After more than six years of work by the community, Broadway Hill Park is officially open. At the Thursday night celebration, Mayor Ed Murray and the neighborhood residents responsible for the park’s creation spoke about the hard work it took to get the project off the ground. An impressive number of neighbors came to the celebration to enjoy what the park’s creators hope will become a communal yard for a neighborhood lacking in green space.

“This is a huge, open, inviting space,” said Kathleen Shea, a Capitol Hill resident involved in the park’s development and speaker at the celebration. “It was designed to be the front porch of the neighborhood.”

Community members say it took years of meetings and surveys to collect input and long nights writing grant applications to arrive at the final creation.

The park includes 12,000 square feet of grass, benches, community gardening space, and a sure to be popular BBQ grill in the middle of Capitol Hill. Seattle Parks acquired the land at the corner for Federal and Republican in 2010 for $2 million after a townhome project slated for the property fell through. In addition to the small grants the community received to plan the project, the park was made possible by a $750,000 grant from the Parks and Green Spaces Levy Opportunity Fund which was used for construction.

Department of Neighborhoods project manager Allyn Ruth said she credits the park’s success to the residents who stayed motivated through the long process. “It’s been seven years of people staying involved,” said Ruth.

Mayor Murray congratulated the community for its “incredible work” in his comments at the opening. “Thank you for taxing yourselves to improve our lives as a community,” said Murray.

Those who worked on the project for the past several years say they are happy with the final product. “It’s really meant to be a yard for a neighborhood without a lot of yards,” said Norah Kates, who helped write the first grant application in 2010. “I think the neighborhood recognized what a rare opportunity this was, and not to let it go by.” Kates’ favorite part of the park is the seating at the top of the slope, which she described as “kind of a perch.”

Marcus Roman, another community member who helped drive the park’s development, said he is glad that the park seems to be popular. “The people in the neighborhood just wanted some green space,” said Roman. Roman said every time he has been to the park since its opening, he has seen people who seem to be enjoying the space.

Whether more green space pops up on Capitol Hill remains to be seen. Though Broadway Hill Park improves the neighborhood’s stats, Kates said that Capitol Hill is still below the Parks Department’s increasingly outdated goal for recommended green space per acre.

Meanwhile, Broadway Hill Park is not finished yet — the community is collecting feedback on a garden shed that still needs to be built. To weigh in on the design, go to the the community meeting that will be held in the park on July 28 at 7 PM, or send your ideas to [email protected].