So what this means is that the real beneficiaries of this kind of permit are going to be the few people who live on your block - you know, the people who live so close you walk over to their houses to say ‘hi’.

Anyway, I then went to check out some of the related info that the city created to help drum up ideas for the block party and checked out some party ideas and invites to the block party they created..and this is where things start getting creepy.

You see, the city doesn’t want neighbors getting together just for the hell of it to grill and listen to music in the street - no, there needs to be some educational social-moral lesson underlying the event. And the lesson the city wants you to leave with isn’t how many hot dogs you can cram into your mouth, but how important it is for you neighbors to go car-free. And they want you to know how especially critical it is to go car-free in situations like this one - where the city is concerned about neighbors on residential streets driving over to their next door neighbor’s house. 

But what’s even weirder than that is how the purpose of these block parties have changed in eyes of the city. These annual get togethers used to be associated with block watches and making sure neighbors got to know one another so that they’d be more likely help keep an eye out for any crime in the neighborhood. And this makes sense, the better you get to know your neighbors, the more willing they are to care about you.

But that’s probably not a priority anymore, since it is not as important as making sure everyone knows about Mayor Nickels’ “Climate Action Now” program and how he has singlehandedly brought environmental awareness to Seattle. Remember that during an election year, it is more critical than ever that you realize that anything the mayor does for the city benefits the environment. 

So what if these permits aren’t shutting down ‘major arterials’ where the real traffic is, no, it’s the city cracking down on the practice of next door neighbors driving a house or two over to visit one another that is the real prize the city is after. 

Anyway, don’t let me bum you out, just ignore all of the lessons the city is trying to pass off here and have fun bbq’ing with your neighbors.

Get your own permit here.

(Here’s a copy of the invite, comments added by me)

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And if rejecting the environmental assessment that the city approved wasn’t enough news, the Maple Leaf Community Council also announced that this Campfire property is back up for sale. I’m not sure if Prescott ever closed the deal on this property, but if not, it would seem that the Campfire Northwest’s board really hurt the organization by; 1) choosing to create an adversarial relationship with the neighborhood instead of working together with them on a workable solution for this property, 2) pricing the land for way more than it would be worth and 3) moving Campfire offices out of their Waldo Woods and into another location where they’re now paying lease fees.

Here’s a copy of the press release, and just so you all know, Seattle city council candidate David Miller was a huge driving force behind holding the city accountable for not conducting a proper environmental review of this project.

Location of the Maple Leaf Waldo Woods project (swiped from The Stranger)

June 2, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Maple Leaf Community Council Executive Board, an elected body representing over 3,400 homes and businesses in north Seattle’s Maple Leaf neighborhood, announces today a successful outcome for their King County Superior Court case filed as part of an ongoing effort to positively affect development at the site of historic Waldo Hospital.

On May 29, King County Superior Court Judge Timothy A. Bradshaw remanded the decision of the Seattle Hearing Examiner, directing the Hearing Examiner to ‘fully consider the additional condition’ of a tent-like enclosure to protect the Maple Leaf Reservoir and surrounding community from lead-bearing dust during any demolition of Waldo Hospital. The lack of any meaningful mitigation for the spread of toxic lead dust during demolition was the primary focus of Maple Leaf’s appeal to King County Superior Court and the appeal to the Hearing Examiner.

‘We are happy the judge agreed with evidence presented by our experts that lead dust resulting from demolition was a significant health risk to the community requiring certain mitigation,’ stated Maple Leaf Community Council President Marc Phillips. ‘Our efforts to save the trees on the site were the most visible part of what the community was working on, but winning this point was very important to families in our community who drink water from the reservoir, have their kids play at the adjacent ball fields, or have their kids picked up at one of three school bus stops in the immediate area’.’

Among the several reports submitted by the developer that contained false or incomplete information, an initial toxins survey claimed there was “no lead detected” in the 1920s-era Waldo Hospital. Only after repeated urging by the Maple Leaf community did the city require sufficient testing, revealing the presence of lead in the walls and in surrounding soil. It is important to note that the lead in the walls of the building only becomes dangerous during demolition. If the building is left intact, lead-based paint on the walls is easily sealed and poses no danger to the community or users of the building.

