A gravel cut-through in Georgetown near Boeing Field will become a dog park and trail corridor, providing a key piece of the community-led Georgetown to South Park Trail. If all goes according to schedule, the park and trail connection should begin construction in the summer and open in 2023.
The City Council’s Transportation and Utilities Committee voted before the holiday break to transfer the former “flume” property from Seattle City Light to SDOT and the Parks Department. The long and skinny property once housed a conveyance that transported water from the Duwamish River to the Georgetown steam plant, but it has been essentially unused since that plant closed in 1975. As part of the deal, City Light will also pay for soil remediation.
The new park will lie at the middle point of the Georgetown to South Park Trail, planned to connect from near S Bailey Street and Ellis Ave S to the South Park Bridge. Routing the trail through the new park will require a couple extra turns, but it will likely be more pleasant than the moderately busy intersection of Ellis and E Marginal Way S. The project is the result of a community-led effort that brought together three different city agencies. That is no small feat. Kudos to Duwamish Valley Safe Streets, who have been working for years to make this trail and park a reality.
Comments
2 responses to “Key section of Georgetown to South Park Trail moving forward alongside a new dog park”
It might not seem like much, but this is going to have a huge impact on making the connection bike-friendly. Having the trail through the flume property means that people biking will no longer have to deal with traffic around the gas station at Ellis & Marginal.
Currently, people biking north have to deal with potential right hooks at the gas station entrance and at the intersection as the bike lane ends, and people biking south have to deal with a stoplight that doesn’t detect bikes and drivers that may turn wide, squeezing cyclists out of the hard to see bike lane.
While I don’t have to deal with this intersection on a daily basis anymore (I moved to Beacon Hill), this segment is a big improvement to making the area more accessible.
Southbound this will make the connection to 16th much safer. Currently the railroad tracks force a very wide and slow right turn which drivers do not understand.