MICA will offer significant benefits to city

Mr. Peter Struck’s letter in the Reporter’s Jan. 6 issue stated that “certain privileged, well-heeled citizens or organizations” would get extraordinary treatment by the city if it enters into a lease for MICA to build an arts center in Mercerdale Park. His disingenuous analogies to lattes, private rentals of picnic shelters and play fields ignore the plain language of the proposed lease, which requires significant direct and indirect benefits to the city, at MICA’s cost, including a reserved city/public use of the facility for arts and education classes, public meetings, recreation, a back-up Emergency Operations Center, support storage facilities and utilities for the Farmers Market, new public restrooms, a public plaza, outdoor theatre stage, indoor/outdoor eating venue open to the public and more.

The most significant benefit of all is the MICA facility itself, which is by and for the people of Mercer Island. It is not reserved for any group of elites; there are no income-based qualifications for use. In fact, it will have facilities and programs specially suited to serve children, the elderly and those with disabilities. For more information about the required public benefits and the MICA facilities, readers can read responses to FAQs at mercerislandarts.org. The $1 per year rent — the same amount paid by the Boys and Girls Club to the Mercer Island School District for PEAK — is obviously a token. The true rewards come from the intangible benefit to the public in quality of life plus the many specific, tangible benefits to the city listed in the lease.

Josh Rosenstein, MICA board member