You can make a difference for your neighborhood.

A friend sent me this listing for a waterfront house for sale in Vantage, and wow, that big stuffed cat on the wall really stands out.

Thanks for passing this along Valarie.

PROTECTING HISTORIC SITES

Good Shepherd Center

4649 Sunnyside Avenue N., Room 202

Saturday, October 18, 2008, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Reservations required

$30 admission includes lunch

HISTORIC SEATTLE PROVIDES A WORKSHOP FOR COMMUNITY RESIDENTS TO BECOME THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOOD PRESERVATION EXPERTS

Struggling to understand Seattle’s historic preservation ordinance?

Disturbed by insensitive new construction in your neighborhood?

Seeking procedures for dealing with local historic properties?

Who is on the landmarks board anyway?

Historic Seattle will provide the answers to these questions and more at a full-day workshop featuring presentations by local historic preservation experts.  Advance reservations are required!  Workshop fees are $25 for Historic Seattle members and $30 for the general public.   Please call 206/622-6952 to register or for more information.  You can also register online at www.historicseattle.org.  Workshop participants will enjoy a lunch delivered to the Good Shepherd Center and receive an extensive packet of useful information about local, state, and national preservation issues and opportunities.  The agenda will cover the following topics:

WHAT ARE HISTORIC PROPERTIES?  Presenters will provide an overview of Seattle’s diverse and unique historic resources including the distinctions between “eligible” and “designated” sites.

NEIGHBORHOOD SUPPORT AND OPPOSITION.  Want to know more about rallying local residents for preservation issues?  What should you do if the owner opposes the landmark designation?  What are the alternatives to designated historic buildings and neighborhoods?  Would a conservation district provide enough protection?

SUCCESS STORIES FROM NEIGHBORS WHO LANDMARKED PROPERTIES IN SOUTH PARK, FREMONT, AND CAPITOL HILL

COUNTY, NATIONAL AND STATE PRESERVATION PROGRAMS.  Seattle and King County preservation legislation is different, but how?  What are the advantages of listing on the Washington Heritage Register or the National Register of Historic Places?

FINANCIAL INCENTIVES.  Help is out there, but you need to find out if your historic building qualifies.

Presenters will include: 

Staff for the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board in the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods

Local Consulting Historians and Architects

Former members of the City Landmarks Preservation Board

Staff from the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation

Staff for the King County Landmarks Commission

Staff from 4Culture

And more!

Deadline for registration at the workshop:  Wednesday, October 15, 5:00 p.m.

Thanks for the tip Isla.

October 8: High Design, Low Impact: Residential Design Forum
How do you stay in the business of delivering high quality design in a world shaped by demand for greener homes, baby-boomer interest in downsizing, population growth and a tight real estate market? Learn why “less is more” is more relevant today than ever. By looking at alternative design solutions and the application of new technologies this forum will show you that size matters and that a simple act of restraint can address multiple problems through elegant design.
Keynote: James Timberlake, FAIA
Class Credits
8 LU / 3 HSW
8:00am-5:00pm
Location
REI-Seattle
222 Yale Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
Cost: $160 AIA Members / $80 AIA Assoc. Members / $30 Students / $240 Non Members
Register online at http://www.aiaseattle.org/node/2023

I think this post on my commenting policies has received the most comments of any post I’ve made on the site. However, the core group of comments are touching on a really interesting question - what if you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel your local community council (or club) isn’t meeting your needs?

In 99.9% of cases I’d recommend trying to become a trustee of the community council because most councils are always looking for ‘new blood’ to help out, and honestly, it’s the most productive way to implement change.

And there are generally two ways of joining your council, and the easiest way is if your council currently has openings.

If their are openings (and you can generally check by visiting their web site or emailing the council president) you can generally request that the council add you as a trustee - in most cases they’ll ask you to present them some background information about yourself along with some of your reasons why you want to be on the council. The trustees will then usually vote on whether to let you in or not.

If all of the trustee slots on a council are filled or the reject your application, then you probably will need to wait until the council’s annual election to try again. At that point you would want to make sure you submit your application to become a trustee before their given application deadline and then like any good politician would do - you should go get other community council members to support you when your name comes up to vote.

Once on the council as a trustee you can do quite a bit - you have the opportunity to 1) ask lots of questions, 2) throw out motions, and 3) see if you can build coalitions of other trustees to support your positions.

