Oct 29, 2008

Playfield resurfacing. Idea #2: off street parking

(Something to consider at the November 5th Miller Playfield resurfacing meeting)

This proposal is contingent upon: 2) Signage and team/player outreach to encourage parking in the lower Meany/Miller parking lot.

The lower Miller parking lot (between the school and the Community Center) is owned by Parks, but is traditionally used by Meany School during the day (Seattle does not require its schools to provide parking: we're very lucky). During the evenings and weekends, the 50 space parking lot is typically almost empty (2 or 3 cars at most) while the players' cars spill out all over the neighborhood. During summer Little League games (2 fields, no change-over time) traffic can get very difficult. I've got years of photos to prove this.

Increased density (townhouses) in the area south of the playfield is also making more demands on neighborhood parking.

Players do park in the upper lot at Miller, but that can compete with some of the less mobile user groups at Miller (seniors, kids, developmentally challenged).

Suggestion:

Parks should strongly encourage ball teams to use the lower parking lot when the renovated field reopens. A few obvious strategies:
  • Install signs to direct players to the lower parking lot, via 19th, Republican and 20th.
  • Require leagues to include this information on their websites
  • Require leagues to distribute maps to team members, showing directions to parking lot and indicating the less intrusive on-street parking locations. A couple of prototype maps are shown below.





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