Delridge Action Plan

Collaborating with the Delridge community to improve household diversity and provide access to healthy food and activities.

What's Happening Now?

Thank you to all who attended Delridge workshops and meetings and helped produce the North Delridge Action Plan.

In 2014, we partnered with the Department of Neighborhoods (DON) to work with a cross-section of community members to assess and address those conditions that have changed since the 1999 Neighborhood Plan. New community members worked with those who participated in the planning over 20 years ago. Through hands-on and interactive workshops, focus group meetings, individual workshops, in-person interviews, business canvassing, and online surveys, neighbors used a variety of ways to become and stay involved in the project.

Together, hundreds of neighbors helped identify the community's vision for North Delridge, and prioritize steps that individuals, organizations and the City can take to make Delridge a healthy and livable neighborhood for all community members. The meeting materials and comments are on our Get Involved page. An advisory committee, made of members who represent cross sections of the community, worked in partnership with the City to balance the different interests of the community with the goal of developing a shared vision and action plan.

The Final North Delridge Action Plan is now available. The accompanying Seattle's Community Toolkit is a guide to City of Seattle and other programs and resources that you can access to take action on priorities in the Action Plan.

The plan outlines six priority areas:

Supporting Diverse & Engaged Communities
Developing Dynamic Neighborhood Destinations
Improving Access to Affordable, Healthy Food
Creating Active Transportation Choices
Nurturing a Healthy Longfellow Creek Watershed
Leveraging Parks & Cultural Facilities to Support a Healthy Community

The advisory committee chose business development as their near-term priority and have completed business outreach funded through a Neighborhood Matching Fund. Funded by an Only in Seattle grant, they are currently using the survey results to begin working on business organization and supports.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) partnered with us to inform the Delridge Multimodal Corridor Study and the development of the Delridge RapidRide H Line project. They continue to use input from those who participated in joint workshops in 2015 and 2016 and visited the online open house in 2017, as well as an existing conditions report, technical data and transportation plans to identify options for moving more people and goods along Delridge Ave SW and to upgrade Metro Route 120 to RapidRide.

As Sound Transit works to bring light rail to Delridge and West Seattle, the City will work with the Delridge communities to inform the rail alignment, station siting and design, and more specific area planning around the North Delridge station.

Project Benefits

It has been 16 years since Delridge completed its neighborhood plan. Together, the community and the City have accomplished many of the neighborhood plan goals. However, some of the plan's priorities are out of date. It's time to work with the Delridge community to establish current priorities and to develop an action plan to achieve those priorities.

The Delridge Action Plan will use the Healthy Living Framework to focus attention on how neighborhood planning can improve our health, connect people and places, and make sure places serve people. The framework proposes that a healthy Delridge includes strong community and organizations, healthy people and families, and a supportive physical environment.

The Delridge Action Plan seeks to support a healthy neighborhood that:

Contains diverse households, supported by strong social and cultural institutions and services
Provides access to resources necessary to meet personal needs, such as healthy food, retail, and commercial destinations
Includes a natural and man-made environment with infrastructure supporting healthy activities such as parks, sidewalks, playgrounds, transit, shopping, and services

The End Result

Our action plan will define community and City strategies that address key priorities developed through the planning process, with the aim of ensuring Delridge's people and places can thrive.

Get Involved

Our planning process and action plan will engaged the full range of community stakeholders, including historically underrepresented communities, using the Department of Neighborhoods' Community Liaisons. Our engagement process included an advisory team that helped create an ongoing and representative committee tasked with implementing the Delridge Action Plan.

Youths at a Food Empowerment Education Sustainability Team dinner encouraged their peers to:

Provide comments to help direct the Healthy Delridge Parks Vision

Our booth at Delridge Day on Saturday, August 8, 2016 encouraged community members to:

Review and comment on draft action plan strategies
Provide priorities and suggestions for the Healthy Delridge Parks Vision

Our Delridge Projects Workshop on Saturday, June 6, 2016 invited residents and community members to:

Provide direction on the North Delridge Action Plan (North of SW Elmgrove St.)
Help design future multimodal improvements to Delridge Way
Learn about Longfellow Creek Basin Natural Drainage Systems

The results and your feedback are posted in the meeting notes below.

Here’s what we have heard at previous Delridge meetings:

Create more community and cultural gathering places
More places to shop and eat
Improve walking, biking, and transit connections
Create more recreation and cultural programs

The transcribed workshop notes and their emerging themes are posted below. These notes are helping us and the Advisory Core Team (ACT) establish the priorities and actions in the North Delridge Action Plan. Here is what we've heard:

Our community loves:

Friends and community
Community and cultural centers
Recreation and open space

Our community says they need:

Better Access to Food
Better access to local shops
More activities for youth and adults
More programs and spaces for them
Improved transportation service and safety

Meeting Notes

Phase 1 Issues & Opportunities Summer/Fall 2014

Advisory Committee Meeting Notes

Phase 2 Preliminary Strategies Summer 2015

Phase 3 Strategies Fall 2015

Delridge Projects Workshop Materials Fall 2016

If you want to contribute your input and ideas for the North Delridge Action Plan, contact David Goldberg at davidw.goldberg@seattle.gov or (206) 615-1447.

Background

Our collaborative planning efforts address three areas of opportunity. These opportunities have expanded and evolved through neighborhood community engagement in a conversation about the future of Delridge.

Create Great Community Places

Encourage neighborhood-serving development that creates great places at SW Brandon St., SW. Orchard St / Sylvan Way SW, and SW Andover St., around the Community Center, and Youngstown Cultural Arts Center as identified in the neighborhood plan
Inform conceptual design for future improvements as part of the Delridge Way SW Multimodal Corridor Project (see below) so that it supports its Delridge’s growth and provides the safe and efficient connections the community needs
Assess issues and identify opportunities to address drainage and flooding

Improve Community Health

Increase access to healthy food by building on existing community work such as the Food and Fitness Initiative, the Delridge Grocery Cooperative, and the recent report sponsored by the Women’s Commission and Council Member O’Brien
Identify ways to build on Delridge’s parks, open space, and natural assets to make walking, biking, and taking transit and easy choice

Build Community Capacity to Identify Priorities & Take Action

Engage historically underrepresented communities through the Public Outreach and Engagement Liaisons to improve the health and livability of Delridge for all its community members
Include community-based actions as well as City actions

Delridge Multimodal Corridor Project and RapidRide H Line
Seattle Department of Transportation partnered with the North Delridge Planning to seek input on transforming Delridge Way SW into a safer and healthier space with predictable movement of people and goods. To help inform the project design, we teamed up with the University of Washington graduate students to conduct a voluntary Health Impact Assessment (HIA). Download the Health Impact Assessment for more information. With the passing of the Move Seattle Levy, the project is now oriented to implementing RapidRide H line.

Resources

Organizations

Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association – DNDA’s mission is to “inspire and engage residents, businesses, and institutions in creating a thriving Delridge.”
North Delridge Neighborhood Council – NDNC is a community organization dedicated to preserving and improving the neighborhood in accordance with the wishes of the community. NDNC strives to inform the community about matters affecting the quality of life in the area, provide leadership in addressing community needs, communicate with governmental agencies in an effort to represent the interests of the community, and cooperate with other organizations and person having similar interests.
Delridge Grocery Cooperative – Planned to open summer of 2014, the Delridge Grocery will be a member-owned consumer food co-op in the heart of the Delridge, in the retail level of the new Cottage Grove building. The Delridge Grocery will provide a place for our diverse community to gather and celebrate simple, affordable, healthy food.

Documents

Business Development Analysis