The Sunset Neighborhood Park Master Plan continues to take shape with each passing community meeting.
Project team representatives and community members convened for another check-in June 18 at McKnight Middle School to see how feedback from the previous meeting has been incorporated into the master plan design.
“We took all that into consideration and came up with the ‘Preferred Bubble Concept,'” said Colie Hough-Beck, of HBB, the landscape architect.
The Preferred Bubble Concept represents a combination of all the ideas that were presented in the last master plan meeting May 1. Most of the 28 people in attendance seemed to find one concept of the three presented for the look of the park that they liked for the Preferred Bubble Concept.The city has called those different looks the “Village Green,” “Vista Place” and “Water Commons.”
The city presented the schematic designs for those three different looks and image example boards of the components that would make up the overall concept. The “Village Green” concept has a nine-foot grade change, with portals and pathways all around the park. It has a boulder channel water feature and playgrounds for ages two to five and five to 12. There is also a plaza that coordinates with the library entrance to the park.
The “Vista Place” has a more formal geometric shape than the other designs, although a similar layout. This concept features a larger surface area water feature. All the playground equipment is clustered in the same area and the lawn has gentle slopes. In the plaza next to the library, there are seat-walls.
The last concept, “Water Commons,” is a blend of the two previous designs. The portals or pathways now function in a semi circular fashion. The space lends itself to a pergola around the central plaza. The water feature spills over a wall and their are pathways through the rain gardens.
“I find it very interesting and I like the Village Green,” said Stewart Shusterman, Renton School District representative.
He found it easy to make comments on the drawings, but more helpful to view the image examples attached to each concept. With Highlands Elementary around the corner and Meadow Crest Early Learning Center up the road, Shusterman said the district is a big part of this development.
“I don’t have kids, so I don’t know if it’s badly needed,” said Sheridan Botts, who lives in the area. “There isn’t really a good natural green space like a play field. So, I’m looking forward to having the water features and the trees. And I’m really looking forward to the new library location.”
The construction for the library is to start sometime this summer. There are components that did not make it into the design like the activity teen courts. Renton Housing Authority’s Kaelene Nobis understands why some components didn’t make it and thinks the project team did a good job of explaining why.
“I really like the ones that are a little more flowey and less geometrical,” she said of the designs. “But I think that they took a lot of what everyone wanted that they could put into it, into it.”
City of Renton project lead Leslie Betlach was excited to see more people out for this meeting than the previous one in May. There is still no budget for the project, as the city identifies grants and other funding sources. The next step is for the project team to distill all the information into a draft master plan, which the public will get to comment on Sept. 23 at another community meeting.
“Right now we don’t want to limit ourselves; we’re trying to define what components the public desires in the park and where they would like to have them located and the size and configuration,” said Betlach about a budget for the project. “So we don’t want to constrain this part of the process with a number.”
