Under the hot noon sun on Saturday, July 27, children chased each other around a rubber play area, while adults mingled and caught up, snacked on banh mis and lemonade, and listened to a DJ by a small grass area.
Hoa Mai Park, the first park in Little Saigon, opened at last.
The park’s opening featured a lion dance for good luck, a ribbon cutting, and remarks from Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle Parks Superintendent AP Diaz, and Quynh Pham, Executive Director of Friends of Little Sài Gòn (FLS), among others – interpreted for attendees into Vietnamese, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
“I think it’s great,” said Dustin Le, one of several dozen people who attended the ribbon cutting for the park. “To have a little green space in an urban, dense area would be very nice.”
You can’t miss the huge green, intricate monumental panel sculpture greeting visitors on the park’s Jackson Street entrance, named “Through” and designed by artist Kalina Chung. From there, the park slopes down to King Street connecting the two neighborhood streets with a continuous line of sight. The park offers an accessible ramp, permanent chairs and tables, a play area, flowers, bamboo and young trees, and an area for events and performances. Soon it will have permanent lighting.
Yellow color accents throughout reflect the park’s namesake, chosen by community members. The hoa mai flower blooms in early spring and represents renewal. In Vietnamese, “Hoa” means flower and “Mai” means lucky. During Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, people use the flowers as decoration for good luck.
“Our hope is that it’s another space to bring the community together and just be a basic amenity for this neighborhood,” said Pham. “We [didn’t] have a public open space for employees in the neighborhood or residents in the neighborhood to go out and just enjoy the outdoors.”
The park was one of the first projects FLS prioritized for the neighborhood. It was envisioned after the 2008 Seattle Parks Levy identified Little Saigon as an area lacking open, green space.
FLS organized neighborhood stakeholders to help select a site for the park. In 2013, Seattle Parks and Recreation bought the site on 1224 South King Street – which was previously used as a parking lot for businesses. FLS and the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda) served as partners on the project, identifying architects, overseeing the design, and gathering public community feedback.
For artist Kalina Chung, it was meaningful to be selected from an open call for artists to design a sculpture for the park. Chung grew up in West Seattle, and her family, of Chinese and Vietnamese background, would come to Little Saigon at least once a week. “I feel super honored to have been able to create work for my community for generations to come,” she said.
Made up of three towering panels, the piece is inspired by Vietnamese tube houses commonly seen in Saigon – tall structures built in a condensed urban area.
The three panels reflect pan-Asian aesthetic styles, including Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese. The sculpture’s triangular panel reflects traditional Japanese kumiko wood working, found in shoji screen doors and latticework – a nod to Japanese and Japanese American presence in what is now Little Saigon. In preparation for designing the piece, Chung met with the Seattle Indian Services Commission, FLS, the Wing Luke Museum, and other community groups. “I was very inspired to try and honor all those lives that have passed through,” she said.
Painted in dark and light greens and turquoise, the sculpture’s colors reflect the evergreens of the Pacific Northwest and “create movement through the sculpture and park in relation to sunrise and sunset,” according to Chung.
“I wanted the park to feel like an open oasis – this breath of air. And so it felt kind of natural to try and bring in more greenery and blues to reflect the sky and the flora around us,” Chung said. “I hope that it invites [people] in to this space to take a breath during their day.”
The park’s opening was delayed this year due to poor soil conditions, requiring contractor Harkness Construction to do more excavation. The northwest corner of the park also needed to be redesigned due to unexpected site conditions and placement of a guide wire.
Public safety issues – which challenge the neighborhood in general – also delayed the opening, said Pham of FLS.
“Public safety was always one of the top concerns and priorities when building this park, right from the beginning,” Pham said. “We wanted to ensure that it was a place that was well lit, it was very open, all these things were taken into consideration with a park to ensure that it’s the most safe and accessible.”
Though celebratory, Mayor Harrell’s remarks at the ribbon cutting acknowledged the area’s challenging public safety issues and drug activity: “We realize, particularly in this area, that we need to do more, we need to be better, and the conditions with which you live and work are not acceptable, and we have to be open about that to fight for a better community here,” Harrell said.
While public safety is still a concern, FLS is working with the Parks Department to activate the park with events and performances – the way Hing Hay Park has ping pong, dancing in the evening, and movie screenings. Pham hopes Hoa Mai Park can host culturally-specific programming and be part of Celebrate Little Saigon and other street festivals.
“It’s better just to have a space like this than not have it,” Pham said. “We see it as a big asset, and if it is taken care of and activated, I think those concerns eventually will go away.”
The park is part of the Seattle Park and Recreation’s Park Ranger program’s South Route, and rangers will patrol during peak hours between 8:30 a.m. and 7 p.m.
public space’s hours and usages. Photo by Theo Bickel