‘We want to express our thanks to the hundreds of people from our community and across Seattle who supported our efforts to positively affect development at this site,’ stated David Miller, who headed up the Maple Leaf Community Council’s effort on Waldo Hospital. ‘This was never about stopping development, it was about making sure the development was environmentally sound. Having the judge recognize the danger of lead contamination from demolition is critical since there are no federal, state, county, or city rules protecting communities from the spread of lead dust.’

‘The EPA has said there is no safe level of lead for children,’ stated industrial hygienist and toxics expert Janice Camp, who lives in Maple Leaf and provided expert testimony during the hearings. ‘Even the City admitted under oath they don’t do a good job on this issue, and this court decision is a step towards fixing the problem,’ added Ms. Camp.

The Maple Leaf Community Council has learned the Waldo Hospital property is again for sale. ‘As we did back in 2006 when we learned through a news article the property was for sale,’ stated Mr. Miller, ‘we immediately reached out to the property owners. This time, we were able to provide names and contact information of qualified, interested buyers to the owners and their real estate agent. We have already been contacted by multiple bidders who are interested in preserving the building and the grove of trees.’

‘It is not well known that we expended considerable effort trying to work with the original bidders suggesting land swaps and other alternatives to reduce the environmental impact of the proposal,’ stated Mr. Miller. ?Under our own initiative, we even secured a sizable King County Conservation Futures Grant to help preserve the grove. We look forward to working with all parties to return Waldo Hospital to a working, vibrant part of our business community.’

Background

In addition to this legal victory, the publicity about urban forest issues created by the effort to save Waldo Woods has resulted in new Council resolutions, ordinances, and proposals to improve Seattle’s ability to save our urban forest canopy.

Waldo Hospital is located in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of North Seattle, near the intersection of 15th NE and 85th NE. Built in 1924, it was one of the first osteopathic hospitals in the state. It was designed specifically as a teaching institution and located just outside Seattle’s city limits because teaching osteopathy was not allowed in Seattle at the time it was built. Hundreds of osteopaths were trained at Waldo Hospital, and it was the first hospital in the area to allow naturopaths from the fledgling Bastyr School to complete the residency requirements to get their medical degrees.

The hospital was named for its founder, Dr. William ?Bill? Waldo, who was very active in osteopathy on the local, state, and national level. He was a three-time President of the Washington Osteopathic Medical Association, president of the King County Osteopaths, and the President of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) 1921-22. Elected to the AOA Board of Trustees in 1913, he spent the next ten years intimately involved in significant decisions that helped shape the path of osteopathy on a national level. He helped author medical school standards, formulate model legislation for state licensure of osteopaths based on Washington State law, and personally lectured about osteopathy to tens of thousands of Americans in the 1920s and 1930s.

Dr. Waldo was also active locally. His hospital offered free surgical care to patients who couldn’t afford it. During the Great Depression, his affordable flat-rate prices for delivering babies made Waldo Hospital a first choice for Seattle mothers. Dr. Waldo personally delivered over 2,400 babies. He provided free medical care to student athletes of three local high schools, was the team physician for the University of Washington Husky football team, and was the team physician for the Seattle Indians Baseball Club.

Washington Historic Trust placed Waldo Hospital on its Most Endangered Historic Properties list in May of 2007.

In addition to the historic building, the Waldo Hospital site contains a rare urban forest habitat of over 80 trees. The intact grove on the eastern 1/3 of the site has become known as Waldo Woods. It was identified in a King County process to be an environmental area/habitat worth conservation.

More information can be found on the Maple Leaf Community Council web site at http://www.MapleLeafCommunity.org

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I actually thought there were existing limits on the number of street parking permits that households in neighbors where parking is tight could purchase, but I guess I was wrong.

In fact, according to a city report,

In some zones, “car-ranchers” use RPZ permits to park 12 to 20 cars reportedly at a time, while cars are being worked on or up for sale.

Anyway, this is one time that I think the city has come up with a good recommendation to amend this process towards:

Final recommendations

• Do not sell more than eight permits per household address to control car-ranching and extreme abuse of RPZ permits; eight is the legal limit for unrelated people living at same address.

• Consider in future tighter limits or other disincentives for permit sales to manage parking demand.

• One option could be to implement a progressive fee structure to discourage purchasing multi ple permits, where household’s request for the third through eight permits cost increasingly more than the fi rst two permits.

Next steps toward implementation

• Adopt limit of eight permits per household address.

• Modify RPZ permit database to recognize eight-permit limit per household.

But another question has been asked recently, is the city using what seems like a no-brainer reduction in the number of permits issued to each household as an excuse to slide through other changes that would negatively impact neighborhoods?

