6/30/11 Park Boulevard on 14^th Ave NW Steering Committee Meeting Notes
Attendees: Dawn Hemminger, Shannon Dunn, Peter Locke, Steph Shelton, Zack Thomas, Lori Twietmeyer

Topics:

1. The Rumor Mill – There were rumors floating around that the Parks Dept might be looking to bring in a Civil Engineer as the lead instead of a Landscape Architect lead for this project. Our committee agreed that we were prefer a landscape architect lead, because if a civil was in the lead, the dynamics would be different and the focus could end up being more transportation focused and less park focused. UPDATE: After talking with Pam, Chip and Donald Harris the following week, it looks like Parks is back on track with a Landscape Architect Lead. Rumors were true, but we got our way in the end.
2. Friday July 1 meeting with Paul Feussel at KPG – Zack found out that Patrick Donahue at Parks who is leading the Bell Street Boulevard project had notified Paul of this project and suggested he contact us. KPG had been a competitor for the Bell Street Project but SVr got it in the end. Dawn, Shannon, Peter, Zack and Lori agreed to meet with Paul at Blowing Sands.
3. EBCA Website – Homework – Sarah Durkee has been working with us to put together a website framework. We need to work on tab names and content for the Park Blvd page. Remember that we need to maintain the site so don’t want to move stuff around a lot after it’s in place. Priorities for the site include Front page and park blvd. We need a tagline.
4. Logo – Lori presented her latest rendition of the EBCA logo. We all love it! We talked about possibly dropping the line of the circle between the stems on the left. In the green version, we’d like the dot between the text to be black, not green.
5. Feedback from the Jimi Hendrix Park community meeting – Shannon and Lori attended this meeting to get a feel for how the Parks-run community meetings for park design are organized. Shannon observed that for one thing, the promotional buttons they were giving away were so incredibly tiny that you’d have no idea what they’re advertising unless you’re 2 inches away. There were about 20 people in attendance, plus parks people and the landscape architect firm (Murase). Parking was an issue brought up at the meeting. When we have our meetings, we need to have literature handed out that directly addresses parking. We need to have signage as well. Murase did not handle the meeting very well, in Lori and Shannon’s opinion. The AV set up was clunky and Scott Murase was not a very strong presenter or salesman. He did not present the pros and cons. We need to make sure our handout literature presents the pros and cons well. The meeting did not cover how the park would be used, it concentrated more on the design. This may be because this was the 2^nd meeting, but they need to take into consideration that this is possibly the first time for several people in attendance.
6. Summary of the Ballard Greenways meeting – Steph and Dawn attended this meeting on June 23^rd as representatives of 14^th Ave. Our takeaway is that the goal of the Ballard Greenways group is to designate safe routes east-west and north-south that get you through Ballard by bicycle or foot. The group’s example is that they want Colin’s mom to feel comfortable riding her bike to downtown Ballard. There are representatives on this committee from a landscape architect firm, WashDOT, Friends of Burke Gilman Trail, parents of small kids, adults with older parents, Bike share proponent and so on, so it was a pretty good mix. The group is still trying to figure out it’s goals, designate a name and get a presence on the web via Facebook. I think it’ll be worthwhile to have a representative continue to attend future meetings.
7. August Night Out – Since we were running out of time, we scheduled a separate meeting at Peter’s house on Thursday July 7.
   Next Meeting: Wednesday July 17th 7PM at Steph’s Home.
   contact Dawn Hemminger at eastballard@gmail.com or 206-953-3940 if you’re interested in attending.