Passionate letter from a concerned citizen

As the sunny warm days of summer draw near an end, there are winds of change blowing through the stately old trees on Wellington Hills Golf Course. If you happen to listen, you will hear the worried whispers warning of what is proposed to arrive in early fall.  The earthmovers, bulldozers, backhoes and dump trucks are lined up ready to roar into action and crawl across the beautifully rolling hills. Their single purpose is to flatten the rolling hills into a tabletop, fit only for the construction of what’s to come. “What will happen to us?” ”How can we survive?”  

Despite the smooth answers from County employees to the many valid questions asked by community residents about Snohomish County’s proposed Business Park/Sports Complex on this site, the trees and I are not feeling reassured.

            Once the two year process of clearing, grading, flattening, filling and reconfiguring are done, the only tall structures will be large and small buildings, 70 foot tall light standards, walls, fences, backstops, and rows upon rows of parked cars.

            Gone forever the green gently rolling hills. The uncut trees are silently screaming, “Although they say we’ll remain, we can not survive the undercutting and backfilling over our roots and trunks. We will surely die a slow and painful death! Is anyone listening? Who will protect the natural order of things?”

 Many good citizens are indeed listening and asking, “What can I do to help maintain our natural, local treasure?”  And I personally ask, why allow the words of the Joni Mitchell song to come true: 

“We paved paradise to put in a parking lot … and they took all the trees, and put ‘em in a tree museum and charged the people a dollar and a half to see ‘em”.

I would also suggest that if this highly developed Business Park/ Sports Complex goes ahead as proposed, your four neighborhood roads (Woodinville-Duvall, 156^th/Bostian Rd., 240^th and Highway 9) would effectively be gridlocked, especially during evenings and weekends.

            Going to your work or home or going shopping?  Expect frustration and slow traffic as you try to negotiate the roads surrounding the sports complex. And then there are those two parking lots for 700+ cars, is that really what's best for this area?

Will you stand with us?

Raise your voice! Demand an appropriate park!

 signed, 

A Wellington Community Resident