Rebecca sent the photo and report:

A warning to Schmitz Park -goers: A large tree fell, and is blocking the main trail off the Hinds street entrance. Recommend using another entrance.

Parks’ 24-hour maintenance hotline is 206-684-7250 (Rebecca has reported this). We appreciate getting reports too, so the wider community is alerted.

2:12 PM: Thanks to Stewart L. for the report and photos. The boat that’s been occupying a parking spot at Don Armeni Boat Ramp – the Gooey, recently renamed “SS Minnow” by an onlooker with a ’60s-TV-show memory – has finally been removed. Stewart watched the tow crew arrive and take on the task:

He says, “They picked it up, swung it into position; a large boat trailer came, the boat was put on the trailer, the engine was picked up and put in the boat, and soon they will haul it away!” He says a crew was cleaning up the parking space post-removal, too. It’s been two months since the boat first made news after multiple reports that it appeared to be sinking; one month ago, Seattle Parks told us that once the boat was removed, the city will seek reimbursement via the state’s Derelict Vessel Removal Program.

ADDED 3:14 PM: Another pic from Stewart L. – the actual departure:

Ian sent that photo of crews working at West Seattle Stadium, also noting that construction fencing has gone up. We asked Seattle Parks what’s being built. Answer: ADA improvements – from the project website:

This project will upgrade the West Seattle Stadium to current accessibility standards, including improvement to accessible routes, parking stalls, providing wheelchair seating and a platform lift to the south concrete grandstands, restroom and interior improvements and Site Work. Site Work includes new concrete ramps, plazas, asphalt parking stalls, landscaping and irrigation improvements, and a new detention vault. This project also includes 2 Additives that we will be doing as well. Additive 1 covers Epoxy Flooring over sealed concrete in the restrooms. Additive 2 includes construction of an additional ramp from the parking area to the concrete bleacher structure.

During construction, the contractor will need to close a portion of the track near the Grandstands. Seattle Parks and Recreation and the Contractor hired for the project will work to minimize the impact on the track & field.

The project page says the work could last up to a year. When the project went out to bid earlier this year, it was projected to cost almost $3 million. The contractor is Optimus, which is also leading the Hiawatha Community Center project.

(Photo sent by Lauren)

Thanks to the readers who’ve sent photos of that canoe, which turned up this morning on the west-facing beach at Lincoln Park

When City Councilmembers start proposing budget amendments next week, District 1’s Rob Saka plans to suggest funding for the all-wheels area, aka skate dot, at Morgan Junction Park. That’s according to both skate-dot advocacy coalition MJAWA and a list of likely budget amendments from Councilmember Saka’s office. To cover the $850,000 that Parks now says the skate dot would cost (backstory here), MJAWA spokesperson Matt Johnston says, the idea now is for Saka to propose $700,000 be written into the city budget, which MJAWA then says would unlock an additional $150,000 in Saka Proposed Amendments 10-24-25Parks matching fund money. They’re lining up supporters to speak at the council’s Tuesday (October 28) 9:30 am meeting as well as the November 6 public hearing, and they’re explaining more about what happens next in this post on the MJAWA website.

SIDE NOTE: Here’s the full list of budget amendments Councilmember Saka is considering, also including the Camp Long restoration project; official proposals are due next week, and then go into formal review with eventual council votes on whether to include them in the budget.

A reader told us about a new name on the landlocked boat at Don Armeni Boat Ramp, minus photo, so we went by to confirm:

(Apologies to younger readers!)

A reader who didn’t know the backstory of that boat, sitting ashore in a Don Armeni Boat Ramp parking space, sent that photo today, and he was not the first to ask us this week how long the boat will remain there. If you missed the backstory too, the boat drew multiple emergency responses in early September, first off Beach Drive, then at Don Armeni ater it was towed there. A man who identified himself as its owner put it on a trailer – and then was arrested for allegedly stealing the trailer. (We checked court records, and it does not appear charges have been filed. He subsequently said his truck, which he was going to use to tow the trailer and boat, was stolen.) So the boat remains parked, toward the southeast side of Don Armeni. We asked Parks what the plan is for removing it, if there is one; spokesperson Rachel Schulkin replied, “We’re still working on setting a date for the contractor to come pick up the boat. From there we’ll seek reimbursement through the WA state derelict boat program.”

Thanks to Steve Pumphrey for the tip. Those are just a few of the dozens of “no parking” signs lining Harbor and Alki Avenues from Don Armeni Boat Ramp to Anchor/Luna Park (and along the north/west half of Don Armeni, too). The spaces are all reserved for a production company (which shot there last year too), all day Saturday (October 4) and Monday (October 6). As Pumphrey, a nearby resident, points out, that’s going to take a big bite out of parking during a weekend with massive events that will bring extra riders to the Water Taxi (among other users in the area) – Saturday brings the Mariners‘ first game of the American League Division Series and Sounders FC‘s match with Portland. But we looked closely at multiple signs and the restrictions are NOT in effect Sunday, which has another Mariners’ playoff game as well as the Seahawks vs. Tampa Bay, so you should be able to use the parking spots on that day. On Saturday, though, you might be better served using the shuttle buses, riding a bike, or having someone drop you off.

