City working to save community center project
December 16, 2008
By J.B. Wogan
Council seeking funding options for $5 million purchase
We should tackle it right away.” Don Gerend, Councilman –
If possible, the City Council wants to save the community center component of the failed parks bond.
The 20-year, $19-million bond was intended to pay for six projects — including a $5 million community center in what is now the library — but it fell short of reaching the 60 percent majority vote to pass Nov. 4.
In order to save the plan, the city would have to act quickly to locate the funds to pay for the building. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the King County Library System, the property owner, would sell it to them.
At its Dec. 9 meeting, the City Council met with the Parks Commission, a citizen advisory board that provides recommendations about parks and recreation projects. The failed parks bond and its aftermath took center stage in the discussion.
“The teen center should be a separate project and we should tackle it right away,” Councilman Don Gerend said.
What Gerend described as a “teen center” was a multi-use community center that would likely have had programs for residents of all ages.
Parks Commissioner Pauline Cantor referred to the $5 million center as relatively inexpensive and worth pursuing further. Some at the meeting speculated that current economic conditions might be driving the price down, making it important to buy the building before the real estate market starts climbing.
City Manager Ben Yazici said he believed the topic would pop up during the City Council retreat Jan. 22-24.
He said he would explore other ways of buying the library building, if the council directs him to do so.
Another option would be to put a revised version of the bond back on the voters’ ballot next November, Commissioner Hank Klein said.
Klein speculated that the bond could be reduced by about $4 million if the East Sammamish Park improvements and the Beaver Lake Vicinity Trail were removed.
“The smaller package might earn enough support to push us over the 60 percent threshold,” he told the council in a letter prior to the Dec. 9 meeting.
The purchase of the library building for a recreation center confused voters, Councilwoman Kathy Huckabay said.
It appeared to residents that the city was buying a building it already owned, she explained.
In reality, the King County Library System owns the building. It identified the Sammamish Public Library as a location that needed a bigger, better facility to accommodate the city’s booming population.
The existing library is 10,000 square feet, a medium-sized library, according to Julie Williams, a spokeswoman for the library system.
It has the highest use of any library of its size in the county, she said.
With or without the parks bond, the county’s library system had decided to build a new library on the land south of City Hall.
With money from the parks bond, the city could have bid on the existing library building for its proposed recreation center. If the city had been successful in purchasing the building, the Boys and Girls Club had agreed to maintain the center and run programs out of it.
The county library system never had a formal agreement to sell the building to the city, according to Williams.
But there would have been an opportunity to engage in an interlocal agreement between the library system and the city, allowing the city to buy the property without competing against private developers, according to Bill Ptacek, the library system’s director.
Such an opportunity could still exist, assuming the city finds the funds to buy the property, Ptacek said.
“If the city comes up with something, great. We’d have to see it before making a decision,” he said.
If the library is sold to a private developer, the two-acre property could be developed with houses or some commercial space.
As was planned, the building will go to market some time in 2009, and its proceeds will help fund the new library in Sammamish, Williams said.
The asking price may or may not change, Williams added. The $5-million figure refers to an early 2008 appraisal.
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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