I want to voice my support for locating the Kirkland Aquatics, Recreation and Community (ARC) Center at the proposed north Juanita Beach Park site. I live just off of Juanita Drive, on the Finn Hill side of the Juanita/Finn Hill neighborhood boundary, where my family and I moved nearly 25 years ago. With Juanita Beach Park only about half-a-mile from our home, I’m sympathetic to many of the concerns that members of the Juanita Neighborhood Association have expressed about building the Kirkland ARC at the north end of the park. In balance, however, I strongly believe that the positives the pool and recreation facility would provide at this location far outweigh the negatives.
Yes, in a perfect world, Kirkland would be able to maintain all of its open spaces and also meet the overwhelming demand (82% of Kirkland residents surveyed) for a public pool and recreation facility. In the real world, we have to make choices and tradeoffs in an effort to achieve the greater good. In this case, the tradeoff may well be one of either choosing to maintain some open space, or creating a modern aquatics and recreation facility that would address many critical needs within our community.
Having closely followed the extensive research and outreach activities that the Kirkland Parks department has conducted over the past year, I think the process has been fair and transparent. The fact that there is some minority dissent about the Juanita Beach location within the Kirkland Park board itself (as cited in a recent letter to the editor), isn’t surprising given that no proposed location can hope to garner unanimous support. I don’t see evidence of bias or railroading on the part of the majority of the Park board simply because they paint a positive picture of the Juanita Park site. That location did, after all, come out as the top choice after a long and comprehensive evaluation process. From everything I have seen and learned, the Juanita Park location is the most practical, affordable – and, therefore, the most achievable – option of the various sites researched.
Anyone familiar with the bleak public pool situation on the Eastside understands that there is a huge and largely unmet need for recreational and competition pool facilities in this area. The Saint Edwards Park and Bothell Northshore pools closed some time ago. That leaves the slated-for-demolition Juanita High School pool only able to (temporarily) meet a small portion of the growing demand for youth and adult swimming lessons, high school and Masters swim team training, recreational swimming and other aquatics uses. By addressing many of these aquatics needs, as well as providing facilities for other health, fitness and community activities, the Kirkland ARC would be heavily used and highly valued.
To my knowledge, no other city-owned property fits the bill for Kirkland ARC as well as the north Juanita Beach location. I fear that no privately owned property is likely to be affordable when the cost of acquiring private land is added to the cost of the facility itself. So the real question for the opponents of the Juanita Beach location is very likely to be this: Would you prefer to have the Kirkland ARC at this location, or would you prefer to have no Kirkland ARC at all? Faced with this option, I think the majority of Kirkland residents would chose to build the pool and recreation facility at the north Juanita Beach Park site. Without question, that would be my choice.
Dwight Davis, Kirkland
