SEQUIM – It was around 9 p.m. Monday, but the City Council chambers suddenly felt bathed in a shaft of summer sun.
“I move to authorize the staff to negotiate with the Keeler family . . . for 45 acres at Happy Valley Road and Highway 101, for open space, park and trail uses,” began Ron Farquhar.
The Sequim councilman had just emerged from a 45-minute executive session to take the next step on a years-long path to this city’s largest park.
The council voted unanimously to have city staff, specifically Planning Director Dennis Lefevre, keep hiking that track toward purchase of the parcel.
Lefevre, who’s been talking about this piece of ground with members of the Keeler family for a couple of years, describes it as “pristine, rolling meadows,” graced with a pond and stands of towering trees.
And the morning after the council’s decision, a warm sun shone on the land stretching along the south side of U.S. Highway 101 just west of the Happy Valley turnoff.
Blue barn swallows and quail flitted among ox-eye daisies – considered a noxious weed, but pretty – while a hawk rode the breeze above the evergreens.
The Keeler family, led by Joseph Keeler and Carol Bolduc of Sequim, plan to donate 10 of their 45 acres at Sequim’s eastern edge, to provide for nature trails, elk viewing and bird watching.
Once purchased, the city park would also have a connection to the nearby Olympic Discovery Trail.
Neither Lefevre nor anyone at City Hall wanted to estimate how much it could cost to buy 35 acres in this popular, and some would say spectacular, part of the planet.
But with Bell Hill home sites selling for $150,000 to $300,000 per acre, the Keeler family might have considered selling the whole piece for a cool $5 million or so.
Almost next door to the Keeler property rises Solana, where the price of a half-acre lot starts at $240,000.
But Bolduc, who with her brother Joe is a third-generation Sequim resident, isn’t interested in such things.
