landscaped and doesn’t carry a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere. But this proposal would seek to not only move towards a more true complete green street, but to create a much more grand gesture in Seattle’s densest neighborhood that currently has a severe shortage of green space.

The proposal would mean that Bell Street would lose one travel lane and one lane of on-street parking in exchange for the much larger 26′ pedestrian space on the north side. While this would mean less parking for residents and businesses, the idea is that the trade off would be worth it in the stronger connection from the waterfront to the Belltown neighborhood, increased pedestrian activity that would help to discourage crime. And by trasferring the jurisdiction of the area to the Parks Department would allow for a much higher level of maintenance including a higher level of patrol and the ability to issue park exclusions from the Seattle Parks and Recreation’s urban park rangers and the West Precinct police officers.

Improvements to the area would include such things as new lighting for safe and well-lit sidewalks, more trees and natural vegetation, swales, vegetation in the right of way on the south side to collect and clean rainwater and larger areas for outdoor seating and cafe-style eating along with children’s play areas and perhaps even a plaza and space for a water feature. If approved, each block would be designed in close collaboration with the community this fall.

The most interesting and ingenious part about the proposal is that, according to the Seattle Times, “Work on the park boulevard could piggyback on a current City Light project to replace utilities beneath the street — which requires tearing up the sidewalk anyway, said Norm Schwab, legislative analyst for the city. He said the proposal is a creative, inexpensive way to put in a downtown park, where land costs can run $300 to $350 a square foot. Since the Bell Street section is already owned by the city, it wouldn’t have to pay for the land. Instead, about $150 a square foot would go solely to developing the park.”

The proposal for the new 17,000 square feet of urban park space would need to use $2.5 million from the $146 million Parks and Green Spaces Levy approved by voters in 2008 and be completed in 2010. The City Council is scheduled to vote on Monday regarding the decision to spend the money for the new park boulevard.

images via Seattle Post Globe