Madison Park named one of Seattle’s best neighborhoods

Of course we knew this already, but Seattle Met magazine has reconfirmed the fact by naming Madison Park as one of the 15 best Seattle-area neighborhoods to live in. Referring to Madison Park as a “secluded little burg of high-priced homes,” the article quotes Madison Park Community Council president Ken Myrabo referring to our end-of-the-road community as a “destination” neighborhood (you really can’t just drive through it on the way to somewhere else, can you?).

Madison Park Hardware owner Lola McKee also gets prominent mention in the story, along with the LOLA road-end project; and our real estate market is fairly well dissected by the authors. In its statistical evaluation of our neighborhood, the magazine reports that the median income is $100,087, that the median age is 48, and that 41% of the adult population have college degrees.

What mars Seattle Met’s coverage, from my perspective, is their map of Madison Park. Once again the legacy of the City’s decision to truncate our neighborhood on its “unofficial” official neighborhood map plays its baneful role in media coverage of the Park.

While Seattle Met is not silly enough to think that the area to the south of Madison Park is really called “Harrison/Denny-Blaine” (as the city “unofficially” does), the magazine does buy into the boundaries for Madison Park set by the City, eliminating Washington Park from our neighborhood. Seattle Met solves the “Harrison/Denny-Blaine” dilemma by calling all of the area south of the Park “Madrona.” Thus Washington Park, in the magazine’s view, is a section of Madrona.

Whatever.