Stroll into Four Columns Park and you'll enjoy a pretty nice view of the Space Needle. Odds are pretty good that you'll have the park all to yourself, as very few people ever venture into the 0.2 acre park at the corner of Pike and Boren. But don't expect your time in Four Columns Park to be at all pleasant. Sitting at the corner of a busy intersection, Four Columns Park overlooks eight roaring lanes of I-5 traffic. There isn't a less pleasant 0.2 acres in the entire city of Seattle.
Jill Janow, the chair of the Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council, describes Four Columns Park as a "tiny open space with a view we can all enjoy," and she's fighting hard to preserve the view from the park. Bentall Corporation, a real-estate development company, wants to build three mixed-use towers over the one-square-block open trench that serves as the north entrance to the Downtown Bus Tunnel. The proposed project would block the view of the Space Needle from Four Columns Park, and this has Janow hopping mad.
But is a view a view if no one ever views it? And is a view that no one ever views worth preserving? The photo at right shows the only "view" of Four Columns Park that most people ever see--a drive-by view. Despite the fact that Four Columns Park is located on the edge of Seattle's most densely populated neighborhood, it is almost always empty, and the only way to really see the Space Needle--the view Janow wants to save--is by entering the park.
"Well, you know there are a lot of homeless people who really enjoy it," says Janow, when asked if anyone ever actually uses Four Columns Park. "And a lot of people walk by it."
"I've stood in that park several times to understand this issue," says Gary Carpenter, executive vice-president of U.S. operations, Bentall Corporation. "It's not a pleasant experience. The sound of the freeway; the cars on Pike and Boren. It's not what I would call a place of reflection."
The project Car-penter's company wants to build would include three towers (one with roughly 25 units of low-income housing), office space, and street-level retail. Not only is the project compatible with a neighborhood plan drawn up by residents and merchants in the Denny Triangle area, it also includes a public park more than twice the size of Four Columns Park.
Janow's attempt to rally the neighborhood to the defense of Four Columns Park is misguided. "Four Columns Park, despite its current appearance, is an important park," Janow asserts. "It can be an attraction [that brings] visitors up the hill." But Four Columns Park currently boasts a view of the Space Needle, and the park is empty. Sacrificing the view from Four Columns Park--a dirty, empty, depressing scrap of land hanging over I-5--for more housing at the bottom of Capitol Hill is a move that Pike/Pine residents, merchants, and activists should support.
Visitors aren't attracted to Capitol Hill for its views; they certainly don't come to Capitol Hill to hang out in tiny parks overlooking freeways. People come to Capitol Hill for its shops, clubs, theaters, restaurants, and vibrant street life. More housing in the Denny Triangle will mean more people making their way up to the attractions that actually draw people up to Capitol Hill, which can only be good news for the Pike/Pine neighborhood.
