Check Out What Seattle Did with a Dead-End Street

Here’s a creative way to make some excess asphalt into a community amenity.

This dead-end-street-turned-basketball-court sits at Eighth Avenue South and South Donovan Street in Seattle. It was completed this fall as part of a larger project that also included a parklet and colorful crosswalks in the South Park neighborhood.

Seattle’s Department of Transportation has been on the cutting edge of rethinking how some of asphalt in residential areas can be repurposed as community spaces.

Here’s another example from a part of the city called Rainier Vista.

Since 2015, the city has converted 13 former road areas into small parks through the “Pavement to Parks” program. All the projects are tested on a temporary basis using low-cost materials so they can be tested. Then the community can determine whether to make them permanent. The average project cost about $70,000.

Here’s another look at that basketball court.Well done.