Fair officials to get long desired chance to see plans for new city street.

County fair officials will finally get their long-awaited chance to see what a new public thoroughfare across the county fairgrounds looks like on paper.

The city of Langley has invited Fair Association Chairman Dan Ollis to review the final engineering drawing of the proposed Fairgrounds Road at city hall.

It’s the first step resembling out-of-court talks between the city and the fair board since Langley filed a condemnation suit against the county in October to get the right of way to a piece of the fairgrounds property. The city needs the land, it says, so it can build a new connector road between Al Anderson and Langley roads.

The fair board has jumped into the lawsuit as intervener, and fair officials say the proposed road will do irreparable damage to the operation of the annual fair.

One of the reoccurring complaints by the fair board during the fight over the fairgrounds property was that the city did not let fair officials look at engineering drawings of the new road.

“The fair board did not get engineered drawings. But then, neither did the city until well after the condemnation process had begun,” said City Administrator Walt Blackford.

“My understanding is that we gave the fair board every drawing we had when we had them,” Blackford added.

“They also received our repeated assurances in writing that the road would be engineered and built to high standards with full protection for fairgrounds property while also providing vastly improved accessibility to fairgrounds property over the existing circumstances,” he said.

The hold-up of the drawing was related to the planning process.

The first set submitted to the city by the developer was determined to be incomplete. The applicant did not submit the second revised set of drawings until a week before Christmas.

The city engineer worked on them last week.

“My understanding is that he will issue his letter of completeness or incompleteness next week,” Blackford said. “In any case, a full set of the original and the revised drawings were to be delivered to the fair board’s attorney today (Dec. 29),” Blackford said.

Blackford said he also left a voice message for Ollis on Thursday morning inviting him to visit city hall on Tuesday to review the road plans with Blackford and with Larry Cort, the new city planner.

“We did this in the spirit of helping to move the process forward and so he would not have to wait for a set of drawings to make its way from their attorney in Seattle back to Whidbey,” Blackford said.

Blackford also addressed other concerns raised by Ollis in a recent Record article.

Ollis had said that building a new road across the fairgrounds property was not the best choice for a new city street.

Blackford, however, said of the four alternatives studied, the proposed route across fairgrounds property was much preferred on every level of analysis — including cost, effectiveness, terrain, traffic circulation gaols, safety and so on.

One alternative route would have extended Al Anderson Road to Langley Road. But that route would have cut across private property.

“The property owners at the end of Anderson Road were consulted and clearly informed the city that they would aggressively fight any condemnation action,” Blackford said.

“It is our understanding that the right of way that once existed at the end of Anderson Road was extinguished by the county as part of an agreement with property owners in the area in exchange for private land needed to improve the intersection at Langley Road and Maxwelton,” he recalled. “The county agreed to never connect Anderson Road with Maxwelton.”

Blackford said it is quite possible that if the county went to court to condemn the property at the end of Anderson Road the court would ask “before taking private property for public purposes, is there any alternative route acceptable to the city that does not require taking private property?”

“And then we’d be right back where we are now,” he said.

Colburn and Blackford both said condemnation was the city’s last resort. The city made two different offers to the fair board and were rejected.

Blackford said the city needed to move forward on the road project, and also needed to address the concerns of residents who did not want construction traffic traveling past the Middle School and down Sixth Street.

“We chose to use the right of eminent domain to acquire public property that would serve the best interest of Langley residents while also enhancing access to the fairgrounds property,” Blackford said.

A use and necessity hearing on the city’s lawsuit is scheduled in Island County Superior Court Jan. 7.