On the weekend of August 14, a floating court bobbed in Lakewood Bay while fourteen water polo teams, ranging from age 14-and-under squads to adult club players, worked through matches visible from the steps at Millennium Plaza Park. The third annual Oswego Lake Open Water Invitational, hosted by the Lake Oswego Water Polo Club and the Lakeshore Lake Oswego Inn, drew spectators the way any summer tournament does. Nobody at the railing seemed to be thinking about property law.
That's worth sitting with for a second, because two summers ago this tournament would have been legally impossible. Oswego Lake had been treated as private water for eight decades, accessible only to the roughly 3,500 homeowners who belong to the Lake Oswego Corporation or pay for an easement. A public tournament floating in the middle of it would have violated the same ordinance the city spent thirteen years defending in court.
The lake looks settled now. The paperwork says otherwise.
Two Summers, One Ruling Still in Motion
If you've lived here through both seasons of public access, you've probably noticed the city treating this one with a lighter hand than the first. That's not a feeling. It shows up in the actual choices the city made.
| Summer 2025 (first year of public access) | Summer 2026 (second year) | |
|---|---|---|
| Seasonal park ranger at Millennium Plaza | Yes, hired in late May, working 10-hour shifts Thursday through Sunday | No dedicated ranger this season |
| Fourth of July closure | Access point closed from the evening of July 3 through the morning of July 7 | No closure planned |
| Court status | Trial ruling in effect; Lake Corporation had filed notice of appeal | Same trial ruling in effect; Lake Corporation's opening brief now filed at the Oregon Court of Appeals |
The city hasn't said the legal fight is over. It's said, in effect, that last summer went well enough not to repeat the heavier staffing. Deputy City Manager Madison Thesing put the reasoning simply when asked about the changes: safety remains the priority, and the Oregon State Marine Board, not city staff, holds the actual enforcement authority over the water itself. That's a resource decision, not a legal one. The underlying question of whether the public has a permanent right to be at Lakewood Bay at all is still sitting in front of three appellate judges.
What Actually Happened on the Water
The city's willingness to scale back makes more sense once you look at what its own numbers from the first summer showed. Lake Oswego's Parks & Recreation Department tracked every entry at Lower Millennium Plaza Park from late May through mid-October 2025 and came away with a report that undercut a lot of the pre-ruling anxiety.
- 3,197 total park entries over roughly five months
- About two-thirds of those, or roughly 2,100 entries, were paddleboarders
- 747 kayakers
- 253 people fishing
- Just 63 swimmers
No injuries or accidents were reported to the city from anyone accessing the lake through that entry point all season. Compliance with life jacket rules told its own story: for May, June, and July, about a quarter of people entering the lake had no flotation device. Once the city added a life jacket station at the access point, that number dropped to less than one percent going without.
The Lake Corporation ran its own count in parallel. Its patrol logged 85 stops of non-motorized watercraft in August 2025 alone, and most of those stops involved members of the public rather than Corporation shareholders. That's a useful number to hold up against the warnings that circulated before the ruling took effect. Justin Harnish, the Corporation's president, had rallied residents ahead of the city council's decision by warning that opening the lake would create a "Wild West" of paddlers showing "no regard to private property." A season of data suggests something closer to a normal, moderately busy public access point.
The Case Nobody Mentions At the Farmers Market
Here's the part that doesn't come up over coffee at the Saturday market: the question of whether the public actually has a right to be in Lakewood Bay was never fully resolved, and the fight over it just escalated. In November 2024, Clackamas County Circuit Judge Kathie Steele found the city's access ban unreasonable and, in a March 2025 order, required the city to open the Millennium Plaza Park entry point. The Lake Corporation didn't accept that as the final word. Earlier this month, it filed its opening brief with the Oregon Court of Appeals, arguing that the trial court got the underlying geography wrong.
The Corporation's argument turns on a distinction between two bodies of water. Its brief contends that only Sucker Lake, an isolated body more than a mile from the parks at issue, was navigable at Oregon statehood and therefore subject to the public trust doctrine. Lakewood Bay, the brief argues, is a different story:
"Lakewood Bay is not itself navigable and the land underneath it is not owned by the State."
If the appellate court agrees, the ruling that created the access point residents are using this summer could be reversed or sent back down for further proceedings. That's not a hypothetical footnote. It's the actual open question hanging over the calm season everyone's been enjoying.
What This Means If You Live Here
None of this means you should expect the access point to close tomorrow. Appeals take time, and the current rules stay in effect while the case works through the Court of Appeals. But it's worth knowing what those rules actually are, since the city has made clear it isn't planning to station someone there this year to explain them for you.
Entry and exit are only permitted at the concrete platforms at Lower Millennium Plaza Park, not at Sundeleaf Plaza or Headlee Walkway. Access hours run from one hour before sunrise to one hour after sunset. Only non-motorized craft are allowed, capped at 18 feet, and any inflatable needs U.S. Coast Guard approval. Life jackets or swim buoys are required any time you're in the water. The full rule set is posted by the City of Lake Oswego.
If you'd rather sidestep the whole debate, the city still runs its own swim park at 250 Ridgeway Road, open 1 to 6 p.m. when weather and lifeguard staffing allow. And if you want water without any of the navigability questions attached, the Lake Oswego Recreation & Aquatic Center, which opened in 2025 after a project residents first studied back in 1960, has a 12-lane competitive pool and a separate recreational pool a short drive from downtown.
The honest version of this summer's story isn't that Lake Oswego resolved a decade-plus fight over who owns the water. It's that the city decided the fight had gone on long enough that it could stop planning around the worst case, even while the worst case is still legally on the table. That's a reasonable bet based on a season of data showing paddleboarders and kayakers using the water without incident. It's still a bet.
Keep an eye on the Court of Appeals docket if you live anywhere near the lake. Whatever happens there will shape next summer's rules more than anything the city decides on its own.
If you're weighing a move near the water, or just want a local read on how a story like this one tends to play out over time, Josh Halemeier has been tracking Lake Oswego's neighborhoods closely enough to know which changes matter and which ones are noise. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
