Blaine Marine Park playground closed through December

The Blaine Marine Park pirate playground and restrooms closed on October 30 and will reopen December 31 as the city of Blaine finishes the last leg of its decade-long Marine Park Reconstruction Project. 

The city contracted Premium Services Inc. to install two pocket beaches and two headlands near the Lighthouse Point Water Reclamation Facility this fall. This comes after the city closed the park in January and February to finish an earlier stage of the project to stabilize the shoreline.

“People can walk off the back of the playground and onto the water’s edge on a new Pacific Northwest beach,” said Alex Wenger, director of the city’s Community Development Services Department. “It’s been a longtime coming.”

Altogether, the project will replace broken concrete and debris with rock materials from the west end of the playground to behind the water reclamation facility. The project will improve shoreline access, safety and habitat areas, while controlling erosion. 

“The city has been experiencing some significant erosion along that shoreline so this is addressing a critical need,” Wenger said.

In 2010, the project’s preliminary plans were finished in the feasibility study. It then took the city until this year to start construction, which Wenger attributes to securing federal permitting and state funding.

A $500,000 grant from the Washington State Recreation Conservation Office and the city’s park capital improvement funds paid for the project.

Landscaping and trail work will be done in the spring, Wenger said.