Edgecliff Park Will Get A Major Facelift

Edgecliff Park in the Spokane Valley is about to become less dusty and more fun.

Construction crews will begin paving two gravel parking lots that border the park on Sixth and Eighth avenues in early August. In September, new playground equipment will be installed.

Edgecliff is on Park Road, between Sixth and Eighth.

Residents have complained for years that park users pulling in and out of the parking lots stir up dust that lands on their homes.

“I saw it so dusty you couldn’t see down that street,” said Felix Bradley, pointing west on Eighth. Bradley has lived opposite Edgecliff for 22 years.

On the other side of the park, 35-year resident Floyd Reeves agreed. Informed of the paving project, he said, “The sooner, the better. It’s quite a dust problem.”

Paving won’t solve all the dust problems, Reeves added. Homes also are covered in dust when park workers grate the baseball field, he said.

On the Eighth Avenue side, the county also plans to put in a sidewalk.

New playground equipment is due to be installed in September. In recent years, equipment has been removed due to rust and rotting. All that remains are two rusting swingsets.

The new playground set, chosen by residents, will include monkey bars, a suspended bridge and a slide.

Valley resident Debbie Vaughn began coming to Edgecliff with her parents 33 years ago, when she was 6 years old. Now she brings her own 4-year-old son, Jamie, to the park.

Vaughn’s been unhappy with the playground equipment for years. “There’s just nothing for them to do,” she said of the children who visit the park.

“All they could do is swing,” said Vaughn’s aunt, Cheryl Mortenson, who run a daycare center out of her home, just blocks from Edgecliff. “You can only swing for so long.”

Two years ago, Vaughn and Mortenson contacted the county Parks Department and got involved in the effort to secure new playground equipment for the park.

Edgecliff isn’t the only county park due for improvements this year. Late last year, county commissioners agreed to bolster the Parks Department’s budget - to the tune of $1 million - with unexpected revenue from the excise tax on real estate transactions.

Parks officials planned numerous projects, including paving, sewer work, demolition of old and rotting buildings and installation of playground equipment.

Many of the projects are either completed or in the bidding process.

Projects due to begin in the late summer or fall include sewer work at Liberty Lake, Sullivan, Terrace View and Holmberg parks and replacement of the irrigation system at Brown’s Park.

After sewer service was extended to the area surrounding Terrace View Park last summer, parks officials added the park at 24th and Blake to the list of those due to be connected to the sewer.

, DataTimes