newrainiervista.com

Come out this Saturday (tomorrow! May 1!) at 10am for our monthly community clean up. Join your neighbors, enjoy coffee and doughnuts, and help keep our neighborhood clean. Bring gloves if you have them; bags and grabbers provided.

Please join in on Friday, May 14thfor a Community Kitchen event from 12noon – 2pm at Rainier Vista Center. We will be cooking E. African cuisine and will then sit down and enjoy the yummy meal we prepared! For more information call 206-461-4568 ext. 211. Open and free event!

Last night, many Rainier Vista residents gathered at the Neighborhood House to discuss the Seattle Community Farm. The event was coordinated by Solid Ground, the Department of Neighborhoods, and our volunteer Landscape Architect, Eric Higbee. Eric has prepared three design alternatives for the farm, working off of the input from our first community meeting in March.

The participants from last night’s meeting gave a tremendous amount of feedback—ranging from general design favorites to compost locations and building materials. Eric will consider all comments as he prepares a final design in the coming weeks. If you were unable to attend the meeting, and you would like to share your thoughts on the design alternatives, please take a look at the illustrations for the three alternative plans (these are large images and will take a moment to load):

Alt A: The Long Table

Alt B: Old Houses Still Cook

Alt C: Under One Roof

Send your comments to urbanfarm@solid-ground.org. Or you can reach the Farm Outreach and Development team, Leslie Heimer and Jamie Robinson, at 206.694.6829

Once a final design is created, it will be posted on this website, on the physical farm site, and at the Rainier Vista Neighborhood House. If all goes well, construction should begin in June.

Interested in Sewing? Please come to a special informational meeting on Wednesday, April 28th at 6:30pm at the Neighborhood House. Join us as we talk about starting a new sewing program in the neighborhood. We need your ideas and input!

Homeowners: Please plan to attend next Tuesday’s HOA Board Meeting. April 27, 7pm, McBride Community Room.

There will be a community meeting for the Urban Farm next Monday, April 26, at 6pm. The landscape architect will be presenting the three designs he’s developed out of the comments and feedback from the last community meeting in March. Monday’s meeting should include an opportunity to provide further feedback and refinement on these designs as well as a chance to ask questions about the project in general.

Monday, April 26
6pm - 8pm
Neighborhood House - Paul Allen room
Dinner and interpretation will be provided.

Questions or comments? Contact urbanfarm@solid-ground.org.

Just a reminder: The NRV HOA Annual Meeting will be held Tuesday, April 6 in the McBride Court Community Room starting at 6:30pm. Come on down, mingle with some neighbors, and elect our two new board members.

Please note: we need homeowners to attend this meeting or send a proxy form. Without a minimum number of homeowners present, the voting will not be valid and we’ll have to do this again, at additional expense to the HOA. Keep your HOA dues low by coming out to this meeting.

At the March 3rd community meeting we learned a lot about what Rainier Valley wants from the Seattle Community Farm.

We wanted to give Rainier Vista residents the opportunity to formulate design ideas for the Seattle Community Farm that will be constructed in the neighborhood starting in May. This garden space will belong to the community, so the ideal design needs to reflect the preferences of the community members and meet programmatic needs.

Meeting Feedback
We created visual, hands-on, and easy to translate surveys to determine community member preferences.

According to the survey results, the garden design should follow these general guidelines:

• General garden aesthetic: tidy and well kept aesthetic
• Garden beds: organic shapes, sustainable and natural materials
• Fences: inviting and natural looking and not too obtrusive
• Gathering places: covered gathering space with tables
  We also asked the five language groups (English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tigrinya, and Somali) what they would like to do and eat during free time in the garden. Residents came up with everything from eating and cooking, to story telling, visiting, dancing and playing games. Foods ranged from traditional foods to typical American picnic fare.

  Residents also drew pictures of a farm. Many included animals and shed/barn structures. Many had fruit bearing trees and vegetables in beds.

  What we know coming out of the meeting
  Residents are excited about the garden and have definite opinions about garden appearance and purpose. Preference was expressed for tidy and neat, yet lush and green spaces. We also learned that we need to be more specific about what the garden is and how the programs there will work.

  What’s Next?
  The landscape architect is preparing three designs that incorporate the above feedback. These designs should be finished by next week and in late April, we will hold a community meeting to choose among the three designs!

  We will be in the New Rainier Vista neighborhood over the next few weeks, visiting and distributing flyers for the new meeting. We hope that final construction documents will be formed from the outcome of this meeting. Next, construction can start in the middle of May and that community work parties can begin in June, with the first beds planted that month!

  If you have any questions about the results of our meeting on March 3rd, or how to be involved in the future, please contact Jamie Robinson or Leslie Heimer at urbanfarm@solid-ground.org or (206) 694.6829.

It’s NRV Neighborhood Cleanup Time! As always, we will be meeting on the first Saturday of the month (that’s Saturday, April 3) at 10am in the Central Park. If you can volunteer to help us clean up New Rainier Vista for an hour or so, please show up with gloves, if you have them. We’ll have some gloves if you don’t have them, and we’ll have coffee and donuts. Come on out and join your neighbors.