Snohomish County NewsHoliday Parlour Tour
Denise Cosgrove’s home, located at 828 Pine Ave., will be one of the homes open for the Snohomish Historical Society’s Holiday Parlour Tour Dec. 13.
Adults dig legos, too
Doug Ramsay photo
Lego robots built by Everett Community College engineering students battle each other Dec. 1. Jack Hart (right) cheers as his team’s robot knocks a competing robot out of the sumo ring. Also watching, from left to right,:are Hart’s father Tony, Patrick Doyle and Justin Maddox. The class learned how to program the robots to work autonomously.
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Pool likely going in at Freshman Campus
SNOHOMISH- A new study shows the school district’s aquatic center likely can locate at the Freshman Campus site.
Before that plan firms up, the district must assuage the Department of Ecology’s environmental concerns about the site. It also must do a traffic study and other studies.
The Department of Ecology is concerned the center’s proposed location west of the campus might be on a wetland, which affects where the buildings can go.
Apartments nearby drive storm water to the Freshman Campus, district superintendent Bill Mester said
When the apartments were built, “the apartments created no accommodation for storm water,” Mester said, leading water to end up at the Freshman Campus. “That creates a question if that is a wetland.”
A recent ground study showed there is enough hard packed dirt at the Freshman Campus to create the aquatic center. The district nixed the Freshman Campus option before because it was perceived the aquatic center’s pools would collide with the city water table.
As long as the district does not dig below the dirt, the aquatic center is OK, district construction manager Ralph Rohwer said.
The district expects the wetlands survey completed in about a month, project manager Steve Moore said.
The district also has a contractor studying the traffic impact of the aquatic center on Maple Avenue. That study will be sent to the city and improvements, if any, to the road would likely come from the district’s pockets, Rohwer said.
Once these issues clear, construction work is slated to start in summer 2010 under a tight timeline. Rohwer said he believes the center can be built by fall 2010.
The school would still use the Freshman Campus site to temporarily house students, fencing off the construction from students.
The Freshman Campus is the current temporary home for Riverview and Machias elementary students as new schools are built. Students from Centennial and Valley View middle schools will come to the Freshman Campus in 2011 as those schools are renovated.
After those students move to their new schools in 2012, the school building itself may be surplused, Mester said. That is for the school board to decide, although the school building is beyond its useful life as a school, he said.
The district hopes to connect the aquatic center to the freshman campus to accommodate an area for pool parties and get-togethers. The gym could be used for locker rooms.
The aquatic center will still have recreational, therapy and competition pools as planned.
Mester emphasized that none of those options will be removed from the plan. He still holds hope the budget can accommodate a “wave rider” surfing simulator that the district believes would attract people from beyond Snohomish.
The district could not locate the pool at the Hal Moe Pool site off of Third Street because of parking. That site’s parking lot is shared by the Boys and Girls Club and the aquatic center would have generated too many cars in the lot. The district is required to have enough parking for its aquatic center, and filling up nearby streets is not an option.
“In the end of the day, we can’t meet those parking requirements, so that killed that,” Mester said.
The Freshman Campus is expected to have enough parking, preliminary studies show.
The money for the facility’s construction is from a $261.6 million bond passed by voters in 2008. Bond money represents an estimated $19.9 million of the $26.8 million project.
By MICHAEL WHITNEY
Published Dec. 9, 2009