 |
City of Seattle
Gregory J. Nickels, Mayor
|
NEWS ADVISORY
|
| SUBJECT: Seattle to Preserve Popular Hillman City P-Patch
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
8/4/2006 9:00:00 AM |
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Alex Fryer (206) 684-8358
Hazel Bhang Barnett (206) 615-0885
|
Seattle to Preserve Popular Hillman City P-Patch
Under the Mayor’s proposal, city will buy property
to protect popular Southeast Seattle garden
SEATTLE - Mayor Greg Nickels has sent legislation to the City Council that
preserves the Hillman City P-Patch, a popular Southeast Seattle gathering place
facing the prospect of losing much of its land.
Saving the P-Patch is one item on the Mayor’s Southeast Seattle Action
Agenda, which aims to bring additional investment to the Rainier Valley for
housing, jobs, education, arts and parks.
“P-Patches bring communities together in ways big and small, and that
has been especially true in Hillman City,” Nickels said. “This
land, which could have been a parking lot, has become a place where people
of different backgrounds and different generations find they all share a green
thumb. That is something special worth preserving.”
The city has leased much of the P-Patch property from the Findlay Street Christian
Church since the mid-1990s. Plans by the church to sell its property and relocate
spurred the community to action.
The city is now able to buy the P-Patch land thanks to neighborhood fund raising,
a contribution from the nonprofit P-Patch Trust, and a commitment from the
church to give back to the low-income and diverse population that surrounded
it.
“We are so grateful to the Findlay Street Christian Church for its generosity
and the city of Seattle for its amazing help (among other wonderful donors).
It’s initiatives such as these that will keep Seattle livable,” said
Meg Richman, a neighbor long involved in the P-Patch.
Under the proposal, the city would spend $240,000 to help purchase the property.
The P-Patch Trust will contribute $160,000 to complete the sale. Money for
the purchase has already been included in the city’s budget.
P-Patch gardeners and the church have enjoyed many good years together; the
P-Patch at one point gave some of its space so that a preschool housed in the
church could have a play area.
While the church could have bundled the building and P-Patch property into
an attractive parcel for developers, the congregation decided that saving the
P-Patch was more important. In order to meet the $400,000 asking price, the
community held local fundraisers, the P-Patch Trust wrote several grants, and
the city incorporated funding into its Southeast Seattle Action Agenda. Now
a neighborhood with very little community open space will have one more area
preserved.
Yao Fou Hinh Chao, who works closely with many of the Southeast Asian families
that garden in the Hillman City P-Patch, was excited about the news.
“The Southeast Asian gardeners love the Hillman City P-Patch, and are
very happy to keep gardening,” he said. “Hillman City is very convenient
for low-income people, because it is only one bus ride to get there.”
Get the mayor’s inside view on initiatives to promote transportation,
public safety, economic opportunity and healthy communities by signing up for
The Nickels Newsletter at www.seattle.gov/mayor/newsletter_signup.htm.
- 30 -
Office of the Mayor
| 
