Ben Beres, co-founder of the Mini Mart City Park, showing off their state-of-the-art groundwater cleaning system.
It’s the second Saturday of August, and Ben Beres, co-founder of the Mini Mart City Park, is getting the space ready for an upcoming Art Attack.
Georgetown’s monthly event welcomes the public to explore the many art galleries and businesses in one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods. Since opening in 2022, the former-gas-station-turned-eco-friendly art space has hosted thousands of visitors for the monthly art crawl, giving onlookers a glimpse into how art and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand.
“We’re happy to be able to use art to heal a piece of the Earth, a piece of our city,” said Beres, who has been working on bringing his vision to life for the past 15 years.
Beres and his partners kickstarted their project with a $200,000 grant from King County’s Brownfield program, a King County Solid Waste grant program that helps fund the assessment and cleanup of contaminated sites.
Two years in, and with the support of two additional grants from the King County Wastewater Treatment Division’s WaterWorks program, what used to be a gas station has been successfully transformed into a demonstration site to showcase the many benefits that green infrastructure can have on local water quality.
Ben Beres, co-founder of the Mini Mart City Park
“This is a tiny speck of land, but what we learn here can help future projects and better water quality for future generations.” Ben Beres, co-founder of Mini Mart City Park
King County’s WaterWorks Grant Program provides approximately $5 million in funding every two years to organizations like the Mini Mart City Park, which carry out a variety of water quality improvement projects in the region.
With the $173,000 in grants they received from the WaterWorks program, the Mini Mart crew have developed a community-friendly space that’s home to a variety of green infrastructure features such as bio-retention planters, a green roof, native drought-tolerant landscaping, and permeable hardscaping – which help capture nearly all of the water that falls on the former gas station. This prevents pollutants from being carried into storm drains and into the Duwamish River.
“This site has a lot of legacy contamination,” said Beres. “Decades of exposure to petroleum left it in a bad shape, and it’s important to us that we do everything possible to keep contamination from spreading.”
Beres said the contamination from the site’s time as a gas station affected both the soil and the groundwater underneath, with an estimated cost to excavate and clean it up running in the millions. However, the Mini Mart crew opted for a less invasive remediation strategy that is expected to restore the site within three to five years.
The eco-friendly art space utilizes an innovative technology that aerates the polluted groundwater, creating millions of little bubbles that help evaporate the contaminated water underground. The vapor is then expelled through the gallery’s green roof, where sunlight helps break down residual pollutants, ensuring a cost-effective, less invasive method of remediating the contamination while providing a desirable asset to the community.
Beres and his partners, John Sutton, and Zac Culler, envisioned the site serving as a model for transforming underutilized spaces into valuable community assets. “This is a small piece of land, but the lessons we learn here can inform future projects and improve water quality for generations to come,” he said.
Another WaterWorks grant funded the establishment of a permanent youth training program managed by Dirt Corps and the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps to help educate young people about water quality issues and climate change.
“We are able to demonstrate to students the various environmental practices we are employing to remediate the damage left by the gas station,” said Beres, who has conducted over 30 classes since the program’s inception. “And we’re doing it through art!”
The Mini Mart City Park offers free workshops and classes year around and hosts visitors for Georgetown’s monthly Art Attack on the second Saturday of each month.
Visit our website to learn more about King County’s WaterWorks Grant Program, see what projects have been funded, and find out how to apply.
Discover more from King County Wastewater Treatment Division
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