EVERETT – Unless you’ve got a friend with a lakefront home, good luck launching a boat on Silver Lake.
Although the state stocks the 110-acre lake with thousands of trout every year, few people with boats can fish there.
That’s because a few years ago, the state eliminated the informal boat launches when it widened the Bothell-Everett Highway along Silver Lake’s eastern shore.
But good news appears to be on the horizon for local anglers.
The city is considering adding a public boat launch on the lake near the 27-acre Thornton A. Sullivan Park.
It’s just part of an effort by Everett to improve the standard of living near Silver Lake and to transform one of its most popular parks into an even greater destination by 2016.
“It would make a number of people happy, if they could do it and do it well,” said longtime Silver Lake resident Dorthy Vandeventer.
Vandeventer, a leader of the Silver Lake Action Committee, a neighborhood group, said the recent attention is encouraging.
The city’s newly adopted parks strategic plan, which sets development goals for the next decade, found that residents in the south Everett neighborhood are underserved by the city parks system.
Now, there is talk of building a large indoor pool complex near Silver Lake Beach at 11405 Silver Lake Road in the next decade.
A design for a trail loop around much of the lake is expected to be unveiled this summer.
Silver Lake Park, now called Thornton A. Sullivan Park, with its long sandy beach, picnic tables and playgrounds, first opened in the spring of 1922.
Accessible from Everett via an old country road and electric rail car line, the lake was a well-liked woodsy retreat with dance bands, a tall water slide and chicken dinner inns, said David Dilgard, a regional historian with Everett Public Library.
Dilgard, who recently completed a short documentary on the history of Silver Lake, said it was a place to swim, paddle a canoe, lay in the sun, go fishing even watch vaudeville circuit acts.
Through the years, though, the lake’s resortlike setting gave way to a more urban atmosphere.
Traffic, high-density apartments and new subdivisions replaced the taverns, dance halls and a roller-skating rink that once lined its shores along with towering evergreens.
Still, it is possible to forget the constant rumble from I-5 and to enjoy the sun reflecting off the lake’s clear blue water.
Refik Polovina, 45, has lived near the lake for a dozen years. In that time, he said the area has become more crowded.
“For me, it’s a good park, but it needs more,” the thin Bosnian native said, wearing a floppy-brimmed cap as he fished from a dock at the city park on a sunny evening last week. “The population is big here, and we need more public access.”
Indeed, since 1990, the neighborhood’s population has nearly doubled.
Jim Brauch, president of the Everett Steelhead and Salmon Club, said he doesn’t believe the increased population has to come at the expense of recreation.
“Just like Green Lake is a gem for Seattle, I think Silver Lake can be the gem of Everett, if the city is willing to pay for it,” he said.
The fishing club stocks the lake with fish every year and assists the city parks department with its annual “Fishing Kids” event.
Brauch, a 62-year-old retired Everett police lieutenant, fished Silver Lake as a young boy.
He said building a public boat launch could help improve the public’s enjoyment of the lake.
In 2005, the club circulated a petition urging the city Parks and Recreation Department to add a boat launch to a list of future park improvements.
The petition, signed by 50 people, said the lake has been an important place for recreational fishing for generations, and should remain that way.
It recommended reclaiming an unused boat launch that the city owns, just south of Thornton A. Sullivan Park.
The fenced-off property – once the homestead of Hans Bothne, an early Norwegian pioneer – has fallen apart. The rotting wood dock, once a place busy with people, is now a place for geese and ducks to dry off.
Everett parks officials say that’s where they’re considering putting a new boat launch. The study is being lumped in with a pending dredging project, which also would help boaters.
The dredging is needed to remove mud from the city’s existing launch, which is used only for emergency rescue boats on the north end of the beach.
The work is expected to start after the summer swimming season. The city is spending $100,000 to prepare for the work.
Striking the right balance between creating parking space for trucks with trailers and retaining precious green space will be the biggest challenge to building a boat launch, said Hal Gausman, special projects manager with the city parks department.
“We really want to be able to create something amazing out there,” he said. “This is just another piece of the puzzle.”
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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