Chromer Building Parklet: A Platform for Design in Seattle

December 3, 2014 - Today Seattle’s first Downtown parklet opened for public use. The Chromer Building Parklet, located just a block from Pike Place Market at 1516 Second Avenue in the heart of Downtown, was designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol and built by Krekow Jennings. Developer Urban Visions invested in the urban parklet nestled between Pike and Pine streets.
 
In addition to providing much-needed, comfortable, and free places to sit for the many people who visit the popular food trucks and takeout businesses in the Pike Place Market area, the Chromer Building Parklet will also serve as a flexible, central platform for Seattle’s design community. 
 
“Parklets are useful because they are small, exciting transformations that can be applied independently of more substantial work, on top of the existing surface of a street. They can go specifically where property owners and neighbors request and initiate them,” said Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Founding Principal Shannon Nichol. "The City's parklet program is well-aligned with the Downtown Seattle Association's Pike-Pine Renaissance Streetscape Plan, in which avenues become greener, more richly used ‘rooms’ with great places to sit – including parklets.” 

More information can be found in articles by Josh Feit of PubliCola at Seattle Met and Sam Lubell of The Architect's Newspaper.