[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor, submitted by a verified resident. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The B-Town Blog, nor its staff:]
As a NO vote, and author of the Con voters pamphlet statement, I’ve been deeply disappointed in the City, it’s City Scene articles on the subject and what I perceive to be PDC relevant concerns.
This project, once touted as $15 million, has grown to $25, with a “plan” that relies on unknown grants and gifts to cover a currently city-estimated 40% of the cost.
It is for a Civic Center full of what may become unneeded offices, due to telecommuting trends and employee preferences, a dance studio without a tenant (she’s now in Des Moines), and the elimination of 1 of only 3 ball fields the City owns. It includes a new police station away from our primary crime corridor that could be built across from Marvista Elementary, where it was for years and years, something no citizen would find imprudent in these troubling school-shooting times.
Finally, our Park space and ball fields could be expanded IF the City offices were relocated into our underused business district. Ironically, the City failed to buy, or even acknowledge the availability, of the property adjacent to John Knox Church which was perfect and only recently sold for $2 million and is now almost completed townhomes. If one reads the City’s documents from the last 10 years one realizes that no one imagined this particular property would come on the market and no one was prepared to or had the imagination to build anywhere but at the City Hall Park site.
Now the gym has been demolished in spite of the fact the City’s own consultant report showed a full seismic upgrade and other upgrades would be much less expensive than new construction and the fact the building was no more dangerous than Dunn Lumber, QFC or the Cove, all built about the same time.
Something to think about.
– David Miller
Normandy Park
EDITOR’S NOTE: Do you have an opinion you’d like to share with our highly engaged local Readers? If so, please email your Letter to the Editor to scott@southkingmedia.com and, pending review and verification, we may publish it. Letter writers must use their full names and cite sources – as well as provide an address and phone number (NOT for publication but for verification purposes).
