Take this park site, please

Surrounded by a chain link fence and languishing in litter, 1445 N. Northlake Place doesn't look like a waterfront extension of Gas Works Park.

But it could be. The Center for Wooden Boats and its supporters want to turn a former fuel dock into a public wharf, and they recently got $50,000 from the city of Seattle to help work up the plans.

The biggest hurdle the project now faces is getting a public agency to take ownership of the site, said Jake Beattie, CWB’s deputy director.

Metro Transit owns the land, but doesn’t really want to operate it is as a public waterfront, Beattie said, since they’re not in the park business.  He said CWB wants it to stay in public ownership, but in this economy, what agency wants to take it?

Seattle Parks is one possibility, Beattie said.

Organizers met with Wallingford residents in July; they’ll do the same in Fremont sometime this fall, Beattie said.

They have a deadline of sorts. Northlake wharf earlier received a $500,000 matching grant from the state of Washington, but the grant’s terms require some degree of project completion by 2011.

Beattie said they hope to proceed fast enough so that they don’t lose that money.