Park element in comprehensive plan being updated

The work goes on to promote leisure activities here.

Two local advisory boards collaborated this summer with planner Michael Davolio on initial steps to update the 2013 Town of La Conner parks plan.

The planning and parks commissions have jointly reviewed the eight-year-old plan, which includes an inventory of existing and potential future parks sites and Davolio has begun drafting language for submission to the Town Council and eventual inclusion as an updated parks and recreation element in the Town Comprehensive Plan.

“The parks element is being prepared to be placed in the Town Comprehensive Plan and it is moving forward,” parks commission chair Ollie Iversen confirmed Sept. 11.

Iversen said groundwork for the process was laid by Marianne Manville-Ailles while she was planner. Davolio received the baton when Manville-Ailles took a position with the City of Mount Vernon earlier this year.

“Michael is doing the final writing,” Iversen told the Weekly News. “He and I have had several sessions working to update the 2013 plan and we have our first rough draft. We are on track to finish it soon and get it off for review.”

The 2013 plan lists 29 properties – covering about 40 acres of land – that are either owned or leased by the Town for possible public park, recreation and open space use.

One of those, the so-called Kirsch property on the North First Street shoreline, has since been sold by the Town to neighboring homeowners Mit and Maureen Harlan.

In addition, the nearly two-acre Hedlin’s ballfield on Maple Avenue, leased for decades as a youth sports venue, was sold this past spring to the Town.

The Town subsequently dealt 70 per cent of the property to a residential developer, retaining the rest – just over half an acre – for public park space.

The parks commission has since facilitated a public survey to gather input on preferences for how the future park on Maple Avenue should be utilized.

“The results (of the survey),” said Iversen, “are being gathered by the Town as we speak.”

Many of the properties inventoried in the 2013 parks plan are small downtown “pocket parks” between commercial buildings and street-end parks providing public access to the Town’s popular waterfront.

The list also includes the John Hammer playground and historic Magnus Anderson Cabin area, both of which are located below Town Hall, and Maple Center’s plaza at the corner of South First and Commercial.

Residents have one large, wooded park, Pioneer Park, and four areas with grass: Conner Waterfront park, Jordan Street end, north of Channel Lodge; the corner on Douglas and Fourth Streets and, the new Maple Avenue park. Five parks are buildings: the two restrooms, Maple Hall, Civic Garden Club and the Magnus Anderson cabin. Six of its parks are street ends, five are downtown squares, with Gilkey Square being the largest by far; two are on the boardwalk and two are stairs.

Pioneer Monument, erected in 1936 at the east edge of town, is likewise listed. The 12-foot granite monument is located in the landscaped roundabout area where La Conner-Whitney and Chilberg roads merge onto Morris Street, offering incoming motorists their first visual impression of La Conner.

The Town’s general goals for the parks and recreation element of its Comprehensive Plan include providing safe active and passive recreational opportunities, promoting healthy lifestyles through recreation, preserving La Conner’s historical heritage while enhancing local beautification, integration of wildlife habitat and conservation elements in parks planning and protecting and developing view corridors to local waterways, farmlands and scenery.