16 years of waiting: Here’s everything you’ll find at Edgewood’s new 18-acre park
Edgewood is getting a new park after 16 years of uncertainty.
The city’s mayor Daryl Eidinger said the Edgewood Community Park is expected to be complete by late summer.
The 18-acre park will have an open field, restrooms, a picnic area, a parking lot and a playground. There will be about a mile of trails that are accessible to everyone, Eidinger said.
The park on 36th Street East and Meridian is expected to cost $4 million dollars, $1 million of which is state grants. The rest will be paid by park impact fees collected from developers.
Park impact fees are one-time costs developers pay a city. Development brings more residents or employees, and the fees help cover costs of the increased demand for public facilities.
“The future stages are flexible but dependent on resources, and if development continues, we could have some other upgraded parks,” Eidinger said.
The Puyallup School District sold the 18 acres to the city in 2005 for about $800,000, Eidinger said. It was one of the first property purchases Edgewood made as a city.
The land was always intended to be a park, but initial plans for a fully built out park have been reduced. The first rendition included a splash park and sports fields. That design cost between $7 and $8 million, but voters rejected the city’s bond proposal in 2008 and the project was put on hold until 2015.
“This is not necessarily a community that want to go in to debt for a project like that,” council member Nate Lowry said.
Eidinger said increased development brought in more park impact fees, reigniting the park discussion. A simpler, less expensive park design was created.
The park could see additional phases that include more parking or a sports field, but the changes won’t add millions of dollars of work, Eidinger said.
The largest park in the city currently is less than two acres, Lowry said. With the addition of the Edgewood Community Park, the city — with 13,000 residents — increases its park acreage from 38 to 52.
“We are a growing area and so the need for formal facilities is ever changing,” Lowry said.
Eidinger said the council has a lot of interest in the walkability of the city.
“Development of parks and improvement of the walkability and bikeability of our city is high up on our list of priorities,” the mayor said. “We are looking currently at the connecting the Interurban Trail between Milton and us and us and the (Puyallup) Valley.”
