Category — Neighborhood Plans

This letter was written by Chris Leman

Citizen observers are welcome and needed on Monday, July 7, 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. in King County Courthouse (516 Third Avenue) room E-733 as Superior Court Judge Julie Spector hears arguments by citizen activist Dennis Saxman and by lawyers for a developer and the City of Seattle in a case that Saxman has brought, arguing that Seattle’s design review and project approval process is not obeying the law.

Saxman alleges serious problems in Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development, the Hearing Examiner’s office, and the City Attorney’s office. He had appealed the DPD approval of a land use project on the 500 block of Pine Street between Belmont and Summit in Capitol Hill’s Pike-Pine neighborhood–ground zero for badly designed overdevelopment. When the Hearing Examiner sided with DPD, Saxman took the case to Superior Court.

It helps a citizen appellant for members of the public to be there in respectful attendance, and you are welcome to attend 9-10 a.m. Monday at the County Courthouse, room E-733. If you want further information, below is detail on the case, and how to donate if you are so inclined.

Why the case matters. Saxman has undertaken this effort because he believes that principles important to many Seattle neighborhoods are at stake, and that the project review system as it is currently practiced, is just plain unfair. Although no longer a practicing attorney, he benefits from his training and experience as an attorney in California, where he is still an inactive member of the Bar.

Many who closely follow the workings of Seattle’s design review process feel that the volunteer review boards, City staff, and Hearing Examiner do not always take the design guidelines seriously, thus favoring developers and undermining existing zoning. Bringing this dysfunctional system to the scrutiny of Superior Court poses the possibility of overturning it, or at least exposing such problems that the Mayor and City Council are forced into reforms.

Few have the energy and knowledge for an administrative appeal, and then the tenacity to take DPD and the Hearing Examiner to court. Dennis Saxman is that rare person who is seeing his case through, dramatizing the need for reform not only of DPD and the Office of the Hearing Examiner, but also of the City Attorney’s office, which seems to be over-zealous in defending the City’s position, acting in a number of instances to make citizen appeals particularly difficult.

Summary of the case. Saxman’s appeal to the Hearing Examiner argued that (1) the DPD Director was not justified in making a SEPA determination of nonsignificance; (2) in approving departures from the Land Use Code, the DPD Director had failed to show that development would better meet the intent of the neighborhood’s design guidelines; and (3) that the relevant design guidelines for the neighborhood had not been followed by the Design Review Board in making its decisions.

When the Hearing Examiner sided with DPD, Saxman filed a lengthy Land Use petition urging the Superior Court to find that the Hearing Examiner: (1) did not meaningfully consider and weigh all of the arguments and evidence; (2) did not weigh the credibility of DPD’s and the developer’s testimony and evidence; (3) treated Saxman and DPD differently when it came to the submission of evidence; (4) failed to adequately address appearance of fairness doctrine issues; (5) made errors of facts and law; (6) erred in finding the granting of departures was justified; and (7) erred in concluding that the project was consistent with the design guidelines.

Benefits of the case. Sixteen neighborhoods in Seattle have neighborhood-specific design guideline, and others are about to get them. Despite the guidelines, these neighborhoods continue to experience development that clashes with the neighborhood context—the very problem that neighborhood-specific design guidelines were supposed to solve. Saxman argues that, while neighborhood-specific design guidelines are meant to control design outcomes, the design review boards pay inadequate attention to the guidelines and DPD fails to ensure that they do, regarding the guidelines as not being binding.

Saxman’s case may establish a legal precedent that DPD and the Design Review Boards must follow the law and the design guidelines when evaluating projects; and more fully consider and heed public input. A clear victory would mean that the days of lax enforcement of neighborhood design guidelines by the DPD would be at an end and developers would be put on notice that they are required to abide by laws and guidelines proposed by the neighborhoods and enacted by City Council.

