Plans for Wapato Hills
Oops. We goofed. Turns out we don’t know all of our Tacoma parks as well as we thought. On Friday morning we posted a story in which we made the embarrassing mistake of conflating Wapato Park with Wapato Hills Park. It won’t happen again. Here’s a corrected post.
Metro Parks is inviting the community to an open house to revisit and comment on the Wapato Hills Conceptual Master Plan. For those of you who weren’t familiar with it either, the 14.2 acre Wapato Hills Park is located in South Tacoma, and features the Skip and Laura Vaughn playground and spray ground, as well as a large undeveloped area. The park was established in 1994, alongside about 70 acres of open natural space.
The City of Tacoma and Metro Parks are partnering to preserve and improve the park through a plan for management of its vegetation, habitat, environment, active use and recreation, future usage, and safety. Public meetings in April and May of this year will be a part of the process as Metro Parks and the City review, and potentially amend, the 1996 Conceptual Master Plan, and carry out the design. The work is being funded by the Parks Improvement Bond Measure, approved by the citizens of Tacoma in November 2005 ($190,000) and the City of Tacoma ($8,840). Learn more about the park and the process on the Wapato Hills Park page
What priorities for improving the park would you like to see moving forward?
Filed under: Neighborhoods, South Tacoma, Parks
4 comments
E Erik Hanberg April 15, 2013
It’s cool.
We have a McKinley Park and a McKinley Playfield too. :)
D Dan H. April 15, 2013
The master plan should call for a pedestrin and bike connection linking it to the other Wapato park. If it is already planned, we might be able to make it part of any future project by WSDOT to extend carpool lanes on I5 south of SR16. Alaska St is already a great bike route after recent improvements and 64th St provides great access to the Water ditch trail. Pedestrians on both sides of the freeway would benifit greatly from having their neighborhoods reconnected.
J JJ April 15, 2013
I agree with Dan H here.Bicycles and Velomobiles are the future as we face worldwide oil depletion in the decades to come even with fracking.Petroleum or even natural gas powered motor vehicles are a dead end and will only greatly harm the Earth (Anthropogenic Climate Change).
The age of the motor vehicle must come to an end.
Electric cars are too wasteful and energy inefficient because they are too heavy.Eventually cars will happily end up in the dustbin of history as one of mankind’s greatest follies and waste.The more friendlier Tacoma gets for cycling and other sustainable forms of productive lifestyle the better Tacoma will be to survive future unsustainable calamities that will cause immense societal disruptions for its citizens.
J jsisbest April 16, 2013
Good God JJ… such a gloomy picture you keep painting with your rants. Take a deep breath, go for a bike ride, or a walk in a park. Hell, ride your Velomobile down I-5 if that’s what floats your boat. Have a little more faith in the human spirit and human ingenuity. I whole heartily agree that Tacoma needs to be more bike, pedestrian and transit friendly. But doom and gloom rants aren’t needed to make the point.