POULSBO — Dreams of a new official City of Poulsbo soccer field at the Olhava site have taken a bad bounce and may be heading over the crossbar for good.

And once again, stormwater may be at least partially to blame.

Officials from First Western Investments and the City of Poulsbo have been meeting recently to discuss the fate of open space at the 216-acre development in the northwest quadrant of the city. Planning Director Barry Berezowsky informed the Poulsbo City Council Public Works Committee Jan. 14 that the issue has been raised over the usability of the current site promised for a community park at Olhava — an “L” shaped piece of land in the northeast corner of the site abutting Parnell Place and residential planning area 9.

“There is still a question about whether the condition relating to the park mitigation has been met as far as my interpretation of the condition of approval,” Berezowsky commented.

First Western President Mark Zenger explained that city staff were concerned that the entire eight acres promised for park land were not present in planning documents. But part of the problem was that when recent lot delineations were released, they included the commercial properties only. A portion of the park is in a residential area, which accounted for the missing portion, Zenger said.

But the park’s size was also recently modified when a drainage basin was sited in the area. Zenger told Public Works Committee members that the addition was necessary.

“The master plan has an area designated as the park, has for a long time, but when we did a drainage basin we could for such a use. The second choice was soccer fields, but Berezowsky said that the area is now too short and too narrow even for that use.

“There was no problem with two soccer fields and now we can’t even get one soccer field,” he commented.

Zenger contended that First Western originally said two soccer fields would fit on the park land because city staff gave him inaccurate measurements of the size of such a facility. He said the presence of the stormwater basin has nothing to do with the ability to site sports fields there.

“The city wants soccer fields on that site but it’s not wide enough, never has been,” Zenger said. “We’re talking about a swap of land near the college but that would require a change to the master plan and other things.”

Zenger also said that the City of Poulsbo’s concerns with the park size were only just recently aired. Berezowsky agreed but said he felt First Western might have communicated better in the first place, especially when the issue may have impacted the site’s usability for Poulsbo’s intended purposes.

“It was not brought up until recently but the city was never told of this significant change with the stormwater ponds,” Berezowsky commented.