Art on the CKC

Path at cross Kirkland corridor on a sunny day
Cross Kirkland Corridor Art Integration Plan

Building off the CKC Master Plan(PDF, 71MB) completed in 2013, the Kirkland Cultural Arts Commission has lead efforts to imagine how art in a variety of forms including performance, interactive, ephemeral and permanent, can be incorporated into the Cross Kirkland Corridor experience with the creation of the Cross Kirkland Corridor Art Integration Plan(PDF, 23MB)

“The 2014 Cross Kirkland Corridor Master Plan guides decision makers, designers and private developers with a vision to move the CKC forward to funding and realization. Art was addressed in the master plan as a priority to shape the corridor experience and as a catalyst to move it forward to engage and shape the community. While the master plan identified the opportunity for art and provided high-level guidance, it did not include a full art plan for the CKC. With the success of the master plan, the interim trail construction, and new emerging projects along the corridor, now is the time to proactively invest in art opportunities on the CKC. The role of this Art Integration Plan is twofold: to inspire the opportunities for art on the CKC (and beyond) and to provide guidance to the City on how to facilitate and manage art on the corridor.”

(Excerpt from the CKC Art Integration Plan, Page 6)

Share your ideas about art on the CKC by emailing arts@kirklandwa.gov. Stay updated on public participation opportunities by visiting the Kirkland Cultural Arts Commission page. 


Art on the CKC 

CKC Mural

The Kirkland Cultural Arts Commission selected creative duo Jake “DKoy” Wagoner and Mike Lucero to install a large format mural underneath the 85th street overpass. For more, check out the project details by the KCAC at: CKC Mural One Sheet(PDF, 444KB).

Check out this great Currently Kirkland video for more information on this interactive, community-activated mural!


Merrily Dicks' "Spikes" Sculpture 

Kirkland artist Merrily Dicks built this historic sculpture on the Cross Kirkland Corridor in 2017 using old railroad spikes she found along the corridor. The art dedication ceremony was held May 12, 2017 on location at the Cross Kirkland Corridor near the 85th Street overpass. This project was founded in October of 2016, when the Kirkland Cultural Arts Commission recommended to the Kirkland City Council that the sculpture titled "The Spikes," created and donated by local resident and artist, Merrily Dicks, be sited on the Cross Kirkland Corridor. The sculpture is located in the Cross Kirkland Corridor Norkirk Edge character zone on the northwest side of the 85th Street underpass. When the City of Kirkland removed the rail along the CKC, artist Merrily Dicks, with help from many community members and CKC Coordinator, Kari Page, collected over 300 spikes. Merrily Dicks created a sculpture with these spikes to honor the history of the corridor. A preliminary concept was approved by the Kirkland Cultural Arts Commission on July 15, 2016 and the KCAC recommended approval of the sculpture at its September 21, 2016 meeting. The sculpture is a series of eight columns approximately 8-feet, 7-feet, and 6-feet high rising from a 4-foot by 4-foot metal base. The sculpture is estimated to weigh 850 pounds. The KCAC contributed $1,000 of King County 4Culture grant funding toward the installation. Thanks to artist Merrily Dicks and the Lake Washington Institute of Technology for assisting the artist with welding and housing the piece.

Check out the KCAC's project outline at: Spikes One Sheet(PDF, 548KB). For more, check out the below video:


Kalakala Art Concepts

In February 2015, the City of Kirkland purchased roughly 30 historical pieces of the Kalakala, the world’s first streamlined passenger vessel. The Kalakala was built between 1933 and 1935 at the Lake Washington Ship Yard in Kirkland’s Carillon Point. Four concepts were revealed at a Public Open House on January 31, 2018 and presented to Council on April 17, 2018(PDF, 5MB).

The City of Kirkland’s vision is to repurpose the salvaged pieces for an art installation on land or on the waterfront that also commemorates this historic ferry and Kirkland’s early history as a regional shipbuilding center. A Citizen Committee has been formed to explore all possible art concepts and locations that provide historical relevance and exhibit the significance of the ferry. Some of the Committee’s objectives and ideas for the Kalakala pieces include:

  • The pieces should tell a story about the ferry and the community’s history
  • They could be incorporated in a new art installation, kinetic or static
  • They should help to brand the city and be iconic
  • People should be able to touch them and interact with them
  • Their location or placement should be considered a permanent home
  • They can be part of some recreational opportunities on the waterfront
  • Technology should be embedded into an artistic display of the pieces and help tell its story

To view the historic pieces owned by the City of Kirkland, visit: Iconic Salvage(PDF, 4MB).

Preserving Kalakala’s history in Kirkland

In February 2015, the City of Kirkland purchased roughly 30 historical pieces of the Kalakala, the world’s first streamlined passenger vessel. The Kalakala was built between 1933 and 1935 at the Lake Washington Ship Yard in Kirkland’s Carillon Point. The Kalakala was dismantled in Tacoma, WA and the City seized an opportunity to save some of its own history by purchasing a wheelhouse, doors, valve wheels, a section of ornament hand railings, the top window section above the car entrance doors in the bow of the ship.

