One day the view from atop the birding tower in Auburn’s Environmental Park will take in the restored wetland with all of its teeming bird life, the Emerald Downs mitigation pond and Mount Rainier, among other sights.

Auburn’s Environmental Protection Manager Kelly McLain Aardal, who is overseeing the park project, said work began officially last week on the first of two birding towers and the first in the city.

It will be the first major recreation piece installed there. Made of wood, steel and recycled materials, it will consist of two covered platforms and an intermediate platform for viewing birds.

“It’s between 24 and 28 feet tall with two platforms,” said McLain Aardal. “The lower one is accessible by anybody of any ability. You go up the staircase to sort of an intermediate platform, then you go up another set of stairs to a covered second story, so it gets you pretty high off the ground.

“… Basically, there will be a path that will go out from the parking area oriented with the stair case and the intermediate platform and another staircase,” Aardal said. “It’s facing so that from any point in here, you can look northeast and northwest at the mitigation pond for Emerald Downs and see a lot of the birds there. The whole piece of property between the tower and 167 is going to be restored,” said McLain Aardal.

Construction of the tower is made possible by a grant from the state Recreation and Conservation Office and matching city funds. City officials broke ground Dec. 15. Construction should be finished by early February.

The park’s master plan calls for trails, birding towers and restrooms.

The two-phase park project bounded on the north by 15th Street Northwest, on the east by the Interurban trail, on the south by West Main Street and West Valley Highway on the west, represents the city’s attempt to make something positive out of the flooding problem the Washington State Department of Transportation left behind when it built State Route 167 in 1970. By damming an area comprised mainly of long-fallow farmland, city officials say, the state silted up Mill Creek, vexing city engineers for years.