If you've walked or driven past Crown Park anytime in the last two years, you know the drill: temporary fencing, a rotating cast of construction vehicles, and a running mental note to check back later. Later arrived. The playground fence came down on February 27, 2026, and by July 2 the city was hosting an all-day grand reopening with a concert to close it out. The $6.3 million renovation that reshaped one of Camas's oldest parks is, for the first time in a long while, actually finished.
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only read the ribbon cutting coverage. Sometime this spring, the people who run the Camas Farmers Market looked at the newly rebuilt Crown Park as a possible new home for their weekly event and said no. Not because the park wasn't ready. Because staying downtown mattered more. That decision, made by people with no stake in real estate and every stake in foot traffic, tells you something about what this park is actually for going forward, and it's worth understanding before you plan your fall around it.
What actually reopened, and what it replaced
The park's history explains why this renovation was overdue. Crown Park has carried an outdoor municipal pool since 1954, a gift from the Camas Lions Club that served the neighborhood for 63 years before Clark County Public Health flagged it as noncompliant with state rules. The city's 2018 master plan called for replacing that pool with an interactive water feature rather than rebuilding it, and that splash pad is now one of the park's headline amenities.
The new playground has a name, and neighborhood kids picked it. The city partnered with the Camas School District to poll elementary and middle school classes on a theme, and nine classes voted between "Treehouse" and "Mountain." Treehouse won. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that tells you this wasn't a generic contractor build. It also means the equipment your kids are climbing on this fall was chosen by kids very much like them.
Scout Hall got an ADA-compliant access ramp, finished with the concrete portion done first and the wood structure completed by spring. The tennis and pickleball courts came back online alongside the playground. And Parks and Recreation Director Trang Lam made a point of protecting the more than 160 trees on the property, bringing in an on-call arborist specifically so construction crews wouldn't damage the mature firs, cedars, sequoias, and maples that give the park its canopy. If Crown Park still feels like the same shaded, leafy place it always was, that's not an accident. It's the result of someone deciding the trees were worth the extra coordination.
The timeline slipped by about a year, and that's worth knowing
When the city broke ground in June 2024, officials described the project as wrapping up in 2025. By spring 2025, interim Parks and Recreation Director Bryan Rachal was telling the Camas Parks Commission he hoped to open the playground and sport court that July. Neither happened on that schedule. The playground didn't open to the public until February 2026, and the splash pad needed additional months after that for piping, health inspections, and electrical work before the grand reopening in July.
None of this is a knock on the project. Renovating a 90-year-old, 7.3-acre park while protecting 160 mature trees and threading in ADA compliance is not simple work, and the finished result speaks for itself. But if you've been waiting for "later this year" for what feels like the third year running, you're not misremembering. The park took roughly twelve months longer than the city originally said it would.
What actually happened on reopening day
The July 2 grand reopening leaned into more than a ribbon cutting. It was folded into the America 250 celebration and built around a partnership with the Cowlitz Tribe, opening with a land acknowledgment and blessing and closing the evening with a performance by Cowlitz Dancers ahead of live music. In between, the day included a Bike Rodeo with hands-on safety sessions, a twelve-station History and Nature Trivia Trail through the park, a "Letters to the Future" writing station, lawn games, and local food vendors. It also marked the kickoff of this year's Concerts in the Park series, which means the summer concert tradition that construction had paused is now officially running again, anchored right back where it always was.
That matters for the traditions residents actually track year to year. The city's 35th annual Easter egg hunt, held in March 2024, was the last major event at Crown Park before construction closed it off, and programming like the Camas Egg Scramble and the CamTown Youth Festival had to find temporary homes in the meantime. With the park now open, those events have a clear path back to their original site.
The farmers market's decision is the real signal
Here's where the story gets more interesting than a typical reopening recap. When the Camas Farmers Market needed a new location for its 2026 season due to unrelated construction near its longtime spot by the library lawn, organizers had a genuinely finished, newly renovated Crown Park available as an option. They considered it. They didn't take it.
Market manager Leah Nichelson explained the reasoning plainly to the Camas Post-Record: staying in downtown Camas protected the roughly $1,500 to $3,000 in weekly visitors the market draws over its 18-week season, foot traffic that flows directly into surrounding downtown businesses. Moving to Crown Park, even a fully finished one, would have pulled that spending out of downtown's storefronts.
"It was so important for it to stay in downtown Camas," Nichelson said, describing why organizers ultimately chose a temporary Birch Street location over the renovated park.
Vendors felt the tradeoffs of the temporary downtown spot too. Steve Inzalaco of Shady Grove Farms told the paper that the tighter footprint meant he could no longer park his cooler trailer next to his booth, forcing him to rethink how he manages inventory through a market day. It's a small operational detail, but it underlines the point: even downtown's compressed temporary setup, logistics friction and all, still beat relocating into the park.
What this tells residents living around Crown Park is fairly direct. The park you're looking at now, freshly rebuilt and genuinely impressive, is going to function as neighborhood recreation space rather than a commercial event venue. The people whose job is to maximize foot traffic and vendor revenue looked at Crown Park and chose somewhere else. That's good news if you value a quieter park close to home. It means the splash pad, the playground, and the shaded lawn are staying built around families and daily use, not turning into a rotating festival ground.
What's actually open right now, this September
A few practical notes if you're planning a weekend around the park this fall:
- The splash pad runs on a seasonal schedule, so by September it's likely wound down for the year. Plan on it reopening with warmer weather next summer.
- The Treehouse-themed playground and the tennis and pickleball courts are open year-round.
- Scout Hall's new ADA ramp means the building is more accessible for reservations than it's been in years, worth checking if you're planning a gathering.
- The Concerts in the Park series that kicked off July 2 typically runs through summer, so check the city's Parks and Recreation calendar for any remaining fall dates.
- Crown Park sits at 120 NE 17th Avenue, bordered by NE Division Street, NE Everett Street, and NE 15th Avenue, an easy walk from most of the surrounding blocks.
Two years of fencing gave this neighborhood a long wait. What came out the other side is a park that kept its trees, gained real accessibility, and, according to the people who run the city's biggest weekly market, is staying exactly what it's always been: yours.
If you're weighing a move into this part of Camas, or just curious what a finished, tree-shaded park like this does for daily life in the neighborhood, Peter Cutile knows Crown Park's streets well enough to walk you through what living two blocks from it actually feels like. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
