Mountlake Terrace is trying to increase building heights

[MrVandelay]

Is the future of city going up?
By Diane Brooks
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...wntown13n.html
Times Snohomish County Bureau



Everyone agrees: Never before had Mountlake Terrace so intently sought the opinions, ideas and values of its citizens.

Roundtable meetings. Brainstorming sessions. Forums. Design workshops. Open houses. Public hearings. Full-color, multipage mailings to every known household in the city, population 20,400.

All squeezed into an intense, nine-month time frame.

"I guess we're about to see if it's a boy or a girl," said Michelle Robles, one of several City Council members still undecided about how the "baby" — the city's future downtown — should look.

The question is: Did anyone really listen to what people said?

The city Planning Commission on Nov. 27 unanimously endorsed a redevelopment plan that would revive the city's dying retail strip by dramatically increasing allowable building heights, which now top off at three stories. The City Council will take up the proposal Thursday; it could vote by Jan. 2.

A roughly three-block area of the downtown core, south and west from the corner of 232nd Street Southwest and 56th Avenue West, would be rezoned to allow mixed-use buildings up to 10 stories tall.

Consultants and the business community say that's the most efficient way to entice developers into razing the existing structures — a pair of 40-year-old strip malls, a modest post office and a church housed in a former Albertsons grocery — and begin creating a new city identity and a solid financial future.

Other sections of the downtown district, a long and mostly narrow strip along 56th, would be rezoned for mixed-use structures ranging from two to five stories tall, with a transition zone of town houses and live/work dwellings buffering the new developments from neighboring homes.

Critics of the plan, including leaders of Mountlake Terrace Citizen Voices, say residents never asked for such large-scale change.

"To me, it's such a flawed process," said group founder Sharon Maynard, who believes the city and its consultant clearly favored the higher-density plan from the start. "The [public] brainstorming was amazing — it was energy, ideas, creativity. I did not see those ideas taken to the next stage."

Maynard's group has collected 1,200 signatures on petitions calling for, among other things, a three-story height limit throughout downtown. Much of the opposition is centered in neighborhoods closest to the business district.

Most residents want a low-key downtown area, she said, with family-oriented gathering spaces such as ice-cream parlors. Small and medium-sized, locally owned businesses would be ideal.

"They are saying nothing will 'pencil out' unless you go taller," Maynard said. "The truth is, it depends on the parcel, and it depends on the developer."

Don Edwards, president of the Mountlake Terrace Business Association, participated in the workshops, too. But he recalls hearing some community support for taller downtown buildings, and he's skeptical about how many of the 1,200 petition signers truly understood the larger issues.

"My understanding is that there are people [developers] who are waiting for the vote on Jan. 2, so on Jan. 3 they can step forward," he said.

The council's Thursday work session will be followed by a Dec. 18 public hearing. If the council reached a consensus on a preferred plan that night, a final vote could be taken Jan. 2.

Nobody is predicting the outcome; the council appears evenly divided, with several members undecided.

"The jury is out for me right now. I'm still trying to debate and go over every little issue I can think of to make a good choice," said Councilwoman Laura Sonmore.

Robles said decision-makers truly have listened to the public, but opinions are too diverse to make everyone happy.

"There are those that want the town to grow, and there are those that don't want the town to change; it's a matter of finding the shoe that fits the most feet and doing something that's going to help the city in the long run," she said.

Mayor Jerry Smith supports the commission's proposal.

"I've listened to them," he said of the critics. "I'm not ignoring them. Nobody likes change, really. It's something that scares them, that they're going to get lots of traffic and this and that. I see it as a little growth to help the taxpayers — we need to either build or raise taxes."

Councilman John Zambrano pointed to a consultant model that predicted the creation of 870 new jobs if heights were raised to 10 stories.

"Hopefully, we'll put this thing to bed [soon], up or down, whichever way the fiddlesticks fall. And God willing, it will be in the best interest of the majority," he said.

[MrVandelay]

City expected to keep downtown height limits
By Diane Brooks
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...dmonds20n.html
Times Snohomish County Bureau


After three years of debate, both passionate and analytical, the Edmonds City Council was expected Tuesday night to approve a package of development codes that could dramatically affect downtown's future.

Simply put: Two-story buildings would continue to rule throughout the city's business districts. The preservationists won, while proponents of economic redevelopment feel they lost.

"We held on to height limits. I think we've done a good job," said Councilman David Orvis, a member of the council's 4-3 majority favoring the new codes.

The council also was expected to revoke a two-year moratorium on new buildings taller than 25 feet. Nobody sought building permits for downtown projects during that period.

Strom Peterson, president of the Downtown Edmonds Merchants Association, is skeptical about downtown's economic future. Many buildings went up in the 1940s and '50s, he said, and are falling into disrepair, with inadequate plumbing and wiring.

"There's not this great influx of people banging on the gates, people willing to build downtown," said Peterson, who owns Resident Cheesemonger and co-owns Olive's Café & Wine Bar. "Property is very expensive, so it's difficult for somebody to buy a building to tear it down and build back up. ... If I were a builder, I sure wouldn't be looking at Edmonds."

The city's new rules would allow buildings up to 30 feet, if the upper levels are stepped back from the street. Developers — and two city consultants — say downtown redevelopment isn't profitable without a 33-foot cap, generally needed to build two stories of condos above retail spaces. Under the 30-foot rule, only strongly sloping properties would sustain three-story buildings.

The previous council majority had endorsed a plan to raise some allowable heights to 33 feet, but that majority was overthrown when voters in 2005 replaced pro-growth member Jeff Wilson with Ron Wambolt, who took office in January.

Wambolt, a leader of the Alliance of Citizens for Edmonds, campaigned hard on the height issue. After knocking on thousands of doors, he was adamant that residents love downtown's small-town charm and oppose taller buildings.

The remaining members of the former majority — Peggy Pritchard Olson, Mauri Moore and Richard Marin — were conciliatory in defeat.

But Olson was disappointed last week when the new majority reneged on what she thought was a compromise struck earlier this year. The Planning Board had recommended that some elements, such as roof gardens, parapet walls or deck railings, be allowed to extend above 30 feet.

The council, on a 4-3 vote, stripped out most of the proposed exceptions. As amended, the rules would only allow a single element, such as a turret or clock tower, to extend an extra 5 feet. The protruding structure couldn't cover more than 5 percent of the roof area.

Orvis said he recalled no compromise agreement.

"Those exceptions I thought were essentially raising the height limit," he said.

The height debate was triggered by the recent development of several three-story buildings that virtually everyone disliked. To comply with the city's 30-foot height limit, in place since the 1980s, developers either sank the retail floor below street level or created unnaturally low first-floor ceilings.

Both plans addressed that problem, requiring 12-foot ceilings and street-level entries.

[mhays]

That sucks for the two of them. I had high hopes for Edmonds in particular since it's already a pretty good downtown, just missing a critical mass of people.

Most local municipalities are forming or densifying downtowns. These two are rare.

[mSeattle]

I saw this online at the PI but didn't read the article. Yea, too bad. They're way out there anyway. This could hopefully put pressure on Lynnwood/Everett to go higher.

[NW Mike]

Yes this will put pressure on Lynnwood and Everett since they already have approved the new Height limits. I would love to see Lynnwood build up. They already have a nice grid lay out of blocks and sits right between 99 and I-5. Keep Mountlake and Edmonds below the 5 stories and move the Central growth to Everett! Sitting on that slight Hill will give it a great skyline over the water.