A golf tournament to raise money for the community playground at Birchwood Presbyterian Church will be held Saturday, June 5, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Raspberry Ridge Golf Course.
Jen Zimmerman, a leader of the playground project, said the church has not yet received a response from the presbytery about covering the remaining costs, so there is still about $7,000 left to be raised.
The cost to sign up for the tournament is $30, with $12 for an optional cart. A sheet with tee times is located in the church foyer where participants can sign up individually or as a team.
For those who want to give the tournament a shot but feel they lack experience, don’t worry. The tournament will be open to all skill levels and consist of nine holes.
Zimmerman said despite incomplete funding, a construction fence is being put up this weekend and the parking lot will start to be torn up next week, so the plan is moving forward.
Interested in learning more or getting involved? Contact Birchwood Presbyterian Church at 360-733-8860 or check out this story about the playground.
Large northern neighborhood boundaries to be revised in order to better suit the community.
The process is underway for a revision of the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood boundaries after the city initiated a project to break up massive northern neighborhoods into sizes that are easier to manage and better representative of the area’s population and interests.
Nicole Oliver, the communications coordinator for the Planning and Community Development Department, said the project seeks to divide the Guide Meridian/Cordata neighborhood, making the Cordata area into its own neighborhood.
Adrienne Lederer, the president of the neighborhood association, said it can be hard to relate to the highly commercial and industrial areas in the neighborhood and hopes the new boundaries will lead to more community participation and make it easier to inform people about common interests.
“Stores have different problems than we have as residents,” Lederer said. “We hope that [the change] brings us all together as a community. That’s the main thing we want.”
With zoning ranging from industrial to single-family residential, Lederer said there have been problems organizing and accurately representing the needs of all who live or work in the area.
Boundary Change Details
According to city planning documents, northern neighborhoods such as Guide Meridian/Cordata had become “unwieldy and oversized due to successive annexations.”
Neighborhood statistics compiled by the Planning and Community Development Department for 2009 show Guide Meridian/Cordata covered 1,545 acres and had a total estimated population of 5,855.
The new Cordata Neighborhood will include land north of West Bakerview Road to the city limits and land west of Cordata Parkway to the city limits, with all other land from the original Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood being combined into the existing Meridian Neighborhood.
Bob Sanders, a member of the neighborhood association, said he feels the boundary revision is a smart idea, but if the neighborhood association had worked harder they might have been able to better interact with the business district.
“We were only moderately successful in working with the business community,” Sanders said. “Frankly, we talked about it a great deal but haven’t done a lot.”
A Focus on Residential
Oliver said the current population and growth of Cordata does not match what was envisioned when the neighborhood was annexed from Whatcom County in the 1990s.
“The neighborhood plan needed to be updated because it was written with the intention of being a business park, when in fact it ended up having a lot of residential,” Oliver said.
Since the Cordata area has become mainly residential, the issues of that area are not necessarily related to the surrounding commercial zones along West Bakerview Road and Guide Meridian, Oliver said.
Of the 5,855 people living in the combined Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood in 2009, the majority of those, about 4,484 people, will live within the new Cordata Neighborhood boundaries.
Making a New Plan
Neighborhood members are currently working with city planners to revise the proposed neighborhood plan for Cordata. The plan was put together by multiple city departments and submitted on April 27 for a month-long review.
Oliver said the neighborhood plan process includes incorporating the neighborhood’s vision and goals from the submitted plan update of 2007, re-numbering the land use areas, developing consistency with the city’s comprehensive plan and updating sections of the plan such as housing, parks, transportation, utilities and area descriptions.
Lederer said some of the most important aspects of the new plan will deal with developing green space such as parks and trails, making housing affordable, making sure housing developments consider playgrounds and pathways for pedestrians and providing provisions for increasing traffic, such as stop lights on busy intersections off of Cordata Parkway.
A planning session is scheduled for June 24 at City Hall to introduce the revised and updated neighborhood plan, followed by a hearing on July 15.
Oliver said the changes should be finalized by December and in effect by January of 2011.
Lack of neighborhood play areas leads church to make playground a reality.
A community playground will be coming to the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood as the members of Birchwood Presbyterian Church put the final touches on fundraising for the project.
Jen Zimmerman, the children’s ministry director at the church and one of the leaders of the playground project, said there are many children in the Guide Meridian/Cordata neighborhood, yet the area lacks public playgrounds.
The playground, which will be located in the corner of the church’s parking lot at 400 Meadowbrook Court, is scheduled to begin construction at the start of June and is estimated to be finished by the end of August, Zimmerman said.
Rev. Bruce Becker said the development of the playground will benefit both the church community and the neighborhood.
“There are no playgrounds,” Becker said. “Although the city is planning a park, the playground there will not get done until around 2017, so children who now live in the area will be in high school before it is completed. That doesn’t meet the current need at all.”
Those who would use the playground include children in the preschool and kindergarten programs, mothers of preschoolers (MOPS), a group of moms with young children who meet at the church, children in Sunday School and also the parents and children of the neighborhood.
“We hope the kids from the housing developments come down,” Zimmerman said. “It is our goal that it will be used by the community.”
Hafdis Smithson, a member of MOPS and mother of two young children, Shelby and Leyton, said the playground will offer preschoolers and kindergarteners a more exciting place to play outside and hopefully interact with other children from the neighborhood.
“Right now the children play in a small courtyard with only concrete and no climbing toys or play in the gym with hula hoops, balls and bikes,” Smithson said. “[The playground] is absolutely going to improve their experience.”
The Cost of Construction
Zimmerman said the playground comes with an estimated price tag of about $95,000, of which there is about $7,000 left to raise.
“I think a lot of the people at the church were a little shell shocked at the price,” Zimmerman said.
The church originally estimated the cost of building the playground at around $30,000, but after meeting with representatives from an equipment supplier and a landscape architect company they realized it would be much higher.
Zimmerman said the church plans to keep fundraising, and it has also appealed to the North Puget Sound Presbytery seeking a grant to cover the remaining costs.
Earlier in the year the church received an anonymous donation of $50,000 which helped put the project back on track after it stalled due to lack of money, Becker said.
Details of the Playground
Becker said the playground will be about 2,800 square feet and will require concrete from the parking lot to be torn up, but that is easier than trying to build on the original site, which contains wetlands.
Zimmerman said the playground equipment alone costs about $42,000 for large play structures with slides and multiple climbing features, plus smaller free-standing toys.
The playground will include two different design structures for different age groups, Zimmerman said. One design will be aimed toward children between 3 and 5 years old, with lower equipment and easier climbing routes, while the other structure will be higher off the ground and have a more challenging climbing route for older children.
“It was always our belief that if we are going to do this, we are going to do it big and right the first time,” Zimmerman said. “We are not going to put in something that will need to be replaced in a couple years. We want it to last forever.”
Zimmerman said the equipment will be manufactured by SiteLines, a company that has done other playgrounds around Bellingham, such as at Carl Cozier Elementary School.
According to a draft of the playground site put together by SiteLines, the playground will be built with wheelchair accessibility.
Becker said the playground will also be fenced and have good visibility and benches so parents can sit and supervise their children.
I am a journalism student at Western Washington University covering the neighborhood of Guide Meridian/Cordata for a reporting class. I look forward to getting to know the community and welcome any ideas you may have.
