I am borrowing a title from one of the public comments at the April 10 Maple Valley City Council meeting. Shock that the price tag on the beach house at Lake Wilderness Park has morphed from a $300,000 remodel project to $1.2 million presented in February to an astounding figure of $2.1 million. Awe that we can even consider spending the entire Parks nest egg on one project. Since these dollars are only replaced by new building construction, it will be a long time before more money becomes available for other projects.

Just how did it grow? The City Council directed Parks to investigate an alternate to the remodel as it would not solve all the shortcomings, however, they did not put a price tag on the project. Nor did they take into consideration any of the citizen surveys where the most popular items were a spray park and playground equipment. Parks staff met with the architect and apparently gave them free reign to design a building encompassing all the Parks Staff’s desires without a budget cap.

The architect has designed a monument in the shape of the letter “Z” which is expensive to build plus a roof line that invites excessive long term maintenance costs. This will be at the expense of putting off other projects for five to 10 years.

After discussing this project with others who are following it’s growth, I believe that the Parks director and the architect should be directed to explore a more conventional design to reduce the cost, (perhaps he can borrow a design from the timeless CCC public buildings in our region). We don’t need a new bathroom that constitutes a memorable monument to Maple Valley, as described by one council member.

Larry Lindstrand

Maple Valley