High Point Natural Drainage System

Neighborhood House

Neighborhood House is a nonprofit organization that provides services like housing placement, access to educational resources and employment opportunities, and community health resources.

This building includes administrative and counseling offices, a family center, large classrooms, a teen center, youth tutoring, and early education and enhancement programs. It also helps manage stormwater by collecting and filtering the rainwater that runs off of its impervious surfaces.

A Roadside Drainage Swale

This natural drainage swale captures rain water from the surrounding green space and road in Sylvan Way SW, and filters it through the vegetation.

The official name for this function is bioretention and it is an important strategy for managing stormwater runoff.

A Basketball Court with Pervious Concrete

The Neighborhood House basketball court and parking lot were built with a special type of concrete. This concrete is pervious, which means that water will drain downward through small spaces in the concrete material. Normal concrete doesn't allow water to pass through it like this. Absorbing more rainwater means that less polluted water will flow into the nearby Longfellow Creek.

As an added bonus, the air gaps in pervious concrete make it much quieter than a conventional concrete basketball court would be.

High Point Commons Park

High Point Commons Park is an open space where residents and visitors can relax and play. All of the parks surfaces are pervious, which means that rainwater will pass through them and get absorbed by the soil below.

Redevelopment History

The High Point neighborhood has seen its fair share of changes over the course of its existence. It was originally built to house defense workers during World War II, and after the war it was adapted to meet the needs of low-income households.

In 2000, another redevelopment phase began--this time, focusing on affordability, walkability, energy efficiency, and green stormwater management. The redevelopment process was completed in 2007.

Click  here  to learn more about the redevelopment history

Bioswales and Rain Gardens All Around!

High Point's sidewalks and planter strips help make the neighborhood nice to walk around. But they also contain a network of green stormwater management infrastructure, including shallow rain gardens, cascading bioswales, and pervious concrete sidewalk panels.

Community P-Patch

High Point Community P-Patch is space for growing vegetables, fruits, and flowers. You might not think of a community garden as being part of the drainage and waste water system—but it is! Rain is absorbed by the soil of this garden, hydrating the plants along the way. This is a great example of a "multi-benefit" project.

Over 100 Mature Trees Saved!

Redeveloping a neighborhood with new underground utilities and dense housing often means removing many of the existing trees. But saving mature trees in a new neighborhood can help provide lots of stormwater management benefits and provide green relief in a newly constructed neighborhood until the newly planted trees mature. Seattle Housing Authority's High Point Redevelopment team designed the streets and housing to save over 110 mature trees and plant over 3,000 new trees so that they could continue to provide habitat and stormwater benefits for the community.

Final Stop: Stormwater Pond Overlook

The overlook at the top of the pond's recirculation stream has views of downtown Seattle and the sound, and it is a great place to take in the views of Seattle and Puget Sound.

The pond's storage capacity of 4 million gallons helps to collect and clean millions more stormwater that passes through it each year before flowing into Longfellow Creek. 

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