NORTH SEATAC PARK
200-Acre Urban Oasis: Forest, Creeks, Wetlands, a Lake, a Bog
& Unique Recreational Treasures
We Stood Up & We Won
In May - August of 2021, over 2,400 people, including elected officials of the City of SeaTac, King County, and multiple other local cities, signed a petition calling on the Port of Seattle to drop plans to destroy 11 acres of trees and mountain bike trails in North SeaTac Park for an airport parking lot. In August, the Port announced that it had done just that. Congratulations and thanks to our community!
But Our Park and Community are Not Safe Yet
Port officials have given welcome reassurance* that there will be no development inside the park as part of its Sustainable Airport Master Plan (SAMP). But threats remain:
The Port of Seattle, which owns most of the park’s 200 acres, can take over 55 acres of its forest “at any time”. This land is zoned Aviation Commercial - not as a park.
Remaining SAMP proposals in the “highly impacted” neighborhoods surrounding the park would destroy acres of trees.
The Port has identified dozens of additional acres of now-forested land within and all around the park as potential sites for warehouses and other structures as part of its 2016 Real Estate Strategic Plan.
Non-native weeds dominate large areas of the forest in and around the park. Trees are being lost. Help is needed.
These Challenges Can Be Met
If our community keeps standing up for the park and the right of people living around it to keep their life-saving trees we can save the park and likely, some of the acres of trees targeted for destruction all around it. A key step would be to create a Friends of North SeaTac Park group. There currently is no such group.
Among recent positive developments that need community power to support them:
The Port will conduct an inventory of the ecological and recreational resources of the park’s 55 at-risk acres.
Three Port Commissioners, President Felleman and Commissioners Bowman and Steinbrueck, have visited the park and have acted to protect it.
SeaTac officials are considering a proposal by Deputy Mayor Kwon to purchase the land the park is on to create “a park in perpetuity.”
Forterra NW is training new Forest Stewards to work in this and other airport community parks. Register for the upcoming orientation HERE.
Can you help? Subscribe below to get updates on specific actions you can take. And check out this site’s Action page.
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Email updates are sent approximately once-monthly. Read a recent newsletter HERE. Upcoming topics: formation of a Friends group for North SeaTac Park, forest restoration events, updates on Port or other agency actions likely to affect the park and surrounding communities. Add info@KCTreeEquity.org to your email address book to keep updates out of your spam folder.
*In a 9/28/21 phone conversation, Clare Gallagher, Port of Seattle’s Public Affairs Director for Capital Project Delivery and Mike Merritt, Senior Policy Advisor for the Port, assured the petition organizer, Noemie Maxwell, that there will be no SAMP-related development in North SeaTac Park.
Email: info@KCTreeEquity.org
© 2021
