Just as drivers figured out how to shift their schedules and routine routes to accommodate road work on Miller Bay Road between Highway 104 and Gunderson Road, more heavy equipment appeared at the entryway to the North Kitsap Heritage Park and began tearing apart yet another section of the road.
The work at the Heritage Park entrance, between West Kingston and Indianola roads, entails creating turn lanes off Miller Bay Road for safe access into the park that will serve the future development of the park itself, according to Kitsap County Public Works transportation planning manager Greg Cioc.
The work, conducted by Northern Conn-Agg, Inc. of Mill Creek, the same company hired to construct the channelization and traffic signal at the Miller Bay and West Kingston roads intersection, is expected to continue through Oct. 10 with minimal delays.
The county’s Facilities, Parks and Recreation Department is also moving ahead with the next step to design the first phase of the Heritage Park. It’s about to finalize a contract with The Berger Partnership of Seattle, the landscape architectural firm that created the park’s Master Plan approved by commissioners last February. According to Brian Lyman, capital projects manager for the parks department, the scope of the design work includes continuing the Miller Bay entrance road into the park, creating an entryway, parking, signage, non-motorized trails, trailheads and development of the first ballfields.
“Once we complete that design,” Lyman said, “we’ll have to wait until 2008 to evaluate our budget at that time and see how much of that design we can put out to bid for construction.”
The Heritage Park includes 426 acres the county purchased from Olympic Property Group in May 2004 and another 20 purchased from Betty Foskett for the main entrance. The county continues negotiations to purchase an additional 380 acres from OPG, and included that portion in the Master Plan, which shows that about 90 acres will be developed for active recreation while the remaining is left undisturbed.
To get a sense of the size of the park’s final 830 acres, compare it to 843-acre Central Park in New York City or 700 acres of Point Defiance Park in Tacoma.
Jonathan Morley, principal with The Berger Partnership, said he expects to get to work soon on the design of the first phase.
“Once the contract is active, we’ll sit down with Brian (Lyman) and layout the exact schedule and determine target goals for beginning construction and goals for what we’re trying to get in.”
“The goal is to get access in from Miller Bay Road up through the hillside to where the fields would be,” he said. Though cost estimates for each phase were determined in the Master Plan, it will be only after the on-the-ground design is complete that a real cost can be figured.
“You don’t need to have every last dollar in place in order to design it,” Morley explained. “We’ll phase it with cost overlays … it will be a fine line between what’s available with what’s trying to be achieved.”
Since the Master Plan was completed, Morley said the park’s wetlands were further delineated and topography and boundary surveys finished.
“The survey is a big step in the reality to what’s on the ground,” he said.
He estimates it will take about a year to get a design document ready and determine permitting needs. In the meantime, he hopes that public groups will begin to organize and develop strategies for how they can help support the first phase of development and achieve some of the goals that will be set so that the needs of groups who will actively use the park facilities will be met.
Indianola resident Casper Lane who regularly uses existing trails in the Heritage Park to hike and ride his mountain bike said he’s “delighted to see progress on the park. It looks like they’re doing a nice job.”
The critical issue he sees in the initial design of access into the park is creating an entryway for bicyclists and pedestrians through Miller Bay Estates that borders the park, so that the public can get to the new fields without having to drive around to Miller Bay Road.
“But for my purposes, the park exists already for rural hiking and biking,” Lane commented. “It’s always a pleasure. The fact that it’s there and protected is what’s important.”
