Kids water park in the works for Mill Creek area
Published 11:18 pm Friday, December 28, 2007
Once the weather turns warm next year, kids will be giggling and dancing through bubbling jets of water, shooting each other with spray cannons and holding court in the “Splash Palace.”
Snohomish County is building a new spray park at the wildly popular Willis Tucker Community Park, just east of Mill Creek.
Far from a dawdling old lawn sprinkler, this park has “aqua jumpers” and “tricky soakers” to cool off toasty toddlers and schoolchildren in the summer sun.
They will be able to work in teams to cover up spouts of water to cause a “power volcano” to erupt even higher.
The park is close to huge housing developments full of families, and the spray park is expected to get a lot of use, county parks director Tom Teigen said.
“We’ve got about 4,000 homes within a mile of the park,” Teigen said. “It made sense. We get a lot of foot traffic, from the neighborhoods, and also have enough parking capacity.”
All the fancy gizmos will cost about $300,000, plus more for pipes and electricity. Construction is under way now.
The county has been building new features into the 87-acre park in phases for the past three years. Construction is complete on the county parks headquarters, two baseball fields, a playground, restrooms and a temporary off-leash dog area.
Trails are the biggest draw. When the weather’s right, hundreds of people walk to the park from nearby neighborhoods daily, Teigen said.
The spray park was once planned for McCollum Park, but it was moved to Willis Tucker, named for the first Snohomish County executive.
Children’s play groups and church groups are excited to see the spray park open, Teigen said.
“Toddlers and the young are going to have a blast,” he said. “It’s that kind of thing that makes parks amazing.”
Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
Willis Tucker Community Park
6705 Puget Park Drive, Snohomish.
For more county park information, go to www.snoco.org and use the search term “parks.”
