John and Sarah Price walk along Alki Avenue Southwest, where a citywide review team has proposed spending $600,000 to extend the sidewalk on the water side of the street to Beach Drive Southwest, creating a safer pedestrian route around Alki Point.
Bill Russell, a condo resident on Alki Avenue Southwest, said a plan to extend a sidewalk there will take away parking and make the narrow roadway more difficult for motorists to navigate. He said parking is already such a problem in the neighborhood that he sometimes can’t find a spot within three blocks of his home.
About half of the new sidewalks will be built throughout northern neighborhoods of Seattle. Until the 1950s, most neighborhoods north of North 85th Street were part of King County, which unlike Seattle, didn’t require housing developers to build sidewalks.
After a decades-long push by some Seattle neighborhoods to get sidewalks, the city plans to install them in 11 tiny pockets — including Alki Point, where not everyone is convinced it’s the best idea.
The Alki Avenue Southwest project, which received the city’s second-largest grant among the 11, would connect a quarter-mile gap in the sidewalk between Alki Beach Park and Beach Drive Southwest, enabling in-line skaters, joggers and pedestrians to travel around the point.
Where the sidewalk disappears and a row of waterside homes begins, residents have long used part of the public right of way for parking, landscaping — even patios. And some are not keen on a sidewalk.
“It wouldn’t be a scenic sidewalk,” says Randy Myer, 50, whose rockery would be torn up by the project. “Can’t we find a better use for that money?”
But others argue that filling in the gap would provide a much safer connection to Alki Beach Park.
“The west side of the street is not too conducive to the operation of wheelchairs,” says Don Greengo, 79, who likes to take his quadriplegic daughter to the park. They have to cross the street twice to get there.
Terry Williams, a West Seattle resident and member of the review team that picked the sidewalk projects, said the Alki Avenue Southwest proposal addresses a huge safety problem for those who walk, jog and bike in the neighborhood. Many people avoid the sidewalk on the other side of the street, he said, and walk around cars in the street.
Across town in the Greenwood neighborhood, residents are so determined to get walkways they’ve formed an activist group that envisions turning the neighborhood into a test site for sidewalks varying in design, cost and attractiveness. Their project received $610,000, the city’s biggest grant, which will provide a sidewalk between the local Boys & Girls Club and Greenwood Park.
This month’s announcement of $6 million in spending for large street-fund projects allots a record amount for sidewalks — but falls far short of the $250 million to $300 million worth of projects submitted by neighborhoods.
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