Ballard Commons Park set to reopen in March after 2021 closure

Ballard Commons Park is scheduled to reopen in March after being closed for more than a year for upgrades that followed the clearing of a large homeless encampment.

The park has undergone a face-lift since it closed in December 2021, in the hopes that a revamped skatepark, new sanitation equipment, an added play area and other tweaks will create a new chapter for the park that originally opened in 2005.

With $1 million set aside by the city to renovate the park, Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss, who represents District 6, including Ballard, said Friday he hopes the reopening will give the community a new relationship with the previously troubled park.

“There’s been a lot of pain and trauma at this park, and a decade-plus of neglect,” Strauss said in an interview. “But we’ve taken the time to build a foundation and a better future for Ballard Commons Park, and this reopening is just the beginning.”

The city will host grand reopening events with games, performances and community organizations from noon to 6 p.m. March 11-12 at the park, 5701 22nd Ave. NW.

Most encampment removals in the city were paused during the height of the pandemic, but they resumed late in 2021 with an emphasis on parks and downtown. As clearings resumed, the city and King County Regional Homelessness Authority say they began focusing on “genuine outreach” and took more time to make repeated contact with people in encampments, which resulted in more housing referrals being accepted, such as in nearby Woodland Park.

The encampment in Ballard Commons was cleared over three months in late 2021, resulting in 66 people placed in shelter or housing, and 11 forced to leave the park, making it the first large encampment “resolved” with this kind of gradual approach. Strauss says this strategy will help prevent large encampments from resurfacing, unlike with previous clearings at Ballard Commons.

“It is proven to work,” Strauss said. “If you push people out and walk away, they will come back a week later. If you give them shelter or housing, they’re not going to come back.”

Strauss, who took office in 2020 just before the park was temporarily shut down for a hepatitis A outbreak, says he’s excited to see the park become more useful to his community, and to return to biking there himself.

“I was actually the first person to ever ride my bike through the park, and I look forward to doing that again,” he added.

At Ballard Commons, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department has planted trees, winterized the Portland Loo public restroom, removed graffiti, installed café-style lighting and added five new benches, among other improvements.

According to Strauss, part of the park will be closed starting in June for the construction of a new play area, which he hopes will be completed in September.