Skip to main content
After days of public outrage, city leaders indicate they’ll reverse a decision to forbid a popular citizen-run waterslide at Brooklyn Park.
Officials with Portland Parks & Recreation sent a letter Friday to the nonprofit Friends of Brooklyn Park, which operates a youth summer day program at the park, informing the group a 100-foot-long waterslide of wetted polyethylene sheeting can remain in use.
“Based on our review, we have determined that the planned waterslide activities as a part of the Summer Youth Program may continue,” reads the letter by parks spokesman Tim Collier. “Moving forward, we ask that Friends of Brooklyn Park include the full scope of planned activities—including waterslide activity during weather above 90 degrees—in future permit applications.”
On Tuesday, WW was first to report the city had ordered the slide shut down due to concerns for the grass.
The Brooklyn Park waterslide has been a seasonal fixture since 1978, when the city started a summer kids day program. Funding was cut in 2017, at which point the citizen group took over and continued operation of the program and the waterslide. Park neighbors Jim Houser and Liz Dally have supplied it with water via a hose from their home on Southeast 10th Avenue ever since.
Starting Tuesday, Portlanders expressed outrage at the news.
“It’s a park. The function is for recreation,” wrote Nick Matthews on Facebook, in a comment that was representative of the vast majority of public sentiment. “If the grass gets damaged, that’s a good thing. That means it’s being enjoyed. It’s there for the public’s entertainment.”
The aggrieved included several members of the Portland City Council. Councilor Mitch Green tells WW he experienced a “visceral reaction” when he read the news, after which he wrote to interim parks bureau director Art Pearce imploring him to reverse the decision.
“We’ve got a lot of big, challenging issues that have no immediate solution,” Green wrote. “We’re asking a lot of Portlanders to hold the faith right now. Taking away this small beloved tradition adds unnecessary pain and sends a pretty bad signal.”
Liz Dally has lived next door to the park since 1975. On busy days, she estimates crowds fluctuate between 20 and 50 kids, more on hotter days. In winter, the hill is popular with sledders.
“It just feels like, here we go again. Don’t they have something better to do?” Dally says. “It’s just a symptom of our siloed city government, where all someone can think about is their own little piece of it and not, what’s really important here? What’s our purpose?”
Summer days in the park with basketball, card games and trips down the waterslide have been summer staples for park neighbor Ellis Gaard, 17, as far back as he can remember.
“It was always a lot of fun,” says Gaard, who’s preparing to enter his senior year at Cleveland High School. “They’ve been putting that waterslide out for decades, and the grass is back by, like, the end of September every year. We live in Oregon. Stuff grows. Stuff grows back immediately.”
The Brooklyn Park day program will run Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays through Aug. 21. The waterslide appears on days with temperatures between 90 and 95 degrees.
