"We want a ground to which people may easily go after their day's work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour seeing, hearing and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets."--Frederick Law Olmsted, founder of Washington Park Arboretum.

Washington Park Arboretum is a public park. Let's keep it that way.

Institutional ambition -- one part University of Washington, one part Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee (the executive arm of the Arboretum Foundation), one part Seattle Parks -- has again made Washington Park the locus of conflict. Institutional ambition -- narrow in scope, broad in its effect -- threatens to remove our cherished city park from public use.

The Arboretum Plan takes the park away from us. The Arboretum Plan: A Greenprint for the Future proposes to create a "world-class arboretum" within Washington Park, a maneuver intended to reduce free public access and increase paid access. A world-class arboretum is, simply put, a quasi-commercial facility. The commitment to a world-class arboretum reorients our park to serve the tour bus trade to the detriment of the citizenry. This commitment demands substantial and far-reaching changes: the institution of admission fees, a fence around Washington Park to control visitor access, and the conversion of natural settings to buildings and parking lots. The revenue forecast for a world-class arboretum includes "$1.25 million, representing an average of $5 for each of 250,000 users per year in the form of an admission fee or other access charge." (Page 81, The Arboretum Plan)

The Arboretum Foundation claims broad public support for the Arboretum Plan. This is not true. An examination of the Arboretum Plan reveals that the Arboretum Foundation deliberately confuses public support with public input. The Arboretum Foundation solicited public input through questionnaires and a series of meetings. This input is dutifully recorded in an appendix to the Arboretum Plan that appears on pages 105-128, but the plan itself does not incorporate the wishes of the public. Two statements from the scoping document convey the public attitude towards Washington Park:

"People are afraid that changes will be negative, that the good things about the Arboretum will somehow be lost with too much tinkering -- the Arboretum is viewed as a unique treasure, an oasis in the middle of a bustling and sometimes overbearing city. This suggests that any changes contemplated should be gentle and respectful of what makes the Arboretum so loved by so many people."

"Participants did not express much interest in building more facilities. Suggestions include making better use of existing facilities for education purposes."

The Arboretum Plan proposes an ambitious building program, which includes the construction of four new buildings and an expansion of Graham Visitors Center. 219,666 square feet suggests the extent of total disruption. Buildings and parking lots do not indicate a sensitivity to our expressed desire to preserve "a unique treasure," nor does it recognize citizen demand for continued access to open space in a city of explosive growth. (The Arboretum Foundation has suggested in various pithy documents that new buildings comprise only 16,500 to 22,000 square feet, but our number is drawn from the Estimate of Probable Construction Costs that appears on pages 130-138 of the Arboretum Plan.)

Execution of the current master plan does not suggest a commitment to improving the park qualities of Washington Park. The Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee pushed the Arboretum Plan by suggesting the current master plan, created by Jones & Jones in 1978, had been executed or was otherwise obsolete. In light of this claim, consider the following list, comprised of elements from the Jones and Jones plan that have not been implemented. All but the last element reappear in the Arboretum Plan: daylighting of Arboretum Creek, a bike path along Lake Washington Boulevard, improved handicapped access within Washington Park, restoration of the Duck Bay shoreline, improved signage, improved drainage on Azalea Way, a Madison Park bike connection (now proposed as a pedestrian path). Once the Arboretum Foundation had secured the construction of Graham Visitor's Center, the plan was declared obsolete. There is no reason to believe that once the Arboretum Foundation gets what it wants -- a substantially expanded commercial presence within the park -- it will execute the remainder of the proposed plan.

The Seattle Board of Park Commissioners has agreed to sponsor an expanded scoping process for Washington Park. The process includes a series of half-day workshops; call 206-233-7929 for information on the Arboretum Plan and how to participate in workshops. The Arboretum Park Preservation Coalition urges citizens to participate in this public process. In one voice, we must remind those who govern that Washington Park is a public park.

Wallis Bolz is a member of the Arboretum Park Preservation Coalition. For more information about the Coalition or the proposed redevelopment of Washington Park, contact Wallis at wallitra@nwrain.com or 206-329-3672.