Magnuson Park neighbors battle proposed sports fields

Since the Navy pulled up stakes at Sand Point in 1995, the nearby neighborhoods of View Ridge, Laurelhurst and Windermere have tried to torpedo plans they believed would disturb the bucolic setting of the former naval air station's lasting legacy, 330-acre Magnuson Park.

They fought efforts to house the homeless there — and lost. They opposed putting a temporary campus for Ballard High School there — and won. As the city presses forward on a $60 million plan to create Seattle's largest lighted amateur sports complex outside of the University of Washington, the neighborhoods face another battle royal.

And the lead soldiers are their new neighbors — the formerly homeless people they sought to keep out of Sand Point.

Late last year, the neighborhoods formed a nonprofit alliance, Friends of Magnuson Park, which is now threatening a lawsuit unless the City Council applies the brakes. The council approved preliminary designs for the athletic complex in 1999 and 2001 but is now being pressured to reconsider. Although construction on the first of the fields would not begin until late 2005, the Parks Department expects to ask the council for a final blessing in late July.

Parks officials briefed a council committee yesterday on the latest design. "I suspect that later we will hold a public hearing," said Council President Peter Steinbrueck, recognizing the sensitivity of the project.

Eleven synthetic-surface fields are to be built on 22 acres at Magnuson — five for soccer, three for youth baseball/softball, two for adult baseball/softball and one for rugby. Seventy-eight light poles, varying in height from 75 to 85 feet, would illuminate the 11 fields with about 625 individual lights — creating an intensity that opponents say is more than twice as bright as Safeco Field. Five of the 11 fields could stay lit until 11 p.m., another five until 10 p.m. and one until 9 p.m.

The Magnuson Park project is the centerpiece of a City Hall objective to more than double the number of lighted athletic fields citywide. It also is intended to lure potentially lucrative amateur-sport tournaments to town.

Friends of Magnuson Park, however, dubs the plan a glaring mistake that would destroy one of the last refuges of nature within the city.

"Our objective is to maintain the natural beauty of Magnuson Park to the greatest extent possible," said Doug Ancona, a View Ridge resident and spokesman for the group. "Spaces for people to relax and enjoy nature in an urban environment are quickly disappearing. There is a value in that, which isn't counted in dollars and cents."

The prospect of recreational sports played under the lights in local parks has sent chills through many Seattle neighborhoods where residents fear increased evening noise, traffic and glare.

Sensitive to charges of NIMBY-ism that have accompanied the other battles in town, the neighborhoods surrounding Magnuson Park — including two across Lake Washington in Kirkland — have styled their argument to immunize themselves from such accusations.

While citing the effects the fields would have on vistas and traffic, Friends of Magnuson Park also is emphasizing the impacts on the residents closest to the fields — the formerly homeless people living in transitional housing within the park.

"This is a travesty," Ancona said. "This plan turns what is supposed to be a comfortable, respectable place to live into a living nightmare for these people."

Peter Lukevich, president and CEO of Friends of Athletic Fields, which supports the parks plan, said the upscale neighborhoods are being disingenuous by using the formerly homeless residents as shields in fighting their battle.

"They think they can get a more sympathetic ear talking about the plight of those with less, than to talk about the concerns of the wealthy who are really behind Friends of Magnuson Park," he said.

But one transitional-housing resident, who is rallying others like her to fight the plan, said she does not feel exploited.

"We're real people, too, and I respect Friends of Magnuson Park for letting me be a part of this and helping me learn about what is going on," said Maggie Kitch, a 51-year-old photographer and aspiring paralegal.

Kitch lives in Santos Place, a 42-unit apartment house on a squatty cliff about 60 feet from where the athletic-fields complex would be built. In all, 94 units of transitional housing lie within Magnuson Park, including homes for teen mothers, with another 106 planned for 2005.

The view from Santos Place now includes two grass meadows frequented by soccer, baseball and Ultimate Frisbee players. The fields have no lights. Through the open window of her apartment, Kitch can hear faint hollers and cracks of a bat as people play baseball on one of the diamonds.

"Those are great sounds," Kitch said. "Playing sports — that's a celebration of life."

But Kitch, who has bipolar disorder, worries that 11 lighted fields would spoil Santos Place's serenity, which she said has helped her get her life back on track. Her neighbors, who include veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome and drug addicts trying to get clean, also need their peace, she said.

So far, $13.6 million in levy and grant money has been earmarked toward the estimated $60 million project, which also includes a wetland/habitat complex. If the council advances the plan and Friends of Magnuson Park sues, the lawsuit likely would argue that the Parks Department has not fully considered alternate sites for the sports complex or conducted a needs analysis on athletic fields by sport, Ancona said.

Both the Low-Income Housing Institute, which manages the transitional housing at Magnuson, and the Seattle Audubon Society also have reservations about the plan, but neither is aligned with Friends of Magnuson Park. Each withdrew from the group's prior legal challenge to the project's environmental-impact statement, deciding it was better to negotiate improvements to the design.

The institute entered into an agreement with the Parks Department that has resulted in reconfiguring the fields and parking to lessen the impacts on residents.

"The original orientation of the fields benefited ballplayers — making sure the sun wouldn't shine in the batters' eyes — but it didn't benefit the residents," said Sharon Lee, the institute's executive director.

Lee, whose agency continues to lobby to shut off the lights earlier, said her conciliatory approach is more realistic than Friends of Magnuson Park's all-or-nothing tack. Ancona said he thinks the group is best representing the interests of the transitional housing residents.

"The people from Santos Place came to us," he said. "We didn't have to recruit them."