SEQUIM — Access to Carrie Blake Park is about to be simplified.
A $344,294 project adding 63 parking spaces and changing the route through the park will be unveiled during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11:30 a.m. July 25 on site at 500 N. Blake Ave.
The additional parking spots and new driveway will be available the next day for the park, which offers softball fields, playground equipment, an off-leash dog park, a picnic shelter, a BMX track and a skateboard park.
The new driveway will reroute vehicle traffic through the park.
Vehicles will travel one way, entering off Blake Avenue and exiting at Rhodefer Road.
Visitors traveling in cars to the park will no longer be able to enter through Rhodefer Road.
“These changes will increase the safety of visitors who utilize the park and better support the numerous events at the park including the use of the Albert Haller Playfields and the James Center for the Performing Arts,” the city said in a news release.
Phase 1
The original parking lot, which was built by Sequim Family Advocates as a part of Phase 1 of the playfields, was “unable to accommodate the high volume of the playfield users during routine use, let alone tournaments or events,” Joe Irvin, assistant to the city manager/parks manager, has said.
When the lot was full, some parked vehicles in grass near the playfields and along the shoulders of Rhodefer Road — creating an unsafe situation, he added.
To complete the project, the Albert Haller Foundation provided a $140,294 grant.
Those funds were combined with $140,000 from the city’s park fund, $30,000 in-kind city services in engineering and project management, $20,000 from the Sequim Family Advocates, $10,000 from Sequim Junior Soccer, $2,000 from Storm King Soccer Club, and $2,000 from Sequim FC Adult League to fully fund the project.
When construction began this summer, city officials had been working with Sequim Family Advocates to find a workable solution to parking problems around the playfields for more than a year.
They had aimed at a July 31 completion date, in time for the Dungeness Cup Youth Soccer Tournament, set Aug. 5-7.
