The Bonney Lake City Council on Tuesday approved the purchase of a small parcel of land in the downtown area that brings dreams of a civic campus one step closer to reality.
“It’s one more piece of the puzzle,” said City Administrator Don Morrison.
The parcel, a half-acre piece of land with a mobile home on it, is located across form the library at 18422 90th St. E. and was previous owned by the Tidball family.
The city agreed to pay $90,000 for the land.
The land will be used for a new food bank, if the city receives a Community Development Block Grant for which it is applying. If the city does not receive the grant, Morrison said it could be used for overflow parking.
The parcel is shown as having a public building on it in the city’s Downtown Plan, which calls for most of the area to become a civic campus.
“It dovetails nicely with the plan,” Morrison said of putting a food bank on the parcel, adding that the idea for that land originally was some sort of community resource center.
Along with a new city hall, the civic campus could contain a new library and new home for the police department, as well as a large central pedestrian plaza, though nothing has been set in stone.
“The idea is to keep all the government-related structures in one area as much as possible,” Morrison said.
The city passed the downtown plan in 2007 and has slowly been gathering parcels in the area, though the buying and the timetable for the campus has slowed somewhat in recent years.
“It was going well until the economy went south,” Morrison said.
But as the city moves ahead, there are still five properties in the area that the city will need to purchase or eventually acquire through condemnation proceedings, including two more owned by the Tidball family and a few, small commercial pieces.
Morrison said the plan is essentially being shelved for five or six years, though he said if the city annexes the southern urban growth area, which stretches from the city limits to the Tehaleh (formerly Cascadia)development, that would mean an additional 7,000-plus people in the city and would speed the process.
For more information on the city’s Downtown plan, click here.
