By Torin Record-Sand
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Summer recaps, a look ahead, and an impending farewell headlined last night’s Seattle Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners meeting. We monitored it online for items of potential West Seattle interest.

The farewell was from Senior Deputy Superintendent Christopher Williams (file photo at right), who declared the meeting to be likely his last, as he will soon be retiring after 33 years of service. Through the superintendent changes in recent years, Williams has led the department (and declined offers of the top job, we’ve been told), including more than five years as acting superintendent a decade ago; he is a former West Seattleite and Chief Sealth alum.

He presented the Superintendent’s Report last night; that and the review of the summer season for aquatics and recreation contained a number of highlights for Seattle parks during this summer. This discussion went over the continuing success of the Parks Department’s ongoing efforts to provide a variety of events at parks across the area. His notable examples included the partnership with GreenStage, whose productions of Shakespeare plays saw an attendance of 11,600 people for 53 performances across 17 parks, including their performances this summer at several West Seattle parks, such as Lincoln Park and Camp Long.

Williams also discussed the success of the ongoing Movies in the Park series across the city, which has seen more than 10,000 attendees throughout the summer. He took time to note the upcoming showing of “Jumanji” at Camp Long on September 19th, saying that events such as movies have given a resurgence of public hope and community for Camp Long after the fire that closed the historic lodge last year.

The Superintendent’s Report also announced that many SPR facilities will be closed on September 25th for a day of staff training. Child care programs, parks proper, golf courses and the Volunteer Park Conservatory and Kubota Japanese Garden will remain open that day.

The report on the summer season for aquatics, delivered by Aphrodyi Antoine and Mike Plympton, also included notable highlights for West Seattle. Among these were the continued growth for both the city’s Summer Swim League, and the continued growth of attendance for swimming lessons across all of the city’s pools, including our own here at Southwest and Colman pool. Plympton said that the Summer Swim League had seen a massive growth in attendance from 400 swimmers in 2024 to 700 this year. Summer swim lessons had also seen an uptick from 6,000 enrollments last year to 8,450 this year.

Speakers said the largest success of the summer, however, was their youth athletic camps. Over 2,829 were enrolled across the city in more than 24 camps. Plympton noted in particular that one of their largest successes was a youth athletic camp that took place in West Seattle Stadium.

The speakers also noted the success of the recent Community Hub Pilot Program, which took place at 7 community centers across the city, including the Southwest Community Center. The program centers on having a space to look after personal mental well-being through organized discussion with peers, opportunities for artistic expression, and further options to find therapy. More than 250 youth enrolled in the program this year, and surveys after its conclusion showed a high degree of personal satisfaction, with 72% of participants saying they felt the program allowed them to express themselves in a way they couldn’t in other spaces in their life.

Finally, they concluded the report on summer by saying they were looking for further options in the future for accessibility, particularly financial accessibility, as well as general advertising for public awareness of the programs. They said that they never wanted to be in a situation where someone who was a neighborhood resident could not participate, but due to federal budget cuts, some support was down this year. They are looking for solutions on how to overcome that in 2026.

Speakers Stephanie Shelton and Lisa Ciecko then presented a report on the collaboration with Green Seattle Partnership, a non-profit focused on reforestation and forest stewardship, went over both their current form of partnership and their efforts to create a new plan on how to expand their programs in the upcoming year. GSP has worked on greenbelts and forested areas across the city, including the West Duwamish Greenbelt here in West Seattle. This year marks one of celebration, as GSP is on their 20th anniversary of partnership with the city after beginning to work with them in 2004. The speakers from Green Seattle said they hope to finalize their plan for how to expand their work by winter, accompanied by a celebratory party on October 30th at Magnuson Hangar.

The meeting concluded with a quarterly presentation on the city’s general plans for planning and development of parks and recreation centers across the city by speakers Jessica Murphy and Oliver Bazinet. By all metrics, they are still on track to accomplish the majority of their projects by 2028, when the current cycle of park development is scheduled to conclude. These included efforts to restore, renovate, and develop various sites in West Seattle. These include restroom renovations at Hiawatha Community Center and West Seattle Stadium, the construction of the landbanked parks in West Seattle Junction and at 48th/Charlestown (described as “close to construction”), and the design of the park-expansion site in Morgan Junction, as well as the new off-leash dog park in West Seattle. They noted that this year had been particularly successful for parks development funding, with the reception of almost 10 million dollars in grant money.

The Parks Board meets twice monthly most months; watch for dates, times, agendas, and video links here.