by Laura Lee Pritt
Preserving our family photos. Preserving the salmon runs. Preserving an old building or house. Preserving our heritage. Preservation is such an important part of
society and of our lives and yet as individuals we give it very little thought. I know I am guilty. I always meant to ask my grandmother, who
lived well into my adulthood, long enough for me to inquire, all about our
family history. The details are lost
now. I have had the wonderful
experience, however, of preserving the 100-year-old house that I live in, a
tear down in many people’s eyes, and get many comments from others about how
much they like it. Preserving it was
well worth it.
Some good
examples of how preservation enhances our lives are right here in our Kirkland
neighborhoods. For example, the
Kirkland Heritage Society has preserved the old Christian Science Church. What a nice addition to the city it will be
once it’s open and the landscaping gets put in. The City of Kirkland continues to buy property for parks when it
can, to preserve our open green space, and what a beautiful city we have
because of it. I am not trying to lead
you down the path of thinking that new things and change aren’t good, I am
trying to point out a balance. A
balance between preservation and progress leads to a city with a very livable
and interesting environment. New York
City is an example of a good mix of preservation and progress and that is part
of what makes it one of our nations most interesting cities. The City of Seattle has this same kind of
interesting balance; there are
wonderful new restaurants, museums and entertainment facilities yet the charm
of the city is preserved in the areas of the old that we all love to walk
through like Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. Did you know that Pike Place market was almost torn down for a
major redevelopment project? The
neighbors stepped in and got the city to save it.
I see Kirkland struggling to preserve some of
the things that make it such a livable city.
We are tearing down old, fixable houses and building bigger ones and/or
multi family projects that crowd our open spaces and take away our beautiful
greenery. We are loosing our population
diversity by allowing the market to drive housing prices up instead of
encouraging varied and alternative housing projects. (And like I said in a
previous article, people are what make neighborhoods wonderful places to
live!). We pride our selves on
preserving our pedestrian oriented downtown yet more and more traffic continues
to funnel through it. Take down some
more trees, widen a few streets, and add a few more large condo projects and
Kirkland will be getting pretty close to the cold, uninteresting feeling of
downtown Bellevue (sorry Bellevue).
So let’s think about what it is we really love about this city and living here. The City of Kirkland is always giving us the opportunity to voice or opinions about what is going on around town, which is the perfect opportunity to let them know what we do want and don’t want to happen to our city. If we don’t try to preserve what we have we now may lose what makes this an interesting city to live in, and Kirkland is too nice of place to live to let it turn into just another city on the eastside.
The votes have been counted
and a majority of the neighbors voted to have the traffic circle, at the
intersection of 7th Avenue South and 2nd Street South,
permanentely installed. The city is
working on the logistics now and it will be built later this summer. Hopefully this fall it will be beautifully
planted with a small tree, shrubs and flowers.
The neighbors east of State Street on 7th
Avenue South have some traffic issues on their end of the street with a bad
combination of industrial traffic and a school crossing. There are many trucks and even semi-trucks
that travel their narrow residential street even through it is not a truck
route in and out of the industrial area.
This street is near Lakeview Elementary School and children cross this
street to get to and from school. The
neighbors liked the idea of a traffic circle but it just wouldn’t fit on their
street with the configurations of the cross streets. Ellen McMahon, Traffic Control Coordinator at the City of
Kirkland and lead on this project, realized that the area where 4th
Street South intersects with 7th Avenue South was a designated
school crossing and suggested that a raised crosswalk be installed
instead. A letter was sent to all the
neighbors of the area to see if there were any objections. There were none, so later this month the
crosswalk will be installed. If you
have any questions please contact Ellen at the City of Kirkland, 828-2238.
Out next Moss Bay Neighborhood is August 8th, 7 to 8:45pm in the Kirkland Library meeting room. Check out our web site for any new news or updates about Kirkland topics: www.mossbay.org