Stopping a building in its tracks?

In Wedgwood we pulled the rip cord on our the condo building process right before our appeal to the Hearing Examiner, and so we didn’t get to the land use petition stage that Dennis Saxman has with the Pine Street and Belmont building on Capitol Hill. Of course, the ironic thing is that both of our developments are currently stalled - ours due to the economy and Capitol Hill’s due to the petition (or perhaps due to the economy too - could the developer be receiving better tax benefits due to the pending petition).

If there’s development in your neighborhood that you absolutely want to challenge, here is a quick summary of a path we took.

1. Engage your community council or neighborhood organization ASAP. Your council’s willingness to challenge a development may be good (ie Maple Leaf, Laurelhurst) or not (ie POWHAT, Wedgwood), but they’re good channels for finding like-minded individuals who can help.
2. Put together your case of what you don’t want, and what you do want.
3. Publish that information, send it off to the media, your land use planner, and any government official who will listen.
4. Attend all the Design Review Board meetings and collect names of people who attend.
5. Keep going back to point 5 until the DPD issues a Master Use Permit (MUP).
6. Within 2 weeks of the MUP, you can then appeal the decision with a $50 filing fee.
7. The Hearing Examiner will call you, the developer, and a DPD representative to a pre-hearing meeting to clarify your testimony, witnesses, and exhibits. This is a quasi-legal process, so anything you present during the hearing you need to offer up here. (It’s a good idea to work with a lawyer here).
8. (At this point, this is when we negotiated a settlement with the developer)
9. You present your case to the Hearing Examiner. Don’t be late to this one!
10. The Hearing Examiner rules.
11. You can appeal the Hearing Examiner’s decision by filing a petition against the decision with the State of Washington.

However, a word of caution. This is a grueling process, and it takes a rare individual to be able to tackle this on their own. We were so exhausted by stage 8 (and there were four of us!) that I really can’t imagine how much work we’d have if we were at stage 11 right now.

Want to read the Hearing Examiner’s decision, you can find it here. And if you want to read the entire Capitol Hill petition, you can grab a copy here.

(Stranger photo - Pine Street and Belmont building being challenged)