COMMENTARY: While the economy was booming, the City of Shoreline was ideally positioned to accommodate projected population growth in a reasonable and sustainable manner, as contemplated under the state’s Growth Management Act. It had the means to foster dense, urban redevelopment along existing transit corridors, such as Aurora Avenue North while protecting and preserving less dense single family neighborhoods.
Our region is expected to grow by 1.7 million people over the next 40 years. By encouraging dense redevelopment, the City could create compact, transit-oriented communities. Peter Steinbrueck, a North Seattle resident and former President of the Seattle City Council, now a Harvard Loeb Fellow, has recognized the development of these types of communities as fundamental to meeting the needs of future generations, protecting the environment, and satisfying the goals of the Growth Management Act. At one City Council hearing on this issue Mr. Steinbrueck said: “The best way to predict the future is to plan it, and that's what this is about. It's about growth management, accommodating the needs of your current population and future generations.”
Professor Jeffrey Ochsner, Associate Dean at the University of Washington’s College of Architecture & Urban Planning, has also testified before the City Council on the reciprocal relationship between transit and urban development. According to Professor Ochsner, “land use shapes future options for transportation, and transportation shapes future options for land use.” He also commented that “dense development is necessary to support mass transit, and where we have good transit service we should encourage density to support it.”
Over the past four years, however, GMA planning seems to have given way to political infighting. Rather than accepting the recommendations of City planning staff and the City’s planning commission, the City Council became bogged down in what some have called “micromanagement” and an unwillingness to buck traditional, pre-GMA, suburban mentalities. Numerous mixed-use redevelopment projects, which could have leveraged Shoreline’s transit corridors at a time when financing was still available, have been delayed, in some cases indefinitely. As a result, the City of Shoreline has missed a golden opportunity to attract new private investment, expand its employment and revenue base, and encourage the development of affordable housing in a sustainable, transit-friendly fashion.
What follow are three examples of redevelopment projects that have been lost as a result of the City Council’s resistance to the GMA.
Proposed Redevelopment of the James Alan Salon
After acquiring a neighboring property several years ago, Matthew Fairfax, the owner of the James Alan Salon, began to investigate potential redevelopment possibilities. He drew up plans for a new, mixed-use building that would continue to house the salon on the ground floor, while also providing four floors of high density residential space above. That high density housing would be located one block off of Aurora, a transit corridor that Mr. Steinbrueck has recognized as “ideally suited for transit-oriented development.”
The City’s existing zoning did not allow the salon’s proposed mixed-use building, so Mr. Fairfax approached the City about a possible rezone.
At first, City staff indicated that no rezone would be necessary because of several pending amendments to the zoning code that would allow for the mixed-use building. Those amendments came before the City Council with recommendation of the planning commission shortly thereafter. The Council, however, remanded them to the planning commission for additional review. After conducting the additional review, the planning commission again issued a recommendation. Despite that recommendation, the Council rejected them outright. All told, that process alone cost the project nearly a year.
With the amendments no longer on the table, Mr. Fairfax was forced to seek a rezone that would allow the mixed-use building. Unfortunately, what should have been a fairly efficient and straightforward process turned into a two-year quagmire.
The rezone request went before the City Council on numerous occasions. Each time, it was greeted with broad public support. Will Hall, chair of the City’s planning commission (and candidate for City Council), says that such public support was remarkable since rezone requests are generally greeted with skepticism. Despite this public support, each time the planning commission recommended rezone legislation that would have allowed for the mixed-use development, the City Council either remanded it for further consideration or amended it such that it no longer met the project’s needs.
According to Mr. Fairfax, the City Council routinely couched its concerns over the various rezone proposals in terms of risks posed by “big developers.” The James Alan Salon, however, is not a big developer. It’s a small, local business that was simply trying to redevelop its property in a manner that would reasonably and sustainably accommodate the City’s future growth. (Disclosure: Although not representing Mr. Fairfax, attorneys with the Buck Law Group were briefly involved in counseling those who supported attempts to develop property close to transit corridors.)
The City finally passed a rezone ordinance that would accommodate James Alan Salon’s development proposal on November 3, 2008. By that time, however, the Great Recession was fully underway. Credit markets were so tight that the project could no longer secure financing. Plans for the mixed-use building were scrapped.
Adding insult to injury, the James Alan Salon may now have to leave Shoreline. The salon had vacated its original space during the rezone process, believing that that space would be demolished as soon as a rezone ordinance was passed. While vacant, the space experienced significant water damage, rendering it unusable. Also, and in a somewhat ironic twist, the salon has been instructed by the City to vacate its current leased space in order to make way for the City’s Aurora Corridor Project. According to Mr. Fairfax, the salon is currently investigating potential new locales and leaving the City is a very real possibility.
Proposed Redevelopment of the Overland Trailer Park
Several years ago, the Senior Housing Assistance Group (“SHAG”) began looking at ways to convert the Overland Trailer Park property into affordable rental housing for low-income seniors. Like the James Alan Salon proposal, SHAG’s development would have been located about a block from Aurora, thus taking full advantage of existing mass transit services.
Unlike the James Alan Salon proposal, SHAG’s proposed development was allowed within the Regional Business zone, which was part of the City’s GMA planning. Unfortunately, it upset a number of the neighboring property owners, many of whom felt that projects of that size should not be allowed so close to Single Family Residential zones. They just did not accept the City’s GMA planning.
Before SHAG could even present its proposal to the planning commission, the City Council, capitulating to the neighbor’s concerns, enacted a six-month moratorium on any residential development within any Regional Business zone that was located within 100 feet of certain single family residential zones. This limited moratorium was originally enacted to give the City time to develop standards that would ensure a “reasonable transition” between the higher intensity Regional Business zones and neighboring single family residential zones. The City, however, proved unable to develop those standards within the six-month timeframe. Consequently, it renewed the moratorium on three separate occasions. What started out as six-month moratorium has thus turned into two-year ban, which has cost the City a significant opportunity to increase its stock of affordable senior housing and generate significant tax revenue.
As a further consequence, Mr. Hall believes that the City Council’s decision to engage in a rolling moratorium created a general sense of uncertainty among the local development community. If that proves to be the case, the moratorium could have serious long-term consequences. After all, when it comes to development, uncertainty is no different than obstruction. As Mr. Hall has stated, “Frequent emergency ordinances and moratoria create delays and uncertainty for investors and developers, and that discourages reinvestment in the community. Even if a project has broad public support, it might not get off the ground if there is a fear that the City Council might change the rules through an emergency ordinance.”
Proposed Redevelopment of the Ridgecrest Bingo Hall
A final example has a different pattern, but a similar result. A developer wanted to redevelop the vacant bingo hall across from the Crest Theater as several multi-story mixed-use buildings. While those buildings would not be located on Aurora, they would be serviced by several existing bus routes.
Rather than employing the standard application review process, the City went through an extensive public outreach campaign, involving numerous workshops and charettes. After more than two years of public outreach, the City ultimately came up with a complex package of incentives and trade-offs that would enable the redevelopment to move forward. Unfortunately, by the time the incentives and trade-offs were approved by the City Council, the financial market had bottomed out and financing for the project was no longer available.
The proposal died about a year ago. The site is still fenced off.
Moving Forward
Failure to respect the GMA and listen to the advice of planning professionals wastes opportunities to foster redevelopment and accommodate the needs of future generations. It also results in numerous vacant properties, which provide no services, generate no tax revenue, create potential safety hazards, and can actually depress the values of neighboring properties, leading to a downward spiral.
(Editor’s note: The statements provided by Mr. Hall reflect his personal opinions. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the City’s planning commission.)
