Park on the Lid to be renamed Aubrey Davis Park at dedication this weekend

The Aubrey Davis Park dedication (formerly known as the Park on the Lid) will take place at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 13.

The Aubrey Davis Park dedication (formerly known as the Park on the Lid) will take place at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 13.

Former Mercer Island mayor and City Councilmember Aubrey Davis and his wife, Henrietta, moved to Mercer Island in 1960. Mr. Davis served as Councilmember from 1967 to 1978, and served as mayor from 1970 to 1974.

He died earlier this year in May.

Among his many achievements, Mr. Davis served as the principle negotiator in what became the 1976 Interstate 90 (I-90) Memorandum of Agreement.

Davis demanded that the state redesign the highway to take into account the impact on the Mercer Island community.

When asked about the freeway expansion, Davis’s signature response was, “We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to hear it. We don’t want to smell it.”

The resulting design transformed Mercer Island into a corridor of landscaped parks, green landscaping and pedestrian pathways adjacent to the I-90 expanded freeway.

The dedication will be located at the park on S.E. 22nd Street by the tennis courts.


File Photo

Construction of the ‘new’ I-90 corridor in the late 1970s caused extensive disruption to Island life on the North end.