EVERETT – A neighborhood’s dream of turning a former Snohomish County PUD substation into a sport court appears to have failed.
For about a year, South Forest Park residents have been trying to find a way to buy, lease or borrow about a quarter acre of PUD property in a residential neighborhood.
The lot, in the 4900 block of College Avenue near Vesper Drive, isn’t being used and could be renovated as a community basketball and tennis court, said Norm Nunnally, chairman of the South Forest Park Neighborhood Association.
Nunnally heard from the PUD this week that residents’ plans for developing a court won’t go any further. The PUD isn’t ready to get rid of the land and also has liability concerns about letting the community use it, PUD spokesman Neil Neroutsos said.
“If someone were to be injured on the court or to be harmed in some way, it raises some liability issues for us,” he said. “And we … want to retain that property; we don’t want to sell it at this point.”
Neroutsos said the land could have several uses, possibly for cellular towers.
“There are also potential cleanup issues that would need to be addressed if an outside group other than the PUD were using that site,” he said.
The neighborhood had planned to use city mini-grant money to fix up the property, removing security fencing, wires and concrete pads used to hold transformers.
PUD officials told neighbors that because the utility would have to remove underground equipment, the cost of fixing up the land could exceed the assessed value, about $90,000.
“It’s really not worth it for them to fix it up,” Nunnally said. “But we wouldn’t have to own it, if they could let us use it and fix it up.”
The PUD would be spared underground cleanup, he said, because neighbors just want to level and pave the property with concrete or asphalt.
But Neroutsos said it’s more than removing fencing; there also could be soil contamination.
“Potentially, equipment there at the substation may have created some issues related to soil, which we would want to go in and correct if people were using it for recreational purposes,” he said.
Meanwhile, maybe because of the neighborhood’s namesake, Forest Park, nearby residents are always looking for ways to add green.
After a two-year effort to gain permission to use city-owned property as open space, South Forest Park dedicated its newest community park in May: Woodlawn Garden.
The new recreation space – a grassy patch at the corner of 52nd Street and Woodlawn Avenue – is now manicured with a couple of picnic tables, a planter and a welcome sign.
With the PUD uninterested in selling or loaning the property, the city is not in a position to try to help the neighborhood build a basketball court, city spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.
But Nunnally and other neighbors aren’t deterred.
“Even though they’re standing here telling us ‘no’ to our face, times change,” Nunnally said. “Opinions change, and ruffled feathers on one side or the other get smoothed down. And then things happen.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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