From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, Seattle Parks and Recreation will host a community celebration to officially open the new playground and skatepark at Roxhill Park, located across the street from Target and Westwood Village at 2850 S.W. Roxbury St.

Named "Roxhill Castle," the playground was a collaborative effort between Seattle Parks and an army of West Seattle Community volunteers coordinated by Mat McBride, Delridge Neighborhood District Council Chair.

The skatepark was built by West Seattle-based Grindline Skateparks.

Both projects were partially funded by the Parks and Green Spaces Levy.

Additional details from Seattle Parks and Recreation:

Join us at the Roxhill Park Playground and Skatepark Celebration!

Seattle Parks and Recreation is hosting a community celebration for the renovated Roxhill play area and the new skatespot on Saturday, April 20, 2013 from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. The official ribbon cutting will take place at 12:30 p.m. The afternoon will be filled with skate lessons, giveaways, music and light refreshment. Roxhill Park is located at 2850 SW Roxbury St. in West Seattle.

The community knows Roxhill Park as the “Castle” park and at this celebration they will celebrate that it will still be known as “Castle” park and the new streetscape skatepark north of the play area.

In 1994, the community built the original castle play structure at Roxhill Park. In 2011, during the extensive community planning process for the Parks and Green Spaces Levy funded play area renovation project, the community learned that the castle would be removed. They made a commitment to organize the volunteers required to complete the “build” of another Leather and Associates play area design. The community build was realized over five days in early November 2012, resulting in the new castle structure and play area. The volunteer and community support was great!

“I didn’t understand the importance of this park when I signed on. But I get it now: kids need a place that is special, just for them, something that says ‘I value you.’ Well, nothing says ‘I value you’ quite like ‘I built this for you with my hands,” said Mat McBride, Delridge Neighborhood District Council Chair and Roxhill Volunteer Coordinator. “This park is a testament to the work of everyone who believed that. I’m honored to have been a part of it.”

The Parks and Green Spaces Levy included $450,000 for planning, design and renovation of the play area and $600,000 for the planning, design and construction of a skatespot. The community received a Department of Neighborhoods Small and Simple Award of $20,000 that allowed for the community build out of the play area.

Seattle Parks hosted five public meetings for these combined projects and presented the skatepark designs for review by the Seattle Design Commission. The Citywide Skatepark Plan, developed through Seattle Parks and Recreation with extensive community input, recommended Roxhill Park as a good site for a skatespot. In Seattle, a skatespot is defined as a skatepark ranging in size from 1,500 to 10,000 square feet.

The Rob Dyrdek Foundation (now the Street League Skateboard Foundation) donated design services and skate features for the park from Street League DC Pro Tour.

Parks’ in-house landscape architects worked with California Skate Parks, who designed the skatespot. Parks awarded the construction contract for the skatepark to Grindline Construction of West Seattle.

The Roxhill Park skatespot is the Street League Skateboard Foundation’s eighth “Safe Spot Skate Spot,” a program conceptualized by Rob Dyrdek, which seeks to create safe and legal havens for skaters across the country. The main goals of the program are to provide communities with safe and legal skate plazas, increase and encourage the active engagement of people in the sport of skateboarding, and design and develop skate plazas in cities and towns throughout the world. The program also provides an alternative option for communities with limited budgets or space restrictions to develop real street-skating locations.

Roxhill Park improvements are the result of many public/private partnerships working together. This event celebrates both the completion of the project and the amazing work done by the neighborhood, the extended West Seattle community and the entire skate community.

For more information on the project please visit http://www.seattle.gov/parks/projects/roxhill/ for more information about this event please contact Karen O’Connor at 206-233-7929 or Karen.o’connor@seattle.gov.

For more information on the Street League Skateboard Foundation, please go to http://robdyrdekfoundation.org/.