SEQUIM — The development of 13 acres east of the city of Sequim’s Water Reclamation Demonstration Park into multiuse playfields will begin in the spring instead of this year, the president of Sequim Family Advocates said.
“We’re going to be starting in the spring, that much is known,” said Craig Stevenson, adding that his original plan to break ground this fall was “probably unrealistic.”
Additional donations
By then, he said, he expected additional donations to roll in to develop the fields — five large and three small — for soccer and other games.
“We’re now meeting with community leaders and people around town,” Stevenson said of fundraising efforts.
“Many people will be hearing from us in the next month to month and a half.”
The group plans to begin work in April.
“I have every reason to believe that the kids will be playing on the fields by next fall,” he said.
Already, Lakeside Industries of Port Angeles, Primo Construction of Carlsborg and Sequim’s Clallam Co-op have committed to work and supplies that will level the playfields and parking area, Stevenson said, providing in-kind labor that is worth more than $200,000.
That leaves about $240,000 to be raised.
Stevenson said additional money has been raised in the past month, but he had not tabulated how much.
Stevenson figured that, without donations and paying for labor and supplies outright, the project’s cost could run up to $500,000.
Under a proposed agreement with the city, the fields will be maintained by the city at an estimated cost of between $13,000 and $14,000 a year, city officials have said.
Four months to build
Stevenson said it would take about four months to build the playfields and a parking lot with at least 100 spaces, as well as to complete a loop trail around the playfields that will provide new space for youth soccer, flag football and lacrosse play, in addition to festival and events grounds for the general public.
Stevenson said that some 1,000 children are anxious to play on the new fields.
The fields available now — the Sequim School District’s — have been overused and are pockmarked with muddy spots and lumpy grass that is unsafe to play on.
At times, Stevenson said, teams are left to practice on paved portions of the school grounds for lack of an available field.
He called it a “crisis” back in October 2008 when Sequim Family Advocates first formed.
Use by junior soccer youths has doubled over the past seven years to 500 players, with additional soccer club use at about 100 more.
Use is at its peak during the late afternoons Monday through Friday on fields near Helen Haller Elementary School and at Hendrickson Road near Sequim Middle School and near the high school baseball fields, he said.
Sequim Family Advocates in May earned the Sequim City Council’s strong support and has passed the muster of a state Department of Ecology’s environmental impact review, or State Environmental Policy Act, commonly called SEPA.
Turn over to city
The project, under a contract agreement with the city, must be completed no later than November 2011, at which time Sequim Family Advocates will turn the improvements over to the city of Sequim to maintain in perpetuity, irrigating the grass with water reclaimed from the city’s newly expanded, state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant.
The project has had opposition.
Resident Robert Mullen has said he wants an environmental impact study of the site conducted by an objective party.
Mullen gathered about 150 signatures of neighbors, mostly living west of the project, on a petition objecting to the project.
He said they mostly wanted the publicly owned site acreage to remain quiet and undeveloped and had concerns about the fields’ impact on nearby Bell Creek, to the south, and nesting Canada geese in the area north of the city’s Carrie Blake Park.
He said he has made a last-ditch effort to contact the state Department of Ecology, which oversaw the SEPA study of the project conducted June 3 through July 5.
With the project approved by the City Council and close to securing a construction permit, Mullen said: “There’s not much I can do about it. I can’t file appeal because the time has elapsed.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
