Olympia to get new waterfront trails, playground as part of $50 million project
A grant agreement the City Council approved with the Department of Ecology to clean up contaminated soil at West Bay Park hints at a larger plan to develop the 17-acre property into an “estuarine garden” park with traversable islands and trails.
Parks Director Laura Keehan told The Olympian on April 2 that the grant agreement helps fund cleanup work being done by Ecology at West Bay Park. The total grant amount available is $566,585, and 50% is being covered by Olympia park impact fees. According to the agreement, the Department of Ecology and the City of Olympia have both allocated $192,500 for the work, for a total of $385,000. The remaining $181,585 of the available grant funds will be allocated through future agreement amendments passed by the council as the project moves forward.
Olympia’s park impact fees are a one-time charge on new residential development to fund park, open space and recreation facility improvements. According to the city’s website, the citywide fee is $3,698, and the downtown fee is $2,827.
Keehan said there’s a chain link fence that divides the north half of the park, located at 700 West Bay Dr. NW, from the south end of the park. The north is open to the public, and the south side has been off limits since the city bought the property after Solid Wood, Incorporated closed in 2002.
She said there was contamination of the sediment on the north side of the property from its history as an industrial site. She said the city has been working on investigating and sampling the contaminants alongside Ecology.
According to an Environmental Site Assessment conducted on the site in 2007, the property is contaminated with petroleum, as well as another surface soil contaminant from creosote-treated rail ties.
“It’s been a very long process working with Ecology,” Keehan said. “That’s typical, though, and we’re at the point in time where we’re, knocking wood, hopefully getting to a point where we can actually do clean up out there.”
Keehan said the city hired a consultant to create a work plan for the park property. She said once they have all their documents, and they’ve been reviewed by Ecology, the plan will be made available to the public and will be sent out to tribal organizations in the area for a 30-day notice of work to come.
That public notice process will happen in June or July this year, she said, and cleanup work of five locations on the property would start in April or May 2027.
Keehan said the soil at those five contaminated spots will be dug out and moved off site to approved locations for contaminated sediment. They will then be filled back in with clean soil. She said the project should take about two weeks in total to complete.
“It’s not that long of a project or anything, but it’s a step in the right direction for, you know, eventually us being able to sort of do a park project out there and open the park for public access and recreation,” she said.
Currently, only 4 acres of the 17 in total are accessible by the public. The park master plan, available on the city’s website, states the park will be expanded by that additional 13 acres, flush with restored habitat and a developed park on Budd Inlet.
“The habitat restoration opportunities include expanding aquatic areas, enhanced intertidal habitat for rearing salmonids, daylighted creeks with expanded sub-estuaries, improved water quality through treatment, contaminated sediment removal, and enhanced riparian corridor conditions,” according to the plan.
Included in the plan are paved and unpaved trails for walking and biking, boardwalks over open water, streams and wetlands, a gravel beach and areas for food trucks.
The northern gateway, or the heart of the park, would see new trails, picnic shelters, a kayak launch area, a playground and boardwalks over the Garfield Creek estuary. The design also includes 24 parking spaces.
To the south, the plan is to build out “estuarine gardens.” The plan calls for removing most of the old rail berm along the bay and transforming remnants of it into two small habitat islands that provide habitat and beach in the Port Lagoon. Clean material would be piled over the areas to create islands, which would be traversable by new boardwalks. The plan includes adding back in the rainbow bridge that is currently along the property.
However, the city doesn’t have any identified funding sources to make the project come to fruition yet. Keehan said the project is estimated to cost about $50 million, and it would be completed in four phases. Design and permitting would cost $3 million, according to the park master plan, and construction of the northern park area would cost $13 million. The central park area is estimated to cost $8,316,000, and the southern park area is estimated to cost $23 million.
“It’s such a cool plan,” she said. “I can’t wait for it to actually happen some day. We are at least moving forward, because this cleanup would have to happen anyway, right? This is the first step, and so we’re moving forward with what we can, and then we’ll continue to look for major funding to be able to actually do the park and the trail.”
Keehan said the plan for the park and a funding strategy would need to be approved by the City Council in its Parks, Arts and Recreation Plan, which is updated every six years. The current plan runs through 2028.
“This is one of the projects that council will have to decide how to prioritize this with other park development projects, whether that’s neighborhood parks or parks along the waterfront,” she said.
Keehan said funding for the project would likely be a combination of grants and some sort of special funding measure passed by the city.
Keehan said it would likely take about five years to develop construction documents, obtain permits and start construction of the new park. That’s if full funding was obtained and everything progressed smoothly, she said.
“I wish I could snap my fingers and have it happen, because it would be one of those things that would be so popular for people to be able to spend time on the waterfront like that,” she said.
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