Campaign underway to raise $250K for Jimi Hendrix Park

You can now support Jimi Hendrix Park, planned for 24th and S Massachusetts, as the park’s foundation launches a campaign to raise $250,000 in 70 days.

The Indiegogo campaign aims to fund the Sound Wave Wall feature of the park, “a curved colored steel wall with cut outs of notable figures of Jimi Hendrix performing. As the sun passes over the wall, people can walk past his long shadows.”

More details from the Indiegogo description:

Public brainstorming sessions to solicit community input for park improvements was conducted by consulting landscape architects, Murase Associates. Three conceptual designs emerged incorporating  popular ideas  that when combined with the legacy of rock legend Jimi Hendrix are imaginative, neighborhood friendly and create diverse use.  

The design process funded by the Department of Neighborhoods Large Project Matching Fund produced a preferred plan and design narrative in 2011 that was approved by the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.  The design is bold, colorful and electrifying as the park’s namesake and transforms an empty grassy space into a multi-use location which includes:  

• Interpretative walkways

• Two rain gardens

• Central shelter and other picnic stations

• Sculptural seating shelters

• Enhanced landscaping

• Shadow wave wall tribute

What We Need & What You Get

Following a year-long public design process, the Jimi Hendrix Park Foundation, announced the launch of a capital fund-raising campaign to finance construction of the park that will celebrate the life, music and legend of Seattle’s hometown icon, James Marshall Hendrix.  The non-profit foundation, with the assistance of the Friends of Jimi Hendrix Park, aims to raise $1.5 million in private funding to supplement a $500,000 Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Parks & Green Spaces Levy Opportunity Fund.

Now, we need your help to fund the iconic Sound Wave Wall in Jimi’s image. Celebrating sound waves, the Sound Wave Wall is a curved colored steel wall with cut outs of notable figures of Jimi Hendrix performing. As the sun passes over the wall, people can walk past his long shadows.

The height of the wall will vary from 4’to 10’ high, and openings will be sited to allow for great views along the path, which connects Jimi Hendrix Park to Sam Smith Park, our gateway. The wall will be oriented for maximium visibility from the street. In addition to the large cut-outs, there will be perforations in the steel to allow for screened images and patterns to form when looked at from varying distances.

20 thoughts on “Campaign underway to raise $250K for Jimi Hendrix Park

  1. Maybe buying books and tutors would be better use of money.
    I don’t recall many poet laureates from the CD. Education people.

  2. With all due respect to poet laureates, Jimi Hendrix is immensely famous and universally loved, his words and music have touched and inspired many lives. I do, however, agree that the money could be better spent; Jimi Hendrix built his own tribute and it is played every day all over the world.

  3. Hendrix was a great musician, but this is no way to pay him tribute. It will inevitably drive property values even higher, making the CD even less accessible for low-income people and even more different from the neighborhood he once knew.

    Plus, to be honest, most of Seattle’s public art is horribly ugly and I doubt this will be much different.

  4. Don’t think that this will make a penny’s difference to property taxes. That optimism is misplaced.

  5. blahhh blahhh blahh I’m agin it, Blahhh Blahh
    I hope it does raise property values, brings change to the neighborhood something a local millionaire rock star could understand along with all the middle class black families who waited for the values to rise and left when the gangs who were contained here and racist economic sterotyping like “sad note” forced them to look for a better place to raise their children. Bring on the neighborhood improvements we needed it yesterday!

  6. This project might not be YOUR cup of tea. So what? It’s an idea that was developed, vetted over a 4 year period, and got community energy behind it.

    I personally think it will be a very nice addition to a fairly unused swath of grass.

    I don’t snipe at positive efforts. I don’t order YOU to participate or contribute to what ‘I’ happen to think the ‘magic’ solution is to improve our community. Because it is NOT all about me, and not all about where I have energy or interests.

    Find something positive to get involved in, solve problems or enhance liveability. Great! Share it when you do.

  7. A troll is someone who deliberately tries to disrupt online interactions. I hate how people on this site throw the word “troll” around just because someone expresses disagreement. This is a public project with public funding and I think anyone has a right to express their disagreement with it. It’s not sniping at “positive efforts”. Geez, it’s all subjective and everyone has a right to voice their opinion, for or against.

  8. Actually there are trolls here, but I will admit that compared to most other sites not many. And there are people who will be negative about almost everything. So I still say Debbie Downer, and armchair DD’s for the most part.

    The article is merely an annoucement for people who want to be involved to be involved and to inform people who look forward to enjoying that space. The public funding was acquired. The time to judge the relative merits would have been in your community council and the district council, or by reviewing and commenting on the proposals as they were submitted.

    Check out the grants offered by City of Seattle. Have a great idea? Work with your neighbors and you can make it a reality. Don’t take it too hard when people impotently snipe on this blog.

