[2] Situated in a neighborhood described as a former "hot-spot for low-level crime, drug-dealing and civil disorder",[3] and intended in part to reduce crime rates on the street,[4] the property was transferred from the city's transportation department to Parks and Recreation,[5] and it was redeveloped as a woonerf or mixed-use pedestrian/vehicular traffic area without curbs.

According to Seattle University's newspaper, The Commons, the Pike Place and Post Alley area at Pike Place Market is functionally a woonerf, and a woonerf was built at the university's Douglas Building (at the junction of the 12th Avenue and Columbia Street pollinator pathways).

[5] A Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson said in 2014 that removing curbs at Occidental Park was under consideration.

[12] A section of 8th Avenue in the South Lake Union district of Seattle was proposed by Vulcan Inc. in 2015 as a woonerf along the lines of Bell Street Park.

[16] The mixed-use area, called by a local magazine an "experimental ped and car mashup"[17] and by another as a "dog's breakfast" of competing design elements,[5] has resulted in traffic rules that have been called "predatory",[18] and a "ticket trap".