West Seattle’s 1st spray park proposed: Highland Park wading pool

When the Parks and Green Spaces Levy Oversight Committee meets tonight at the city Parks Department’s HQ at Denny Park downtown (7 pm), their agenda will include a briefing on potential “spray parks” to be built at some of the city’s wading pool sites, to be built with money from that levy, passed by voters last fall. We’ve taken an advance look at the documents: A West Seattle site, the Highland Park wading pool, is near the top of the spray-park list – ranked #2 priority, after Northacres. The recommendation is for the city to build those two next year – here’s an excerpt from the briefing document:

Next Steps after a Decision
• Design Programs and Public Involvement Plans for each site will be developed.
• Northacres Park Play Area project is scheduled to start construction in July 2010.
• Highland Park would be scheduled to start construction in May 2010

We hope to find out tonight how long construction would take, what the spray park might look like, and whether the Highland Park spray park would be done – if that timetable is maintained – in time for use next summer. This summer, the HP wading pool is closed because it hasn’t undergone federally mandated drain-safety improvements, and that in fact factored into this decision – when evaluating where to build “spray parks” first, the Parks Department used criteria (see the full briefing document here) including ruling out those close to existing spray features (there are none in West Seattle) and those where the drain work had already been done (HP is one of 11 citywide where it hasn’t been). More later tonight.

6 Replies to "West Seattle's 1st spray park proposed: Highland Park wading pool"

  • d July 27, 2009 (5:27 pm)

    Spray park!?! We’ll take it!!!

  • Cheryl July 27, 2009 (5:41 pm)

    Ooooh, we can haz NOW please?

  • Racheal July 27, 2009 (6:40 pm)

    Very exciting. It has been a disappointing summer with our HP wading pool shut down. It’s nice to hear there is something fun in the works for next summer!

  • Dreamland July 27, 2009 (7:29 pm)

    Can you park one of those in Fairmount Park area???

  • Brie July 27, 2009 (7:38 pm)

    Wonderful news!

  • Jodi July 28, 2009 (3:12 pm)

    That would be a great addition to the park, especially with the wading pool closed down. The kids would love it, and probably parents too with this hot weather.

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