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Keep Loyal Heights Playfield Alive - Neighbors for Natural Spaces in Ballard
| The Loyal Heights Difference |
Four Reasons That Converting Loyal Heights Playfield to an All-Synthetic Surface is a Bad Idea:
1. No other park in Seattle that is slated for conversion has the small dimensions of Loyal
Heights. There are no adjacent arterials, there is limited surrounding buffer, and the park is
small. Other parks that have or are getting synthetic turf (such as Genessee, Lower Woodlawn,
Interbay) are much bigger, and have synthetic turf as only a small component of the entire park.
The plan at Loyal Heights would cover most of the park.
2. Ballard already has the lowest amount of open space in the city except for downtown. Taking
three acres of what little open space we have left and covering them with plastic is wrong.
3. Loyal Heights Playfield has been a place for a unique blend of activities for 70 years. Athletes
and non-athletes alike have shared the field with good cheer and a spirit of community.
Plastering the whole park with plastic grass will change forever the versatile nature of the
park, and will say "get lost" to non-athlete users.
4. Removing the grass at Loyal Heights betrays the efforts of neighborhood children who went
door-to-door seventy years ago, collecting spare change to allow the neighborhood to create a
place where the kids and families could play.
1. No other park in Seattle that is slated for conversion has the small dimensions of Loyal
Heights. There are no adjacent arterials, there is limited surrounding buffer, and the park is
small. Other parks that have or are getting synthetic turf (such as Genessee, Lower Woodlawn,
Interbay) are much bigger, and have synthetic turf as only a small component of the entire park.
The plan at Loyal Heights would cover most of the park.
2. Ballard already has the lowest amount of open space in the city except for downtown. Taking
three acres of what little open space we have left and covering them with plastic is wrong.
3. Loyal Heights Playfield has been a place for a unique blend of activities for 70 years. Athletes
and non-athletes alike have shared the field with good cheer and a spirit of community.
Plastering the whole park with plastic grass will change forever the versatile nature of the
park, and will say "get lost" to non-athlete users.
4. Removing the grass at Loyal Heights betrays the efforts of neighborhood children who went
door-to-door seventy years ago, collecting spare change to allow the neighborhood to create a
place where the kids and families could play.
