Citizen Advisory Committees vs. Design Review Boards, a tale of two Seattle neighborhoods.

Last night I attended a Dearborn St. Coalition for a Livable Neighborhood meeting and was really surprised at how quickly this massive redevelopment project is making its way through the DPD’s Design Review Process.

The process is basically moving along as quickly as if the project was a 4-story condo building instead of a proposed 600,000 sq ft retail and 450 residential unit shopping complex. However, what really struck me about the Dearborn Street Group is how well-organized they are, the energy they are bringing towards making neighborhood-friendly changes to this proposed project, and how effectively they are building up their popular/political/financial capital throughout the city. They are providing tons of real neighborhood feedback to the DPD, and regardless of the Design Review Board’s recommendation, will keep pushing all the way to the city council. My prediction is that the developer, TRF Pacific, will need to accommodate their requests in writing, or will lose this battle.

Now, compare this to the Children’s Hospital redevelopment project in Laurelhurst where they plan to double their space and add 250 new beds. For this project, Children’s was able to get the city council to pass a resolution authorizing a Citizen’s Advisory Committee to basically organize a group of neighbors to gather neighborhood concerns and to make a recommendation. However, what is really surprising is that Children’s Hospital can make the call on who sits on this board. In fact, here’s what it says in city resolution 31002.

WHEREAS, the Department of Neighborhoods has worked with Children's
Hospital and Regional Medical Center to develop a list of twelve
potential members to serve on the Citizens Advisory Committee;

At first I thought that the Dearborn group wasn’t getting treated as well as Laurelhurst because they weren’t assigned a CAC for their project, however talking to someone from the Children’s Action Coalition (the other CAC) it doesn’t seem that the Children’s/city- appointed CAC is as activist oriented as the neighborhood group.

The problem for Laurelhurst is that the official voices of their neighborhood are being represented by representatives they didn’t even choose. So, this actually leads me to believe that the Laurelhurst folks are in a disadvantaged situation because regardless of what they do, there will be two different sets of Laurelhurst neighborhood recommendations. One from the Citizen Advisory Commitee’s view of the project, and one from the grassroots neighborhood group.

It should be very interesting to see how both of these processes play out.

Flyover view of the proposed Dearborn St. project

Proposed Children’s Hospital Redevelopment Project