Madison Park makes another Best Places list

One local magazine (that shall remain nameless) had the temerity recently to not include Madison Park on its list of best places to live in the region.  How rude.  Madison Parkers can be forgiven, perhaps, for thinking that it’s the natural order of things for our neighborhood to automatically appear on such lists. Apparently, it’s not.

Fortunately for those of us experiencing a diminished sense of place, Seattle Met Magazine has just come to the rescue with another “Best Places” list to which we can point with pride.  Madison Park is listed as Number 12 on the magazine’s recently published list of “The 20 Best Places to Live Now.”  Also included on the list are nearby neighborhoods Pike/Pine, Madrona, Montlake, and Laurelhurst. Madison Park is cited as a waterfront destination neighborhood.  [Full disclosure: the author of the Madison Park Blogger is quoted in the section on Madison Park, opining that this is a liberal, welcoming, walk-around neighborhood that, once arrived, you really never have to leave.  Any dissension?]

By the way, that other magazine (the one that overlooked us) included both Madrona (34th Avenue, at least) and Capitol Hill (12th Avenue, at least) on its list of best places to live.  But in the same issue, the magazine chided Beacon Hill for not being quite “there” yet as a neighborhood.  Which is interesting, since Seattle Met this year places Beacon Hill at Number 1 on its Best Places list.  Proving only, we suppose, that when it comes to determining best neighborhoods, it all depends on who’s doing the choosing.

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.

Madison Park makes top-20 ranking

I’m not sure that this can be considered a particularly noteworthy honor, but Madison Park is ranked Number 20 on Seattle Magazine’s recent list of Seattle’s 60 best neighborhoods. “Madison Park enclave Broadmoor,” however, makes the list at Number 8, just behind Madison Valley, at Number 7. The list is highly subjective, and there appears to be no obvious method to the magazine’s madness in creating its rankings. There are multiple paragraphs detailing the source of information for the various categories used in creating the list, but there is no explanation of how these categories were weighted.

Given the magazine’s stated criteria concerning housing affordability as the “key to continued dynamic growth in our area,” it is interesting that Broadmoor (with its supposed $2,009,000 median house price) ranked so high, while Madison Park as a whole (with its stated $792,500 median house price) was so far down the list. I guess it’s just that Broadmoor is eminently affordable for the wealthy, while the rest of the Park is considered pricey for the less wealthy.

Or maybe the magazine places high value in its belief that the commutes to downtown Seattle and to Redmond (two of the ranking criteria) are significantly shorter for people in Broadmoor than for the rest of Madison Park. (Are are we really five minutes further away from Redmond; and if so, do very many of us care?) These are the only two categories in which Broadmoor ranked higher, unless you want to count the fact that $2+ million gets you more bedrooms and bathrooms per median house than $792,500 does. Crimes per resident, park acreage, and percentage of fourth graders passing the WASL were the other criteria for the rankings. Oh, and for some reason, the appreciation (or not) of median house values from 2007-2008 was an important element. (Madison Valley was down 1%, Broadmoor was up 1% and Madison Park was up 4%).

Personally, I suspect that Seattle Magazine’s staff voted on their favorite neighborhoods in order to create the list. The magazine certainly does not seem to be particularly aware of Madison Park. In the “Neighborhoods” section of the magazine’s website, for example, the “Madison Park/Madrona” webpage devotes 200 words to describing the pleasures of Madrona, but there’s not a single word about Madison Park. This didn’t help Madrona in the listings, however, as it was ranked Number 33. Leschi, on the other hand, barely made the list at Number 60, just below Judkins Park! Really?

Frankly, I think the list is screwy. However, for those who are interested but unwilling to actually buy the August issue of the magazine, here’s the top ten list: Queen Anne, View Ridge, Alki/Admiral, Phinney Ridge, Magnolia, Delridge, Madison Valley, Broadmoor, Capitol Hill, and Roosevelt. The Seattle and suburban Seattle neighborhood rankings are not available on the seattlemag.com website.

[Sour-Grapes Disclosure: My impression of Seattle Magazine’s neighborhood rankings is in no way influenced by the fact that a story on best neighborhood blogs in the same issue of the magazine did not list Madison Park Blogger as among “the cream of the crop.” Actually, this blog was not mentioned in any context, but neither was the Central District News, which certainly deserved comment.]