Friends of Marymoor Park

January 23rd, 2002 Meeting Summary

-- see also the August 2001 meeting summary

Heritage Festival and Derby Days

There was a lengthy discussion of a plan being worked on jointly between KC Parks and the City of Redmond to combine some aspects of the Heritage Festival and Redmond's Derby Days.  Traditionally  Heritage Festival has been the first weekend in July and Derby Days has been the weekend after the 4th of July.  Fireworks have been held on the 4th.  Under the proposed plan, the Derby Days parade and other activities would move to the 4th of July, and some of those activities would be inside Marymoor.  This would be tricky on years when the 4th falls on the weekend, meaning Derby Days would coincide with Heritage.  However there would be good leveraging of resources, with savings for both Redmond and KC Parks.  It would also allow combined advertising, etc.  This planning was initiated by the City of Redmond, and more discussion was to happen  February 5th before the Redmond City Council.

Summer Concert Series

Noise concerns expressed again, but: most weekends shows will only be Saturday 7:30-10:00 pm.   Sometimes, shows will be Friday or Sunday instead, and occasionally two nights on same weekend.

Sammamish Rowing Club

In response to complaints especially during last fall's season, the Sammamish Rowing Club put together a 7-Step Program to mitigate for the growth of their program.

Hod Fowler first gave a bit of the history of the site:  From 1952-1972 it was a sewage treatment center for east Bellevue.  It was closed as a result of the creation of Metro.  The site was purchased for a school in 1975 but the school was never built.  They built the boathouse in 1977 and it was used until 1989.  The site was sold to the county in 1995.  Conservation Futures Funds have been spent to enhance the property.  The Sammamish Rowing Club has invested considerably in the site, both in terms of development (parking, road, repairs) and as a steward (including trash collection, cleanup, etc.)

The 7-Step Program includes limits on the size of the Junior program to the same size as the 2001 season.  They will have limits on parking, will put an emphasis on car-pooling, will do noise monitoring, and will educate their rowers and rowers' parents about proper procedures.  Hopefully this will significantly lesson the negative impacts of their program on the neighborhood.  However, they will not, at this time, reserve any parking spaces solely for non-rowing park users.

These notes were made by the webmaster, Michael Hobbs, and they do not constitute an official record of the meeting.  They may have inaccuracies and omissions.  If anyone has any complaints about the content of these notes, they should direct them to Michael Hobbs at fomp@marymoor.org, and he will endeavor to correct them.