New park in Newport Hills neighborhood might be ready by November 2020
A new neighborhood park in the Newport Hills area will likely open to the public next year, according to the city of Bellevue.
“We’re kind of anxious to move this forward,” said Glenn Kost, Bellevue’s planning and development manager at a Dec. 2 city council study session. He noted that if progress continues as planned, the park could be completed by November 2020.
The project’s inception dates back to December 2018, when the city council included $3 million in the 2019-25 Capital Investment Program Plan (CIP) to design and construct a new park at 11560 SE 60th St.
By then, work in the park had been gestating. In February 2010, the city purchased, with help from King County, the 4.79-acre Tyler property parcel (situated along Southeast 60th Street in Newport Hills) for a neighborhood park space. In 2011, the Newport Hills Community Club (NHCC) approved, with the assistance of the city, a Vision Plan for the Tyler property to make available off-leash and general park areas.
Bellevue next bought the adjacent Patterson and Brick properties. When joined with the Tyler properties, a 13.7-acre space was created. Though, as noted in meeting documents, development in the combined space has to be limited to between 3 and 3.2 acres, due in part to the wooded and sloping elements of the site. The wooded area of the land — which is part of the Patterson parcel — saw the construction of a soft-surface loop trail in 2015.
In May 2019, city staff, following the 2018 approval to move forward with the new park’s design and construction, started community outreach for the project, which concluded last month. With the intent to create a Preferred Park Plan for the site, three neighborhood meetings (the first hosted by the NHCC, and the others put on by the city of Bellevue) were held to get feedback.