Community fest was a first — Pritchard Park update, Part 1
Published 5:00 pm Sunday, September 19, 2004
A Suquamish fishing camp, a timber treatment plant, a farewell port for Japanese Americans bound for internment, a Superfund clean-up site.
The one-third mile of shoreline tucked between Bill Point and a marina on Eagle Harbor has been all these things, but Saturday evening’s Blackberry Festival gave about 800 people a glimpse at the site’s future role as the city’s next shoreline park.
“This is an unbelievable place,” said Frank Stowell, a Bainbridge Island Land Trust board member. “It’s a special landscape with wonderful stories.”
A partnership between the BILT, the Trust for Public Lands and the city worked to acquire the 22 acres for the future Pritchard Park.
The $4.9 million parcel will pass over to the city from a land trust at the start of 2005. The site’s trustees have allowed public use of the land after the city exercised a purchase option on the property this past June.
The second-annual Blackberry Festival served as a kind of housewarming for the future park.
“Our primary goal is to get people to the site and see what’s here,” said Sallie Maron, chair of Friends of Pritchard Park fund-raising group.
Named after the Himalayan blackberry, the festival also aims to raise awareness about invasive species that crowd out native plants.
“Eat the seeds,” Maron said, repeating the festival’s catchphrase. “We figure it’s a delicious and pleasant way to eradicate an invasive species.”
Attendees availed themselves of the fruits of the ubiquitous thorny bush, dining on blackberry pies, cakes, cobblers, jam rolls, crepes, empanadas and sorbets.
Acoustic musicians strummed and plucked instruments on the trail leading to the beach and amid crowds relaxing on hay bales. Children had their faces painted, decorated flags and made plant rubbings. Many local groups set up tables under tents.
The Bainbridge Historical Society’s table displayed a panoramic photo of the former wood treatment plant, depicting a row of employee houses facing a shoreline that, on Saturday, was crowded with canoes, kayaks and frolicking kids.
“This was a place of extraordinary importance to the island,” said Will Shopes, a BIHS board member. “Most of the treated timber used for the Panama Canal came from right here.”
Fellow board member Barbara Winther said the site’s industrial past and the pollution that came with it is instructive.
“We need to know about our past to know about the mistakes we made,” she said. “Then we can say, ‘hey, we’re not going to do that again.’”
Frank Kitamoto said the site tells stories of a past he hopes residents will not forget. The former internee and president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community proudly displayed architectural renderings of a planned memorial marking the site at the park’s western edge where the island’s Japanese Americans were shipped to internment camps.
The descedents of those who made the first use of the site also made a strong showing at the event. The Suquamish tribe cooked up 70 salmon, performed traditional drum-driven songs and displayed a long, handmade canoe.
“The land trust has been good hosts,” said Leonard Forsman, who sang songs with other members of his tribe. “It’s nice to be accepted in your own territory and acknowledged as First Peoples.”
Rob Purser, the tribe’s fisheries director, commended the efforts to clean the area of industirial toxins and improve fish habitat.
“The salmon now have clean water here,” he said. “There is habitat for juvenile salmon now that the shore has been restored and there are no bulkheads.”
The EPA removed concrete structures, docks and 40,000 cubic yard of contaminated soil from the property in the late 1990s. The area was landscaped with a curving shoreline and capped with 15 feet of soil to contain remaining contaminants.
“The place has seen quite an evolution since I got here five years ago,” said Cliff Leeper, superintendent of the Superfund site.
With half of the Wyckoff property cleaned and secured for park use, the city has set its sites on the remaining 28 acres on Bill Point that the EPA is trying to rid of 1 million gallons of toxins.
While the deadline to purchase the $3 million property is just over a year away, Maron predicts the city will get a one-year extension. The upcoming fundraising crunch will stagger supporters but not knock them out.
“There’s a lot of work to do and a long way to go,” said Kent Whitehead, the Trust for Public Land’s project manager. “But we’ve got a great start and I’m confident we’ll raise the funds.”
The sale of salmon, t-shirts, hats, cookbooks and a multitude of blackberry-related items during the festival raised an estimated $3,000 for the purchase of the Bill Point portion, BILT members said.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-1st District) said the festival’s large draw could help boost enthusiasm for the project and future fundraising.
“I hope this tremendous turnout will mean more support for this,” he said. “This is a extraordinary opportunity to give our city a unique asset.”
