Anger at soccer deal sparks lawsuit

A local remote-control-glider group sued King County on Tuesday in an effort to stop a proposed deal that would give control of a Redmond field to the Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association.

The Seattle Area Soaring Society (SASS) has used the south portion of Sixty Acres Park for three decades and says the soccer deal would force the group to disband.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a history of bad blood over Sixty Acres. The soaring society and neighbors successfully fought a county plan in 2003 to build a sewage plant on Sixty Acres South. And the soccer association alienated the passive-use groups over the years by keeping them off Sixty Acres North.

The lawsuit asks for an order that would effectively boot the soccer association from Sixty Acres North, where it operates 17 fields.

King County officials, surprised by the suit, say they have worked for a year to find a new site for the soaring society and have lined up a probable privately owned site near Duvall. They've also helped negotiate an agreement with the soccer association to allow the society to use Sixty Acres South every Wednesday night and a couple of weekends a year.

That's not enough, society leaders say.

The tentative agreement for a new field near Duvall may last only a year or two, they say. Even if it lasts longer, they argue, the deal to give control of Sixty Acres South to the soccer group would displace thousands of people who use the land for "passive" activities, such as flying model rockets, tossing boomerangs and walking dogs.

"The county doesn't really seem to be pushing for the public's best interest here," said Jim Laurel, vice president of the society.

The lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court, alleges that the proposed deal to hand over control of Sixty Acres South conflicts with the terms of Forward Thrust, the 1968 bond issue that gave the county ownership of the land.

According to the suit, a 1975 county law clarifying the bond issue defined a regional park as land "developed primarily to provide outdoor-recreation opportunities not feasible in urbanized areas." Soccer has long been feasible in the Seattle area, served by hundreds of fields, and is therefore not a legal use of the Sixty Acres regional park, the suit contends.

The soaring society is joined in the lawsuit by some neighbors and other Sixty Acres users.

King County Parks Director Kevin Brown said he hadn't seen the lawsuit, but he said he was caught off-guard.

"We've had some really good meetings with the SASS folks and we've identified a really good site for them, so I'm really surprised."

Brown said the deal to give the soccer association control of Sixty Acres South would provide much-needed fields for thousands of players at no cost to taxpayers: "It's a win-win."

Negotiations with the soccer association should finish in about a month, and the Metropolitan King County Council could consider the deal soon after, Brown said. The soccer association would control the land for 30 years under a concession agreement, he said.

Ashley Bach: 206-464-2567 or abach@seattletimes.com