Birch Bay gets its own Beach Park

I attended the first of three community input planning meetings for the Birch Bay Beach Park last Saturday. This has been a long time coming in my opinion.
For years I had been walking and driving by the empty Vogt property, all boarded up and fenced off.

The Vogt family homesteaded here many years ago and had an RV park and store on the property but it had been out of use for years. In 2014 the county bought the property for park purposes.

Last summer and this summer the Birch Bay Chamber has been able to use the property for their summer events. Event permits have been obtained in order that booths could be erected and cars parked there. I've enjoyed watching the public use the area.

There has been a lot of talk about having some structures on the property and allowing for additional parking since the parking along the bay is minimal and there are no fixed public restrooms in the area.

These facilities will be built after the completion of the Berm project AKA Birch Bay Drive and Pedestrian Facility Project. You can read more about that on Kathy Berg's Birch Bay Steering Committee website listed below.

I enjoyed most of the discussions in regard to planning the park site. First notable point of interest for me was that the funding came from Conversations Futures Fund which requires that the use be park like, open areas, not for libraries, museums or visitor's centers.

We were asked by the developer of how we saw the area being used which opened the discussion up to much input by the 5 tables of 8 or so people attending the meeting. We heard about set backs, traffic rules, archeological finds, review of maintenance cost issues. 

I believe Jeff Carrington did a good job of helping to wind up the open discussion by summarizing and pointing out that most folks want the park to be a landing place for visitors and locals to be able to take advantage of our bay "playground" and also be able to then stay and visit our local businesses. 

Eventually we divided up into 4 groups and sketched out plans for what we thought were important items to include on this piece of 4.2 acres of property on the east side of Birch Bay Drive.  Roughly, 397 feet from north to south and 401 feet from west to east.
The park does include 8 acres in total including the tide flat area.

After each group presented their plan I felt there was a lot of consensus and a few varying ideas.

Plan A

All of the plans included road way for driving in and driving out and lots of parking. All plans included open space for booths, or playing on the dirt/grass such as volleyball or Frisbee. All plans included restrooms and storage. In door showers requires a whole lot of maintenance so were talked out of those but outdoor showers would be very useful.

Everyone wants some type of open covered structure. Some of us wanted it to include a theater or stage area.

Plan B

All plans included area for tables and or benches and a way to BBQ. 

One concept where we had differing points of view was making space for a playground for younger kids and basketball court for teenagers. In this writer's opinion along with others, our playground is the beach.

We discussed educational signs around the park on the beach side to identify landmasses and give a history of the area.

Plan C

Although we can't have a museum on the property we'd like to make some reference to the native heritage and our early settlers. 

Plan D

We all want the pedestrians to be safe in crossing the road while at the same time not cause a terrible amount of congestion. For this reason, and for protecting the views we hope there won't be parking along the drive and we want a clear crosswalk, possible with flashing lights.

I think most of us wanted the ingress and egress of cars to be at the north side of the property, however this may not work for the traffic engineers, so we'll need to learn more about that. It is required and vital too that emergency vehicles can get in and turn around, so that will need to be taken into account.

I feel there was a good group at the session, a lot of familiar faces. There was space for more, so come if you can next time and bring a friend.

 
 

Read More Here:
http://www.thenorthernlight.com/2016/08/03/comment-session-on-new-birch-bay-park-this-saturday/

 http://www.birchbayinfo.org/bbdrpedfacberm.html