Paid parking begins at Lighthouse Park for non-Mukilteo residents

MUKILTEO — Lighthouse Park, with its views of the Olympic Mountains and Salish Sea, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

Now, for many people, those sweeping vistas will come with a cost.

A much discussed and debated program to start charging for parking in the city’s waterfront district begins at 6 a.m. June 1, when the covers are scheduled to come off recently installed parking kiosks.

Lighthouse Park will have paid parking between 4 a.m. and 10 p.m. from May 1 to Sept. 30 and between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. from Oct. 1 to April 30. Parking will cost $2 per hour from May 1 to Sept. 30 and $1 per hour from Oct. 1 to April 30.

City residents can apply for a free parking permit and so far about 900 have done so, said Mayor Jennifer Gregerson. Residents can pick up the passes at the front desk at city hall, 11930 Cyrus Way, or at the Rosehill Community Center, 304 Lincoln Ave.

The city also will have applications for the passes available at the park June 3 as part of the season’s first farmer’s market, Gregerson said.

The city has said that the pay-to-park program was needed to help avoid the long lines of cars waiting to get into the park and to prevent people from parking and spending the day there, limiting easy access to the park by others.

The City Council approved the new parking program in March, following years of complaints from city residents that they had to struggle to find parking at their own city park and the nearby waterfront district, which draws an estimated 750,000 visitors a year.

The switch to paid parking is a change that at least some park visitors were surprised by Sunday.

“Obviously free parking is better than paid parking,” said Melissa Goodwater from Lake Stevens. Her husband, Andrew Goodwater, said he wasn’t aware that he was enjoying the last day of free parking. “It’s terrible,” he said of the new program.

Lori Brosius, who lives in Mukilteo, was walking her dog near the beach. Brosius said she has mixed feelings about the parking program, even though as a city resident, she already has her parking pass.

She said she usually comes to the park four to five times a week, but she picks her time to be there. She’s well aware of the crowds attracted to the park and wants to avoid them. She said she gets there early in the morning, usually around 7 a.m. The park’s traffic congestion also has kept her from coming to the summer farmer’s market, she said.

The limitation of one free parking pass per household means that if her teen son wants to come to the park and she isn’t home, he will get charged, Brosius said.

Carolyn Logsdon, who lives on the border between Everett and Mukilteo said she’s been coming to the park for years. “Now we park on top of the hill and walk down,” she said. But she said she wondered if hilltop parking would now be at a premium with others trying to dodge a parking fee.

Logsdon said if the goal was to open up more parking, they could have limited how long people can park. That would accomplish the same goal without the charge, she said.

Leslie Lee, of Everett, said she’ll miss the feeling of serenity she gets by simply pulling her car up to curb and enjoying the waterfront view without having to pay. “I’ve seen whales spouting from there,” she said.

Shanna Enns, of Everett, said she had mixed feelings about the change. “I’m sad but I understand,” she said. “Parking is important to me, but it saddens me we have to pay.”

Gregerson said she expects that a lot of visitors won’t realize that there’s been a switch to paid parking until they arrive at the park. For the first couple of weeks of the program, people will be given warnings rather than ticketed, she said, unless they’re frequent parking scofflaws.

The parking fees are expected to net the city a minimum of $42,099 in the first year and between $215,528 and $441,056 per year by the fifth year.

The money will be used to hire two park rangers to help enforce park rules and the new parking program. The parking fees also will help offset the park’s maintenance costs, which are expected to hit $285,000 this year, Gregerson said.

The city will review the parking program in October to see if any changes need to be made, she said.

Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.