Commentary: City land purchase is a good first step, but more is required
The essays, analyses and opinions presented as Community Voices express the perspectives of their authors on topics of interest and importance to the community, and are not intended to reflect perspectives on behalf of the Salish Current.
On March 7, the City of Bellingham purchased 66 acres on the Samish Crest, one of the last remaining urban forests in Bellingham. Trails on public land now extend from Racine Street in the north to Governor Road in the south, realizing a long-term goal of the City’s voter-supported Greenways Program. But the Crest is still threatened by development. The City must act soon if the area is to realize its potential, according to a plan put together by a devoted group of neighbors and friends: the “Samish Crest Neighborhood Vision for Trails and Open Space.”
Samish Crest, the top of Samish Hill, extends from Governor Road in the south to Racine Street in the north, and from 40th Avenue in the west to Yew Street Road in the east. Like most of Whatcom County, Samish Hill was logged over by the mid-20th century. But the forest regrew, covering most of the hill with a magnificent canopy of conifers and hardwoods, under which grow a multitude of flowering and fruiting shrubs and groundcovers. The Crest is also a designated wildlife corridor, providing habitat for birds and mammals including barred owls, pileated woodpeckers, ravens and the occasional bobcat.
Except for traces of a long-ago homestead, there are no structures on the Crest itself, but since the 1990s, housing developments on all four sides have surrounded the shrinking forest area. Alberta-based developer Samish Heights LLC clearcut 111 acres of its property on the west side of the Crest in 2017 through 2019, and built a network of gravel roads as preparation for 100 or more luxury homes. Any plans for building have been stalled by questions about roads and utilities, but the possibility of massive construction, however distant, still remains.
The City has been acquiring bits and pieces of the Crest with Greenways funds since 1994. Some of these parcels have been combined into the North Samish Crest and South Samish Crest Open Spaces, and the City’s new acquisition links them. The main north-south route over the Samish Crest will be a vital part of a proposed longer Samish Crest Greenway extending from Lake Padden to Whatcom Creek, and connecting from there to Lake Whatcom and the downtown waterfront.
Dina Dickerson, Samish neighborhood resident and member of the City’s Greenways Advisory Committee, stressed that the City’s purchase of land linking the open spaces is just the first step in making the Samish Crest Greenway a reality. Realizing that the Samish Crest needed to be preserved before the area was swallowed up by development, Dickerson and a devoted group of neighbors formed the Samish Neighborhood Association Greenways (SNAG) committee. For the past two years, SNAG members and residents of nearby neighborhoods have been walking and mapping the existing trails on the Crest and are now ready to present the City with the Neighborhood Vision for the Greenway.
The Neighborhood Vision recommends several improvements. Expanding public access is one. The immediate priority is the main north-south route, with connections to Yew Street Road. This should be a wide gravel path suitable for walkers and bikers, and ideally wheelchair accessible. A large number of dirt trails should be maintained in more primitive condition, but they still need signs at intersections to help hikers find their way. Still other paths, boot-beaten during COVID-related restrictions, are best returned to a more natural state. As retired environmental educator and longtime local resident Glen “Alex” Alexander explains, “It’s also important that we preserve wild areas where nature can survive and mature forest can retain clean, cool water before it drains into Padden Creek, a recovering salmon stream.”
There are many trail entrances to the Crest, but none is a true trailhead; the Vision proposes 12 of these, each including a few parking spaces, dog waste stations, signs with maps of the Greenway, and scannable maps for the digitally inclined. Twenty-one other, less developed entrances need simple signs with directions and mileage.
Developer Samish Heights’s 111 acres have been on the market since 2023. The current asking price of $37 million is more than even dedicated supporters can reasonably ask the City to spend, but the Vision still proposes that the City at least preserve access to property at the very top of the Crest. This could be turned into a viewpoint with spectacular views.
Between the south end of the Crest and Lake Padden Park lies the Lake Padden Open Space, also known as the Forty-Acre Wood, a forested area crisscrossed by a maze of trails. Many of these need the same sort of triage as those on the crest—improving some, leaving others as they are, and decommissioning those that are unnecessary or redundant. The Vision also recommends creating an off-street connection between the Forty-Acre Wood and the Samish Crest.
Chris Moench, an area resident who frequently walks the trails on Samish Crest, recently mused that “it would be a beautiful and enduring blessing to the community if a significant north-south corridor across the top of the ridge could be preserved for the community’s benefit and for the wild creatures that make it home.” The City’s recent purchase brings us halfway to making this blessing a reality. Now is the time to realize this Vision before it is too late.
— By Stevan Harrell
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Community Voices / Saving the Samish Crest,” Aug. 11, 2023
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