But suppose the blood is so bad within the neighborhood that the only option is to split up - what can you do? Well, I guess you can form your own community council.

I’m not quite sure how the process would work, but I would assume you would have to create bylaws, elect officers, and set up your organization as a not-for-profit - but that should get you started.

Once this is done I think you would need to lobby the Department of Neighborhoods and the City Neighborhood Council to officially recognize you as a council. The importance of gaining city neighborhood council recognition is so that you could have a seat at one of Seattle’s many district councils, where reps from each community council meet to prioritize issues in their district and make recommendations back up to the city.

For those of you who don’t know what a Small and Simple Grant is - four times a year the Department of Neighborhoods solicits applications for these small and simple grants. These grants are capped at $15k, and the project these grants must be completed within a 6 month period. Grants must fall into one of six types of projects,

1. Race Relations and Social Justice
2. Neighborhood Climate Protection Fund
3. Neighborhood Planning and/or Design Project
4. Capacity Building Project
5. Neighborhood Physical Improvement Project
6. Neighborhood Non-Physical Improvement Project
7. Public School Partnership Project

I’m helping out with putting together one of these grants for neighborhood planning in Wedgwood, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Anyway, the deadline to submit your application is October 6th, and the Dept of Neighborhoods strongly recommends that you get in touch with one of Seattle’s ever-dwindling numbers of Dept of Neighborhoods project managers.

On a side note, there’s a really good book called ‘Neighborhood Power‘ by the former head of the Department of Neighborhoods that gives a nice history of this program along with a seemingly endless number of projects this fund helped.

Urbnlivn wrote about the Cheap Shit Condos site yesterday. And wow, they put the smackdown on some of Seattle’s most ‘design-challenged’ buildings.

And just for the record, this isn’t my site. But I do kind of wish I had thought of this sarcastic caption -

The American Institute of Architects is conducting a course on ‘Design for Livablity: Doing Density Right’ for September 26th, and a course on September 27th called ‘Taking Action: Advocacy Training’.

The courses are largely designed for architects and others in the development industry, but the topics seem pretty interesting even for those who are on the neighborhood advocacy side of the fence.

Some of the courses include:

Housing Typologies: Not Your Average Townhome 6-pack
Getting Great Design from Design Review
Implementing Your Vision Through Form-Based Codes
Sustainable Communities: Can LEED for Neighborhood Development help?
Character Building Growth for Small Cities
What To Do With The Automobile?

It will cost you $260 to attend (unless you’re a student then the price drops to $35), but maybe you can get your local community council to foot the bill.

You can get more info about it here.

Could the Rainier Valley Post be a junior West Seattle blog in training? It looks like they’re providing some super indepth coverage of the Rainier Valley combined with a tendency to actually confirm facts. Nice job.

But what is really great about this blog is that they caught one of the most interesting coincidences of the year. On Monday the RVP published this Q&A with SDOT regarding traffic safety in the New Holly neighborhood - and within this post the RVP included a complaint from the owner of the Kwik Cup cafe about SDOT’s response to traffic issues in the neighborhood.

And then later that day the RVP reports that a car which was struck by another vehicle then crashed into the front of the Kwik Cup cafe!

Fortunately nobody was hurt, but could there be any better proof that traffic conditions are really bad in New Holly.

A couple of stories caught my eye here because of the

In fact, where else can you find this - RVP posts an article

Q&A with SDOT re: ripping out Holly Park speed bumps?

And then the very next day a car crashes into the letter writer’s cafe!

Wanted to pass on this status on the Maple Leaf Community Council’s appeal of the DPD’s permitting decision for the Waldo Woods property in NE Seattle.

The week of August 4, our appeal of DPD’s decision that there was no environmental impact to the proposed development at Waldo Hospital was heard by the Seattle Hearing Examiner. The hearing lasted 3.5 days, concluding on Friday, August 8. Written closing arguments were due at 5pm on August 22. The Hearing Examiner has 14 days to publish her ruling. This means we will hear her decision no later than 5pm on September 5.

The short answer is, I actually don’t have a policy.

However, I did want to let everyone who reads this blog know that I was nicely asked (not threatened) to remove a couple of comments from two posts on this blog.

The first comment I was asked to remove, which I did, was from someone who asked me to remove it because it included personal email address contacts.

The second comment I removed was at the request of someone mentioned in one of the comments. And since pulling this comment off the post pretty much put the other three comments out of context - I decided to end the conversation on that thread.

