Category — City Council

The city council announced a meeting today to discuss proposed amendments to the city’s comprehensive plan. The council collected ideas for amendments last month and is now ready to discuss those that were submitted.

(One constructive complaint though - the city didn’t do a very good job of communicating this amendment submission process - and I can say that because I’m on the land use board for Wedgwood and didn’t hear about this from the city).

However, I’m happy because one issue we’ve been trying to figure out in NE Seattle is included as a potential amendment:

Amend neighborhood planning goal NG-3 to make it possible for neighborhood planning for all areas of the City, not just those that are expected to take significant amounts of growth.

Below is a copy of the announcement from the city:

The Seattle City Council’s Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods Committee (PLUNC) will hold a public hearing to decide which proposed Comprehensive Plan amendments should be considered in the 2008 annual Comprehensive Plan amendment process. The public hearing will be on Monday, March 31, 2008 at 5:00 p.m. in the Council’s Chamber, 2nd floor, Seattle City Hall, 600 Fourth Avenue. The entrances to City Hall are located on the west side of Fifth Avenue, and the east side of Fourth Avenue, between James and Cherry Streets. For those who wish to testify, a sign-up sheet will be available outside the Council Chamber one-half hour before the public hearing.

Throughout the rest of downtown, towers must be spaced at least 60 feet apart from one another. This distance was set as a standard for ensuring a livable downtown for those who work and reside there. However, for reasons that still don’t seem clear in 2006 one specific area of downtown (The Denny Triangle) was exempted by the council and mayor from this 60 foot requirement. If you want to read how the whole process unfolded, I definitely recommend checking out the Cosmo Seattle blog.

The result of this spacing exemption can be seen below, where the 1918 8th Ave building is sited just 18 feet from the neighboring Cosmo condos. And if you’re a Cosmo resident on the 8th Ave-facing side, your personal result is that you’ve just been exempted from the livability standards that are granted to other downtown and condo dwellers.

I’ve received this Sally Clark (Seattle Councilmember) email from a few folks, and  the forum sounds very interesting. It’s hard to tell if this is just a brainstorming session, but they’ve got some good partners helping to  facilitate this forum. Oh yeah, it’s by invite only, so if you want to go you’ll need to contact the Outreach Coordinator listed below.

Neighborhood Planning Forum

As many of you know, I’ve been working on the review of Seattle’s neighborhood plans for almost a year now. We’ve found that while some neighborhoods are on pace with their neighborhood plan goals, others are changing far more quickly or slowly than anticipated. As we prepare to make updates to the 38 neighborhood plans created nearly 10 years ago, we are faced with an extraordinary opportunity to ensure that the next ten years successfully meet community needs.

It is important that we enter into this process with a dedication to participation and faith in the process. For this reason I am partnering with former Mayor Norm Rice and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington to host a forum about the future of our neighborhood plans. Should we update them? How would we know whether a plan needs refreshing? If we do update the plans, what should be our goals for the process and the product?

The forum will happen Saturday, March 1, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the University of Washington campus. This event seeks to bring together a great diversity of voices and opinions for discussion of what makes great community planning. We’ve invited district council representatives, members of community councils and small chambers, and interested voices from groups that haven’t been connected to planning previously.

I want to make sure that we move forward smartly — learning from our past and adding in great ideas as yet untapped. If you are interested in participating in the forum, please email a note of interest to Outreach Coordinator Chris Godwin crgoodwin23@gmail.com. Chris will follow up with you soon after.

Please know that space is limited and not all who want to will be able to attend. If you can’t make it, have no fear. The Evans School team will compile a report from the event and that will be available in April on my website.

My priority is to ensure that any neighborhood plan updates are truly community driven that we carry through the commitment to grassroots, democratic planning that was integral to the success of planning 10 years ago. I’m looking forward to it!

Position number 1 (take):
Steinbrueck wants Vulcan to pay an additional $2.6 million towards affordable housing to build higher within South Lake Union.

