Magnuson Park Restrooms: A Relative Chronology, part III

Dear Diary,

A couple of days ago I took a few hours off work to go to UW's Suzzallo Library.  My main goals there had to do with the downtown parks, but I also took the chance to look at the biggest final environmental impact statement ever published for Magnuson Park, which appeared in 2002.  Once the libraries re-open next year, anyone interested can find it at F899.S47 W3743; there's also a copy at the Seattle Public Library's Central Library's Seattle Room, which is now open by appointment.  The statement is in two physical volumes, volume 1 and volumes 2-3.  Volume 1 is the main text, the other volume including longer parts that didn't fit, including the comments on the draft report, at which I didn't look more than cursorily, because they're rather compressedly presented.

To recap, the previous two parts used notionally four maps to present a chronology. The environmental impact statement from before the park opened in 1976 spoke of these restroom buildings:

• The officers' bathhouse (already existing)
  
• The enlisted men's bathhouse (already existing)
  
• The boat launch restrooms (planned)
  

The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's official picnic map for Magnuson Park confirms (yes, still today) the continued existence of all of these, but also shows:

• Restrooms near the 74th St park entrance

A mysterious map that used to be attached to a counter at the current beach restrooms there confirmed the continued existence of three of those, but also showed four new restroom sites, one replacing the enlisted men's bathhouse:

• Tower restrooms (the replacement, still existing but not open)
• Central restrooms (still existing)
• Promontory Point restrooms (not existing and possibly never existed)
• Field restrooms (not existing and possibly never existed)

The statement from 2002 is clearly later than these, just as the fourth map I cited, from circa 2012, is.  And it mentions almost the same restrooms as the 2012 map, as two restrooms left over from the military site that preceded the park (Tower and officers' bathhouse) plus the central restrooms.  Here's the map in it that shows restrooms.

 

Weirdly, it doesn't show any of the restrooms that existed in 2002.  What this map shows is the planned restrooms:

• Playfield restrooms, more or less where the previous map showed field ones.
• Sports meadow restrooms, a fair way east of the previous two maps' park entrance restrooms.
• Promontory Point restrooms, hard to place in relation to the previous map's set.
  

So if the boat launch restrooms shown on all three earlier maps, and the park entrance restrooms shown on two of them, ever actually existed, they were gone long enough ago by 2002 that the authors of the later EIS didn't feel the need to mention them.  Ditto the Promontory Point and field restrooms shown on the mystery map, whose existence has always been in doubt.  I found nothing, in an admittely fast reading, suggesting that the authors of the 2002 report were aware that each of their proposals would've replaced a previously mapped set of restrooms.

So the question I'm left with is, have restrooms at Magnuson Park actually been thrown away, or have only promises of restrooms at Magnuson Park been thrown away?  If the latter, why so many promises, on so many different maps?  What's so special about Magnuson Park, that either restrooms get torn down there, or restrooms that were never built are shamelessly mapped there?  Why can't the parks department just admit that Magnuson is a big enough park to need more than two sets of restrooms, plan some, and build them, as it would anywhere else?

Anyway, since 2002 the only change is the replacement of the officers' bathhouse with the present beach restroom building.  Also, I still don't know at what date the restrooms at the Brig that have outside doors acquired those doors.

I have to go run errands today, dear Diary, but hope to write the second page about the parks of central downtown tonight.  Until then, happy hours.