Neighbors differ on ideas for Bidwell Park features

Bidwell Park isn’t built or completely designed yet, but it’s already suffering an identity crisis.

Plans call for a multiuse park featuring ball fields, but some north Spokane neighbors are pushing the county to include more natural areas.

Spokane County purchased the nearly 20 acres of parkland along Hatch Road last fall, and the Parks Department is now finalizing a master plan that should be completed next week.

Park neighbor Karla Hydzik has been working for more than five years on the park, going so far as to contact landowners to see if they’d sell property to the county.

It was a heartbreaking process at times. After working on one site for four years, it was purchased by a developer, Hydzik said.

“We were fortunate to find some landowners who were interested in giving back to the community and leaving a legacy,” she said.

She envisions an area for families to play, and prefers a plan that features grass but keeps things open for kids’ safety.

But neighbor Jeanne Dammarell wants more trees, bushes and walking trails.

“One of the reasons the natural area is so important is because nitrates move through the groundwater and the only way to absorb them is with trees and bushes,” Dammarell said.

Dammarell lives in a wooded area just south of the park and land where a new housing subdivision is planned.

Over the past few weeks, does have been birthing fawns, and hummingbirds have been feeding in her back yard.

She worries that park traffic could ruin the area’s wild qualities.

Designers must balance competing needs and desires, said Spokane County Parks and Recreation Director Doug Chase.

Not everyone will be satisfied.

“If we had five more ball fields up there, they’d be filled with people from up there,” Chase said. But that wouldn’t leave room for the other planned amenities, including a skate park, sledding hill, playground equipment, basketball courts, paved pathways and pool.

Some features clearly stood out in the public surveys the Parks Department conducted last month.

Kids overwhelmingly preferred a skate park over other park activities.

Soccer and softball fields, basketball courts and play equipment also ranked highly among the children polled. Midway Elementary students also listed natural areas as a top desire.

The two options presented to the public last month and under consideration by the Parks Advisory Committee include everything but the natural area. One plan has a larger meadow and two fields – one a softball field, the other a combination softball/soccer field. The other has three ball fields, with two being combination fields.

A third option now being designed would add a natural area on the park’s eastern edge.

Developing those amenities is in the future, however.

The county can only afford to build the pool now, and expects to complete it in time for the 2005 swimming season.

The $1.8 million pool is actually two swimming areas in one. One section of the U-shaped pool is for diving and lap swimming and the other is a shallow area that will include tumbling buckets of water, water jets and other play features.

It would have cost the county an extra $500,000 to build two separate pools.

Some neighbors don’t like the idea that the only mature trees on the site will be cut down to make way for the pool.

The trees and bushes — cottonwoods, pines and lilacs — surround a dilapidated house that will be demolished.

And depending on who you talk to, the large red X’s painted on the tree trunks mark the death of the trees or the location of a new recreation treasure.

“A park should have trees,” said Ann Martinson. “The idea that they would cut down the only existing feature… It takes 50 years for a tree to grow.”

Spokane County Commissioner John Roskelley said he sympathizes with people who want the trees to stay, but added there just isn’t a good way to save them and build the pool.

“What you have to do is consider what’s the best for the majority of people,” Roskelley said.

Moving the pool to another location would cost more and increase the chances of vandalism, said Chase.

Pools along major roads like Hatch can be better monitored, he said.

And Dammarell said she’ll give up the fight for the existing trees, in the hopes that the county will incorporate more into other parts of the park.