City may expand sports park

  • John Santana<br>Mill Creek Enterprise editor
  • Monday, March 3, 2008 6:50am

The day may come when the Mill Creek Sports Park will be a bigger facility – only that day will likely be a few years out.

The Mill Creek City Council on Sept. 20 told city staff that despite the recent purchase of the Huntron Building, the Council was still interested in buying two adjoining parcels of land the city has purchase options on, with the purpose being to expand the sports park.

The city’s purchase options on the two properties are good until March 2008.

“I’m ecstatic that the Council agreed to secure the land to expand the sports park,” Mayor Terry Ryan said, adding that since the city is running out of undeveloped land, that it makes “sense to expand what we have.”

The two parcels in question are both approximately five acres. They are directly north of the sports park, fronting the extension of North Creek Drive. Part of the property is wetlands and wetlands buffers, city public works director Doug Jacobson said.

Under preliminary city plans, any expansion of the park onto the land would include two full-sized artificial turf soccer fields, with a baseball/softball diamond and additional parking. The additional land could add eight more acres to the park, Jacobson said.

“We could (expand the park) in two phases,” City Council member John Hudgins said. “We need the fields.”

Council urged staff to start looking into acquiring grant money to pay for buying the land and developing it. In addition, there are several ways the city could finance purchasing the land and expanding the park, such as lease revenue from Huntron Building tenants, parks mitigation money and real estate excise tax revenues. The city also can go for grants. Those funds would cover purchase of one of the two parcels the city has an option on, meaning that the city would need to take out bonds if it wants to buy both properties, finance director Joanne Gregory said.

“If we want to buy both we would have to incur some debt,” Gregory said.

Jacobson said the Council will likely revisit Sports Park expansion early next summer during its review and update of the city’s capital facility plan, which is part of the city’s two-year budget process.

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