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

While the Morgan Junction Park expansion site rolls toward its next step – hydroseeding, now that the contaminated soil has been replaced with new fill dirt – the community group fighting for a “skate dot” at or near the site has just talked face-to-face with city reps.

Morgan Junction All-Wheels Association, which rose from a community effort to unofficially “activate” the long-vacant site with skateboarding features a few years ago, has put volunteer time and grant money into what they originally were told could be built along with the rest of the expansion project at no extra cost.

(Grindline’s schematic for proposed ‘skate dot’ at Morgan Junction Park site)

Then Seattle Parks‘ project team changed and so did the message they gave to MJAWA – that the price tag for the “skate dot” (a relatively small skatable area within a park, not a full-fledged skatepark) was much higher than the estimate given by the skatepark experts at Grindline when creating a schematic design for MJAWA, and that the skate feature could not be covered by the project budget even though that is now estimated at $7.5 million, more than two-thirds of which has been spent.

Standing at the current Morgan Junction Park site in a drizzle late Monday afternoon, MJAWA reps, Seattle Parks reps, the president of the Morgan Community Association, and reps from two nonprofits who’ve been supporting MJAWA through the process, Skate Like a Girl and Seattle Parks Foundation, talked for about an hour and a half. MJAWA didn’t get exactly what one of its leaders, Matt Johnston, kept asking for – a cost estimate just for what they propose building, without throwing in the cost of other complications – but some progress was made.

The biggest complication, said new project manager Trae Yang, is stormwater drainage, made more complex by the slope of the site. If the skate dot goes in the existing Morgan Junction Park – the scenario with which MJAWA and the previous Parks team had been working – a pipe has to go 500 feet downslope to the west. If it goes on the expansion site, she said, chances are it could be connected to a pipe at street level. But using that site would require a different design, since the one on which MJAWA worked with Grindline incorporated some existing features at the current park (and MJAWA leaders reminded Parks that one of the concerns about the expansion site had been noise for adjacent residents, less of an issue if it were built on the park site further south).

All the new concerns are because of requirements imposed by stormwater regulations dating to 2016 which Yang pronounced “pretty brutal.” She added that “infiltration” drainage is not allowed because of the contaminated soil at the park expansion site – even though it’s been removed, the site isn’t totally clean. And even though Parks and SDOT have reportedly resolved the issue of ownership of the Eddy Street right-of-way that bisects the park-and-addition site, Yang said she still needs to find out whether any of that is contaminated. (The existing park site apparently got a clean bill of health sometime back, though it held a service station/vehicle-repair shop before its short-lived time as a potential Seattle Monorail station site.)

MJAWA leaders expressed their frustration that all this seems to be in danger of washing their two years of work with the previous city team – including $72,000 worth of design work funded in part by a city grant – down the drain, figuratively and literally. And not just their work – also the community’s buy-in and enthusiasm: “We told the entire community this is where it would be.”

So the bottom line for that aspect of the project, Yang explained, is that she has a lot of investigating to do to figure out the stormwater-drainage issue and how the park addition’s original design – even before MJAWA got involved – can factor into it: “We still don’t know a lot about the site.” (That despite the city having bought it more than a decade ago, and having demolished the commercial building it held just a few years after that.) She and other Parks representatives – including Kim Baldwin, Olivia Reed, and Annie Hindenlang – said that’s likely to take at least a few months, and committed to monthly updates on where that stands.

But they still wouldn’t give MJAWA what they were desperate for, a ballpark number for what skate-dot construction might cost, separate from the drainage issues and any other site complications. MJAWA wanted the city to acknowledge that resolving drainage difficulties was a Parks issue, not theirs. As Johnston put it, “It’s like Parks is putting some bricks in our backpacks when we’re just trying to ride our bikes.” Baldwin countered, “Parks will fund as much as we can but we just don’t know” the extent. Hindenlang said they needed to figure out the site constraints before they met again with the designers who’d been involved in the project, Board and Vellum.

MJAWA did get city reps to acknowledge that they’re the ones who changed the terms – the skate dot’s current state of limbo isn’t the community volunteers’ fault. But that’s not much solace when the future is to some degree clear as mud. Yang expressed some hope that things will turn out to be not as costly or problematic as she fears but stressed that she has a lot of work to do to get answers. And some of the issues she’s dealing with could come down to factors such as how tough their assigned reviewer at the Department of Construction and Inspections will be.

Skate Like A Girl’s Kristin Eberling said the most important constituency in the process was waiting for answers too: “I’d like to have something to tell the 13- to 17-year-olds I’ve been telling about this.”

WHAT’S NEXT? Among other things, there’ll be a project update of some kind when the Morgan Community Association has its quarterly meeting on October 15 (watch morganjunction.org for details). And MJAWA promises updates too.

