County to purchase Martha Lake Airport

MARTHA LAKE

It's official: Baseball and soccer fields, not a sprawling housing development, will replace Martha Lake Airport west of Mill Creek.

The heirs of longtime airport owners Ed and Dorothy Hauter have agreed to sell 26 acres to Snohomish County for $3.6 million, despite a $4.1 million offer from a residential developer.

The deal, scheduled to close April 28, allows the family to keep 4 acres of airport property that includes the Hauter home, county officials announced yesterday.

The nearly 40-year-old airport lies just north of Martha Lake in a residential area undergoing rapid growth.

Patti Bourgault, vice president of the South Snohomish County Preservation Society, heard the news yesterday when she returned home from a county hearing on the latest high-density residential project proposed for the neighborhood.

"With all that's happening in our area, we need to be plucking up more pieces of land (for parks) because our density is way over the line," she said. "It's good to see something being preserved in the urban area because it's going downhill rapidly."

A residential developer could have wedged an estimated 125 houses on the airport land, excluding wetlands and the portion to be retained by the Hauter family.

Park construction probably won't begin until 2005 because of planning, funding and permit issues, said Ron Martin, director of the county Parks and Recreation Department.

Preliminary plans for the property include four soccer fields, a regulation-size baseball field, two junior baseball diamonds, a playground and restrooms.

In the short term, Martin said, the county could rip up the runways and other paved areas to create space for temporary soccer and baseball fields. The Sno-King Youth Club might help with that project, he said.

The deal took two years to clinch as the Hauters' three adult children argued over what to do with the property. Ed Hauter was killed in a traffic accident in 1971 and his wife died two years ago.

Daughter Jill Herbert of Mill Creek exercised what amounted to veto power, refusing to sell the land for anything other than a county park.

A family mediator helped break the impasse in January, when the siblings agreed to a compromise. They agreed to sell the airport to the county unless a private buyer turned up with a larger cash offer by April 30.

This week, the family told the county it's ready to sell. The private developer who earlier had offered $4.1 million couldn't beat the county's $3.6 million cash-on-the-spot deal, said Dianne Housden, the county's senior real-estate coordinator.

Developers typically buy land by making a small down payment and paying the rest with bank loans, which aren't issued until midway through the development and planning process, Housden said.

Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel yesterday called the acquisition "an absolute win" for the county. He praised the Hauter family and the county parks staff for pulling together a deal under difficult, competitive circumstances.

"This is just one of those displays of the government doing the right thing for the right reasons and not missing an opportunity that will never, ever present itself again," he said.

The county will buy the land with proceeds from an $8.2 million parks bond sale completed last fall. Those bonds also will pay for ballfields on a corner of the county's closed Cathcart landfill between Mill Creek and Snohomish.

Last summer, the county thought it would lose the airport because the private developer offered the family double the land's appraised value, then $2.4 million. The developer's offer then dropped to $4.1 million due to wetlands issues.

The county subsequently got a $3.2 million appraisal for the property. The county's decision to offer $400,000 above the appraised value took into account the developer's $4.1 million bid.

Diane Brooks' phone message number is 425-745-7802.