Discovery Park
A Master Plan created in 1972 specified that Discovery Park should be an urban wilderness, and that the park's primary role should be "to provide an open space of quiet and tranquility for citizens of the city...[T]he pressure for those sites may constitute the greatest single threat to the park. They must be resisted with resolution...There must be a deep commitment to the belief that there is no more valuable use of this site than as an open space."
The words in the original Master Plan would be returned to again and again and over time, and the commitment to this belief would be tested in many ways. In 1987, Parks Manager Paul Frandsen told the Seattle Times, "This park is so big and so open that people assume it is waiting to be developed into something else. It’s not."
The park would grow from its original 391 acres, and new ideas about how to use the additional land accompanied the acquisitions.