The counterpoint to the city’s message has been that the city isn’t just making changes to this one point, but they are completely restructuring the whole Residential Parking Zone program. And critics charge that the impact will be that these residential spaces are going to be replaced by commercial parking (so there’s really no reduction in car traffic) that residents will lose their ability to help setup the boundaries of these Residential Parking Zones, and that the city is making it harder to establish new Residential Parking Zones in the future.

One person wrote up to the city saying,

The concern that I ask that the Transportation Committee to pursue is with the removal of the ability for residents to directly act when streets are overburdened by parking overflow from nearby businesses and institutions. There has been almost no public evidence provided to justify removing this avenue for the establishment of new RPZs. The anecdotes provided by SDoT are isolated cases and are not supported by the survey results that have been presented. The use of examples in which SDoT has already established parking restrictions on block designated ‘residential’ by the land use code undermine the argument that the process must be changed. If there should be a new process for establishing RPZs where the land use is residential, that doesn’t mean that it must eliminate the (direct) democratic process that has been in place for 30 years.

I have raised the issue in terms of SDoT acquiring authority that is currently held by the City Council because the Council has the authority to set boundaries in the Land Use Code. Under the current policies, the boundaries set by the Council under the Land Use Code limits SDoT’s exclusive authority to establish parking restrictions. It is plain that SDoT’s proposal would transfer authority from residents to SDoT.

 
You can find more about the whole resolution here, and if you want your thoughts heard you can speak up at tomorrow’s (Tuesday the 19th) 9:30am City Council’s Transportation Committee meeting in City Council Chambers, 601 Fifth Ave.

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The six head shower can be found in one of the luxury units of the Madision Tower/Hotel 1000 building on 1st Avenue downtown. And I guess for those of you who don’t have one at home, I hate to say it, but according to the Weber Thomspon web site, you’re not one of those, ‘demanding and worldly buyers with very sophisticated palates’ that were targeted for this building.

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(Image: Jet City Journal)

into this:
(Image: Jet City Journal)

And I especially thought this was a good observation the Jet City Journal made about Soleil Development and Dan Duffus (who you may remember participated in a big ‘Townhomes - Can the patient be saved‘ forum last year where he played the role of a ‘white hat’ developer).

On the Soleil Development website, Duffus notes that he’s a frequent participant in “focus groups” for the city and the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) and credits himself with “understanding the complexity of Seattle’s land-use code.” In fact, Soleil has taken flack for shoehorning large projects through the DPD permitting system while avoiding any public comment or scrutiny. Soleil also touts its green credentials along with its design philosophy:

We are committed to sustainable practices, restoring and rehabbing existing properties and innovative designs that are in keeping with the character of a neighborhood. (emphasis mine.)

But if this house is in keeping with the character of my neighborhood, I’m a jelly donut.

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Today, presale purchasers of Vulcan’s Rollin Street Flats received a letter from Vulcan’s Ada Healey announcing that:

‘Unfortunately, pre-sales at Rollin Street are at approximately 25%, which is below the 50-70% threshold Fannie Mae and most mortgage lenders require for buyers to obtain financing. Market conditions tell us we will not achieve the required minimum 50% pre-sales in a short timeframe.

We have decided to convert Rollin Street into a rental apartment building. We will refund your earnest money deposit (currently safely held in an escrow account) and any deposits you made for upgrade finish options.”

Meet Rollin Street Apartments

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Of course, one word of caution, I have more interests than just land use, so if you subscribe to my twitter account you’ll see things about:

* Digital media
* Food I like (and sometimes make)
* Traveling
* Did I mention food?

Anyway, the 10 people who are already following me can’t be wrong! And I promise not to be some kind of inconsiderate twit who just collects followers without tweeting or following back.

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If you’d like to learn more about what administrative design review for townhomes really means for neighborhoods, check out thisCORA presentation given in Wedgwood earlier this year.

And what do townhome developers think of this proposal? Here’s what one said about it when the idea was floated last July. (Last July!?! Man, this city moves like mud on updating policies).

Miklos Kohary, who built 160 town homes in the city last year, said the mayor’s “insane” proposal would add $30,000 to $40,000 to each home. He now spends that much on loan payments, he said, waiting for building permits to clear with the city, which takes seven to 10 months.

Will administrative design review make these genetically modified parking areas a dying breed?

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