Fast-food sales could come to Magnuson Park

Someday soon, Magnuson Park could be selling acres of Ivar's clams.

In a proposal the Seattle parks department hopes the City Council will approve, Ivar's and Kidd Valley could move into a building at the northwest tip of the park. The fast-food restaurants would be the first for-profit development at Magnuson, Seattle's second-largest park.

A private developer has offered to pay $7.7 million for renovations to the 59,000-square-foot building sandwiched between Lake Washington and Sand Point Way Northeast. Developers hope to rent the building to nonprofits and for-profit businesses and to turn the upstairs, with its unobstructed water views, into offices.

Along with the restaurants, tenants in what is known as Building 11 would include water-sports businesses and a day-care center. Those businesses would pay higher rents, according to the proposal, to subsidize lower rents for the parks-related and nonprofit tenants. Next door, in Building 27, the city hopes to bring in a developer who would build indoor ballfields and a fitness center that could become a membership gym.

The city knows many people have concerns about commercialism in the parks but says it has no choice because the aging buildings are not earthquake-safe or up to current fire codes. If the buildings aren't renovated, they would have to be torn down.

"Our alternative would be to demolish them because the city doesn't have all of the funds to meet all of the needs," said Jackie Kirn, staffer for Mayor Greg Nickels.

Buildings 11 and 27 are just two of many buildings in Magnuson Park, once a naval air station. With natural areas, athletic fields, a dog park and spots for boating and swimming, the 350-acre park has been the focus of debates over how parks should be used — whether they should be active or passive, developed or wild, publicly or privately funded.

At Magnuson, the parks department and sports enthusiasts clashed vigorously with the park's neighbors over plans for lighted athletic fields.

Park planners' vision for Magnuson is an urban park that combines arts, education, recreation and environmental restoration.

The city hopes to achieve some of those goals by renovating the old Navy buildings. Nickels put $2.7 million in his 2008 budget proposal to convert part of Building 30 into artists' studios. But the total cost for all the buildings could reach $50 million, and the city has sought outside partners to pay for much of it.

Many partners are nonprofits. The nonprofit group The Mountaineers is investing $3.5 million in remodeling Building 67. Cascade Bicycle Club has proposed renovating Building 18.

Beyond that, the city will have to partner with private developers, it says, yielding plans such as bringing Ivar's into Building 11. That building is now partly rented out to nonprofit Sail Sand Point and a raft and kayak center.

"If there were enough recreation-oriented nonprofit entities out there to do this, that would be our first choice, but we know there are not because we've tried," said Eric Friedli, head of the park's enterprise division.

The city's Pro Parks Levy, which has funded improvements in several parks, expires at the end of next year and the mayor has not committed to renewing it.

John Barber, who serves on the Board of Parks Commissioners but spoke from his personal perspective, said he would prefer the buildings be turned into public facilities. Having a private developer is "No. 1 exclusionary, and No. 2 we're never quite sure whether we get the public investment back in terms of the value of the property itself and existing building itself," he said.

Bill Fuller, one of the development partners for Building 11, is on the board of Sail Sand Point, and said he wanted to help the group stay in Magnuson after its lease expires at the end of next year.

"We needed to take a more creative way to fund it," Fuller said. He also said that during public outreach no one has protested plans to bring in commercial businesses. Investors in the Building 11 development group also are behind a controversial housing and shopping complex to replace the Goodwill buildings on South Dearborn Street near the Little Saigon neighborhood.

The parks department wants to bring the proposal to the City Council at the end of November.

Councilmember David Della, who chairs the parks committee, said, "While we don't mind private-sector companies funding parks projects, we want to be very careful not to commercialize the parks."

Tim Burgess, who seeks to unseat Della in the Nov. 6 election, says he needs to look at the details but that "a couple of red flags go up. My biggest concern is who are the parks for?"

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com