day 5 – walking lucile street – georgetown

Today we walked from 15th Ave S by Flora Bakehouse all the way west to the end of Lucile Street at East Marginal Way South. We connected the two segments of Lucile Street on Airport Way S. Joining us for this segment of Lucile was our neighbors, the Yamashitas.

Lucile Street – we walked from 15th Ave S to E Marginal Way S and back.

Reflections

For our only walk through an industrial zone, it really wasn’t all that bad! Much of the industrial uses fronting Lucile Street had an office park feel with maintained landscaping or parking areas.

As the kids noted in their reflections with mentions of hearing and seeing cars and trucks, this segment had by far the most traffic. It was positively busy compared to the residential stretches where on some days we only had one or two cars pass us for the entire walk.

Lucile Street – Sidewalk quality could range from leafy and complete to non-existent. Concrete blocks filled in parking spots along several stretches.

But for being a busier area, the kids still described themselves as feeling happy although maybe a bit hot. The elements of placemaking that businesses used to make the street comfortable included regular landscaping, large creative and/or colorful signage, and large painted murals with images appearing unrelated to the business it was on.

We did, however, speak as a group about one other element of placemaking that is more controversial – concrete “eco-blocks” are used on a few unfinished curbs to define the edge of the sidewalk, but clearly as a strategy to resist the parking of RVs by unhoused neighbors. The strategy appears to be working on this part of Lucile Street.

Lucile Street – A visit to Hilltopper Electric Bike Company where we learned about their electric conversion kits for standard bicycles and how they develop and test their battery and motor kits.

The kids illustrated and mention bicycles in their reflections, because we stopped-in at the HQ and warehouse of Clean Republic, makers of Dakota Lithium brand electric batteries and Hilltopper Electric Bike conversion kits.

Clean Republic is a great example of one of several green industry businesses that are on Lucile street. The most prominent of which is the Ardagh Group’s glass recycling plant. It occupies several city blocks along the Duwamish Waterway at the very end of Lucile Street. According to the company’s website, the glass plant is over 91 years old, sits on 17 acres rented from King County, and employs 345 workers.

Clean Republic is far smaller than Ardagh, but far more approachable. Chris and the team were very welcoming and gave us a generous amount of their time to see their products and give us a hands-on demonstration of how they perform quality testing on their electric bike conversion kits. If you have and love your bike, but have been considering an electric bike, check out their conversion kits.

After our tour of Clean Republic, we purchased a few banh mi sandwiches from Pho Sriracha on 4th Ave S and walked back to Georgetown Playfield and Spraypark. The kids took in the cooling mist of the spraypark before we returned back up Lucile Street to the car parked off 15th. And with that, our walk across Seattle on our street came to a close.