  9. People go to Renton every night to have a blunt, a beer, and then piss on Jimmy’s grave. Not sure why they do that, but, it is tradition. It would be nice to have a more possitive place to remember a very talented world famous hero. Too bad about drugs and all, but, perhaps some will see the drug use kills even the best among us.

    I would enjoy the park very much.

  10. Grumbo
    To clear up a general misunderstanding about the way Jimidied from someone who lived in London during the time and knew friends of Jimi let me clue you in. He had a head ache and ate a mandrex he got from a friend from Finch’s Pub on Portobello road. He had a few drinks and went back to his girl friends flat nearby by to laydown. Portobello road at the time was a poor white and west indian neighborhood who had running riots with the London Police over discrimination issues. Jimi had a adverse reaction and an ambulance was called. The ambuance attendent held his head down preventing him from vomiting and he chocked on hiw own vomit. There were calls to prosecute the ambulance attendent but she was never prosecuted. To her he was just another “wog” who did not matter, better off dead. Yahh, it was very racist at that time in England. You would see signs and notices in the paper saying “no coloureds” for house and flat rentals. Jimi did not die from an over dose of drugs. If he were allowed to vomit he may still be here today.

  11. Racist economic stereotyping? What the heck are you talking about? Do I need to cite demographic statistics and go over the history of racism in the US for you to understand that black & brown people are disproportionately poor and that there are historical reasons for this?

    Obviously the Central District become a majority black neighborhood due to redlining and racist containment, which you seem to be alluding to. I’m not saying the CD was ever perfect, clearly not, but it was “home” to generations of African Americans and unique cultures and networks grew from that. Now many of those people have watched their neighborhood change into a place they and their children can no longer afford. Gangs and gentrification can both be enemies of healthy neighborhoods. To act like a bunch of wealthier people (whatever their race) moving in is the way to heal neighborhood problems is to completely misunderstand reality. But this cognitive dissonance seems central to the gentrifying mentality…

  12. “understand that black & brown people are disproportionately poor ” = sad note = sad racist sterotyping !

  13. If you say so. Still a very good idea for that park space. I take it you agree.

    Pop icons seem to die from drugs, often some contrived reason they were taking certain drugs, but, still they carelessly take drugs and manage to choke on puke or drown or just stop breathing. I seriously doubt that the ambulance driver failed to clear the throat. There are very few people that cold hearted, extremely few. My personal opinion is that we are all racist to a larger extent than we admit, but still, as humans it is almost impossible to cold heartedly watch somebody die when you know how to prevent it. Nobody does that, it is almost impossible. Every ambulance attendand in the last 70 years would have know to simply turn the person to their side and let them puke.

    Jimmy OD’d. It’s OK. He was still a good man and an ispiration to millions. A park in his honor would be awesome.

  14. Grumbo, it was in all the English papers. It was not the US. I was there. It was on purpose. You would have had to live there at that time to understand why.

  15. There is a large gap between the wealth of minority households and White households within the United States. The Pew Research Center’s analysis of 2009 government data says the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households.[10] In 2009 the typical black household had $5,677 in wealth, the typical Hispanic had $6,325, and the typical White household had $113,149.[10] Furthermore, 35% of African American and 31% of Hispanic households had zero or negative net worth in 2009 compared to 15% of White households.[10] While in 2005 median Asian household wealth was grater than White households at $168,103, by 2009 that changed when their net worth fell 54% to $78,066, partially due to the arrival of new Asian immigrant since 2004; without taking those newly arrived immigrants into account Asian net wealth only dropped 31%.[10]

  16. I find it hard to believe that people are that cold.

    I guess there are a ton of examples and reason’s I should believe you. But it is hard to imagine something so cold as to not take a simple action to save a life. I can more easily imagine murder and genocide – killings based on a hatred, than to comprehend aid providers intentionally neglecting a dying man. It certainly is possible. If that was the case at the time, we certainly have come along way since then. Racism isn’t nearly so overt today (in such places as Seattle or London). Not saying it doesn’t exist, but, I doubt anyone would let Mr Hendrix die today. Heck – we save idiots like Monfort.

  17. Suppressing the economy of neighborhoods with high proportions of minorities is no way to fix the inequity. Using that logic, we should be sure to continue to suppress investment in CD and Rainier Valley schools. If you provide top notch education and facilities – then whites will move in. So, for the sake of black people everywhere – let’s be sure they are provided with poor schools, crummy parks, substandard emergency services, broken infrastructure, and low paying jobs. Otherwise they will lose their homes – right? See, they just can’t compete on an equal basis, so we have to spoon feed them spam puree.

  18. Your right Grumbo, it was that logic, the same de-facto polite racist logic of “sad note” that was applied to the CD and SE Seattle that drove the middle class black population out.