The 21-acre park is at 10600 SE 248th St. <\/a><\/p>\n“These renovations offer a beautiful, refreshed space for our community to gather and play outdoors,” according to a Kent Parks Facebook post. “Bring your family to explore and experience this beautiful new space.”<\/p>\n
The park reopened May 18 after closing in April 2023 for upgrades. The main parking lot, restrooms, shelter, field and playground were closed for construction.<\/p>\n
The Kent City Council awarded a $1.59 million bid in April 2023 to Enumclaw-based Harkness Construction, which submitted the lowest of eight bids. King County awarded $500,000 to the project, funds raised by the county’s Parks Levy. The rest of the costs were covered by the city’s capital projects fund.<\/p>\n
The new children’s play area offers a more inclusive play experience for all ages and abilities, including a new nature-based play area. Additional improvements include ADA improvements to existing walkways, upgraded site furnishings, lawn renovation with enhanced turf and irrigation, pollinator meadow and a permanent stage for the city’s summer concert series.<\/p>\n
The city plans a grand opening celebration on Saturday, June 29, with more details to come.<\/p>\n
The trails, dog park, sport courts and other park features remained open during the second phase of park construction.<\/p>\n
In 2019, the city celebrated the grand opening of an improved Morrill Meadows Park, which combined with East Hill Park and included the adjoining, redesigned, relocated off-leash dog park. <\/p>\n
The conversion of the two parks and dog area – replete with a dedicated parking area – completed a city-funded and grant-assisted endeavor that took years in the making. The park added a multi-sport court, new walking trails and pathways, open space, gathering spaces for picnics and community events and a dog park that features a separate section for small or shy dogs.<\/p>\n
The amenities of the reshaped park in 2019 integrated with the then-new YMCA – a two-story, 50,000-square-foot facility, giving city parks and Y staff the opportunity to work together to provide indoor\/outdoor recreational activities and programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Upgrades include expanded playground, new swings, improved lawn space and a permanent stage <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":69494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-69493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69493"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69493"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=69493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}