Position number 2 (give):
Steinbrueck recommends that the city forfeit $20.5 million in real estate proceeds in order to permit Triad to develop a 40-story office/condo building and a 1/2 block park next door to city hall.

Position number 3 (give):
Steinbrueck waives setback requirements in the Denny Triangle area, giving to developers who are able to build higher than previous zoning allowed.

Position number 4 (take):
Steinbrueck waives setback requirements in the Denny Triangle area, takes value from new condo residents at the Cosmo building downtown.

I was down at the South Lake Union Discovery Center today checking out all the displays about the upcoming South Lake Union redevelopment and had a thought, “what if the city spent as much time thinking about neighborhood development in other neighborhoods throughout Seattle as it is doing in South Lake Union?”

I have a feeling that if the city did spend time carefully looking at developing neighborhoods as a whole instead of piecemeal, I don’t think you’d see bad development like we’re seeing in:

• The Denny Triangle neighborhood, where the city is permitting a high-rise to be built just 16 feet away from a neighboring residential high-rise?!? This kind of close-in high-rise development has not been successful in any major city and is terrible urban planning. 
• The Pinehurst neighborhood (North Seattle) where Kohary Construction has pretty much ticked off the neighborhood by using a loophole to avoid the DPD’s Design Review Process and using this lack of review to build dull, characterless townhomes that push most of their development’s traffic issues into the surrounding neighborhood.
• Wedgwood (again in North Seattle) where Murray Franklyn wants to build a huge mixed commercial/residential property that is only 8 feet away from single family homes and is going to really screw up traffic on 35th Ave NE.
• Summit and Belmont on Capitol Hill where Murray Franklyn is planning to put in a less than dynamic mixed use building leased out to even duller tenants.
• Dearborn Street just south of downtown where there are plans to build a major shopping complex, which the neighborhood feels will have a devestating Walmart effect on their neighborhood businesses.

Anyway, this is just a list of problem developments I’ve learned about while working on this blog, and I’m sure there are many more out there. Perhaps what we need is the DPD to put together a ‘South Lake Union Discovery Center’ that covers the entire city and lets us think about development holistically. Or perhaps what we need is a mayor or city council to realize that this is the major issue facing Seattle neighborhoods.

South of Safeco Field and north of King County Airport, a tug-of-war is brewing between the city and property owners who want to convert their properties from industrial use to office-retail. The reason for this? Developers feel they can make alot more money from office-retail space than they can from industrial space.

What’s really surprising here is the mayor’s position on this, he actually wants to preserve the industrial zoning! And this is actually a good thing for Seattle because it protects an important sector of our economy, international trade and the businesses that support it.

Working in the high tech field myself, I’m always happy to see the tech business sector do well, but it’s never wise to put all your eggs in one industry basket. And, it’s kinda nice to know there are parts of town where development doesn’t equal mixed-use condo/retail buildings with coffee and burrito shops on each corner.

What’s not surprising in this debate is the position the city council is taking, which is to take no position. The Times reported,

Steinbrueck said he is considering alternatives to the mayor’s plan, such as increasing the amount of industrial development allowed on a lot, rather than decreasing other uses.

Whatever. This is just par for the council. Do they even know how to take a stand on a controversial issue anymore? Anyway, it’s just fortunate in this case that the mayor (who generally tends to ignore them anyway) is on the right side of a land use issue.

