The path to building a park in the City of Seattle takes years and years and thousands and thousands of dollars. So, CHS got a little excited when we saw work underway at the corner of 19th Ave and Madison. The excitement was a little premature. Cayton Corner will be a nicer open space this summer with a safer, less trip-y sidewalk but the money needed to complete the full vision for the park is still an open question.

Things are moving forward slowly in the meantime. “The new sidewalk is part of the park construction,” a Friends of Cayton Corner representative tells CHS:

The Friends of Cayton Corner Park applied for a Street and Parks grant a couple years ago, as the sidewalk was being uprooted by the maple tree. Since we are in a neighborhood with a couple senior retirement communities , a couple private schools, and people with mobility issues visiting nonprofit organizations nearby, not to forget families going out for a walk with strollers, it was imperative that the sidewalk be safe. The first step was to remove the old sidewalk and put in the temporary asphalt Now with the progress of the park design SDOT is putting in the permanent side walk to accommodate the park plan and save the maple tree.

Susie Revels Cayton, daughter to the first U.S. Senator of African descent, arrived in Seattle in 1896 and is remembered as a a writer, newspaper editor and leader in Seattle’s black community.

The bigger mission is to raise the $225,000 or more required to construct a new park on the 4,500 square foot plot of land directly across the street from the Mount Zion Baptist Church and snuggling up against the Hearing Speech and Deafness Center. Early plans for the design included a sensory garden, ADA accessible pathways, and an embankment slide. The land was purchased by Seattle Parks and Recreation in 2011. In 2015, CHS reported on hopes that funding through grants and giving would be in place to have the park built by 2017. The park was named in 2013 to honor an important African American Seattle newspaper publisher.

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Funding challenges for full-blown city parks are nothing new. Challenges over construction funding were part of the reason it took five years to begin work to create Broadway Hill Park near Federal and Republican off north Broadway. That project was finally completed in the summer of 2016, some six years after the city acquired the land at Federal and Republican. We called Broadway Hill Park the last of its kind on Capitol Hill. Cayton Corner Park may eventually prove us wrong but, in the meantime, the City of Seattle has changed its open space strategy toward simpler, cheaper solutions like pavement parks and so-called streateries.

The Friends group says it is renewing its push to find funding “but progress has been slow.” A foundation has reportedly expressed some interest in being part of the project and the group says it plans to apply for a Department of Neighborhoods grant in June. The Seattle Foundation’s Give Big drive also comes up soon and the Cayton Corner group is hoping for a boost — any money you donate during the drive to the Seattle Parks Foundation make sure to designate toward Cayton Corner Park, they ask.

Even if there is a rapid change in success on the grant and giving front, it’s unlikely that the designs for Cayton Corner Park will be fully realized this summer or maybe even next. The Friends group is still planning to put the space to use as a community place to hangout and with a few, hopefully sunny, events.