Redmond's Woonerf

This Living Street abuts Mr. Pantley's artfully painted Apartment Building "162-TEN." The street runs south on 162 Ave NE towards the Downtown park from 81st Street.

A Living Street is a street designed primarily with the interests of pedestrians and cyclists in mind.  Robert Pantley, an Eastside developer, built Redmond's first Living Street. These roads are still available for use by motor vehicles, however their design aims to reduce both the speed and dominance of motorized transport.  Vehicles drive at the same speed as pedestrians walk. This is often achieved using the shared space approach, with greatly reduced demarcations between vehicle traffic and pedestrians. These street design principles first became popularized in the Netherlands during the 1970’s, and the Dutch word “woonerf” (Living Street) is often used as a synonym for living street.

Living streets protect water quality in rivers and streams by removing up to 90% of pollutants. They replenish groundwater supplies, absorb carbon, improve air quality and neighborhood aesthetics, and provide green connections between parks and open space.  An abundance of rain gardens and trees on this street remove pollutants.  Vegetated curb extensions improve pedestrian and bicycle safety, and calm traffic. 

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Robert Pantley is a Pacific Northwest native and deeply focused on making the region a better place for all people to live. He is a strong supporter of neighborhoods and has a focus in expanding the affordable housing options on the Eastside.

He served as a Kirkland City Council Member, Kirkland Park Board Chair, on the Redmond Code Rewrite Commission, is the past president of OneRedmond and currently focused on how to help small business recovery from Covid-19 challenges while helping current residents with the “We Care Team” that has them working on site to help cover rent and buy food while they make each property shine more from new flowers to painting doors and helping to deep clean each community. The benefits are more together communities with residents able to get to the other side of this pandemic ‘debt free’ with pride in their hearts and more smiling faces than one could imagine.

Robert’s companies, Natural and Built Environments LLC, and Muse Management have grown into a front runner in green building, becoming the Eastside’s key sustainable building company with expertise in transit use and parking realities as integral parts of successful Ten Minute Communities-TM. His companies built the Eastside’s first residential suite communities in Redmond – Tudor Manor and Vision 5, which brought very needed affordable housing to the city. Arete community that was honored to be the LEED Multifamily Project of The Year (Worldwide) in 2017, has been a two time winner of the Washington Governor’s Smart Communities Award, and an ARCH Award recipient.

He has been married to his wife Elizabeth for over 30 years and they raised their four children in Kirkland along with “Grandma.” He is a member of the Audubon Society and enjoys bird watching in his neighborhood parks, reading, and fishing with his family.

Sources:  Robert Pantley's website

                Wikipedia, 12/31/2020