This Monday the city council will hear proposals for updating and ’standardizing’ the city’s neighborhood plans. Within the proposal there are a number of goals the Mayor wants to achieve, including;

* Growth in some neighborhoods out of sync with growth targets
(higher or lower)
* Major new investments (light rail, large private investments)
* Some current plans not effective in guiding growth
* Importance of Sustainability and Climate Change Today
* Many new city-wide plans and policies adopted since original neighborhood
plans adopted

However, a couple of the many issues not mentioned here that are also driving this need to update these plans include;
* The plans themselves were built with close neighborhood involvement and so within these plans are specific things neighborhoods wanted that the city does not now want to support. This includes specific zoning, open-space, and traffic requirements set out by different neighborhoods.
* The city wants a streamlined neighborhood planning process performed by city employees to avoid what one internal Department of Planning and Development (DPD) memo (thanx to Dennis Saxman for finding this) stated as:

The August 15 DPD memo also
complains that “There was emphasis on creating neighborhood planning
committees with balanced stakeholder representation, rather than
attracting creative thinkers and problem solvers who may have had
useful knowledge or skills they could contribute.” Another DPD memo
ridicules the effort to be inclusive: “At the extreme, some planning
committees set rigid criteria of selecting, forexample,
two residential property owners, two business owners, two Antarctic
penguin lovers, etc.”

So, why do I think this could be the end of the beginning of the Department of Neighborhood’s (DON) role in putting together these neighborhood plans? Well, the first is money, within this proposed plan, the DPD will receive $457,365 worth of new resources and $314,312 worth of reallocated resources. On the other hand the Department of Neighborhoods would only receive $89,950 worth of new funding. In addition to this, it is also looking like there are big differences in philosophies about the process of building neighborhood plans between the two departments, and the Mayor strongly favors that of the DPD.

Personally, it is looking like the DON is being moved into more of a neighborhood services role (working with community councils, providing passport services, etc…) and will be responsible for smaller, less strategic planning roles. While on the other hand the DPD will be in position to not only approve and adjust individual projects within the city, but now will own the policy under which all projects are planned. For those who support neighborhood involvement as an important part of Seattle’s land use planning, this is not a good change.

And one interesting thing to watch on Monday is whether Councilmember Sally Clark (Chair of Economic Development and Neighborhoods) argues vigorously against this change because it would basically neuter the power of her committee.

You can check out the presentation the city council will receive on:
http://www.seattle.gov/council/attachments/2007bneighborhoodplan.pdf

When the City Council took a pass on the Seattle Nightlife Ordinance a little over a week ago by deciding not to decide, I didn’t actually realize that the City Council passed this as a bill. Today, Mayor Nickels vetoed this ordinance and sent it back to the City Council. It should be interesting if they even take a vote on it again, or just do nothing.

Unlike their earlier pass on an important vote earlier this week (the nightclub ordinance), the city council did decide to vote on whether to replace the vacated barracks at Fort Lawton with open space or affordable housing. Their decision, bring on the open space.

However, in addition to receiving criticism from housing advocates, the city council was also called to task by the Port for a different decision the city made on a similiar project. The Times reported, 

Officials with the Port of Seattle and the city of Burien said Seattle’s plans are hypocritical. Seattle officials had intervened when the Port wanted to tear down 162 affordably priced units at the Lora Lake apartments in Burien this summer.

Port Commissioner John Creighton said Wednesday, “I find it disappointing that they raise this issue and request that another jurisdiction [Burien], that has a higher percentage of affordable housing, go to bat to save housing when they’re not prepared to do the same.”

Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis responded,

City officials said the Capehart housing is inappropriate for low-income residents. “It’s isolated in the park and there are no services or transit,” said Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis.

Wow, Tim doesn’t get around much. Believe it or not, there are even low-income residents in suburban and rural areas who obviously find ways to get around.

Tomorrow night, City Councilmember Sally Clark’s Economic Development and Neighborhoods Committee will be meeting at 6:00 pm at Hing Hay Park on Maynard and King. (Bush Hotel at 409 Maynard is rain location).

It’s a controversial issue, with the Mayor proposing stricter regulations for nightclubs and those nightclubs fighting the regulations. So when the issue was brought up to the city council, everyone was excited to see their decision. However, the city council wasn’t quite ready to have made up its mind on an issue everyone’s been debating for the past year so they decided to take a third option and wait until next year to make a decision.

So…I guess nothing changes with this issue and everyone fights about it for another year. Thanks for your clear, bold leadership, city council.