From baseball to soccer, lacrosse to cricket, sports fields are an important part of our community. They’re a place to hone new skills, learn the value of working on a team, a place to come together over the love of the game, and an opportunity to exercise and improve mental and physical wellbeing. The 2020-2025 King County Parks Levy has a variety of projects and funds that go to creating and improving existing sports fields on King County Parks properties and in local cities throughout the county.
Projects in King County Parks
The 2020-2025 King County Parks Levy includes funding to upgrade 11 synthetic turf ballfields and improve 4 grass ballfields in King County Parks to ensure high-quality play for all sports users continues for years to come. These capital projects range in size from improving ballfield drainage, adding lighting, or even completely replacing synthetic turf.
Creating multi-use fields where several types of sports are available for all ages and abilities is the priority in our sports field capital projects. When replacing turf, we add new lines that can accommodate additional sports to play on the improved field, or even connect fields to accommodate sports with larger footprints like cricket.
Project Highlights:
- Ravensdale Park: Work included replacing the synthetic turf on Ball Fields 1 and 2 as well as the soccer field. In addition, multi-use sports lines were painted to include youth and adult soccer, as well as men’s and women’s lacrosse.
- Petrovitsky Park: The project on the multi-use fields presented a unique opportunity to combine two previously separate sports fields into one, large field. After removing the asphalt strip that was separating the space, the entire area was resurfaced with new synthetic turf. By having one large field, Parks was able to create a practice cricket field, responding to community requests to add more places to play cricket in the County. Two games of soccer, lacrosse and other sports can still be played at the same time.
- Skyway Park: Added new mini-mod soccer fields as part of multiple improvements to the park. These fields provide new opportunities for youth soccer in the neighborhood.
City Projects
In addition to improving sports fields on King County Parks properties, the King County Parks Levy also includes pass-through funding that goes directly to local cities in the county to support parks, trails, and recreational programming as they see fit. Some local cities have used these pass-through funds to support sports field improvements in their parks.
City of Redmond: Levy funds were used as part of the turf replacement project at Grass Lawn Park, one of Redmond’s most popular community parks. This project replaced the existing, degraded turf for new all-weather turf and striping for multiple sports and year-round recreation. Due to community interest and demand, the fields also include lines for cricket—the first cricket pitch in the City of Redmond.
Seattle: Used Levy funds toward synthetic turf replacement at Delridge Playfield.
City of Duvall: Levy funds were spent on Big Rock Ball Field maintenance and operations activities.
What’s Next?
As we approach the final year of the 2020-2025 King County Parks Levy, we are completing the remaining sports field improvement projects. These efforts include:
- Sunset Park: Resurfacing the tennis courts to extend their lifespan and improve the playing surface.
- Big Finn Hill Park (Ballfield 4): Enhancements to the ballfield, including replacing and installing new fence, dugouts, mow strips, and a warning track to improve playability and usability.
- Mel Olson Stadium at Steve Cox Memorial Park: Finalizing plans for drainage improvements for the grass outfield to increase durability and usability. The project is a collaborative effort between King County Park’s Community Partnerships and Grants program, and the DubSea Community Sports Foundation.
We hope you are able to get out to one of the sports fields to play soon! Check out our Backyard FunFinder to see where you can play different sports throughout King County Parks.