If you walked your dog down 22nd Ave NE in the last two weeks, you probably noticed the orange flagging tape wrapped around branches you've passed a thousand times, or the laminated notice zip-tied to a utility pole near the softball field. Somebody trimmed the hedges nobody asked them to trim. A few "No Parking" signs appeared on posts that used to be blank. If you tried to make sense of it as one construction project, the timeline probably felt random. It isn't random. It's two separate projects on two separate clocks, and once you know which one you're looking at, the rest of the fall gets a lot easier to plan around.
Seattle's Department of Transportation is running an improvement project along Ravenna Ave NE, NE 55th St, and 22nd Ave NE, and the work is happening in stages that don't overlap the way most people assume. The first stage is daytime and mostly invisible once it's done. The second is nighttime and loud enough to notice from your bedroom window. Confusing the two is why the neighborhood chatter about this has felt scattered.
The Two Clocks
The first phase started August 17. Crews began trimming vegetation and removing a small number of shrubs along the west side of 22nd Ave NE, work aimed squarely at one problem: the sidewalk on that stretch has been hard to use because overgrowth crowds the path and blocks sightlines at driveways and intersections. This is daytime work, and it's the reason for the parking signs that started showing up that week.
The second phase, which began August 21, is a different animal entirely. This is when the actual parking and lane changes get painted onto the street, and SDOT is doing that work at night, between 7 PM and 5 AM, specifically so it doesn't compete with daytime traffic. That's the phase that will feel disruptive if you're a light sleeper or you park on the street.
Here's the rough sequence, based on what SDOT has published so far:
- August 17 onward: Vegetation trimming, west side of 22nd Ave NE, daytime hours, temporary "No Parking" postings
- August 21 onward: New parking configuration and lane markings painted, 7 PM to 5 AM, parking restricted inside the active work zone
- No date yet: A new shared-use path, curb ramps, crosswalks, and stop signs, which SDOT says will come later without a published timeline
That last phase matters if you've been waiting for the finished product. There isn't one yet. What's happening right now is prep and restriping. The path, ramps, and crosswalks are a separate, unscheduled phase, so don't expect the corridor to look finished by the time the leaves turn.
Why Your Parking Spot Is Turning Sideways
The specific change on 22nd Ave NE, between NE 54th St and NE 45th St, is a conversion from back-in angled parking to standard parallel parking on the west side. If you've always backed into a spot along that stretch, you'll need to relearn the habit. SDOT is also removing on-street parking on the north side of NE 54th St, from the softball field to 22nd Ave NE, specifically to improve sightlines near the intersection and crosswalk there.
None of this touches the Restricted Parking Zone that already covers 22nd Ave NE south of NE 50th St. RPZ 6 stays exactly as it is. If you have a permit, nothing changes about where or when you can park under that program. The changes are additive, not a replacement for the existing zone.
During active construction, expect crews working either 7 AM to 5 PM or 7 PM to 5 AM, mostly on weekdays but occasionally weekends, with driveway access blocked for up to two hours at a stretch during the overnight window. If you keep your car in a garage or driveway and need to leave overnight, the practical move is parking it outside the work zone before crews start rather than trying to get out mid-shift. There will be temporary lane closures and detours on 22nd Ave NE, with flaggers directing traffic around the work zone while it's active.
The Bike Lane That Isn't Quite a Bike Lane
Here's the detail that's easy to miss if you only skim the project page. This corridor sits inside Seattle's protected bike lane program, but what's actually going in in the northbound direction is sharrows, shared lane markings painted directly in the travel lane, not a physically separated lane. SDOT's own reasoning is refreshingly direct about the tradeoff: street space on 22nd Ave NE is limited, and a fully protected lane in both directions would mean pulling out significantly more parking than the neighborhood currently loses. Instead, sharrows go in northbound because that direction runs downhill, and SDOT's logic is that people biking downhill can hold their own in a shared travel lane more comfortably than they could riding uphill in the same conditions.
It's a small design choice, but it tells you something about how these projects get built in practice. The city isn't pretending this segment gets the gold-standard treatment. It's trading a full protected lane for keeping most of the existing parking supply and giving cyclists an easier ride in the direction where traffic mixing is least risky. If you were expecting a Burke-Gilman-style separated path along this stretch, that's not what's coming. What's coming is a narrower, more parking-conscious compromise, funded through the 2024 voter-approved Seattle Transportation Levy and tied to the city's Vision Zero commitment to end traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.
What This Has to Do With the New Building Two Blocks Over
Around the same week that SDOT crews started trimming hedges on 22nd, a Seattle-based developer, Phoenix Property Company, filed plans for a six story, 150 unit apartment building priced at roughly $25 million, sited on what local coverage describes as Ravenna's restaurant row. That's the stretch of small storefronts and sit-down spots, including Ravenna Brewing Company on 26th Ave NE, that gives this part of the neighborhood its evening foot traffic.
These two things, the street work and the filing, aren't officially connected. But they're happening in the same six-week window on the same handful of blocks, and that's not a coincidence worth ignoring. A neighborhood doesn't get sidewalk investment and a six-story development filing in the same month by accident. Both are downstream of the same basic fact: this corridor is seeing more people move through it on foot, on bikes, and eventually as new residents, and the infrastructure is catching up to that reality rather than leading it.
If you've noticed more foot traffic near the brewery on a Friday night, or wondered why a familiar surface lot suddenly has a permit notice posted on the fence, this is the answer. The street work and the building filing are two symptoms of the same underlying shift.
What to Actually Expect Through Fall
The corridor's older landmarks aren't part of any of this. Cowen Park and Ravenna Park, which sit conjoined at the southwest edge of the neighborhood, aren't in the construction footprint. The Burke-Gilman Trail, which follows the old Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway route, remains a clean alternate for anyone who wants to avoid the work zone on a bike entirely. The pedestrian bridge over the old 20th Avenue Bridge, closed to cars since 1975, is still car-free and still the easiest way to cross on foot without dealing with flaggers or lane closures. And if you're worried this reaches Park Road, it doesn't. Candy Cane Lane's December lights display, a tradition since 1951, is nowhere near this project.
What you should actually plan for between now and whenever phase three gets scheduled: nighttime noise on the block if you live between NE 54th and NE 45th on 22nd Ave NE, a parking habit you'll need to unlearn if you've backed into a spot there for years, and detours if you're driving through during active striping hours. The finished shared-use path, curb ramps, and crosswalks are real, but SDOT hasn't attached a date to them yet, so treat the current disruption as the first half of a longer project rather than the whole thing.
Knowing which phase you're watching, and which one is still unscheduled, is the difference between assuming the street will look like this all winter and knowing exactly when to expect the noise to move on.
If you're weighing a move within Ravenna or anywhere else in the Seattle and Eastside markets and want someone who tracks this level of detail on your actual block, not just the citywide averages, Joyce Juntunen would love to hear from you. Let's Connect.
