Funds to purchase the buildings and land at the corner of Maynard and King were made available by the Forward Thrust bond initiative, approved by voters in 1968. The original park space was designed by the landscape architecture firm of Sakuma, James, and Peterson, led by S.K. Sakuma; the land was previously occupied by the Specie Bank of Seattle, built in 1911, and the park, originally , was completed in 1973. The pavilion and furniture were donated by the then
Mayor of Taipei after a visit to Seattle in the early 1970s. He met with then
King County Council member
Ruby Chow, who explained to him that the city had purchased and torn down the condemned buildings on the land, proposing a park instead, but it needed to be as care free as possible because the city could not afford ongoing maintenance costs. After discussions with Ruby Chow, the mayor of Taipei offered to donate the brickwork, pavilion and bulletin board from his own private funds. He sent over a crew of trained workers to aid in its construction; the pavilion was completed in 1975.
Expansion Using funds from a voter-passed parks levy, the city
Parks Department purchased the former post office on the west side of the existing park in 2007, intending to demolish it to nearly double the size of Hing Hay Park, adding . The Friends of Hing Hay Park, formed in 2012, met regularly with the internationally known design team of
SvR (from Seattle) and
Turenscape (based in Beijing). Construction of the expansion project began on January 6, 2016, shortly after the contract was awarded to WS Contractors; the old post office was demolished by February. The Hing Hay Park Expansion opened on June 29, 2017. Although the park was largely complete by April, the artistic gateway and light poles caused the park's opening to be delayed. The large artistic gateway, constructed of perforated red metal and measuring , was designed and fabricated offsite by
Studio Fifty50. It was installed in February 2018. A celebration was held on March 24, 2018, to mark the completion of the expansion project. Studio Fifty50 also designed and fabricated the perforated red metal
stair risers used elsewhere in the park expansion. ==In media==