Even as Metro moves to open new destinations, work is underway to improve the parks and facilities that 1.3 million visitors a year already enjoy.
Park improvement projects are aimed at upgrading aging facilities, improving sustainability features, and enhancing safety and security. This means improved signage, repaired roads, new play areas, building and amenity renovations and more – all the little things that make a visit to a Metro destination more fun, convenient, safe and memorable.
New entryway greets Blue Lake Regional Park visitors
If you’ve ever been among the 15,000 visitors to Blue Lake Regional Park in Fairview on a hot summer weekend, you might have had to wait a bit to enter through one of the two lanes.
But a new, three-lane entrance completed in spring 2015 makes it easier than ever for visitors to enter quickly and to start enjoying the park.
With 300,000 annual visitors, Blue Lake is Metro’s most popular park. Some 15,000 visitors pass through the entrance every summer weekend day.
Metro partnered with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to improve water quality by shifting the new park entrance and making room for bioswales that catch and soak up rainwater runoff from the park road, cleaning and cooling water before soaking into the ground.
More improvements are coming. Work is underway in fall 2015 to improve the wetland area in the western corner of the park. Asphalt trails will be replaced with compacted gravel; damaged bridges and lookout platforms will be replaced as well.
Also in the works are new restrooms and improvements to picnic areas throughout the site, including improved access under the Americans with Disability Act.