2017 has been another great year for the Seattle Park District! We’ve been working in every corner of the city to preserve our urban forest, maintain our community centers and parks, encourage community members to get active, design new parks with community input, and much more! Read on to learn about some of our Building for the Future highlights to date, and look out for our comprehensive Seattle Park District annual report coming soon.
Click the links to read highlights from other Seattle Park District initiatives: Fix it First: Major Maintenance; Maintaining Parks and Facilities; Programs for People.
Building for the Future
These initiatives prepare for the future by developing new parks, acquiring new park land, or building new assets within parks. They include maintenance funding to keep the new parks clean, safe and welcoming long after they’re constructed. They also contain funding to activate connections between greenways and parks, and explore a new management and partnership model for downtown parks.
Ten downtown parks – Hing Hay, Children’s International, Kobe Terrace, Pioneer Square, Freeway, Cascade, Denny, Bell Street, Belltown Cottage, Tilikum, and Victor Steinbrueck Parks —enjoyed the following activations last summer:
- 2,577 hours of Park Concierge time to support activities and patrons, and to help keep the parks safe and welcoming.
- 1,050 hours of free live music by a juried pool of buskers.
- 119 hours of free concerts.
- 77 hours of free fitness programs.
- A total of 10,213 hours of programming and 2,736 individual events or programs.
We are working with community members to plan for future new parks and park additions. Community planning is underway for North Rainier, Christie Park, West Seattle Junction, and Greenwood. Designs, based on earlier community planning, are being developed for Baker Park, Lake City, Westlake & Lenora, and Ernst Park.