Mayor Mike McGinn told South Park residents that the city would try to ensure the neighborhood and business community they would not become isolated after the South Park Bridge closes June 30 at a community meeting at the South Park Community Center June 9. The city allocated $150,000 toward helping the neighborhood's businesses after June 30. He and Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark also said they would try to find funding for a new South Park Bridge.

"The meeting had a potential of getting very ugly but the mayor has moved his position a little bit so we are kind of excited," said Bill Pease of the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle, or ECOSS, and president of the South Park Bridge Committee. "For years and years we've been told the (South Park) bridge is not part of Seattle. This is the first time since the mayor was in office I heard him say that indeed it is a Seattle issue and pledge to help with the City Council in terms of matching dollars. We need to come up with an 'X' number of dollars to make our TIGER-2 Grant application viable (to get a Federal matching grant) matching grant) from King County, the city of Seattle, and the state, to find funding to put into this package. It needs to be done by the deadline, the end of August."

"The Office of Economic Development is looking for input from businesses and others in the community," Said Lora Suggs, with the South Park Information and Resource Center who attended, referring to how the $150,000 may be spent. "This might mean beautification to marketing South Park as a destination, to professional consultants helping to find new ways for the businesses to support themselves."

Suggs dines at Jalisco Restaurant, just south of the South Park Bridge at 8517 14th Avenue S. and said this and other area businesses will suffer with the bridge closing because they depend on the lunch crowd from across the river.