Steel Lake Little League Goes To Bat For Playfield

SEATTLE - Armed with "Norm Rice have a heart" signs and baseball caps, about 25 Steel Lake Little League parents and players gathered in the 12th-floor lobby of the Municipal Building.

The game plan: Talk to the City Council, to Rice, to anyone who might champion their cause - persuading the city to sell them 14 acres near a Kent landfill so they can continue playing baseball.

A spokeswoman for the council said they couldn't address the council because they weren't on the agenda.

Strike one.

And the mayor wasn't in.

Strike two.

But Deputy Mayor Bruce Brooks and D'Anne Mount from the Solid Waste Utility were, and an impromptu sports summit took place.

The league wants to purchase 14 of 345 acres that Seattle was forced to buy in 1990 as part of a legal settlement. They offered $200,000 for it, which the city turned down. Then, several weeks ago, King County offered to buy the 14 acres under a private-public partnership with the league for $1 million.

Seattle hasn't responded.

How much the land is actually worth is debatable.

The county has funded an independent appraisal of the property that is due any day. But in the meantime, Seattle's asking price remains at $7 million for the entire parcel.

And no decision has been made whether to break out the 14-acre portion or to extend the league's lease on the property, which ends Dec. 31 - less than two months before the 1996 tryouts.

"We're not unsympathetic," Brooks told the group. "But because we paid money to acquire this property (about $7.5 million) we need to make as close to that as possible."

The league is made up of youths from Kent, Auburn and Federal Way, and all of those cities have indicated their limited playfields can't possibly accommodate games for an additional 700 youths. At peak season there are 48 games a week.

At the end of the meeting, league members felt as frustrated as ever. "I'm not willing to let other entities set the agenda for the city," Brooks said.

"If they'd break those 14 acres off it would be done," said league President Dan Slaeker.

"We've jumped through every hoop," parent Vicki Schmuck said.