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Troll's Knoll Project Funded Print E-mail

The Troll's Knoll Project has been FUNDED and awarded $685,000 from the Seattle Parks and Green Spaces Levy Opportunity Fund!!!!  The Seattle City Council unanimously passed the Opportunity fund final list on March 10th.  See the video at the "Parks and Seattle Center Committee 3/10/2011" link under videos on the left of the page. The committee addresses the opportunity fund around minute 50 and passes the recommended projects list around minute 65.

http://www.seattle.gov/council/

http://www.seattle.gov/parks/levy/opportunity.htm

This project entailed endless hours of community meetings and coordination with our neighbors.  We were pleased to find out that the project proposal was uncannily similar to original project designs from 20 years ago when the Troll was first introduced.  More details on the Parks Levy proposal, the original 20 year old project designs and much more at our facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trolls-Knoll/305200590574

Just as a reminder, the proposal does not change the Troll itself but rather keeps the same atmosphere but improves the areas around the Troll including the ~2 acres of green space on each side of the Troll and to fix some of the erosion problems directly adjacent to the Troll.

The City of Seattle will be implementing the project.  A project manager will be assigned and they anticipate the planning and design to begin in 2012, with construction in 2013.   The Friends of the Troll's Knoll and any other interested community members will morph into an informal "Project Advisory Team" (PAT) as Parks moves forward in the design process. What that means is that the project manager will probably meet monthly with the PAT to discuss public meeting formats and outreach, consultant selection up-dates and general design input. There will be at least 2 large public meetings to discuss the conceptual and schematic designs which the PAT will be integrally involved with.   We've been told that the city works hard to honor the original project designs and proposals.

Regarding budgeting issues:  Seattle City Council is proposing to use some of the next round(s) of opportunity funds to assist with capital and maintenance costs for existing park sites but this first round has been fully awarded.

A few other important things to note:

  • WSDOT will be working on an Aurora Bridge seismic retrofit project this summer.  This will entail working on primarily the columns but they will also be looking into drainage off of the bridge.  We've let them know about the erosion issues around the Troll and they've said they would address these issues as part of this project.  If anyone has photos of the pre-Troll-o-ween clean-up:  the erosion problems as well as the water coming out of the rusted pipes... please send to me and I'll forward them on to WSDOT.   WSDOT has been very supportive of this project and has worked with us wonderfully including replacing trees after the wake of the contractors for the ‘safety barrier' fence and with a variety of other issues.
  • Trees slated for removal on the east side??  YES... there are cottonwood trees (many of them) on the east side of the Troll that apparently have shallow root systems, are not native and are at risk of falling down if they get too tall or winds too strong.  Well, according to Seattle City Light, many of them are in contact with primary distribution lines, fuses and transformers and are slated for removal.  SDOT would normally go to bat to save any trees and just prune them but because these are cottonwoods, there is no chance.  Apparently a tree caught on fire briefly about a block away due to the close proximity to power lines.  We will need to address this with the parks levy money even though they were not budgeted but as a community, hopefully we can gather some donated trees or additional grant funding if necessary.
  • Please look forward to some SPRING CLEAN-UPS to get the Troll in ship shape for the amazing Seattle summer months.  Thank you so much to the Friends of the Troll's Knoll group for all your hard work, to Groundswell for being our fiscal sponsor for other grants we've received, to the Fremont Arts Council for working with us so closely as well as the Fremont Neighborhood Council, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce and the Fremont Rotary for your continued engagement and support.  We look forward to seeing you all in future ‘Project Advisory Team' meetings with the city.