Park Planning & Capital Projects

Master Trail Plan 

The Monroe Parks and Recreation Department is developing the City’s first Trails Master Plan. The goal of the project is to develop and plan that will serve the City’s residents over the next 20 years.  The scope for the project generally includes existing trail analysis, planning for future expansion of the existing trail system, trail design standards, and a robust outreach plan.  The new plan will serve as a decision-making tool with a system-wide approach that helps the City prioritize the allocation of available resources to local trails. Visit the project page to view information and updates.

Blueberry Children's Park Playground

After receiving input from the public, the City is moving forward with constructing new playground at Blueberry Children's Park. The playground will be 50% larger than the existing and provide more play opportunities than the current version. The feedback from the residents is reflected in the final design. Start of construction is dependent on the completion of the Blueberry stormwater project and the weather. This means, if the stormwater project is not completed on time (summer), the playground would be pushed to the following dry period (spring – summer 2024). 

New Pickleball Courts/ResurfacingPickleball

The Parks Department is contracting a company to resurface all of the existing sports courts at Lake Tye Park, including the basketball courts and the two combo tennis/pickleball courts. The re-lining of the courts will include reconfiguring the layout of the pickleball courts to increase the total number of pickleball courts from the current two, to five. Four will be on the west court, and one will be on the east court. A small storage container will be on site that will contain portable pickleball nets/stands for the 4 courts on the west court, with the expectation that park users store them in the container when not in use. At Sky River Park, we will develop two dedicated pickleball courts between the playground and the exercise stations. We received input from two local pickleball enthusiast groups, in which we received great ideas for our final layout design. The total estimated cost of these projects is $60,000, which is in the City Council-approved Parks Capital Improvement Project (CIP) Fund. As well, a $10,000 Snohomish County Small Capital Projects Partnership grant was awarded. Staff have designed the project, applied for all applicable permits, prepared bid documents for resurfacing and anticipate the completion of the project by the end of Fall 2023. If any unexpected permit or bid delays occur, completion may be delayed to Spring 2024 if we miss the good weather window. 

Trombley Park 

In 2021 the City of Monroe purchased the 5-acre site now known as Trombley Park. The goal for this land is to develop the site into a neighborhood park. In 2022, with the input from surrounding residence, the City developed preliminary design plan for the future development of the park. Due to the estimated development cost of $10 million, the project was broken into two phases. The City is currently seeking grant funding to develop Phase 1 (PDF). The goal of developing Phase 1 (PDF) is to develop three acres of the five-acre park area for the surrounding residents.

Cadman

Under a 2002 agreement between Cadman, now Heidelberg Materials, and the City of Monroe, Cadman agreed to transfer approximately 140 acres to the City of Monroe for use as a new park. Cadman will retain 37-acres as an operations pad. The land is located between the Skykomish River and City’s Skykomish River Park. Once the transfer is complete, the City will begin implementing the Master Plan developed in 2018 (PDF).


Past Projects

  1. Lake Tye Park All Weather Fields 
  2. Highway 2 Bypass Temporary Trail Study
  3. Lake Tye Park and Cadman Master Plan
  4. North Hill Park Acquisition
  5. 2020 Park Bond
  6. ECPRD 2019 Bond

Lake Tye All Weather Field Project

On August 5, 2021, we celebrated the grand opening of the Lake Tye All-Weather Lighted Fields! The new fields offer all-synthetic, LED lighted, multipurpose fields, permitting year-round extended competitive play and practice for baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse, football, and rugby.  The new, synthetic fields improve the capacity, diversity of use, and accessibility of two fields at our signature community park. 

This community high-priority parks capital project consisted of renovating two natural grass, single sport-use, unlighted fields, originally built in 1996, to all-synthetic, LED lighted multipurpose fields, permitting year-round extended competitive play and practice for baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse, football and rugby. The new, synthetic fields will improve the capacity, diversity of use and accessibility of two fields at our signature community park.

The project, at a total cost of approximately $3.9 million, was funded in part with $1,305,000 in awarded state and county grants and a local community donation. In 2018, the City of Monroe applied for, and received a State Department of Commerce $800,000 Appropriation, and a $350,000 State Recreation & Conservation Office (RCO) Youth Athletic Facility Grant. Also in 2018, Monroe’s Sky Valley Little League donated $10,000 cash toward the project. In 2019, the City of Monroe applied for and received a $150,000 Snohomish County Community Partnership CIP Grant. The remaining funding for this project was budgeted from the City’s Park Capital Fund

We have made access available to the public as much as is practical and that protects our community’s $4 million investment.  Appropriate drop-in incidental uses are allowed on the fields, as long as such use does not interfere with any scheduled uses,  field maintenance, field closures, or negatively affects the integrity of the new facility.  Incidental use would be defined as, but not limited to, walking along pathways adjacent to the fields, non-organized, non-league use such as playing catch with balls or frisbee’s, kite flying, or informal pick-up games of soccer, football, and softball among friends.  As with other athletic fields, pets will not be allowed on the fields, as well as specific restrictions unique to protecting the function of the synthetic turf surface such as no food or drink, spiked shoes, bicycles, etc.  Please observe all posted rules at the site.

We will monitor the activity and use at the new fields and may recommend changes to our policy as necessary, to protect our community investment.

Lake Tye Park all weather fields design:

Lake Tye Park All Weather Fields Conceptual Layout

Watch videos of the project progress here:

For more information, email Mike Farrell.