OnApril 21, 2015, the City Council approved $20,000 in funding for an Art Integration Framework Plan(PDF, 2MB)  A committee comprised of the members of the City’s Cultural Arts Commission, Park Board, Transportation Commission and interested contributors will coordinate art proposals to have the Kalakala pieces find a new home in Kirkland, most preferably along the Cross Kirkland Corridor. To learn more about the Commission’s efforts, contact James Lopez at 425-587-3001or jopez@kirklandwa.gov

Kalakala’s travel to Kirkland

By Christian Knight, Neighborhood Services Coordinator
Public Works Department, Capital Improvement Program

March 2015

Kalakala-being-transported-on-highway.jpg

Gordy George has moved all kinds of unwieldy objects in his 27 years as a Rhine Demolition truck driver: backhoes, cranes, excavators, rock crushers.

A wheelhouse was never one of them.

That changed Feb. 19, 2015 however, when George received an assignment to transport a wheelhouse, a pair of bus-sized doors, four valve wheels, 10 feet of hand-railings and a silver-colored steel shell called an ‘essence’ to a loading yard in Bothell.

George seized the opportunity. “It was an honor to pack something that was built in the 30s,” he said. “I’m glad to be a part of it.”

Until February, those pieces belonged to the Depression-era Kalakala, the world’s first streamlined passenger ship—built at Kirkland’s Carillon Point and dismantled February in a Tacoma dry dock.

Now those pieces belong to the City of Kirkland and eventually to anyone who will walk, run, or bike along the Cross Kirkland Corridor.

That’s where the City of Kirkland plans to place its pieces of the Kalakala.

Right now, those pieces are in rough shape. The essence is twisted and dented, with jagged edges, where workers cut it from the Kalakala. The floor of the wheelhouse is flaking. Clumps of rust coat the valve wheels. 

And besides, this isn’t the ultimate state of the Kalakala. Later this year, the City of Kirkland will request proposals from artists, who will use the wheelhouse, the essence and the other pieces to establish the Kalakala’s permanent Kirkland legacy.

Several people have already commended the City for its pursuit. One of them is Ted Lagreid, a retired City of Seattle urban planner and current resident of Scottsdale, Ariz. He read a Feb. 11 Tacoma News Tribune article that said the City of Kirkland was interested in acquiring some pieces of the old ferry.

“It was the icon of Seattle prior to the Space Needle,” Lagreid said. “When that ship was seen sailing around Puget Sound, it was like ‘whoa.’” Kalakala-Wheelhouse.jpg

Lagreid wrote a letter to the City Council to commend it for the vision it used to identify the opportunity and the courage it demonstrated to seize it.

“Kirkland showed some real vision [in the 60s, 70s and 80s] when turning all that waterfront land into park land,” Lagreid said. “And now, the City has decided to perpetuate that history and use what they have that’s representative of what the Kalakala was.”

The idea for Kirkland to bring the Kalakala back home emerged as part of a community brainstorm back in the summer of 2012. The question posed by then-Mayor Joan McBride to scores of community members gathered at the Kirkland Arts Center was what to do with the Cross Kirkland Corridor.

“There were no constraints on the ideas,” says Lisa McConnell, Houghton’s neighborhood association chair and a present member at that meeting. “Money was no issue. We were supposed to come up with big ideas and I came up with a big one.”

McConnell’s idea was to extract the top deck from the Kalakala and place it over the Cross Kirkland Corridor near the South Kirkland Park and Ride.

“So you could ride a bike right through it,” McConnell said. “That would be our trailhead.”

The meetings’ attendees chuckled politely, McConnell says.

“And then they were like, ‘Oh my gosh. This would be pretty cool,’” McConnell said.

The chair of the Cultural Arts Commission isn’t sure exactly what an artist will make of Kirkland’s pieces of the Kalakala. But she’s glad Kirkland is pursuing it.

“You take historical objects and make them into something that’s art,” said Melissa Young, the chair of the Cultural Arts Commission. “You do it to bring that history into the art and in order to bring that art to the people.”

Young and McConnell certainly weren’t the only ones who thought it would be a cool idea. Even before Joel Simmonds’ Rhine Demolition began dismantling the Kalakala in early February, treasure hunters had already seized their pieces of history.

“So much of [the Kalakala] was already picked over by the time we got there,” Simmonds said. “Anything that wasn’t bolted down—or that even that was—was already gone.”

By the time his crews had dismantled it, Simmonds had received nearly 250 requests to purchase a piece of the Kalakala. The requests came from people who had, at one time or another, and in one form or another, experienced the Kalakala.

“They rode on it as a kid, they are history buffs, their family rode on it,” Simmonds said while reading his synopses of the emails. “Their father worked in its engine room as an employee. It was their first ferry boat ride ever. One person is 84 years old and had ridden on it when he was younger. Another one worked on it when he was a kid. Another one’s uncle bought it and brought it to Alaska.”

And of course, one of those 250 requests came from the City of Kirkland.

Photo credit
Top: Kalakala pieces being transported to storage in Bothell, WA (photo by City of Kirkland)
Middle: Wheel house of the Kalakala (photo by City of Kirkland)