SEATTLE — A nude beach at Denny Blaine Park can stay open to the public until at least next spring after a King County Superior Court judge ruled Seattle had done enough this summer to curb behaviors that neighbors called illegal and lewd.

Denny Blaine Park for All, an anonymous group of neighbors, sued the city and its park department in April to shut down the city’s longtime unofficial nude beach. Attorneys for the city and the neighbors presented oral arguments Friday in Seattle.

Judge Samuel Chung sided with the city, saying its efforts at the park — including fencing off a designating “clothing-optional” area, adding signage about park rules and increasing staffing — had abated issues enough to keep the nude beach open until its next hearing, according to court records.

Chung’s decision marked a victory for the city, which has pledged to address lewd behavior at the park while preserving its nude beach — a hub of “safety and community” cherished by Seattle’s LGBTQ+ community, according to court filing by the city.

For more than two years, people who live and own property near the 2-acre park on the shore of Lake Washington have complained about behaviors there, including public masturbation and indecent exposure. In its April lawsuit, the anonymous neighbors accused the city and its parks department of mismanaging the park by allowing repeated lewd and illegal activity.

Chung declined the neighbors’ request to temporarily close the park in July, but demanded the city submit a plan for suppressing illegal activity.

The city submitted its plan about two weeks later and implemented it throughout the summer, including installing a 4-foot-high, chain-link fence with green tarps affixed to it to block the view of a clothing-optional section of the park’s beach and lawn. Park rangers and parks staff also educated people at the park about the rules and requested help from police to address criminal activity when necessary, according to an Oct. 6 report filed by the city.

The measures’ impact over two months this summer showed encouraging signs, the city said in its report. Nude parkgoers mostly stayed within the clothing-optional area, and those who were naked in the clothing-required area complied with the rules when park rangers asked them, according to the report.

The neighbors called the city’s report “fiction supported by hearsay and opinion” in an Oct. 13 response. “Nuisance” behaviors had increased — not decreased — over the summer at the park, where “nudists and sexual deviants” felt they had free reign to break the law, according to their court filing.

The group said witnesses had reported seeing nude parkgoers in the clothing-required section of the park more than 85 times in the summer, along with lewd behavior, including couples having sex and one man seen “doing squats in a provocative manner,” the filing states.

The city responded in a court filing Wednesday, saying Seattle police have investigated the neighbors’ allegations of illegal conduct at the park this summer and referred half of them to county prosecutors for criminal charges. Some of the reports of nudity were also “transitory in nature,” including instances of people changing by their cars, the filing said.

Closing the park would endanger a “sacred place in the lives of queer and trans Seattleites,” and risk intensifying protest activity there, which could negatively impact the area, the city’s filing said.

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