Here is Dennis Saxman’s summary of his goals: “In a nutshell, I think multiple design review, departure and SEPA analysis requirements are being ignored. If I prevail in this lawsuit, that should begin to change. I also think it would go a long ways towards beginning the repair of a review process that, as practiced, is highly biased against public appellants such as myself and that is not conducted according to the requirements of the law.”

Should Saxman lose his battle at the Superior Court level, the research he has done will still do a lot of good. He has found partiality and arbitrariness in the system–evidence that could help push the Mayor and City Council to reform the design review boards, DPD, the Hearing Examiner’s office, and the City Attorney’s office. If you have questions about the case or would like to receive documents about it, contact Dennis Saxman at (206) 328-5326 or peregrin@isomedia.com. As mentioned above, the hearing (case no. 08-2-05294-0 SEA) will be held 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday, July 7 in King County Courthouse room E-733, Superior Court Judge Julie Spector’s courtroom. Citizen observers are welcome and needed.

Dennis Saxman has undertaken this case despite chronic poor health and very low income. It is not overdramatic to say that in expending vast amounts of energy and time, he is risking his life for a citizen voice and good design in Seattle’s neighborhoods. He needs donations to help afford the filing fees, exhibits, and the official transcript that, as appellant, he is required to provide. Checks can be made out to Dennis Saxman and addressed to him at 1717 Bellevue Avenue #205, Seattle, WA 98122.

The above is an individual message from Chris Leman (206) 322-5463, and not offered on behalf of any organization.

The next meeting of the City Neighborhood Council takes place on May 19th (6:30 to 9:00 p.m., West Precinct Conference Room, 810 Virginia Street)

In the meantime, here’s a nice recap of their April 19th neighborhood planning workshop.

Neighborhood planning.  

In May, the City Council will be reacting to the (still very vague) proposal from the Mayor, DON, and the Department of Planning and Development to update the 38 neighborhood plans.  It appears that the Mayor, DON, and DPD do not want to allow those neighborhoods that want to, to repeat the model of the 1990s under which they hired planning consultants for their neighborhood plan under City guidelines and oversight.  Unless the City Council insists, that grassroots model will be dropped in favor of having City staff and City-hired consultants prepare the neighborhood plans.  Also, the Mayor is proposing that the plans to be updated will be only in one or two sectors per year (there are six sectors) rather than based on which plans most need updating.   

CNC’s April 19 neighborhood planning workshop was lively and successful, attended  by more than 110 (including three City Councilmembers).   Seattle P-I reporter Deborah Harrell’s article about it is http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/359823_hoodplans20.html.   Crosscut.com reporter Peggy Sturdivant’s coverage of neighborhood planning (and her May 11 article about the City Neighborhood Council) is http://www.crosscut.com/authors/peggy-sturdivant   Also, Seattle Channel 21 is airing videos of CNC’s April 19 conference on neighborhood planning; to find these on the schedule, go toseattlechannel.org, and search for “neighborhood planning.  For viewing on the web, here are the links:   Panel on “Why do Neighborhood Planning–GMA Compliance and More?”  http://seattlechannel.org/schedule/programDetails.asp?title=5010827 ; How Should Planning Be Done and by Whom? http://seattlechannel.org/schedule/programDetails.asp?title=5010829  ; and What does Success Look Like? http://seattlechannel.org/schedule/programDetails.asp?title=5010828

Saturday morning at City Hall the city neighborhood council sponsored a neighborhood planning workshop. Personally, it reminded me quite a bit of one I attended last year where the city says it is gathering comments, neighbors give examples of where the city needs help, and everyone leaves having enjoyed some snacks and coffee.

This particular planning forum was a follow-up to one in March held at the UW.

