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Opening day announced for Seattle’s Pier 58 featuring jellyfish playground, restored fountain

SEATTLE — Seattle’s revitalized Pier 58 will be opening to the public, offering new waterfront experiences with sweeping views of Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains, city officials announced Thursday.

The new Pier 58 will open July 25. Visitors are invited to a celebration from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Previously known as Waterfront Park, Pier 58 has been reimagined as a multi-use public space designed especially with families and young children in mind.

The 47,280-square-foot park features an expansive open plaza for community programming, a marine-themed playground, and a raised lawn with shaded seating areas created by a grove of six types of trees.

The centerpiece of the new play area is a 25-foot-tall jellyfish-shaped structure with climbing nets, handholds, slide bars, and suspended seating.

The sculpture’s semi-transparent body offers both enclosure and supervision visibility, with panoramic views of the water and city skyline.

Additional playground features include ADA-accessible equipment, kelp-like wooden structures, and “bubble” mounds rising from the ground.

Seating surrounds the space to allow adults to watch children comfortably.

Incorporating environmental sustainability into its design, Pier 58 also includes features that support marine habitat restoration.

Open sections of the pier deck allow natural light to reach the water below, supporting algae and sea life.

The adjacent Elliott Bay Seawall improvements include rock beds for fish shelter and a sidewalk surface that allows light to penetrate, helping young salmon navigate during migration.

Construction of the new pier involved significant marine and structural engineering.

Crews used 128 steel piles—ranging from 75 to 127 feet long—driven into underwater soils to support the deck.

The deck itself consists of 205 precast concrete panels, each weighing about 35,000 pounds, connected by over 870,000 pounds of reinforcing steel.

Most of the heavy lifting was done using the Pacific Lifter, the region’s largest barge-mounted crane, which towers 350 feet tall.

The newly completed pier also celebrates public art and history.

The restored Waterfront Fountain, originally installed in 1974 and known as the FitzGerald Fountain, now sits on the pier’s southeast corner.

With updated plumbing and a new basin that holds 4,500 gallons of water, the fountain has been refurbished to match the original design and water flow.

Artist Qwalsius-Shaun Peterson of the Puyallup Tribe will also install three sculptural figures titled Family along the promenade near the pier.

The City says the renewed Pier 58 is a result of years of public involvement and collaboration with local partners.

The project is a key part of the city’s larger waterfront transformation plan.

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