La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

As the photo shows, our snowy Salmon Slide is resting for the winter.

Yet here is the good news: Conner Waterfront Park was started with a $50,000 matching grant from the Osberg Family Trust, which after some time fundraising, we were able to match.

Well, you know it must be the holidays, because Town Hall received a letter from the Osberg Trust offering a second matching grant — this time for $25,000 for all donations from Dec. 2 through all of 2017.

As you have seen, we started building the park last summer using available funds so we can have some portion of the park for everyone to use.

Also, you may have received a letter from the Park Commission explaining financially where we are today and how much more we will need to make the park almost totally useable. With the funds we now have coming in plus this matching grant along with further donations, it has been decided work at the park will start right after the first of the year.

We will finish the pathway to the fish, landscape and build out the hill around the slide, prepare the slide landing area, add the path to the fish using Ries Niemi’s Fish Bridge and clean and build out the surrounding area.

Right now we have tables and easy-to-use barbecues available on the waterside, with plenty of off-street parking, so with this work finished, we will have an almost completed park in the spring for all of us to enjoy along the channel.

The matching grant will double all donations up to that amount, which will help us get closer to finishing our park.

Happy New Year from La Conner Park Commission; we are excited about this news, so stop by after the first of the year and see how our park develops.

The writer is a member of the La Conner Park Commission.