Valley Record SNOQUALMIE
101RS YEA
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2015 n DAILY UPDATES AT WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM n 75 CENTS
Come in and play Indoor Playground begins 19th year in new Si View, with fresh needs for community support By CAROL LADWIG
LOCAL
Editor
It’s party time on Center Boulevard, the Valley Block Party Pages 4-5
Everything looks new in the Si View Community Center gym, but it’s already familiar turf for Bobby Lawrence, age 3 and-a-half. He goes directly over the gleaming wood floors to the cleverly hidden drawers under the stage, where he knows
Carol Ladwig/Staff Photo
Snoqualmie Valley Indoor Playground coordinators Hilary Shemanski and Marni Donnelly are working to raise awareness of this community resource. the toys for Snoqualmie Valley Indoor Playground are stored. He wants a ball.
His mom, Hilary Shemanski, unlocks the drawer and pulls it out — “this is one of our favorite
improvements to the community center, and I think we might get more volunteers because of it,” she says later. Inside, they find toy cars and a gas pump, but not the ball he wanted. It’s OK, Bobby is already wheeling around the gym at the driver’s seat of a plastic fire engine. The search, and the playtime afterward, were just a tiny part of Bobby’s day, but a formative part, if the child development study Marni Donnelly cited is correct. “Any experience before age 5 becomes a building block,” said Donnelly, president of the playground board. The nonprofit Snoqualmie Valley Indoor Playground has been offering those building blocks to families SEE PLAYGROUND, 2
Roundabout work under way, over protests
SPORTS
Snoqualmie Tribe opposes Tokul roundabout, Snoqualmie Mayor says city followed due process
See what’s happening this fall with Mount Si sports teams Pages 9-11
INDEX Opinion 6 7 Puzzles On the Scanner 12 Classifieds 13-15 16 Calendar
Vol. 102, No. 17
By EVAN PAPPAS Staff Reporter
After nine years, the Tokul roundabout project is still facing major problems in Snoqualmie. Since 2006, the city of Snoqualmie has planned to make big changes to the intersections of S.R. 202 with Southeast Tokul Road and Southeast Mill Pond Road. According to the city, the planned roundabout, now under construction, will improve safety by replacing angled intersections. It will also give people easier access to historic Snoqualmie and Snoqualmie Falls and open up possibilities for development north of the city. Snoqualmie Mayor Matt Larson explained some of the many dangerous elements at the targeted intersections: The driveway to the upper parking lot of the Salish Lodge and Spa is on a blind curve; Tokul Road comes down at a very sharp angle as it meets 202; and bad sight lines and distances from intersections for the bridge do not meet state standards. In conversations with the owners of the Salish Lodge, the city learned about a possible expansion, Larson said, so city staff tried to think of ways to rework that area to improve traffic flow and safety to accommodate that growth and possible activity at the mill site someday. SEE ROUNDABOUT, 5
Courtesy Photo
The roundabout project proposes to improve safety at the Tokul and Mill Pond Road intersections.
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