Today marks the start of the summer-meals program, and food is available for kids and teens at multiple locations. In our area, the locations open to everyone 18 and under – no registration or ID required – include:

Highland Park Playground
South Park Plaza
High Point Community Center
Dick Thurnau Park – KC Parks (White Center)
White Center Community Center at Steve Cox Memorial Park – KC Parks

The sites offer breakfast, lunch, and/or snacks. The hours and days vary – that information is on the full site list, linked from this page on the city website.

If you’ve ever wanted Colman Pool all to yourself, the first session of the first day of this year’s 7-day-a-week season certainly offered something close to that – this was the scene about an hour ago; we stopped for a photo while walking on the Lincoln Park waterside path. Today through September 1, the outdoor heated salt-water pool is open daily, with this schedule:

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm…. Lap Swim (daily) and weekend Recreation Swim (Fri-Sun only)
1:45 pm – 3:15 pm…. Lap Swim and Recreation Swim
3:45 pm – 5:15 pm…. Lap Swim and Recreation Swim
5:30 pm – 7:00 pm…. Lap Swim and Recreation Swim

Note that it’ll be closed to the public five days this month and next for swim meets: June 26-28 and July 18-19. After Labor Day, two post-season weekends are planned, September 6-7 and 13-14. Fees are listed here. There’s a free aquatic opportunity in Lincoln Park too (for kids, anyway) – this Saturday (June 21) will be the first day of the 7-day-a-week season for the park’s wading pool, also open daily (weather permitting) through Labor Day.

FYI from Seattle Parks:

Many Seattle Parks and Recreation facilities and programs will be closed Thursday, June 5, 2025, due to a Recreation Division staff training day.

These facilities and services are CLOSED:

All recreation programs
Community centers and teen life centers
Environmental learning centers
Indoor swimming pools
Amy Yee Tennis Center
Green Lake Small Craft Center
Mount Baker Rowing and Sailing Center
Mounger and Colman Outdoor Pools

These facilities are OPEN on regular schedules:

Parks
Volunteer Park Conservatory
Boat ramps
Golf courses and ranges
Lifeguarded Beaches (Madrona Beach and West Green Lake Beach)
Sprayparks

The report, photo, and suggestion were sent by Dukes:

After months of seeing the north-side trail at Me-Kwa-Mooks not being maintained by the city, my father-in-law and I went down on Sunday to work on allowing it to be walkable/runnable once again.

We got most of the big weeds and overhanging trees off the forest floor.

However, if anyone would be willing to assess and clean a bit more, it would make even more of a difference.

That’s the wading pool at Lincoln Park, awaiting the start of a new season. The city opens its sprayparks before wading pools, and West Seattle’s only one, Highland Park Spraypark (1100 SW Cloverdale), will open this Saturday (May 24), with 7-day-a-week operation, 11 am-8 pm, until Labor Day. West Seattle’s wading pools all open in June – with schedules similar to last year – starting with Lincoln Park (8011 Fauntleroy Way SW), opening June 21 and operating daily, noon-7 pm, through Labor Day; E.C. Hughes (2805 SW Holden) opens June 23 and will be open Mondays, Tuesdays, and Sundays, noon-7 pm, through August 17; Delridge Community Center (4501 Delridge Way SW) wading pool is open June 25-August 15 on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, noon-5:30 pm; and Hiawatha (2700 California SW) wading pool will be open June 26 through August 16, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, also noon-5:30 pm. If it’s cloudy and cool, the city won’t open the pools, so keep watch on the weather. More info on the city’s wading pools and sprayparks, including the rules, can be found here.

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

More than a year has passed since Seattle Parks announced that planning had resumed for one of its three long-“landbanked” West Seattle park sites, the one at 48th/Charlestown [map]. At the time, Parks said it expected the park to be finished by mid-2025.

That’s a few months away, and the project hasn’t even gone out to bid yet. But it’s not far from that stage, a Parks manager said during an informal meeting at the site with a neighborhood resident who wants to ensure the park is built to plan by donating money and time – and hopes other neighbors will want to do the same.

First, here’s what we learned about where the project stands: You might recall the site is one of three in West Seattle that the city bought and “landbanked” as future parks more than a decade ago. As Parks’ Rhys Harrington said during the informal meeting, this project “stalled out” before the pandemic. It already had a design, resulting from community collaboration – a fairly simple “neighborhood green” with an oval of lawn, some seating, a play area for kids, a mini-stage in a raised area toward the site’s southwest corner.

It also had a larger budget. Now, Harrington said, the construction budget is $730,000, so some features – like the mini-stage – might have to be dropped. He explained that they’ll send it out to bid with some features as “additives” to the basic plan (lighting, for example). The design is being “revisited” right now so that it’ll have full documents and cost estimates within about two months.

News of that shortfall is what got neighborhood mom Jordan Colvin involved. She’s hoping community contributions and involvement can ensure the park is built to the original plan, or close to it, in part via a Neighborhood Matching Fund grant that could be available if enough money and time is donated.