Some interesting highlights for me were:

• When asked what a neighborhood without a plan should do, city reps said, get busy now, tap into some Neighborhood Matching Funds, get active, etc…
  OK…great, but they didn’t have any specific answers about what doing this research will guarantee for your neighborhood or even if they would listen to this work any neighborhood completes.
• The audience was predominantly older and white. I’ve heard the city talk about the importance of increasing the diversity of those who are involved with this process - but as far as how they’re going to do it? No real plan yet.
• The concern with institutional players like the Seattle School District, Seattle Housing Authority, Parks Department, Hospitals, the Zoo and Universities who do their own planning outside of neighborhood planning. The concern here is that their planning isn’t aligned with neighborhood planning so the result is that these groups frequently are at odds with one another. Some comments were brought up mentioning that one problem is that when neighborhoods do make connections with these institutions, sometimes these people at the institutions leave and nobody is there to pick up the relationship.
• The Central District and Hillman City both had issues with their plans. The Central District’s issue is that many of the economic investment parts of their plan have been pulled out and reassigned to other neighborhoods (like Capitol Hill). And Hillman City feels that although it is included in the Columbia City neighborhood plan, that they’re getting the short end of the stick - where streetscaping improvements have happened in Columbia City but not Hillman.
• And finally, I liked David Miller’s comments on how the city loves to solicit comments from neighborhoods rather than driving neighborhood participation. And I liked these comments because I kind of felt like today’s meetings (and the other two before them) were mostly about comment gathering.

Photos from the Neighborhood Planning Forum

Just an FYI for those of you following the DON’s current neighborhood planning process. One UW class is helping them conduct smaller focus groups to help gather neighborhood planning info. Of course, the one rub is that the students aren’t giving invitees much of a heads up on this process - the following invitation to attend an April 17th meeting last night was sent out around 5pm on the 14th.  

We’ve been asked by the Department of Neighborhoods and Department of Planning and Development to conduct several focus groups in your area. The purpose of the focus groups is to find out how neighborhood residents feel about the last neighborhood planning process, and identify issues that the City will need to consider during the neighborhood plan update process. I am writing to invite you to participate in a focus group. We are holding two focus groups at the University Heights Community Center (5031 University Way NE) on this Thursday, April 17, one from 6:00 to 7:30 pm, the second from 7:30 to 9:00.

Would you be interested in participating? If so, please let me know which time would work best for you.

Finally, if you know anyone in addition to yourself who would be interested in participating in one of these focus groups, don’t hesitate to get them in touch with me or to give me their contact info.

I know I posted about this earlier, but here it is again!

City Neighborhood Council
Neighborhood Planning Workshop Program
Saturday April 19th 2008 - 8:30 am – noon
Bertha Knight Landes Room, City Hall

Why have Neighborhood Plans?
How and by Whom should a Neighborhood Plan be crafted?
What Can a Successful Neighborhood Plan help citizens accomplish?

Homeowners, renters, business owners all have a stake in the upcoming decisions on how the city will “update” the
existing 38 neighborhood plans. Changes in neighborhood plans and policies are a precursor to land use and
zoning changes as well as a way to identify and prioritize needed infrastructure improvements to accommodate
growth.

The City Council is weighing a proposal from the Mayor to spread the updates over several years, group plans by
geographic sector, and rely heavily on city staff for professional guidance.
The City Neighborhood Council has raised questions about this approach particularly the way it differs from the
grassroots model used when the plans were prepared in the late 1990’s.

Come and join in the Conversation on Neighborhood Planning II and help the Council decide what to authorize
and how to allocate those resources. Hear from and talk to:
• Richard Conlin, City Council President
• Sally Clark, City Council Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Chair
• Stella Chao, Department of Neighborhoods Director
• Jim Diers, author and consultant on neighborhood development
• Tom Hauger, Senior Planner with DPD
• Fellow citizen panelists with diverse experience in the successes and shortcomings of neighborhood planning
and the current approach to dealing with the impacts of growth on neighborhoods citywide.

