Adventure Park

After residents see-sawed back and forth over the possibility of a new tourist attracting addition to the quaint village, the city of Leavenworth was notified on Sept. 19 that the both dreaded and celebrated proposed Adventure Park had withdrawn their Conditional Use Permit application. 

According to a public notice from the city of Leavenworth, the withdrawal was a gesture of putting the controversial park on temporary hold until resubmitting their application at a later date. The stalling is a reflection of the locals being divided on the park after developers of the alpine theme park reviewed public and agency comments. 

“The developers of the park spent the last several weeks reviewing the public comments submitted regarding the project, pros and cons, some merely opinions and some more specific in the analysis of the information presented,” said Joel Walinski, City Administrator. “After analyzing and reviewing those responses, they identified some additional gaps in the information or project descriptions, and decided their path forward was to withdraw the permit and resubmit at a future time.”

Locals had filed into City Council meetings to voice their concern on how the park would produce an abundance of traffic and noise; whereas, others were eager for the added incentive to drive tourists in and catapult Leavenworth to a new degree of popularity. The home to the future Alpine Coaster and Eurobungy Trampoline would be on Icicle Road and Hwy 2.  

However, this doesn’t mean that the Adventure Park will become a forgotten shell of a proposal, but has the possibility to revive the proposal in the future. 

“From the City’s perspective, this is how the process should work. If there are identifiable gaps in the information or if the information is not clearly presented, the application should be either amended or withdrawn and resubmitted if the applicants want to move forward with a project,” said Walinski. “Ultimately, the Hearing Examiner is going to make the decision on the application of the Conditional Use Permit for the project, having a robust and complete application to make that decision on is in the best interest of the applicants and community.”