SEQUIM – The much-anticipated purchase of a 45-acre city park and wildlife refuge has fallen apart, Sequim Public Works Director James Bay told the Sequim City Council this week.
“Due to a number of constraints,” including the city’s 2008 budget and a new property appraisal, “we’re not going to be able to pull this program off,” Bay said.
During the public hearing on the city’s 2008 budget on Monday night, the council removed the park purchase – as well as a planned Olympic Discovery Trail link along Spruce Street – from next year’s list of expenditures.
The council added some spending, however, on park improvements, including allocations for renovating a Carrie Blake Park ball diamond and putting in restrooms, a paved path and new signs for the nearby James Center band shell.
All year, Bay and Planning Director Dennis Lefevre had talked with the Keeler family, led by Joe Keeler and Carol Bolduc, about their land stretching along the south side of U.S. Highway 101 west of the Happy Valley Road turnoff.
The family planned to donate 10 acres and sell the other 35 to Sequim for a wildlife refuge in memory of the late Joseph L. Keeler, Joe and Carol’s grandfather.
But then the city had the property appraised. The verdict: It’s worth $33,500 per acre, or $1.5 million for the parcel.
That’s 33 percent higher, Joe Keeler said, than a nearly two-year-old appraisal the city had used when it began negotiations.
The City Council held an executive session Monday night to discuss whether to raise its offer for the Keeler land.
They decided against that, for now.
