Adults who want a taste of childhood might like this feature coming to a Bellingham park
An adult-sized slide is being built at Maritime Heritage Park in the city’s downtown to help revitalize the area and attract more families and other visitors to the park and waterfront, the city of Bellingham said.
Its construction is part of a $283,000 playground project that will include a smaller slide, as well as a picnic area.
The project should be completed by summer, and its centerpiece likely will be the wide 21-foot-long slide that will curve and drop 12 feet from its start on a hill.
“This slide project has been in development for several years, but it was complicated by the slope of the hillside, the landfill under the park and other factors. We are thrilled it is finally coming to fruition,” Nicole Oliver, director of the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department, said to The Bellingham Herald.
Maritime Heritage Park, at 500 W. Holly St., sits on what was, until 1957, a municipal dump.
The project will include a stairway back to the slide’s top, and a second smaller slide as well as what the city, in a news release, called “engaging play panels for younger children.”
The new additions will be located down from an existing stairway that connects the park amphitheater and the Whatcom Museum’s Old City Hall building.
Oliver said a playground was included in the original master plan for Maritime Heritage Park. Such plans help guide a park’s development.
“As we have added additional programming and the big summer toys, such as the chessboard, we found more people came down to enjoy the park, but still not a lot of children,” she said.
“A slide big enough for adults, with a smaller slide for smaller kids that is wheelchair accessible, seemed like a good option for a new play amenity,” Oliver added. “This addition follows several other completed projects that all aimed at contributing to more activation, which brings more visitors, and increased overall use and enjoyment.”
Bellingham-based Strider Construction Co. is the general contractor. Park impact fees are paying for construction costs.
City officials said the big slide was the most recent effort to diversify recreational opportunities in the park.
But the park, though pretty, has a reputation for seediness.
Despite that, Oliver believes the slide and another new-ish green space nearby will draw parents and youngsters.
“With the very popular playground at Waypoint Park only two blocks away, we think this new slide will definitely attract families,” she said to The Herald.
Recent ideas for improvements, such as the big slide, have come via a task force and are detailed in a 2013 report that focused on revitalizing Maritime Heritage and using environmental design to deter crime.
That translated into more lighting at the park, more trash cans and more activities to get people there, including, previously, free summer theater and Music at Maritime, and oversized games for people who like to play their chess, Jenga and Connect Four on the big side.
More recently, the city has closed a public parking lot after documenting 20 “significant” 911 calls near a fish hatchery on the west bank of Whatcom Creek in Maritime Heritage Park, according to a Bellingham Herald article about the closure as a result of violent incidents involving homeless campers.
“The issues experienced on the other side of the creek are really separate and related to a number of issues, including lack of visibility,” Oliver said.
This story was originally published April 19, 2021 at 10:57 AM.
