Find Posts By Topic

Healthy People: 2019 Highlights from Seattle Parks and Recreation

This year, we worked in every corner of the city to expand recreational opportunities, restore our urban forest, build and design new parks, renovate play areas, and engage with community.

As Seattle’s population grows, and livability, affordability, and transportation issues continue to become more challenging, Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) is working hard to provide affordable, accessible programming that helps maintain the livability of our city, and to provide indoor and outdoor spaces for community to gather, be active, and connect with each other and the natural environment.

Read on to see how SPR helped support Healthy People in 2019, and click the links to see how we supported a Healthy Environment and Strong Communities!

Healthy People:

  • Opened new parks & renovated playgrounds! We opened Urban Triangle Park in the South Lake Union neighborhood, and Alice Ball Park in the Greenwood/Phinney neighborhood. We also continued to work on the design and permitting of 7 landbanked sites which are on track to open in 2020. In addition, SPR renovated 6 play areas across Seattle (David Rodgers, E.C. Hughes; Wallingford PF; Gas Works; High Point; Puget Ridge).
  • Welcomed summer beach goers: More than 186,000 people visited our lifeguarded summer beaches!
  • Partnered to support Scholarships and Summer of Safety: Amazon and the Alliance for Education granted SPR $225,000 to support our work keeping young people engaged in safe, structured activities during the summer. SPR used these funds to provide scholarships for 142 young people on our camp waitlist, allowing them to attend 932 weeks of camp, collectively. In addition, we supported the Summer of Safety, a drop-in program geared toward youth not otherwise enrolled in programming, that served an average of 72 youth a day.
  • Expanded access to Roller Derby: When Seattle-area roller derby teams lost their main practice space in Shoreline, SPR worked with them to identify spaces, times, and other needs to help accommodate this growing sport that serves mostly young women. Now, we’ve put roller derby stripes on courts at Bitter Lake, Delridge, Garfield, and Meadowbrook community centers, with more to come.
  • Achieved record-breaking attendance at specialty gardens: Working with our partners, we achieved a record number of attendance at three specialty gardens: Kubota Garden (over 100,000 visitors); Japanese Gardens (over 100,000 visitors); and Washington Park Arboretum (over 250,000 visitors).