The as-yet-unnamed park on Auburn’s West Hill probably won’t offer fields, baseball diamonds, basketball or tennis courts, or anything else like that.

Instead, City leaders say, the future park, north of Mountain View Cemetery, is likely to be preserved as a natural setting, something of a green chapel to stroll through.

And its crowning jewel is a small lake.

Auburn City Council on Monday gave the mayor and city clerk authority to to execute a purchase and sale agreement between the City of Auburn and owner Auburn Lakes Investment, LLC for the 9.2-acre site.

The purchase cost is $456,191, but as Auburn City Councilwoman Nancy Backus said after the unanimous vote, King County Conservation Futures is picking up half the tab, while grants that the City has already secured from the county are picking up the rest. Which means, Backus said, that the overall impact of the purchase on the City’s budget is zero.

“… An opportunity presented itself,” Backus explained, adding that the people who own the property had decided over time that they did not want to develop it, so that by Monday the price had come down to about a third of the original $1.2 million.

The future park is made up of two parcels of vacant, undeveloped land, with scattered fallen trees that will be cleared away. A little more than two acres of the site is lake.

At this time there are two ways to enter the property, via W Street or off 56th, but at some point in the future, the City may choose to develop parking, depending on what side it makes the access point.

According to the Auburn Parks, Arts and Recreation Department, the new park will be the city’s 39th.

Kevin Snyder, director of planning and development, said Auburn Lakes Investment is a private investment group comprised of a consortium of owners. King County’s Conservation Futures program is aimed at preserving what land it can from residential or commercial development.

“It will secure that piece of property for the development of it as another gem in the parks system for the city of Auburn,” Backus said of the purchase …”It’s very exciting news. For one thing, there’s not a lot of park opportunities on the West Hill, aside from Jornada, which is a very small park on the top of the hill. This is part of the overall master plan of what we want to do in the City of Auburn.”