Permits for the Little Squalicum Creek Estuary project have been finalized, with construction slated to begin the week of June 13, Nicole Oliver, Bellingham’s director of Parks and Recreation, told City Council members Monday.
The project, which involves developing an intertidal estuary in Little Squalicum Park, will require partial park closures throughout the summer.
“The whole area is going to be closed to the public for the duration of this project,” Oliver said Monday. “It’s one of the few places that are left that we could do such an extraordinary project.”
Several areas in the park, including the dog park, will remain open during construction.
“We talked about the need to close the area during construction for safety reasons, and the public was really supportive,” Renee LaCroix, the city’s assistant director of natural resources, said during the meeting. “People are understanding that the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term impacts.”
Oliver offered updates on several other ongoing park construction projects during the meeting, including the Boulevard Park repairs, the development of the Bay to Baker trail and bridge repairs in Arroyo Park.
Boulevard Park, which requires extensive, expensive repairs due to ongoing erosion, will be delayed until 2023, Oliver said.
“It’s a really serious situation,” she told council members. “It’s going to require about six months of permitting, so probably construction won’t happen until summer of 2023 at the earliest.”
Bridge repairs at Arroyo Park, too, are delayed. Initially, the city planned to repair or replace a bridge in the park that was “damaged severely” by a tree, Oliver said, but they have “run into a bit of a snafu.”
Now, the city plans to bring in consultants to review how the bridge may impact the environment.
“It’s going to delay our anticipated repair work to this stretch of the bridge, and it may require that we rethink this project,” she said. “This is an extremely important native fish-bearing creek in an extraordinarily pristine area, and so we want to make sure … that if we’re going to be doing extensive work to this bridge, that we make sure that [it] isn’t hurting anything.”
The Bay to Baker trail project, a 2.2-mile loop trail connecting King Mountain and Irongate neighborhoods with the Barkley Village area, is on track. The city is in the process of submitting grant applications to fund the project, which Oliver said will be expensive.
“We’re really excited about [this project],” Oliver said. “[Lake] Padden is 2.6 [miles], just to compare it, so I’ve been referring to it as the Lake Padden of the North.”
