POLL: Is there interest in contiuing with the City of Seattle/Vacant Lots project?

Comment

Comment by BC on August 20, 2010 at 9:25am

Greetings all. Checking in from Portland. I've been following your situation closely, as we too had been looking for a permanent locale. I've been working with Portland Parks & Rec and regarding decommissioned tennis courts (DCTs). While they are not ideal size (120x60), it works decent enough for 4 on 4. It is actually working nicely. Plus it is fenced in all around and the surface is real smooth. We share the court with the Bike Polo group here in town. Both groups have similar needs. Perhaps check with Seattle P&R to see if they have an inventory of DCTs. And if you use double tennis courts, you can always put up a border patrol on one side.

Comment by ML on August 19, 2010 at 3:54pm

Speaking of thread derailing, yes the purpose of this thread is to find out if anyone is interested in continuing with the Vacant Lot project. Lots of good ideas on here about options if we get a permanent home, but that's not what we're really looking for in this discussion. Although, we could take all the comments about permanent home options as negative interest for the Vacant Lot issue, so maybe its not so bad :)

Comment by hobvias sudoneighm on August 19, 2010 at 3:12pm

i'm pretty sure the city wouldn't like advertisements on parks land, but i don't think the money will be necessary if you pursue the matching grant. if the materials costs for the boards are 3000k, and the paving is 10k or less, that's 13k leaving 2k contingency on a 15k grant. very feasible.

used boards at 15k+ freight could work, though they would stretch a 15-20k DoN grant to its limit. that said, supplement the DoN grant with ~5k or more of donations to cover the pavement, and using used boards appears to be more plausible.

someone should probably contact the parks dept and see if there's any possibility that Judkins Park location could be used for this project. or another location. pretty important to figure out which locations are available [if any] before doing a lot of other planning.

if these tennis courts in the park could be repurposed or repaved, it would save a lot of money over paving a fresh area: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=judkins+park&ie=UTF8&hq=&...

looks like they are rather low quality tennis courts right now, and the parks dept might not mind a refurb and upgrade to a hockey/bike polo rink.

Comment by Katherine Cortes on August 19, 2010 at 3:00pm

The Small & Simple Grants require us all to have insurance and an agreement with a property owner. If someone wants to spearhead that, step forward, but insurance at least is likely to require a greater degree of pay-in and coordination than we have had thus far.

Comment by Bryan C. on August 19, 2010 at 2:18pm

http://www.rinkequipmentresource.com/equipment-for-sale.aspx

This company rep. is going to call me back to price these used dasher board systems. I recall seeing some ready to re-assemble for around 15K + freight (when I was doing the ball hockey board research). Many rinks go out of business or upgrade equipment. So they want to make $ on what ever they can. I think it's a matter of timing for a good deal though. I bet Seattle Center has some old ones they are not using ;).

Comment by Mark Burkart on August 19, 2010 at 11:31am

Perhaps derailing this thread but here's some thoughts on the actual construction.

Doing quick material estimates for just boards the cost of wood vs cement is roughly 2/3 ($2200 vs $3000 assuming $70/yd and Lowes Lumber prices). Of course the installation cost of cement would be higher and would of course imply 'permanent'. However the added quality benefits would far out weigh the difference. We could try to get a contractor to donate the labor in exchange for advertising, (on the boards maybe) or even sell that idea to other companies (Microsoft anyone?). Of course I'm not sure what the city would have to say about pimping out the project if we were using their land.

Comment by hobvias sudoneighm on August 19, 2010 at 10:09am

i think the 50-75k boards are well beyond the Small and Simple projects grant. there's a large grant, up to 100k, but i'm not familiar with that and i imagine it is very difficult to secure.

presuming the area at Judkins Park is available for conversion, i think you could probably hire a contractor to pave the rink and purchase lumber for volunteers to assemble into sideboards. this could possibly fit into the "Small" project budget of around 15k plus whatever you can get donated from individuals.

you could build short sideboards using 2x8 planks, joined together and staked into the ground. behind the nets, the end-boards, could be larger. maybe 4x8 boards. that's the cheapest option. a bit more expensive but certainly within the realm of possibility are reinforced DIY rink boards like the ones here: http://www.mybackyardicerink.com/build-rink-boards.html

once you have volunteer labour pledged and the budget secured, you pay to have the area paved. after that, you have weekly weekend work parties to assemble and paint the boards, as well as any other accoutrements you work into the design - like benches, equipment storage etc.

these activities will create the volunteer hours to match the grant from the city.

someone should call around local contractors to figure out how much it would cost to pave the necessary area. then do the math on the amount of lumber required to build the reinforced or staked boards around that paved area and call lumber sources to see how much the lumber would cost. if the combined budget for those two things is under ~20k, it is probably worth going ahead with an application.

Comment by Steve W on August 19, 2010 at 9:13am

I vote for finding a permanent location and Seattle Neighborhoods matching funds grant. I think the liability is too high for a private land owner to let us temporarily use their vacant lot, let alone the construction cost. Again, the first step would be to find suitable locations. Remember, your standard tennis court (including ample room around the boundary lines) is 120'x60', so a double tennis court would be around 120'x120'. A hockey rink is 200' and where we play now is about 170'. Greenwood was about 125'. If it was all we could get, then so be it, but we're really looking for a triple tennis court size area.

Comment by Shnoy on August 18, 2010 at 10:18pm

Petanque? What the? I had to Google that one Hob. Goes to show you again, you learn something new everyday. Good stuff on the info. You as well Matt. It will take some planning to organize the troops to move ahead with this. Making the time is the issue for me this year. We'll see what happens.

Comment by hobvias sudoneighm on August 18, 2010 at 10:01pm

so, for example, if you were to build the boards and pave a surface yourselves over the course of a year, DoN would match that labour at 15 to 55 dollars per hour, depending on if it is considered "skilled" or not. it would also match monetary donations you collect.

example:

if you collect 300 pledged volunteer hours, valued at 5000 dollars - and another 3000 in monetary donations, the DoN would match that with 8000 dollars that could be spent on materials and/or hiring contractors to help with building/paving/installation.

if you folks are going to be donating money to get the project completed on your own, there's a lot to gain by asking the city to match your donations of money and time. hardly anything to lose except the effort of writing up the grant application.

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