City officials look back at 2014

Published 4:12 pm Tuesday, December 30, 2014

From a successful new night market, to a construction mistake that led to a Frontier outage that lasted two-and-a-half weeks, 2014 was a year filled with ups and downs for the City of Redmond.

A BIG LESSON

This past year was one of lessons learned — the biggest of which came from when a construction crew working on the Redmond Way Stormwater Treatment Facility project in September cut through fiber and copper cables. This disrupted Frontier Communications FiOS and copper services for phone, television and hi-speed Internet, as well as some 911 services.

“What I learned is that people turn to the city for information, no matter what the crisis,” said Redmond Mayor John Marchione.

He said while the outage occurred on a Saturday, it wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon that they realized information was not going out to the community and the city needed to be more proactive.

“The city’s mistake was not taking the lead on communications,” Marchione acknowledged, saying they allowed Frontier to take on this role because it was the company’s customer base that was affected by the outage. “That was the big learning point.”

Redmond City Council President Hank Margeson added that while they appreciated Frontier taking the lead on the situation, the city had more opportunities to communicate to the community as the way things were handled were not up to people’s expectations.

Once they realized this, Marchione said they sent city staff to go door to door to the businesses affected to provide them with information.

MAJOR CONSTRUCTION

In addition to the stormwater project in downtown, the city had a number of other construction projects in 2014.

One of those projects is the ongoing Cleveland Streetscape, which began in February.

Marchione said the project will be substantially done — meaning, crews will be out of the road — this month and completely done in February. He said the project was originally scheduled to be completed by Dec. 10, 2014, but they had to redo some work that did not meet city standards.

“It’s been rough on the businesses that have been there the whole time,” Marchione said about the inconvenience of the construction.

This being said, the mayor said he has spoken to some of the businesses along the street and said they realize that while they have taken a hit this past year, they foresee the benefits of the project this coming year once it is complete.

Another project that raised some concerns in the city was the 166th Avenue Northeast Rechannelization project, which converted the road from four lanes to three from Northeast 85th Street and Northeast 100th Street and added bike lanes in each direction.

Margeson said the project added controlled crosswalks, giving people a safe way to cross the street — which they did not have previously.

Marchione added that the conversion was a demonstration of a conflict in values: pedestrian and cyclist safety versus travel speed. He said in March, the city will conduct another traffic study to look at the completed project’s impact on congestion, travel speed and safety.

PARKS DEVELOPMENT

In 2014, the city continued with its work on developing Downtown Park.

Marchione said conceptual designs on Downtown Park were done and City Council selected a preferred design in October. He said the city received a lot of input from the community over the summer through open houses and other means of communication. The public, Marchione said, also helped in selecting an architect for the park, a firm from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Moving forward, he said 2015 will be the year for more advanced park design and 2016 is when they hope to begin construction.

With the first phase of the Redmond Central Connector (RCC) completed, Marchione said in 2015, the city is scheduled to continue building the linear park. He said they are looking to build a 1.3-mile extension of the trail from east of the Sammamish River to the 9900 Block along Willows Road Northeast, near Digipen Institute of Technology and the Overlake Christian Church.

While Downtown Park and the RCC are still under development and construction, one park was completed last year: the Redmond Bike Park. The park opened in the fall and was the result of a city-community partnership, with volunteers working with city staff to build the park.

LOOKING AHEAD

Just as construction projects are scheduled to continue this year, the city plans to bring back So Bazaar, an urban night market showcasing local artists, artisans, entertainers, food trucks and a beer garden.

The event was held three evenings in August last year, with each week featuring a different theme.

Marchione said the first night had about 1,000 people attending, with that number doubling the following week and almost doubling again the week after that.

Building on the market’s success, the mayor said they have budgeted to hold it for three nights this summer and they are looking into grants to fund three more nights after that.