SEQUIM — Grading should continue for two more weeks at the future site of Albert Haller Playfields, Sequim Family Advocates president said.
“We’re most of the way done grading,” Craig Stevenson said Thursday.
After grading is completed, Stevenson said the new parking lot will be built and irrigation system installed.
“Then we put in a whole bunch of new walking paths,” Stevenson said.
Grass seed will be planted in the fall, he said, with grass expected to mature by some time in next spring.
We Dig It Excavation, owned by John Dickinson of Sequim, was dozing ground this week and has been since the project commenced in early June.
Opening day for the fields is pending completion of work done and how soon grass is established for recreational use.
Sequim Family Advocates broke ground on 13 acres of multiuse playfields at the city of Sequim-owned Water Reclamation Demonstration Park after more than two years of fundraising that collected $220,000 in cash donations.
The project will kick up the community’s inventory of youth soccer and general recreation fields, lessening the dependence and burden on Sequim School
District’s beaten up and overused grounds.
The site on the east side of the Demonstration Park is partially bounded by a leg of Olympic Discovery Trail.
Besides soccer, the fields will be used for flag football, lacrosse and other community events and activities.
Before work started, the group detoured the nearby segment of Olympic Discovery Trail around the project until completion.
The trail will be altered slightly but improved to accommodate the fields, and a connecting trail of about 200 yards from the fields to the 100-space parking lot will be added to complete a loop around the acreage.
At lest 1,000 children are anxious to play on the five large and three small new soccer fields on the north side of Bell Creek, adjoining Carrie Blake Park to the south, according to Stevenson.
Sequim School District’s overcrowded fields are pockmarked with muddy spots and lumpy grass.
We Dig It Excavation donated its work. Primo Construction of Carlsborg, Lakeside Industries of Port Angeles, Clallam Co-op of Sequim, Pettit Oil of Port Angeles, Four Seasons Engineering of Port Angeles, and Cummins and Associates of Sequim also donated work and materials.
Donations of work and materials total more than $150,000.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
