Status report: Friends of Sunset Park and Boeing Creek Open Space

From the Friends of Sunset Park

Summary report completed: Pomegranate completed a beautiful summary report on our community visioning process, which you can view if you click the link above. It’s an impressive testament to all of the great work we accomplished together! The summary report will be presented for approval to the Shoreline School Board at their July 19 meeting and to Shoreline City Council on July 26.

RCO grant application submitted: The City of Shoreline successfully submitted a grant application by the July 9 deadline to the state Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO) for funding to support the implementation of our plan for the Boeing Creek Open Space. Our sincere thanks go to the dedicated Shoreline city staff, especially Maureen Colaizzi and Bethany Wolbrecht-Dunn, along with JGM Architects, for the many long hours that they put in to meet that very tight deadline. The RCO will announce their grant awards at the end of October. You can read more about the RCO decision-making process on our "fundraising" page.

Other funding opportunities: FoSP continues to work with the City of Shoreline and the Shoreline School District to identify and pursue additional funding opportunities to implement our community vision over time. After taking a closer look at the fine print of the RCO funding requirements, the City of Shoreline determined that the Sunset Park portion of the project was not a good match for an RCO grant. (You can learn more about that decision at our webpage.) The City and the School District will be updating their formal Joint Use Agreement this fall to include the Sunset site, which will allow the City to begin seeking out and pursuing other promising funding opportunities for that project.

Early success project: FoSP is working on identifying and organizing an “early success project” to engage our community, sooner rather than later, in a concrete step toward making our vision a reality. In May we organized a first Ivy Out party: though it was intended to take place at the Boeing Creek Open Space, a little bureaucratic policy glitch caused us to move the effort to Boeing Creek Park at the last minute. Still, a great group of about 10 hard-working volunteers showed up and managed to obliterate a great deal of ivy. Many thanks to all who helped with that. (And our sincere apologies to anyone who showed up at the Open Space but couldn’t find us after we moved.) We will keep you posted as we continue our efforts to get another early success project moving forward--and this time at one of our actual project sites.