Echo Lake Park — Attraction in Shoreline

I bought my condo because there was a little lake next to it. In the summer you hear kids playing and see families enjoying a tiny slice of nature. Another feature is that the Interurban Trail goes right by, so I have a great spot to get my 10,000 steps in. It should be a perfect spot. Echo Lake Park has a play structure for kids, an apple tree and blackberries for snacking, a small beach for all sorts of water sports, spots to BBQ and a nice field for lounging around. When people see these amenities, they can be forgiven for thinking that this would be a great place to bring children for family fun. The look of disappointment and fear that I see on their faces when they notice the riff-raff that have invaded that park is sad. If it were just a few homeless people happy to find a place to sleep, I would be sad for them, but I would accept their presence. They have to be somewhere and who am I to deny them this spot? I might even overlook the people hunkered down in the trees at the edge of the park taking drugs. What I won’t overlook is when they stagger out of the trees and scare the kids or when they go into screaming fits laced with threats of violence. The police used to ride along the trail and keep some level of peace in the park. For some reason, they seem to have given up on the place. I don’t think police are the answer to homelessness and drug use, but they did limit some of the worst behavior. Everyday, a truck shows up with a guy who picks up as much of the garbage as possible. His job would be a lot easier if there was not a culture of littering in the park. Some of the litter comes when the wind blows something off a table, but a lot comes from people ostentatiously throwing things around and walking away from the mess. What is up with that? Parks are a nice thing to have in our otherwise overbuilt neighborhood. It is too bad that this one is...

Bathroom is closed down with graffiti on it, not sure why it was a good idea for them to shut down the one solid public bathroom in the area to replace with a ugly and odor filled porta-potty. The transit center right next door has no public bathroom and it's very inconvenient to walk as far as the nearby stores. Home depot bathroom is at least a 10-15 minutes trip to walk there and back. Not to mention this is a customer only bathroom and if your in any type of rush to get back to the transit station to catch a bus then having the possible requirement of needing to make a purchase is out of the question.

So you would need to settle for the porta party, this is but another con is that it's placed almost directly on the inturban trail. Not what I want to smell or possibly run into if I was riding my bike down the trail. If someone opens the door to come out it would almost pose a accident risk if someone was at a moderate speed on any type of wheels such as...

A cute little park with so much potential placed in the wrong neighborhood. I visited Echo Lake Park with my daughter's class to test the water quality for a science project, unfortunately there were a dozen hypodermic needles floating in the water and stuck in the trees at the edge of the lake. That combined with all the trash floating in the water made for a sorry sight. there is a porta-potty on site but I would be afraid to go in at considering the number of used needles around. The playground equipment appears in good repair but once again used needles. the ecologist that was with us said the park had been cleaned up since she was there the day before, which isn't saying much. It's hard to avoid such things with the proximity to Aurora, but it is good to know that there is a likelihood of running into drug paraphernalia...