She explained to WSB that her family learned about the landbanked project after moving a block from the site and “saw an opportunity to contribute to both the community and raise awareness of childhood cancer.” Working with a West Seattle artist, the Colvins plan to financially back some of the park’s components and to donate a public art piece in honor of their son, Parker, one of 16,000 children who are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States.

During the informal park meeting, Jordan also explained that after they had chosen Parker’s name, they learned it meant “guardian of parks.” So remembering him via involvement in building this park – where his 4-year-old brother will play – seemed perfect.

Exactly what and where the artwork will be in the park, that has yet to be worked out. But Jordan is hopeful that area neighbors will join her quest to ensure the park is “as great as it can be”; to ensure flexibility, Harrington said, they’ll go out to bed with some features characterized as “additives,” so they reduce the chances of base bids so high they’ll have to do a second round of bidding.

Assuming nothing like that gets in the way, Harrington said the park project could break ground this September. He explained that it’s vaulted ahead of the other two landbanked West Seattle park projects because it’s the closest to being “shovel-ready,” even though design updates are required – much of the construction is simple “concrete and earth work.”

If you are interested – or even potentially interested – in involvement with the park project, including Colvin’s quest to corral a Neighborhood Matching Fund grant for the park, you can use this form to connect with her.

(WSB photos by Oliver Hamlin)

Hours after the aforementioned water-polo match, Colman Pool opened to the public for the first time this year. Noon today marked the start of this year’s first preseason weekend. Photojournalist Oliver Hamlin, who showed us a behind-the-scenes look at the outdoor saltwater pool’s final preparations, went back today. Above is Ed W., who’s been swimming at Colman Pool since he was 10, using the fastest lane today. Below, lifeguard Jude M. watches over the pool during this afternoon’s brief drizzle:

Jimmy, who was first to tip us when this year’s opening day was revealed, shared this observation: “Despite the chilly temperatures, there was a solid turnout — I counted around 32 lap swimmers in the water. No one was there for recreational swimming (understandably, given the cooler weather), but the lifeguards responded quickly to the lap lane demand and added a fifth lane, which was great to see.”

During the preseason, Colman Pool will be open to the public for four hour-and-a-half sessions between noon and 7 each Saturday and Sunday, until it starts 7-day-a-week operations in mid-June. If you’ve never been, it’s on the shore at Lincoln Park, and getting there requires walking, running, or rolling.

Photos by Oliver Hamlin for WSB

On Saturday, Colman Pool on the Lincoln Park shore officially opens for the year, and one last work party today got it ready. Photojournalist Oliver Hamlin was there for WSB. Above, lifeguards Rommel D (left) and Patrick K dismantle an old lane line before discarding it in a dumpster outside the pool. This year Colman Pool has new lane lines and reels thanks to a donation from the Greater Seattle Swimming Association. You can see them in the next photo, behind Aquatic Technical Supervisor Robert Danielson preparing the diving board:

Lifeguard Patrick K tested out the diving board after installation:

Another kind of board was also addressed today – the protective wooden boards were removed from the Plexiglas around the pool (we showed you a reader photo of the work in progress earlier).

Other work was done inside. Below, Aquatic Center Coordinator Wendy Van De Sompele points toward the filtration system in the Colman Pool pump room. The pump room contains a mix of newer and original pipes from the 1940s.

These are the wells that bring Puget Sound water into Colman Pool, visible during low tide today. The pool can only be filled during high tide, meaning sometimes work must get done in the middle of the night.

Colman Pool celebrated its milestone 75th anniversary nine years ago. This year, as we first reported last month, it’ll be open for “preseason weekends” through mid-June, then seven days a week (except for swim-meet closures June 26-28 and July 18-19) through September 1, and two “postseason weekends” after that. For those who have asked about the slide, it’s only open during private events; they’re keeping it out of service the rest of the time, Van De Sompele told us, because it gets in the way of lap swimming and creates staffing challenges, and the diving board is considered a more accessible feature to keep open.

See the pool schedule here; plus, you can get a sneak peek at the pool during Friday night’s West Seattle Water Polo matches starting at 6:20 pm.

Thanks to the three readers who sent photos and info about three Lincoln Park sightings, starting with tree trouble:

Huge fallen oak tree limb on the north stairs at Lincoln Park, the ones that were recently closed for the stair maintenance

From another reader, this sighting of what appears to be a poisonous weed:

Sharing a safety alert: there is a lot of poison hemlock growing in Lincoln Park between the south playfield and south restroom. The one by the restroom (NW corner) would be especially easy for a small child or a dog to snag a piece of and eat. The bigger patch (south of field, north of the concrete) is also very exposed. I’ve alerted Parks and King County noxious weeds department but unsure how quickly these will be addressed so thought you may want to post a warning.

Here’s a closer look at, and more information about, this plant.

Finally, from Dawn, who spotted this on the shore:

Panels coming down at Colman.

As we reported a month ago, Saturday is the first preseason-weekend day for the only city-owned outdoor salt-water swimming facility, Colman Pool, but you’ll see activity there tomorrow too (Friday, May 9, 6:20 pm) as the West Seattle Water Polo team hosts a home game!