We are grateful to Doug and Libby Armintrout for our enlarged park by the water.

In early May, the Friends of Waterway 1 wrote to Department of Natural Resources and LCC offering to sow the expanded area of the central green at our expense. However, at the moment, that goal is blocked by an alternative LCC plan that provides tall, thicket-forming, non-native trees and shrubs.  So, we still have a job ahead to advocate for a village green that uses native plants and responds to the wishes of the community.  I am writing now to learn your vision for Waterway 1 and to ask you to share your views with us and with LCC.

Our current plan reflects Andria Orejuela’s draft designs and your discussion over the past year.  I will list a few main points, below, on which there is a strong consensus, and I invite you to share your individual priorities with us by posting a comment at our website at waterway1.org or by replying to my e-mail, anonymously, if you prefer. Most importantly, we ask that you give a copy of your comments to Emily Dexter, the LCC Waterway 1 coordinator, at edexter4@comcast.net.  We hope that active feedback from the community will encourage LCC to support the wishes of the neighbors for a village green with clear views of the water and views of children playing at the shoreline.  We will benefit, too, from learning more about your preferences.

Neighborhood preferences:

• A simple, low-maintenance park with open views of the water and the shoreline;
• A lawn with room for families to sit and children to play;
• Low-growing native plants on the slopes;
• Height restrictions preserving the water-oriented views of neighbors;
• No path between the street and the shoreline.
• No dense trees or shrubbery providing cover for prowlers;

Medium-term goals:

• Prepare a proposal for replacement of the basketball court and begin to seek additional funding;

• Begin the process of seeking approval from multiple agencies to replace a small segment of the concrete-rubble shoreline with a shoreline of fish-run gravel for safe launching of canoes and kayaks.

Thank you,

Judith Thornton

Recently, Doug and Libby Armintrout graciously paid to have the laurel hedge (pictured here) removed from the waterway.

Friends of Waterway 1 (FOW1) have maintained the waterway by mowing, trimming and weeding for decades.

The Friends of Waterway 1 neighbors, who have long maintained the waterway, have the goal of restoring and preserving a beautiful, natural waterfront setting providing public access to the Union Bay waterfront.  We seek to create a simple, low-maintenance public waterfront glen that will allow members of the community to connect with their neighbors and reconnect with the natural environment of Union Bay.  On 4 May 2012, the Friends of Waterway 1 offered to hire a commercial landscaping firm to level and sow the expanded area of the central green at Waterway 1 at our expense.

We want to restore the waterfront that has been opened to public use.  We hope to create a cove where mallards and mergansers can feed and neighbors can launch small boats to kayak, canoe, or fish in Union Bay, preserving an historic site where parents and children can view frogs, turtles, otters, yellow-tufted ducklings, and the resident blue heron.

We want the central green to remain a natural lawn with room for families to sit and children to play.  Low-growing plants on the slopes will shade the water’s edge. This will be a simple, natural village green on the water.