Students help celebrate renovations to Kent’s Salt Air Vista Park

The chants of nearly 100 elementary school students turned the ribbon cutting at Salt Air Vista Park on the West Hill in Kent into a new adventure for Mayor Dana Ralph.

“It was so fun having the kids from Parkside Elementary there,” Ralph said in her weekly update. “When we got ready to cut the ribbon, they not only held the ribbon, they started chanting ‘Cut the ribbon!’ Hands down the most enthusiastic ribbon cutting I’ve ever done!”

Parkside Elementary is in Des Moines, part of Highline Public Schools, but about a mile west of Salt Air Vista Park, 24615 26th Pl. S., which is just west of Pacific Highway South and less than a mile south of Dick’s Drive-In.

City officials had a ribbon cutting Nov. 8 because of a $338,000 upgrade to the small neighborhood park in the spring.

“Our parks team completed the renovation earlier this year where it received a full playground replacement, new swings, a renovated lawn area with new irrigation, stormwater upgrades, improvement to the nature trail, the addition of a nature play area and a new drinking fountain with the ability to fill up drinking bottles,” Ralph said.

Attendees scored Kent Parks swag, enjoyed the play equipment, voted on what tree they wanted to see planted in the park, and experienced a nature walk in the new park trails led by the city’s Natural Resources team, according to the Parks Department.

King County awarded $1.04 million in grants to the city of Kent in 2022 for three projects, including Salt Air Vista Park. The other projects included a $500,000 renovation to Morrill Meadows Park on the East Hill and $206,437 for improvements to the Green River Trail and Interurban Trail.

Salt Air Vista Park opened in the late 1990s and had been showing its age, according to park staff.

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