We’re pleased to announce that the neighborhood is getting 4 community-initiated park improvement projects! On October 22nd, Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) published a press release announcing this year’s selection of CommUNITY Fund projects. South Seattle will be getting:

  • Covered and Lit Basketball Courts at Be’er Sheva Park
  • Art Installations and Signage at Hutchinson Playground
  • A Spray Park Feasibility Study for Rainier Beach, and
  • Kids Basketball Hoops at SE Parks

 

RBAC had something to do with this! This year, we were an advisory partner on the CommUNITY Fund. We worked with community delegates, SPR staff, and SPR’s Board of Commissioners, to refine and narrow down over 240 ideas from community to 27 that were voted on by over 2,900 local residents. In fact, RBAC wrote proposals for 3 of the South Seattle projects that were selected. 

 

Here’s some of the backstory on the proposals we wrote: 

 

The idea for covered and lit basketball courts at Be’er Sheva Park came from a Rainier Beach High School graduate who is now working at RBAC as a circle keeper. He suggested the idea so that local youth would have positive things to do after school regardless of the weather. When he offered the idea up, another staff member in his thirties said “We’ve been asking for that since I was in high school!” 

The Friends of Hutchinson submitted the idea for art and signage at Hutchinson. This group was founded by one of RBAC’s public safety staff in 2020 after a violent incident happened in the park, which Emerson Elementary uses for recess. The 125-member group has advocated for a beautiful, safe park for the students ever since. Thanks to their advocacy, Hutchinson Playground will be renovated next year, and this new artwork and signage will mark the new entrance impacting the park’s identity. 

RBAC also refined the idea for a spray park feasibility study for Rainier Beach. We wrote this proposal because the requests for a local spray park or splash pad during the Henderson St, Be’er Sheva, and Hutchinson design processes were incessant; and we knew how beneficial a local spray park would be for the families in our neighborhood. The challenge is they are very difficult to build and require a lot of planning. A feasibility study is the requisite first step to making it happen. 

We are pleased to have played a role in bringing these projects to Rainier Beach. We know that the neighborhood has been dreaming about these ideas and working towards them for some time now. 

 

The Park CommUNITY Fund projects will be implemented in phases beginning in April 2025. For more information, please visit bit.ly/parkcommunityfund 

-Stewart Bowerman

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