Walla Walla looks at renaming park in honor of Adam West

A Walla Walla native, best known for his role as Batman, could have a park named after him.

After Adam West passed away in June of 2017, the Adam West Day Committee has been advocating to rename Menlo Park to Adam West Park. The group says it has done extensive research with city experts and believe the park was named after Menlo Street in the 1960's, and not a person or anything of historic significance.

Andy Coleman with the Parks and Recreation Department says according to the city code the group had to wait six months after the actor's death before anything official could be done. Now that time has passed, the idea was brought to the park board January 8th and they asked to get more community input into the matter.

The department then conducted an informal poll online and through Facebook. Coleman says as of Friday morning 72% of 630 people are in favor of changing the name.

He says the poll will be closed soon, with the topic back on the park board agenda for their meeting Monday, February 5th. The city council also plans to talk about the issue, but will not vote at their workshop meeting in April.

If approved, it will be the first time a park's name has been changed in the city since the 1990's. In that case, Trailhead Park was changed to Heritage Square in the downtown area.