Congratulations, Kirkland! The time, effort and dollars spent in improving Juanita Beach Park are nothing short of amazing. According to the City of Kirkland’s Web site, “visitors park in a more space-efficient parking lot complimented by new lighting and landscaping (and bio-filtration stormwater features), can enjoy new walking paths that lead to and from the beach and the pier, can take a swim, and have a picnic on the new picnic tables.” Apparently, more space-efficient parking means half the spots are gone, the ones left are smaller and the landscaping in the parking lot takes up more spaces. I know I appreciate landscaping in my parking lots. It gives me something to look at while I’m circling the lot trying to find a place to park.

Thank you, too, for adding the walking pathways to and from the beach because without them, people would not be able to cross the “bio-filtration stormwater features” – the drainage ditches that have replaced what once was grassy area and are less than walking friendly, but I must say look pleasing thanks to their extensive landscaping that also makes them impassable.

Thank you, too, for making a more “space-efficient” beach area, which also seems to have been downsized by half. At least it will look pretty, eventually. I particularly enjoyed the thoughtful placement of the three large fir tree plantings right smack in the middle of the beach seating area which, in time, will make a most impressive display of 30 foot trees blocking the view of the lake, but providing the much needed shade and carpet of needles, sap and cones on the beach and the walkway. The person responsible for the landscape design, if you can call it that, must either not have children or have too many children and a serious disregard for them, because who would purposely install planting beds mounded with beauty bark and rose rushes on the beach where bare little feet are certain to be? Bees, thorns and splinters are not conducive to being kid-friendly, let alone grown-up friendly.

The city’s Web site also boasts “the planting of 900 new evergreen and deciduous trees.” I beg to differ. Shrubs and swamp grass planted in the parking lot, the unusable planting berms, and the biofiltration stormwater features do not count as evergreen and deciduous trees. I think they got that number confused with the number of trees they removed. I don’t even want to think about the time and money it will take to maintain all of those unnecessary plantings, but all in all, Kirkland, congratulations. You have once again taken a perfectly fine space and made yourself a beautiful park…ing lot.

Kathryn Rich, Kirkland