EVERETT — The city of Everett has started construction on a new off-leash dog park at Clark Park, while dismantling and storing the park’s 103-year-old gazebo.
Construction is expected to take about six months, city spokesperson Simone Tarver said in an email. The dog park, in the works since 2019, is set to open next summer.
During construction, the east half of the north Everett park will be closed, but the tennis courts will remain open.
The project will cost $360,000. Everett received a $10,000 grant from Snohomish County for the project, and the city will spend $350,000 via the Capital Improvement Program fund. Money from the capital fund is a part of the city’s general fund, but is not included in the general government operations budget. Those dollars are separately designated for capital improvement projects and are spent via construction fund ordinances.
New amenities will include the off-leash dog park, dog waste pick up stations and new signage. The lighting at the park will also be improved, Tarver said.
In June, the City Council voted to disassemble the gazebo after months of debate. Nonprofit group Historic Everett spoke out against the gazebo’s removal earlier this year and called on the city to preserve the historic structure. The city and neighborhood associations saw the gazebo as a hub for criminal activity and argued for its removal.
“I really think this is a big mistake,” local historian Jack O’Donnell said Wednesday. “When you take the most character-defining feature of the oldest park in town, and remove it … I think that makes our city look silly.”
In 1993, Clark Park was added to the Everett Historic Register, a list of buildings, structures, sites and objects that are at least 50 years old and considered historically significant. Sites can meet a number of criteria to be added to the register, including unique architecture, archaeological importance or simply being associated with significant national, state or local history.
In April, Patrick Hall, the chair of the Everett Historical Commission, wrote in a letter to the City Council that the gazebo “is the only remaining structure within Clark Park that offers any sense of architectural significance. Its demolition would rob the park of a major reason why it was put on the register in the first place.”
Options to save the gazebo — like upgrades to make it accessible, create a shuttering system to close it when not in use or moving the gazebo to a different location — would have been too costly for the city, Tarver said. She added the only portions of the gazebo believed to be original were the base and the design. The rest, at one point or another, had been replaced.
“Parks should be spaces that are welcoming for all and right now, many members of our community would not feel welcome or safe spending time at Clark Park,” Tarver said in an email. “Removing the gazebo and the addition of the new dog park will be steps in the right direction toward reactivating that park.”
The city installed a fence around the gazebo for nearly two decades in an attempt to prevent vandalism and drug use. In 2017, a number of drug arrests were made close by. In 2021, the fence was removed and in 2022, a woman was stabbed near it.
The park lies within a “no sit, no lie,” buffer zone, which makes sitting or lying down on city property like sidewalks and streets a misdemeanor. Buffer zones don’t apply to parks, however, and it means Clark Park is one of the only places in the zone where people without homes can find shelter without facing fines or jail time.
The city purchased Clark Park in 1894, and built the gazebo in 1921. It is the city’s oldest park.
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
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