Anyway, what do you think of my call here? Are these fair reasons for removing comments? And if so, should I indicate that a comment has been removed?

Thanks,
Greg

Wow, congrats to the ‘Save the Trees’ team, they took on a pretty formidable foe and won! Now the school district has to apply for and receive the correct permits for their project.

Now with that out of the way, here are some hard questions that should be asked.

Just passing along this press advisory from ‘Save the Trees!’, the group that is challenging the Seattle School District’s approach to development at Ingraham High School.

Save the Trees! Press Advisory Update – Monday August 25, 2008

A hearing is scheduled for 2:00 PM today Monday, August 25, before Judge Erlick of the King County Superior Court, 516 Third Ave, Seattle in Rm W 10-60 on the Save the Trees Motion for a Preliminary Injunction and Motion to Reduce Bond. 

Save the Trees is back in court today on their motion for a Preliminary Injunction to prevent the Seattle School District from cutting down 68 Douglas fir, Western Red Cedar and Pacific madrone trees on the west side of Ingraham High School before a hearing can be held in King County Superior Court to resolve the environmental impacts of the project. The temporary restraining order expires today, which means the Seattle School District could again try to cut the trees down tomorrow unless the Preliminary Injunction is granted.

As Save the Trees Attorney Keith Scully of Gendler and Mann notes in the petition to the Superior Court, “The District’s Decision to withdraw its MUP and other permit applications has dramatically altered the factual picture since the Hearing Examiner made her decision. As the District has gone to great pains to demonstrate, the District has not applied for permits…It can cut the trees without any city permits or even finalizing construction plans.  It is not bound to submit the proposal as described to the Hearing Examiner to the City.  There is thus no guarantee that any mitigation will actually be constructed once the trees are gone, let alone enough to compensate for the massive increase in untreated stormwater to Haller Lake, increase in greenhouse emissions, removal of habitat, and other impacts that will result from the District’s clearcut.  Unlike most land use cases, where the court reviews both the permits and the associated SEPA review, the District in this matter is attempting to manipulate the City of Seattle’s review process by cutting trees before finalizing permit plans.  The necessary consequence to the District of this course of action is that they cannot rely on hypothetical mitigation measures to justify the determination of non-significance: unlike the facts presented to the Hearing Examiner, the only action on the table at this time is clear-cutting a rare collection of trees and other native species”

The Ingraham Tree Grove is comprised of a plant habitat that has been identified by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources as a rare plant community in King County.  The area has also functioned as a school and community park and has been used by Ingraham High School biology and ecology classes for education purposes. While the Seattle City Council and Mayor Nickels are urging the preservation of existing trees and adding canopy to the city, the Seattle School District is going in the opposite direction.

The issue at Ingraham High School is not one of education versus trees. We can have both trees and education.  The Seattle School District can build the proposed addition on the open lawn area on the North side of the School without cutting down any large trees.  This is a location they have already identified and selected as a future building site in the Ingraham Master Plan. Save the Trees supports the renovation of Ingraham High School and building the new addition on the North side of the school.

By having withdrawn their construction permits and trying to just cut the grove of trees down, the Seattle School District is trying to avoid any consideration of Washington State and Seattle environmental and land use laws.  They are saying the issues will be settled by the chain saw not the rule of law.  To date the environmental issues have only been evaluated by the Seattle School District which obviously has a conflict of interest.  The appeal before a hearing examiner was before a hearing examiner hired by the Seattle School District.  The issues have yet to reach the King County Superior Court.   The Seattle School District is playing the school yard bully and trying to prevent the normal process by which citizen’s have a right to seek redress from actions or decisions  of their government which they think are wrong.

I need to update the ‘Mega House Ordinance’ link in the upper right hand corner of my blog, because well, it’s freakin’ out of date.

But looking at the old link is fun because it let’s you see how Conlin’s proposed mega house ordinance has changed in the past year.

In fact, since comparing things can be entertaining, let’s look at what’s changed with Conlin’s proposal since last year.

Right now the rule regarding single-family home new construction is that, ‘The maximum lot coverage allowed in single family zones is currently 35% or 1750 square feet, whichever is greater.’ 

Back in July of 2007, Conlin proposed doing away with the ‘or’ part of this coverage rule and replacing it with a flat 35%. Of course, things change (ie lobbyists get involved) and proposed ideas get massaged (you can get a summary here, or read council bill 116275 here) so that no conjunction is ever permanently removed from any piece of Seattle land use code. (In this new proposal ‘and’ replaces ‘or’.)

