We wanted to take the opportunity to ring in the New Year with an update on the progress of the Imagine Lake City Together project. As you may remember, Children’s Home Society of Washington, Lake City Future First and Lake City Neighborhood Alliance received a $100,000 Neighborhood Planning Grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. The grant supports the creation of a strategy that will help improve the quality of life for children and families in Seattle’s Lake City. We now call this project Imagine Lake City Together.

While Lake City has experienced a great deal of planning efforts in the past, many of us that are close to this project and past work believe that the Imagine Lake City Together project is particularly special. It has truly been the inclusive and robust effort that our community deserves and one that can produce the kind of plan that will not merely be shelved and forgotten about. The final product will include past planning efforts as well as the activities driven by this grant, with a plan to intentionally achieve the community’s priorities.

What’s happened so far?

• The Steering Committee, a diverse and representative group of community and civic leaders, local residents and business owners has met three times to offer their insights and expertise.  Many have also volunteered on our survey, focus groups and other efforts. We thank you for your support.
•   With the help of many of your neighbors and local organizations we are in the process of completing the resident satisfaction survey. We have received approximately 100 completed responses.
• Volunteers have worked hard to conduct a parcel analysis providing a visual assessment of our built environment of all the parcels both residential and commercial in the catchment areaidentified in the grant.
• We are in the midst of conducting several focus groups including businesses, youth and seniors with work being done to conduct groups with service providers and individuals experiencing homelessness from our community. If you would like to join a focus group, please call 206-387-4505 or email LakeCity@chs-wa.org.
• Two local residents who completed our resident satisfaction survey were chosen in a random drawing and received $100 gift cards. Investing in your community bears rewards!

We expect that preliminary reports from the Imagine Lake City Together project will soon be available. We will begin sharing with the community our emerging trends and results in the near future. 

Ann Fuller serves as the community manager for the North Seattle Family Resource Center in Lake City. Chris Leverson is the director of Lake City Future First.