One month after work resumed to fill the hole where contaminated dirt was removed at the future Morgan Junction Park expansion site, we have a progress report. The report and photo are from Morgan Community Association president Deb Barker, who’s been monitoring the project closely:

Earlier today, I talked to Holt Services backhoe operator Erik about the status of Phase I at Morgan Junction Park expansion site. While he was waiting for topsoil to arrive, he said that Holt was almost done with filing the pit, with just a few more topsoil loads to be added. Parks plans to hydroseed the site next week. Holt will install straw coil erosion control at the base of the southern and western slopes and will re-anchor the construction fencing for the long term. Erik mentioned that the 12 inches of added topsoil will settle after the rains come so that the eventual sod will be ‘even’ with the adjacent asphalt. The photo shows the southern 2 to 1 slope ending at the unimproved alley along with the topsoil layer.

Once the grass is established and the site is opened to the public – expected in “late fall,” the city says – the next phase is actual development of park features. What those features will be is not yet finalized – you’ll recall the question of what happened to funding that Parks once said would cover inclusion of an “all-wheels” feature at the park/expansion site and now says requires community fundraising. The all-wheels advocates of MJAWA, who already have rustled up a lot of volunteer time and grant money for the project, expect to talk again with the city in the week ahead. And you can count on an overall project update in some form at the next MoCA meeting October 15.

More than 10 months after its historic lodge was ravaged by fire, Camp Long remains open as a park and environmental learning center, but the lodge is years away from full restoration. A reader suggested a followup this week. The newest online update on what’s being done right now details the stabilization work and “pre-design study.” But the update concludes:

Our current estimate is that the renovation construction would begin in 2031.

That’s 3+ years after the early estimate we reported a little over a month after the fire. Part of that might be related to the funding issue mentioned by District 1 City Councilmember Rob Saka, whose newest newsletter includes his report on a Camp Long site visit:

(Photo from Councilmember Saka’s newsletter)

I recently joined Seattle Parks Superintendent AP Diaz at Camp Long to tour the site and see the stabilization work underway following last year’s brazen arson attack that caused significant damage.

Camp Long is truly a community treasure. While the historic lodge remains closed as repairs move forward, many other parts of the park remain open and accessible for neighbors to enjoy. Camp Long continues to be a special place in the heart of West Seattle.

I’ll keep working closely with the Mayor’s Office and Parks Department to ensure the site is fully restored to its former glory – and that it remains a place where community can gather, learn, and connect with nature for generations to come. We will build back better! In the near term (2025-26), we believe that we can fund initial planning and design costs associated with this restoration project by using insurance proceeds. After that, we’ll need to look for other funding sources, with a potential renewal of the Metropolitan Parks District Fund being the most viable candidate (assuming this Fund ends up being considered for renewal upon its expiration in 2027).

But again, Camp Long remains open as a park and offering events; just this morning, in fact, we published a call for organizations to join this year’s “Trail or Treat” event by stepping forward to decorate the park’s also-historic cabins for visitors on October 25.

Heads-up – we mentioned this in our recent report on the Board of Park Commissioners meeting, but in case you missed it, many Seattle Parks facilities will be closed tomorrow for a training day:

Many Seattle Parks and Recreation facilities and programs will be closed Thursday, September 25, 2025, due to a Recreation Division staff training day.

These facilities and services (will be) 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

These facilities (will be) OPEN on regular schedules:

Parks
Volunteer Park Conservatory and Japanese Garden
Boat ramps
Golf courses and ranges

Then on Friday, it’s back to regular schedules.

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.

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Thanks for the tip! Seattle Parks has been screening the “Twilight” movies – the Northwest-set vampire stories – outdoors and the next one is at Lincoln Park this Wednesday – here’s the Parks announcement:

THIS WEDNESDAY, Sept. 10, come watch Twilight: Eclipse (movie # 3) at Lincoln Park (8011 Fauntleroy Way SW — ballfield # 4). Join fellow Twihards for the next installment of this epic series!

Movie starts at 6:30 p.m. and we recommend getting there early + bringing blankets and chairs (and, ideally, wearing your best Twilight merch!).

Thanks to the 800+ of you who joined us this past Wednesday at Cowen Park for Twilight # 2! Some of you were celebrating birthdays and other special occasions, brought along tiny werewolf friends, and even decorated on-theme cupcakes! We are so happy to share these fan- and fun-filled evenings with you.

Apparently that’s the only one in West Seattle, as Parks says it’s showing movie #4 at Carkeek Park on September 17 and movie #5 at Volunteer Park on September 24.

(WSB photo, last month)

One month ago, after a reader tip via a story comment, we reported on a pathway project at the south end of Fairmount Playground/Playfield that was expected to be complete by Labor Day. It wasn’t. Nearby resident Kevin asked Parks why and cc’d us on the thread. In a reply this morning, a Parks rep explained:

The project was originally scheduled for completion by September 1. However, the concrete sidewalk the contractor installed did not (meet) ADA requirements, we had to request its removal and replacement.

The contractor has been working to correct the grades and complete the project as soon as possible. I have requested an updated schedule from them and want to assure you that this remains a high-priority project for us.

According to our previous story, the contractor is Sunset Grill Construction.