Larsen visits two Marysville projects earmarked for potential funds

Two major Marysville projects could soon receive a large amount of their funding as federal money has been earmarked for a park at Mother Nature’s Window and a Grove Street over-crossing.

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen visited the sites of the two projects with Marysville officials on Oct. 21 to talk about the progress on the funding.

The packages to provide funding for the two projects have passed the U.S. House of Representatives, but still have to go through the U.S. Senate.

The Mother Nature’s Window project has $750,000 earmarked currently.

“Mother Nature's Window is important because we got that into public hands 23 years ago and now we finally have an opportunity to develop it into the regional park that we have all envisioned over that time,” said Larsen.

The old-growth forest area was previously an area that Snohomish County owned before being annexed by Marysville.

The two government agencies have been preventing development in it to eventually turn it into a park.

“It’s not really open because there’s nowhere to park and the trails need to be reformed. We hope to build a picnic area and an educational area for the kids,” said Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring.

The city has three planned phases for improvements to the park and $750,000 could get them part of the way through those plans.

“It’s been closed for 20 years,” said Tara Mizell, director of Marysville’s Parks, Culture and Recreation Department, so work needs to be done to redo the signage.

Mizell noted that people who have traveled into the property recently have sometimes gotten lost in the trails that exist and have had to call to be helped out.

She said an educational area to encourage school visits is also planned for the property.

“And a bus turnaround so that they could drop kids off easily,” she said.

The biggest improvements for right now remain public access.

“We’re working with the city to make improvements here so that there is better access and the city pursued an earmark at the federal level,” said Larsen. “They’ll use that federal money to really develop public access.”

The property in central Marysville would also allow the city to start constructing additional recreation opportunities away from south Marysville, where the majority of parks are right now.

“The further north you go in Marysville, the less trail or park assets that we have here,” said Nehring.

The second project Larsen visited was the Grove Street over-crossing, which would provide a way for local traffic to travel above the train tracks that run parallel to State Avenue.

The total cost for the project would be about $26 million.

“We’re looking at about $18 million for construction,” said Jeff Laycock, director of engineering and transportation services.

Three million dollars is currently earmarked in the federal funding package.

“It’s only $3 million of a much larger project but that is going to be an important part of the whole project to connect Marysville,” said Larsen.

Currently, there is no way for Marysville traffic or first responder vehicles to get around a train going through the city.

“It’s going to give the city of Marysville and its first responders and its citizens the ability to access east and west even if there is a train going through town,” said Larsen.

A way to bypass trains is one of the most frequently requested items for the city, said Nehring.

“Everybody is so tired of waiting for trains,” he said.

City officials looked at the various ways to do that at the various crossings and ended up focusing on the Grove Street crossing as the other crossings would have been prohibitively expensive to build.

If constructed, the over-crossing would provide a huge benefit to emergency response vehicles needing to get to the other side during train traffic.

“The healthy and safety portion is huge. My husband was a firefighter for forever and it scared him because if you hit it wrong, then you’re waiting at the train tracks and that could be the difference in someone’s life,” said Mizell.