Conlin’s new proposal is ‘(1,000 square feet + 15% of lot area) to determine the amount of lot coverage on lots less than 5,000 square feet, to replace the current 1,750 square feet allowance.’

Okay, so what does this really look like. I put together this quick chart showing what the maximum coverage for three different lot sizes are (Lot sq foot) - the first is what can be built now (current code), what it would have been under Conlin’s original recommendations (Conlin pre), and what the limits could be under Conlin’s new recommendation (Conlin post).

Last year in Conlin’s plan, ‘The base height limit in single family zones would be reduced from 30 feet to 25 feet’, that simple provision appears to have been removed and replaced by this brain-teasing regulation.

Removing height averaging provisions that allow height to be determined based on the height of adjacent single family structures, when either structure exceeds 30 foot height limit;
adjacent single family structures, when either structure exceeds 30 foot height limit;

And last year Conlin said, ‘The five-foot additional height allowed for pitched roofs, and the extra height currently allowed on sloped lots, remain unchanged by the proposed ordinance.’

But this year, there are changes to both the pitched roofs and the extra height currently allowed on sloped lots.

Roof pitches now have to be built at a 4:12 (pretty shallow  - about 14 degrees) ratio instead of the current 3:12 ratio (really shallow, about 18 degrees - by the way, this is also the roof pitch you find on most mobile homes).

Unfortunately at the end of the day, this change in roof pitches (from 3:12 to 4:12) is going to be pretty hard for anyone to notice when the roof is actually built.

And keeping the extra height currently allowed on sloped lots would be capped at 5′ (1 foot for every 6 degrees of slope). Would anyone really build a house on a lot that sloped more than 30 degrees? Yeah…at that slope you should talk to your insurance company - because you could be at risk for a landslide.

Honestly, I have no idea why Conlin is tooting his horn on these two negotiated points, the updates he negotiated for roof pitch and slope caps are insignificant at best - it’s almost as if his eyes glazed over and he stopped negotiating when some basic geometry was brought to the table - hmmm…4:12 sounds better than 3:12, and I think a cap on 30 degrees of slope sounds fair - I mean, if a slope were 90 degrees (ie - a cliff) - that means they could build an extra 15 feet - that’d be terrible!

One part of his new proposal - the hardscape surface limitation could help - where ‘The maximum hardscape surface permitted shall not exceed sixty five percent (65%) of the lot area.’

It also seems like he closed a couple of odd loopholes with, ‘Reducing from 25% to 10% the amount of additional permitted lot coverage when a lot is adjacent to an alley; Removing provisions allowing corner lots to include ½ of an abutting side street in lot coverage calculations; ‘

But the one area he doesn’t address at all are setbacks. And for neighbors who live next to megamansions, these are the big issues - where a megamansion can tower over you because it can be located just 5 feet away from the property line!

In fact, look at this poor little house in Wedgwood hiding in the lower right hand corner from this beige 3,226 sq foot megamansion- I wish I could buy the place and rent it out to a bunch of sunbathing nudists - it’d make the megamansion owners wish they were more than 5 feet away from the property line.

Anyway, there are some good things in his proposal - but he could have done much better by pushing harder for lowered heights and increased setbacks- my grade for Conlin on this, a C-.

SaferFremont.blogspot.com writes about the Fremont neighborhood’s efforts to improve traffic safety and reduce crime.

Hmmm…I think I know who is stealing those VW beetles.

One of the hardest things for a neighborhood to convey to the city how a proposed development would fit into the neighborhood. Architects are able to convey their vision of this in early design review by showing professionally produced mock-ups of the development as it would fit into the neighborhood. And if you’ve ever seen one of these mock-ups, you know they always look really good.

Now, consider what the neighbors produce - they talk about the neighborhood and what the development will mean to the area - but generally have a hard time showing what it will look like.

However, there is one new tool called Photosynth that could be used to tie photos of a property together to show just how dynamic the location is.

I went ahead and took photos of a property on the corner of 86th and 35th to show what stitching photos together can produce. In this case you can slide along two sides of a building at a variety of different angles.

Think about the cool uses of this, you could show the entire grove of trees at Ingraham High, or all four crossings at a dangerous intersection.

I’m going to add some more of these photos of different projects over the next few days, and if you add any, feel free to let me know.