Mukilteo voters back plan to knock down Rosehill

Published 11:33 pm Tuesday, February 19, 2008

MUKILTEO — Most Mukilteo voters are ready to say goodbye to the Rosehill Community Center.

In an advisory vote held Tuesday, 1,609 Mukilteo residents — roughly 54 percent of the tally — believe Rosehill should be torn down and replaced with a new community center.

That left 1,331 voters, about 45 percent of the turnout counted by Tuesday, who said the former school building in Old Town should be renovated.

The City Council will make the final decision about what to do with Rosehill, but council members put the issue to a vote to gauge the public’s opinion on the long-divisive issue.

“I personally voted for renovation,” City Councilwoman Jennifer Gregerson said. “But I wanted to ask the voters because I wanted something to finish this. For me, this is definitive.”

Gregerson said the council could discuss the vote as soon as its next meeting on March 3.

People who favor renovating the old building believe it’s an important piece of the city’s history that is still capable of functioning as a community center. Those in favor of tearing down Rosehill say a new community center would make better use of the property and could be built to accommodate more events and activities.

The city’s plans to renovate would cost between $13 million and $15.3 million, depending on how much work is done to the interior of the building. To build a comparable community center from scratch would cost an estimated $16.2 million, city studies have shown.

Mukilteo resident Pat Kessler, a longtime advocate of renovation, said she is saddened by the thought of losing one of the city’s most iconic buildings. She criticized last year’s council for punting the issue to the voters, instead of deciding on the issue for themselves.

“Those who voted to build new have no idea what they voted for, because there is no real plan for a new building,” Kessler said. “What they saw in the information sent out by the city was simply an architect’s apples-to-apples comparison to see whether it would be more costly to build new or to renovate.

“I don’t want to see the historic building go, I just really don’t,” she said.

Gregerson said was surprised by the outcome of the advisory vote, but that she’s prepared to go along with the results.

“All of these controversial decisions are never really done until you start digging in the ground,” she said. “I want to get there as quickly as possible. We’ve talked about this for many, many years.” Reporter Scott Pesznecker: 425-339-3436 or spesznecker@heraldnet.com.