With its recent 29-acre purchase from the Auburn Land Company of Las Vegas, Nev., the City of Auburn has all the land it needs to complete the first phase of the Auburn Environmental Park.

The Las Vegas-based limited partnership bought the property, adjacent to and south of today’s State Route 167 interchange on 15th Street Northwest, in the 1960s but never developed it. Locals called it “Oceans 11” because of the film of the same name set in Las Vegas, but more formally it was known as the Dombrowsky property.

“We have been working for four years to buy it,” Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis said last week.

The purchase price was $629,800, and the City tapped a state grant to pay for it. Lewis signed the purchase agreement on July 13. The transaction is in escrow and scheduled to close within 60 days of the signing date.

The 240-acre environmental park, which runs from 15th Street Northwest to Main Street, is intended to make positive use of commercially undevelopable wetlands created by the construction of SR 167 in the early 1970s.

The park will be developed in two phases, the first phase consisting of 120 acres east of Highway 167, and the second phase comprised of 120 acres west of 167 to West Valley Highway. At the moment, the City is concentrating its efforts on the first phase.

Amenities will include trails, a boardwalk, native plantings, an interpretive center and more. The City completed a birding tower in 2009 just off Western Avenue.

To get the last piece of land for the first phase required permission from the Washington State Recreation Conservation Office to amend a $572,000 Wildlife Recreation Programming grant it had awarded the City three years ago to create a wetland mitigation bank within the park. The grant required a 50-50 match from the City.

City officials later learned that there isn’t enough land in the EP to create a viable wetland mitigation bank. So when the opportunity came up to acquire the Auburn Land Company’s property and add it to the park, the City approached the state about amending the grant and the state agreed.

Earlier this year, the City received approval for several related grant modifications, allowing it to use some of the money to use native plantings to create a buffer between the park and Highway 167.

The City also received permission from the state to tap the same grant to build 2,500 feet of surface trails and elevated boardwalks within the newly acquired area. In 2008, the state allowed the City to use some of the funds to build the birding tower off Western Avenue.

The City has its eye on additional land for the second phase.

“We also hope to acquire from the Washington Department of Transportation about 57 acres in two parcels at the north end of the park, bounded by 15th Street,” said Chris Anderson, environmental programming manager for the City of Auburn. “We are in discussions with the WSDOT, but at this time there are no transfer or acquisition agreements that have been executed.

“Essentially, we have reached an agreement in principle, but we need to work through the details,” Anderson added.