MUKILTEO – The city’s long debate over where to build a new city hall could come to an end on Monday.
Most city leaders surveyed last week favored building the city’s permanent headquarters in Old Town. Four City Council members favored the Rosehill Community Center site in Old Town, two preferred a site next to the Mukilteo Police Station, and one was undecided.
Dan Bates / The Herald
A council vote is expected after a public hearing on Monday.
A couple of things could sway the vote.
The city is still $3.5 million short of money to proceed with its original plan to tear down Rosehill Community Center and build a city hall and new community center in its place.
“The decision is not going to be to go with the current plan,” council president Cathy Reese said.
The most likely alternative could be putting city hall next to Rosehill on the property. That would postpone the decision on whether to preserve the 77-year-old former school building or build a new community center.
It also would allow Rosehill supporters to breathe a sigh of relief, at least temporarily.
“I’m OK with that,” said Kathy Wisbeck, president of Friends of the Community Center, a group that has been fighting to save Rosehill.
Adding a wild card to the situation is a plan by state Rep. Brian Sullivan, D-Mukilteo, who is trying to get the state to sell land in the 10600 block of 47th Place W. to the city for next to nothing.
That site includes 2.45 acres of state land next to the police station. The five lots are appraised by Snohomish County at $746,000.
The city already owns 4.4 acres in the Rosehill block. Building a city hall and community center is projected to cost $12.2 million. Building a city hall alone would cost $5.5 million.
Four council members – Reese, John Sullivan, Bruce Richter and Paul Rand – support building the new city hall in Old Town. Councilman Tony Tinsley supports the site next to the police station, and Councilwoman Jennifer Gregerson said she is leaning that way. Councilwoman Lori Kaiser is undecided.
Mayor Don Doran also supports an Old Town location, but he can vote only in the event of a tie.
“Historically, City Hall has always been located in the north end of town,” he said.
Advocates of the site on 47th Place W. argue that its location is more central to the city and that it’s next door to the police station and near Fire Station 3 and the Mukilteo Public Library.
“City Hall probably has more in common in operations with the fire station and the police station than with the community center,” Gregerson said.
Council members and the mayor are anxious to make a decision. The city pays $150,000 a year to lease its current building, and the lease expires in 2007, which is the earliest a new city hall could be completed, city administrator Rich Leahy said.
Also, each year of delay adds about $600,000 to the project cost, Leahy said.
Change comes slowly
The issue has dragged on since 1992, when the city moved its offices from Rosehill to its current location on Chennault Beach Road near Harbour Pointe.
“If I were to sum it up in a word,” Doran said, “it’s procrastination.”
The City Council has changed hands several times since then, with new members offering different opinions, he said.
“We couldn’t get the City Council to agree on anything,” said Sullivan, who was mayor from 1990 to 1998.
The city moved its offices to Rosehill in 1977 from a former fire station after Rosehill was donated to the city by the Mukilteo School District.
In 1992, annexations to the south required the city to hire more staff, outgrowing the 14-room Rosehill building. The city leased a former industrial park warehouse at 4480 Chennault Beach Road in what was considered a short-term move.
City Hall is still there.
Many residents were not happy when the city moved out of Old Town, Doran said. The presumption was that the city eventually would move back for good, said Doran, who was on the council at the time.
In 1997, the council voted to build the new city hall and a new community center at the Rosehill site.
“I made that commitment twice,” Doran said.
In 1999 and 2001, a site plan and design study were approved. They included a 25,000-square foot, single-story community center; a 15,000-square-foot, single-story city hall; a multilevel public plaza; and parking underneath.
But the plan to tear down Rosehill helped spawn Friends of the Community Center.
“It’s a connection to our past,” said Wisbeck, president of the 30-member group. “It’s been a significant part of Mukilteo for all these years.”
The city is studying how much it would have to spend to keep Rosehill safe. The building has not been seismically retrofitted, Leahy said. The city budgeted $100,000 this year for upkeep, and the same amount likely will have to be spent each of the next few years, Doran has said.
Thirteen groups and classes use Rosehill, renting the space from the city, including Allegro Dance Studio, Jazzercise, the Gene Nastri School of Performing Arts, the Mukilteo Chamber of Commerce, Mukilteo Seniors and the Second Hand Rose Thrift Store.
Renee Arnett’s daughters Maggie, 7, and Katie, 5, take dance lessons at Allegro. Arnett said she’s not as concerned about Rosehill itself as she is about having a place for recreation and cultural activities.
“I think it would be awesome for them to build a community center,” Arnett said. “This place (Rosehill) obviously has a life span, and it has been nursed along quite effectively.”
Reese said the community center issue could go to voters.
“The only way to answer the question – whether the community really wants a community center and wants to pay for a community center – is to put it on the ballot,” she said.
Debate continues
Building the new city hall next to Rosehill is preferable to the original option, Wisbeck said. But Rosehill advocates still favor the 47th Place W. site.
One reason, Wisbeck said, is that with two buildings on the Rosehill property, there wouldn’t be enough room for recreation. Rosehill advocates also like the central location of the 47th Place W. site and its proximity to other city buildings.
Sheila Smith, another mother of dance stuents, doesn’t think city hall should be downtown at all.
“We don’t have room down here for the ferry and a community center and city hall,” she said.
However, Doran said the Old Town location would bring much-needed business to that part of town.
“We’d have 25 to 30 pocketbooks, with an employer (the city) that’s not going to leave,” he said. And with a community center there as well, “we can have our cake and eat it, too.”
Wisbeck said a community center would be a greater benefit to Old Town than a city hall. “They’ve only got 25 employees,” she said of the city.
Old Town proponents also note that the Rosehill block has fewer uncertainties about it. The city owns the land, and soil testing has not yet been done at the 47th Place W. site to determine if a large building could even be built there.
The state owns more than 12 acres of school construction trust land on 47th Place W., which is appraised at $3.7 million. Sullivan already has considered working a deal in which some of the land could be swapped for other state land, enabling it to be donated to a nonprofit organization.
He talked with the Mukilteo Boys and Girls Club about acquiring some of the property for ball fields.
It may be possible to do both, Sullivan said. He plans to introduce a bill in the House this session, and is optimistic about its chances of passage.
“I think it would be foolhardy of the council to pass up an opportunity like this,” Tinsley said.
Reese said the idea is interesting, but “it will delay our decision. We should make a decision and move ahead and actually do something.”
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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