Kayak Point Regional Park Day Use Project
Day Use Planning Efforts
Background: Kayak Point Regional Park is easily one of Snohomish County's most popular parks, offering salt water access as well as overnight opportunities. This beautiful site includes a broad range of recreational amenities and serves a wide variety of users. The park also provides critical wildlife habitat through its acres of forest land and extensive shoreline.
Snohomish County Parks, the Marine Resources Committee and People for Puget Sound have recently been studying the relationship of the day use portion of the park to marine habitat. The study has found that minor changes to the southern tip of the beach area would provide benefits to nearby aquatic species and would also have the added benefits of addressing recurring damage to the park access road, addressing safety concerns related to the existing bulkhead and open up opportunities for increased recreation.
In order to more fully explore the opportunities for changes to recreation at Kayak Point Regional Park, the Parks Department is looking at the overall usage of the day use portion of the park and opportunities for improving the area.
Planning Process: A public visioning workshop was held in 2009 to find out what park users most valued about the area and collect information about what they would like the park to look like in the future. Participants in the workshop provided information on how they currently use the park, completed a survey that was also made available to individuals unable to attend the meeting and provided suggestions for action items that they thought the Parks Department should pursue. The Parks Department incorporated this information into a planning process which resulted in three draft redevelopment concepts.
The three draft redevelopment concepts addressed four major themes that emerged out of the planning and public input process:
1. The need for improved vehicle and pedestrian circulation;
2. Interest in educational and interpretive opportunities;
3. Improvement of the boat launch; and
4. Habitat enhancement
The three redevelopment concepts were presented at a public meeting on March 31st and feedback was collected from participants. Following the meeting a period for additional feedback was opened and a number of emails and calls were received offering further comments. The input received through this process was synthesized into two alternate conceptual site plans.
The ultimate goal of the planning process had been the creation of a single conceptual site plan. The planning team found however that significant questions surrounded the incorporation of a lagoon in the northern portion of the site and further information is needed to determine if it is a feasible component of the project. Feedback received from the public was mixed on this component and negative comments largely questioned how it would function and the usefulness of the feature. Since enough information was not available to understand the feature fully, two alternative conceptual site plans were developed (one including the lagoon and one not) and incorporation of the lagoon feature will be dependent upon further information.
The two alternative conceptual site plans are available for viewing: Option 1 (no lagoon)
Option 2 (lagoon)