as i understand it, that parking lot (pictured above) is privately owned. the owner doesn't want to pay to have the water tested and looked after or be liable for its consumption. that is why those signs are up do you think if the well got gentrified they wouldn't let the homeless stand within six feet of it anymore? i'm kind of making a joke... but not really. i have a feeling that if the well got turned into a park type thing it would stop serving some of it's community functions. that it would be less comfortable for everyone to use and more for certain people to look at. just a thought. thanks for the post!!

The parking lot is owned by some unreasonable company that only holds onto the property so that someone will end up buying it.

With that vague understanding, if someone wants to put up a statue.. it would be at their own risk and expense, since the city doesn't own that lot.

The use of the two words combined together 'Urban Space', don't really apply here since the property is owned by a third party, which at this point has not ripped out the pipe.

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The lot pictured above is owned by Diamond Parking and they aren't interested in selling from what I've heard.

The water is tested, once a week, and is always clean.

Meta Hogan has been involved with beautifying the well since last summer. There are a few planters with flowers and other stuff, a rose, there was a bench or some chairs but Diamond said no way to that. They've given the police a universal trespass notice and if people are "hanging out", the police are supposed to boot them.

In my ideal world, this would be a space that a lot of different people could enjoy, much like such places in Italy, Turkey, India, etc. For example, the elderly could come and be social here. My grandma used to spend hours people watching on a park bench. This fountain that I am talking about doesn't have to replace the one in the Diamond parking lot. I haven't seen the new DOT lot and perhaps that would be an excellent space for a plaza of sorts. Its proximity to the low income senior housing, the market, downtown and IT is a huge plus. Urbanists like Jane Jacobs and William Whyte have long argued that in urban spaces, people attract more people and that places to sit where people can linger, are key to making those spaces vibrant. The aquifer provides a natural flow of people that the city could use to its advantage. A space that has a constant flow of people is also a safer place in a sense that people provide a "natural surveillance." As nasty as "surveillance" sounds, it is actually better than cops chasing poor people away. In a well loved and used space, people are more accountable and are likely to be less fearful. Through informal public interaction we become more human to one another whether teenage, old, poor, yuppies, etc.

Two other wells in downtown: The one next to the IT station, where the building was just torn down, which was capped recently, and The one north of the IT (toward the market), in another parking lot against a building (near the alley between Olympia St & Thurston St)

But I am Just Another Voice

I kind of like the weird funky pipe outlet in a way. I do agree though, it could be more aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps a circle of bollards instead of the concrete blocks. I guess I'm thinking of Dutch city bollards, which usually have a symbol designed into them (a stork for The Hague, three Xs for Amsterdam).

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