Letter to Woodinville Weekly

REGIONAL SPORTS PARK AT WELLINGTON from the Woodinville Weekly

For those of  you who wonder why the neighbors of the Wellington Hills area are opposed to the building of a park at the Wellington Hills golf course site by the Snohomish County Park Department, you have to consider the intent of these feelings.

A regional sports park is best suited in industrial or business park areas where traffic, noise and lighting are not a problem.

The proposed development would bring all of these to our area.

Traffic is one of the biggest problems as 240th St S.E. is already a traffic problem area.  Before Costco was built, the traffic count was 400 cars per day and it has now risen to 2,800 per day.  The parking lot for the proposed development is the same size of that of the Costco lot.

The parks department is proposing as many as nine ball fields, four lighted artificial fields, three natural grass and two more if needed.  The fields will be primarily used for soccer with as many as four or more major tournaments a year.

This could bring in an extra 2,800 or more cars per day during tournament play.

Snohomish County currently has no other such type of park, which is in the close proximity to a residential area as this park will be.

The main use of this park will be organized sports, which of course will have to pay to use the facility.

If the Marymoor Park is any indication, the people parking in this park will also have to pay to park.
Funding for this park comes from mitigation funding from King County when the Brightwater plant was built.

The implication is that the Brightwater plant negatively affected the people living in this area.

The ONLY negative impact it had is in the loss of property taxes on the site due to the fact it is now owned by King County.

It does not create noise, traffic or lighting problems, which is exactly what it will create for those of us living adjacent to this site, which is why we are in opposition to the proposed development.
Larry S. Nelson, Woodinville