Environment Government

City Council approves Crescent Creek Park master plan

The Gig Harbor City Council adopted a master plan for a revamp of Crescent Creek Park on Monday, Jan. 26. 

Implementation of the plan would make the park ADA-accessible and preserve the existing native plant garden and native forest. The city also plans to renovate recreational structures in the park and install additional parking and restrooms.

The adopted master plan does not cover the future of the former Masonic Lodge, which the city could either tear down and replace with a covered picnic shelter or adaptively reuse. The council will decide the lodge’s fate following an historic structures survey, which the Historic Preservation Commission recommended in November.

However, the city has not yet performed a full critical area analysis of the park. The city will conduct this analysis — which includes wetland delineation and classification and shoreline evaluation — before approving any new final additions or improvements to the park.

Before the vote, several members of the public voiced concern over the plan, highlighting its environmental impact, particularly on Crescent Creek’s salmon population. They said the city should figure out the environmental impact before proceeding.

The final master plan for the city of Gig Harbor’s Crescent Creek Park.

Renovation plan history

A 2019 Americans with Disabilities Act complaint from the Department of Justice spurred the city to change the park, Parks Manager Jennifer Haro explained to the council.

People with limited mobility cannot move between the park’s different areas as currently configured. Those who rely on wheelchairs or walkers, for example, can’t access the whole park.

After the 2019 complaint, the city began taking early steps toward renovating the park, including soliciting comments via online polls and open houses.

“The guiding principles included maintaining the natural character and ecology of this park, sustainable design, adding capacity and more variety of activities, and ADA and universal accessibility,” Haro said of the final design. “The top most-requested amenities were sand volleyball, walking trails, restrooms, pickleball and parking. We accommodated the most-requested amenities except for pickleball, as there are close neighbors who are affected by the noise, and new pickleball courts were being built at Doris Heritage Park.”

The adopted plan allows the city flexibility to remodel, add to or demolish the lodge. Haro said no one has proposed new activities for the park, but the city will expand both the playground and volleyball field and eliminate the BMX track. 

The city will also build another restroom in the upper portion of the park, and is considering a proposal to install ADA-compliant paths to each of the park’s amenities.

“Currently, there is no ADA access to the baseball field,” Haro said. “We hear from parents and grandparents of kids playing that they can’t attend games without being able to climb stairs.”

Building in phases

Haro said the city would renovate the park in several phases to manage costs. Phase one renovations will focus on the upper terrace, including the volleyball area and a small parking lot, while the second will see the new ADA-accessible path. 

Work on the Crescent Creek Park revamp will proceed in phases.

In the third phase, the city will first renovate the areas around the Masonic Lodge and add parking, and then focus on the lower level, which involves playground improvements and increased accessibility on the lower level’s paths.

Regardless of what happens to the Masonic Lodge, the final phase includes a 40-foot buffer for the park’s northern neighbor, and increases the tree canopy.

Haro noted that “the consultant contract did not include a wetland study in the scope, but it will be done prior to design.”

Environmental concerns

Several members of the public highlighted concerns over the plan possibly damaging the environment, particularly the creek’s native salmon population.

Speaking on behalf of Gig Harbor Climate Resiliency, biologist and retired teacher Pete William Miller said the group would “respectfully and strongly urge you to put a hold on this plan for the current Crescent Creek Park … until a more comprehensive, holistic environmental review can be completed.”

“The plans you have, had not undergone the level of scientific review needed for a site that is both a designated critical area and a well-known salmon bearing system that is our home to our iconic Chinook habitats,” he explained.

The current plans, he said, include human infrastructure that encroaches “well within the critical area buffers.” By reworking the plan, the city “could better demonstrate the compliance with county critical area codes, the best available science standards and voter-approved Climate Commitment Act.”

Haro said that “our proposal, for the most part, stays out of the creek buffer, recognizing that importance as that salmon-bearing stream.”

Crescent Creek Park in Gig Harbor. Photo by Larry Steagall

‘A general framework’

Lucinda Wingard said that the plan missed some important points. As a 50-year resident in Crescent Valley who has spent the last two decades “stewarding the native biodiversity of Crescent Creek, its marvelous riparian system … I feel very vested in this park’s function and its future.” Wingard asked that the city council delay a decision in adopting a master plan.

She said that the city does not have an environmentally sensitive stormwater management system installed at the park, and has not addressed the area’s traffic problems nor finalized the creek’s salmon passage and estuary.

“As the city cuts down wide swaths of canopy to build homes and amenities for population growth,” she continued, “I suggest the council direct [the Parks Department] to consider how best to manage its spaces throughout the city … for tree canopy, for preserving our area’s rich heritage of native biodiversity, plant and animal, and for climate mitigation as directed in the city’s own climate action plan.”

Haro said the master plan is “a general framework for where we’d like things, and if something can’t be put where we would like to see it, we have to change it or eliminate that element or whatever is the best course.”

Mary Manning, who said that she was on the advisory committee representing the native woodland in the park, asked that the council “champion the details of the plan” for the duration of the park’s renovation.

Use as much pervious paving, for instance, in the parking lot as possible. Keep asking questions for alternatives,” she said. “[Champion] native plants, of course. The wetland and the creek study and the stormwater studies will have to be done. So I just ask the council to keep an eye on all these things in the next years ahead.”