Norah Robinson, King County Parks – Marymoor Park lead; Michael Hobbs, FOMP Secretary, webmaster; Laura Hall, Marymoor Community Gardener's Association, FOMP Board; Glenn Eades, Eastside Audubon, neighbor;

2) Sound Transit Link Light Rail

Sound Transit is moving forward with their design for the Link Light Rail connection from Overlake to Redmond, to be given to the design-build contractor.   Sound Transit will have to cut down trees along the south edge of SR-520, and therefore will have to do some tree replacement, hopefully within Marymoor Park.  Norah has developed a map of the park to go along with the previously produced Tree Plan for Marymoor. 

Portion of Norah's map, with a few annotations relevant to comments below

 

Michael was concerned that the strip just east of the velodrome is likely to be impacted by development with the next 10-15 years, and should not be planted right now with new trees.  That can be part of future projects.

 

Michael suggested the heart shaped area just south of Big Top parking would be a good place for a grove of native trees, including Oregon Ash, Red Elderberry, Bitter Cherry, Pacific Crabapple, and possibly Sitka Spruce.

 

There was also a great interest in using this opportunity to plant trees in the Historic District around the mansion, as this area needs to be restocked with large specimen trees, and faces the high cost of archeological surveys.

 

There were questions raised about about K Lot, where all the trees were removed due to drainage and pavement damage.  Norah was a bit resistant, hoping to keep the parking lots bright and visible.  But she will consider planting something there.  Michael suggested cherries or plums.    (Michael pointed out that two existing patches of cherries are dying out, having reached the end of their life cycle – one immediately east of the “compost piles”, and one along the slough trail a bit below the weir – and birds like cherries).

 

Norah also brought up the mitigation for the mitigation wetland that is just west of the Event Pad and Cricket Field.  This will require an extensive mitigation, at some multiple of the acreage that is being lost (0.6 acres).   There was STRONG support for enhancing the rough triangle wet area south of Marymoor Way just south of the velodrome shelter. This was far preferred to a site along East Lake Sammamish Trail.  There was also some support, along with some concern, for another idea – that of filling in the ditch that runs east-west immediately east of the Interpretive Trail south of the East Meadow.  Laura would like to come up with a name for the desired site, and we discussed various past owners, or even better, a Native American trade language name for this area.

Norah also mentioned that there will be paths from the Light Rail station to the Marymoor Connector Trail, and that we should think about what we'd like to see as things move forward.