Here’s what Bellingham is doing to ease parking, traffic jams at Bloedel-Donovan Park
A new swimming dock at Bloedel-Donovan Park became so popular so fast that overflow crowds forced city officials to expand the parking area and hire extra traffic-control staff through the summer.
It probably didn’t help that the swimming dock opened the last weekend of June, amid a record-breaking and deadly heatwave, said Nicole Oliver, director of the Bellingham’s Parks and Recreation Department.
“We had an extraordinary amount of people who were anxious to cool off,” Oliver said during a July 27 City Council committee meeting to request $56,000 in emergency funds for traffic-control measures through Labor Day.
Oliver said that as temperatures soared over 100 degrees in many parts of Whatcom County, the park was mobbed with people hoping to cool off.
They blocked fire access, double-parked and took handicapped parking spaces, she said.
“That (weekend) was unbelievable,” Oliver told The Bellingham Herald. “It was so hot that people were quite desperate.”
Now, flaggers will be on duty and the parking area has been changed to allow better traffic movement, Oliver said.
Bloedel-Donovan, on the western end of Lake Whatcom, is one of the city’s most popular open spaces, with a boat launch, playground and community center — in addition to the new swim docks.
Parks staff doesn’t keep count of visitors, but lifeguards counted 800 people in the swimming area on June 28, the hottest day of the heatwave, Oliver said.
Some 500 swimmers used the park last weekend, she told The Herald.
New swimming docks and weekend lifeguards were possible through a fund-raising effort by the Bellingham Bay Rotary Club.
Bloedel-Donovan’s new H-shaped docks are similar to a dock that was removed in 2004 because of budget cuts that also cut lifeguards.
