Going with the flow

By JULIET VONG
Hough Beck & Baird

A West Seattle neighborhood is looking way down stream at ways to recapture and preserve urban creeks as living ecosystems. With help from the city of Seattle and a dedicated design team, a rediscovered Longfellow Creek will be ready to showcase on the first Earth Day of the new millennium.

Imagine what we can do together is the theme for the Seattle Millennium Project. Community events and capital projects are grouped under Legacy, Celebration and Volunteerism. Mayor Paul Schell sends a strong environmental message for the Puget Sound region in determining that the legacy for the next century is Light, Water and Woods.

Photo taken of Venema Creek by Doug Sovern.

The Longfellow Creek project joins the Urban Creeks Legacy with an extensive long and short-term program for enhancing habitat, reducing erosion, and improving the overall quality of the creek environment. It supports the legacy goals by creating a sustainable system to enhance fish and other wildlife habitat throughout the corridor, improving public access to the creek, and developing a long-term monitoring program to maintain community involvement and stewardship of the creek environment.

The first step in implementing the Longfellow Creek project involves the Yancy Site, off 28th Avenue Southwest between Southwest Andover and Genesee Streets. Hough Beck & Baird Inc. was selected as part of a design team that also includes URS Greiner Woodward Clyde and Gaia Northwest, to work with Seattle Public Utilities and the Seattle Parks Department in developing the Yancy Site. Artist Lorna Jordan was brought into the team to introduce design-integrated environmental art to the project and help create an overall environmental and educational experience to launch Seattle into the new millennium. As one of the premier Millennium Projects, it is slated for ribbon-cutting on Earth Day 2000.

Conceptual design drawings are based on a site analysis to develop public access, education and habitat enhancement at the site.

Native vegetation will be preserved and enhanced whenever possible - both adjacent to the creek and within the watershed - thereby increasing year-round water quality and wildlife habitat value. Multiple in-stream features are also proposed to improve fish passage opportunities and water quality in the stream bed. Other design considerations include controlling access to the creek, public safety, using recycled materials and involving the community in ongoing stewardship of the Longfellow Creek and watershed environments.

Comments from the recently completed Delridge Neighborhood Plan and extensive public involvement were considered during the design process. The design team also focused on existing trails and access points created by the community. Special nodes are proposed where art, education, and environment would merge to create places for people to experience and better understand the creeks natural system. Fish habitat areas, promenades, overlooks, and educational signage/demonstration areas will be situated to allow people to discover the creeks environment while protecting the habitat and controlling erosion along the creek banks.

A number of educational workshops were presented by Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle Parks, and Hough Beck & Baird to help foster a greater understanding and awareness of this backyard resource and to plant the seed for the future protection and stewardship for Longfellow Creek. The workshops focused on using native plants in the landscape, controlling access to reduce erosion along the creeks edge. Understanding the overall storm drainage system and how it affects the creeks natural immune system is part of the project will help to determine how local residents adjacent to the creek and within the watershed can work together to create a more healthy creek environment.

Further design development and construction of the Yancy Site is scheduled to begin this spring.

---

djc home | top | special issues index