County Will Explain Fish Lake Park Plan

Final plans for improvements to the county’s Fish Lake Park will be reviewed during a meeting of the Marshall Community Coalition Wednesday.

The meeting will be at 7 p.m at Windsor Elementary School, 5504 W. Hallett Road.

County and city officials will be on hand to talk about the park improvements as well as plans for extending the Fish Lake Trail. Work at the park will begin this summer.

Bev Keating, coordinator of the coalition, said residents can voice their opinions about the park development during the meeting.

“If anybody wants changes, now is the time to do it,” she said.

Also next Wednesday, parks officials will appear before County Hearing Examiner Mike Dempsey to seek a shoreline development permit for the park.

The hearing is set for 9 a.m. in the Commissioners Assembly Room in the county Public Works Building.

The county is considering a proposal to use $44,200 of community development funds to help pay for park improvements, Keating said.

The block grant money would pay for handicap-accessible pathways to the playground equipment as well as a handicap-accessible fishing dock.

Already the county has spent $19,000 to buy a little more than a half acre of land on the north end of the park. Another $23,000 will be spent on a vault restroom built by CTX Corp. All together, about $254,000 will be spent on developing the park. Much of the land was purchased by the county in 1991 from the Myers family, which operated a fishing resort there for years.

The former county park site along the Cheney-Spokane Road is being allowed to return to wetland. An old restroom building is being removed as part of the reclamation effort.

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, members of the coalition will receive an update on the city of Spokane’s plan to pave three miles of old railroad bed near the city limits. It will be part of an eventual trail linking Spokane with Fish Lake and Cheney via the former railbed.

A representative of the Inland Northwest Land Trust also will talk about putting property along Marshall Creek into conservation easements.

, DataTimes