Sequential Plenary Sessions So You Don’t Miss Any of the Topics!
PANEL 1: Why do Neighborhood Planning – GMA Compliance and More?
PANEL 2: How Should Planning Be Done and by Whom? – What are the successful models to keep citizens
engaged and respected?
PANEL 3: What does Success Look Like? – Can planning improve our quality of life? Provide fair distribution
of growth and public investment?

Light refreshments – Program Begins Promptly at 8:30am – Don’t Be Late

The city council needs to approve the Mayor’s proposal to ‘update’ neighborhood plans, and Councilmember Sally Clark and the Dept of Neighborhoods have been holding meetings to collect neighborhood (and even developer) input.

On Saturday April 19th, from 8:30am-noon in City Hall’s Bertha Knight Landes Room there will be a discussion on Neighborhood Planning Part II, Path to Citizen Empowerment.

I believe that this is a continuation of this neighborhood planning meeting from March. The first planning meeting was very useful, and I like the fact that this meeting is going to address the following:

* How will future growth really affect your neighborhood and the city?
* Is your neighborhood plan working or just sitting on the shelf?
* Who ‘owns’ your plan?

More information, visit http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoodcouncil/

Last month Seattle Metropolitan published and article talking about development in Wedgwood and Phinney Ridge. In it DPD director Diane Sugimura was quoted as saying, “We hear a lot of concern about what is happening with neighborhood character.” and “Change is hard to accept.”

In the article this comment was actually directed at neighborhood activists like myself, but in reality, Sugimura is the one most resistant to change. And what she’s resistant to changing are the broken elements of our zoning code which permit really bad infill development. (And this goes beyond just townhomes and condos, our land use code is being abused to allow bad single-family development too).

So…what does this change that the city is avoiding look like? Well..the good news is that a group called ‘Livable Seattle’ has done this work for us by publishing a 21-page commentary on the Multifamily Update draft that Mayor Nickels is using the Department of Planning and Development to push forward. (quick note: this was first reported on the Seattle Community Council Federation’s blog)

Why this update is bad for Seattle is because it expands (and doesn’t fix) the scope of our current zoning problems while also significantly removing neighborhoods’ voices from the discussion table. And removing these neighborhoods from the discussion takes out an important element of the process which has had some success at preventing many more of the kinds of problems detailed in Livable Seattle’s report.

Anyway…getting back to change, maybe the change that Sugimura should start making starts with accepting what the City Auditor wrote last year and was reported by the Seattle PI as neighborhood neglect.

“The City made a commitment to the neighborhoods when it adopted the Comprehensive Plan – that in exchange for accepting growth and density, the neighborhoods would be engaged to participate in designing mitigating measures to make their communities more livable. This kind of engagement requires an ongoing City commitment to provide the resources to draw all interested community members into the process.”

Visit Livable Seattle and grab a copy (or you can click here and grab it).

Here are just a few visual examples and comments from the Livable Seattle’s report where broken zoning codes are causing problems:

There used to be yards, and kids, and trees. Then the code writers decided that townhomes would make affordable “starter homes” for young families, and now yards, kids, and trees are gone.

Where’s the back door? Instead of using alley access to put the parking in the back, the developer used stock plans, tried and true, and fenced off the unpaved alley. No gates. Developers are allowed to reduce the rear setback to almost nothing when facing the alley. Maybe the City can plant trees or make a playground in this now useless city-owned alley for some real open space.

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.

Here are some challenges and questions that attendees to the Saturday forum are being asked to think about.

Civic Engagement for the 21st Century Project

Neighborhood Planning Forum

As part of today’s discussion, we are interested in learning more about what you—the community—think are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing neighborhood planning in Seattle, and how you think those challenges should be addressed.

[Read more →]

I’m going to ‘whine and dine’ it up!

————————

10:00 am - Keynote speaker with three respondents

Keynote: Professor Carmmen Sirianni from Brandeis University
Respondents: City of Seattle Councilmen McIver, Karma Ruder of the Center for Ethical Leadership, and Tom Hauger of the City of Seattle Department of Planning and Development

[Read more →]

This is a copy of one of the four files I received in preparation of Saturday’s Neighborhood Planning Forum meeting at the UW. This one summarizes the topics to be discussed.

NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING FORUM: TOPIC BACKGROUNDER

There are inherent challenges to neighborhood planning, but the approaches to overcoming these challenges can be transformed into opportunities. During today’s deliberation we want to explore these challenges and opportunities, and discover which ones might apply to neighborhood planning in Seattle.

Challenge 1: The City/Neighborhood Partnership

Throughout the neighborhood planning process, the largest challenge facing a city is how power and decision-making authority are distributed, and the working partnership between city government and citizens.

In a city-directed process, the city government can provide technical expertise to evaluate the feasibility of recommendations, relay recommendations to district-wide and regional authorities that require their collaboration, and will commit to implementing the results. However, city-directed planning is often more limited to the measures government is responsible for, and some evidence shows that top-down planning processes do not always build on the work and momentum from previously planning initiatives.

A neighborhood-directed process is likely to produce more varied results, and to include recommendations that would be implemented not just by government but also by residents, businesses, non-profits or others. There is also some evidence that shows neighborhood-directed processes result in more buy-in and ownership of results, which can leverage valuable resources for plan implementation. However, neighborhood-directed planning processes do not always include necessary city staff, which can produce plans with recommendations that are too vague for effective implementation.
[Read more →]

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!

Here is a copy of an urgent letter I received from some concerned Seattleites. This letter does a great job of pointing out how the city’s attempt to ’simplify the zoning code’ is going to exasperate exacerbate many of the problems with the existing codes, and cause new ones to develop. Sadly, nothing in the ‘zoning simplification’ addresses fixing the larger problems with the existing code (like micropermitting) which are causing much of the bad development taking place in Seattle.

If you disapprove of this plan, contact the members of the city council land use committee: Councilmembers Tim Burgess, Sally Clark, Jean Godden, and Tom Rasmussen

Citywide Upzone Outside Villages Being Rushed Through by Planning Staff

Seattle Urgently Needs Your Help
Over the holidays, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) quietly issued a Declaration of Non Significance (DNS) on what it bills to the public and Council as a “Multi-Family Update.”Adrienne Quinn, the City’s Housing Director, perhaps unwittingly, misrepresented the changes to City Council when she called them “some proposed changes to the multi-family code, really more clean-up”. (This occurs at 4:13:12 of the video of the Urban Development and Planning Committee 12/12/07). See:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2140731

Actually, this is a total rewrite of all of the development standards for all the multi-family zones, a complete change in the comprehensive plan. Most important, it destroys the consensus reached after a long process in 1988 and 1989, when the city rewrote the code to deal with ugly, excessively dense conditions created by the city’s 1980’s attempt at an “experimental code.” The 1989 process took over a year and had an enormous amount of citizen input. Now the planning staff proposes to bring back the very problems that caused the 1989 rewrite-and even worse-to break all the promises made to communities who agreed to take Urban Villages. Some of the worst changes will:

Purge the rezoning criteria of definitive aspects that ordinary people can understand.

Upzone the most common apartment zones (L2 and L3) and bring back huge ugly, ugly multifamily buildings where both the existing code and Department of Planning and Development’s own proposal says they do not belong-outside villages.

Sell zoning-additional height and bulk within villages (in addition to already increased standards) creating even huger buildings in villages that didn’t get listed against L3 upzones.

Dispense with all limitations to assure compatibility with existing development (overweighting DPD Objective 2–”foster creative design through development flexibility.” The rest of this list enumerates how this single-minded focus loses all sight of the comprehensive plan’s urban village strategy.

Repeal, in some places, and in other places enlarge building width and depth limits-critical limits that
did away with appeals by discouraging the assembling of lots outside villages.

