Northridge Park’s 36 acres are home to more than a mile of trails, a duck pond and, on a clear day, sweeping views of Bellingham Bay.
When it comes to the city’s $1.2 million plans for the park’s future development, however, Northridge is also home to some controversy.
The third phase of development – on hold since 2008 – will include playgrounds, sheltered picnic areas and restrooms in two activity areas in the east side of the park, according to the Parks and Recreation Department’s Northridge master plan.
Sitting at the top of the hill north of Barkley Boulevard, the park is bordered by eight cul-de-sacs: Woodside, Spyglass, Tweed Twenty, Highfield, Pinehurst, Deerpoint, Tanglewood, Magrath, Carrington and Wycliffe Park.
Woodside Community Association Director of Communications Jim Brennan said Barkley residents are concerned that development could increase traffic in the neighborhood’s streets and compromise the trails’ peacefulness.
“(The city has) a problem seeing that this is a different kind of park,” Brennan said. “They seem to think they have to create these things…because it’s cool from a design perspective, but in reality it creates a host of problems.”
Funding for the third phase would include $500,000 from the Greenway Levy and $300,000 in park impact fees (costs that fall back on neighborhood developers and residents).
The master plan also designates new parking access at the park’s border with Woodside Way. Currently, parking is limited to three spaces on Magrath Road and, without signs leading to the spaces, is difficult to locate.
Gina Urcuyo, who lives on Carrington Way near the park, said the issue was not with people outside the neighborhood visiting the park, but with the city’s ability to maintain the project after construction.
“We want to be a welcoming, but we also want to keep traffic down in these quiet dead-end neighborhoods,” Urcuyo said. “We don’t think we’re better than anyone else, we just want sensible development.”
For now, Northridge development is postponed as the city focuses on other projects. Budget cuts that have halved its staff over the past two years, said Park Operations Manager Marvin Harris.
Harris could not be reached for further comment on Monday.
John Schulz, project manager for Parks and Recreation, said Northridge development is currently 60 – 70 percent complete, with all necessary utilities available for the future playgrounds and picnic areas.
The third phase would affect about 7 percent of the park’s total area, he said.
“We take huge efforts to steward the landscape under our control,” Schulz said. “When we design trails, we try to do the best job we can; we try to be efficient and make things as beautifully wondrous for users as possible.”
Schulz said the department had no approximate date when development would continue, and was consequently unsure when and if more public debate would occur.
The debate over the park’s development came to a head in December 2008, when former Parks and Recreation Chief Paul Leuthold announced during a public meeting that the city could not maintain the facilities that Phase III would provide.
“They don’t want to see any kind of development,” Leuthold told The Bellingham Herald shortly after the meeting. “People blow these things a little out of proportion.”
Brennan said that while many of the residents did feel that the city had ignored citizen input at times, their only interest was making Northridge Park better for everyone.
“That is really the only thing that has offended us – in other respects the city done marvelously, given that they’re cash-scrapped.”
While the residents do not necessarily view the situation as an us-versus-them scenario, many of those living around the park plan on voicing their concerns to the city before development begins again, Brennan said.
“From our perspective, the project would destroy the virtue and value of the park for no reason,” Brennan said. “We’re going to speak up, not wait around for what the city wants to do with us.”
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