Community Planning + Placemaking

Leadership at the Pike-Pine Urban Neighborhood Council (P-PUNC) recognized they had a rare opportunity to solve the most severe urban environmental problem facing the neighborhood: healing the open wound caused by Interstate 5, which runs between the Pike-Pine neighborhood and Seattle’s downtown. The Washington State Convention Center announced plans to acquire and redevelop a six-acre hole in the ground and thereby enliven the property just across the freeway from Pike-Pine. Plans for the convention center addition provided an opportunity to draw attention from decision-makers, the media and the public to the idea of lidding I-5.

The neighborhood activists brought in Catalyst to help produce and implement a plan that would create a vision for future uses of the new land that could be constructed over the freeway and to set the public debate about how the program could be implemented. Catalyst worked to produce visioning workshops, educational forums and media opportunities. All of which worked to turn what was once considered an innovative idea into growing expectation that has support from several elected officials and members of the media.