Replace lot coverage limits in all zones, and density limits in L3 with the complex FAR (floor area ratio) used in commercial zones, so complex that neighborhoods lose the predictable densities and lot coverages promised in 1989.

Increase permitted height in all the zones below L3 (from 25′ to 30′ high).

Replace front, rear, and side setbacks with a flat seven feet (7′) all around.

Leave townhouse disasters unaddressed, if not worsened by the setback relaxations.

Repeal “open space” and “ground related”, even remove the terms from the glossary. *

Replace nature’s way of accepting storm runoff–open space-with the “Green
Area Factor,” a complicated numbers game just adopted for business districts that has not been demonstrated to have any real benefits.

Replace predictable development standards with vague design standards, such as ‘choice of articulation,’ with the DPD director (which usually means plan reviewer) as the sole judge and no community participation or appeal allowed.The Comprehensive Plan still elaborately documents the Urban Village strategy that neighborhood planners honored and expect to be honored-attractive density increases in villages, and in-fill projects that fits in outside villages. This “cleanup” cleans out the urban village strategy and replaces it with high density again scattered randomly around the city. It throws out neighborhood plans and upzones with a code change.None of the members of the present Land Use Committee of the City Council were there in 1989. The Department of Planning was there, and has the audacity to think we have all forgotten.”He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it”We do not need ANOTHER round of experimental zoning.This is the opposite of Simple.This is the opposite of Cheaper, Faster Permitting.There is no emergency yet, but there surely will be if we let this “cleanup” pass.

Yesterday night I had the opportunity to attend a North District Council meeting with 40 other folks at the Lake City Library. The guest speakers were Diane Sugimura of the Department of Planning and Development and Mike McGinn of Seattle Great City Initiative.

Mike’s talk was interesting. He showed photos of what the Seattle area might look like in 100 years (very scary) and presented ideas for building smart sustainable urban development. All were great ideas, but I feel like Seattle Great City is more of a theoretical, ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ kind of organization, instead of the in-your-face dog-fight politicking group needed in this city to actually change our zoning and land use laws.

Then Diane Sugimura spoke. And after presenting the DPD’s roles within the city, opened it up to the floor for questions. And boy, she was grilled (especially by a North Seattle audience who wasn’t too happy to begin with since most of them had just been flooded out). And to her credit, Diane handled all the questions with grace and patience. The audience peppered her about ‘crackerbox’ style development, houses built on wetlands and unstable slopes, and developers that level all the trees on the property to build even bigger single family houses. However, while listening to bad development story after bad development story I had a profound thought - the DPD is just a bureaucratic entity and nobody is leading any kind of land use planning within Seattle’s neighborhoods.

In fact, the DPD’s role in city planning is actually pretty small - they’re here to make sure that the pipeline of permits, complaints, and various questions are efficiently processed. Although they may actually think they have some influence, don’t look to Diane or the DPD to propose the kind of updates to the zoning code that these neighbors and others are demanding. Instead, look to the mayor who is choosing not to invest in fixes to our broken zoning codes and to conduct important neighborhood planning.

Sadly, unless you fall within one of the following areas I’ve listed below - you’re pretty much on your own. And if you don’t have the backing of a strong community council, you’re going to have to build up your coalition to fight any bad projects in your neighborhood.

The areas where the city of Seattle is actually devoting its urban planning attention.

• The city is demanding more from it’s own buildings in terms of environmental and community sustainability.
• The city is actively planning growth in South Lake Union and the Downtown area. (note: the Denny Triangle area is strangely outside this area)
• The city is will retain the 65%+ portion of the city that is zoned single family (note: and this is old school thinking too, there are plenty of single family areas that would be ripe for improvement if they could be zoned multi-family. What is important here is to manage the transition between single and multi-family zones)

Anyway, I now believe more than ever that to get the kind of land use planning attention throughout Seattle that the city deserves, that we’re going to have to either change our mayor’s attitudes, or get a new mayor.

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.