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Seattle looks to rein in state policy used to push back on big projects
- StudentStuff 7y agoThe city and state have permitted environmental protection laws to be used and abused by those with the funds to hire a lawyer, to the point that one angry person has successfully stopped redevelopment of the military base at Fort Lawton: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/cbmeye/fort_lawton_redevelopment_plans_draw_legal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/cbmeye/fort_lawt... When I was a kid, half my class was kids from Fort Lawton. They were kind, compassionate, and fun to hang out with after school, despite the limited means of most of the households that were in Fort Lawton. Many of the people that live (under the radar) in the park surrounding Fort Lawton would lead much better lives if we redeveloped this into affordable apartments. The area already has reliable bus service (with dedicated lanes to downtown) and dedicated bike trails and lanes, its one of the few candidates for adding significant housing at a low cost inside Seattle. Edit: A word
- greenonions 7y agoSeems like a positive move to limit the tools of NIMBYs to stymie well-intended development.
- ganitarashid 7y agoThis is a huge step back for the environment. People who are not familiar with construction and development don’t know just how much waste and garbage and pollution is generated by real estate development.
- jjallen 7y agoWhat do you propose as an alternative to real estate development to build housing?
- vineyardmike 7y agoMove to Detroit, they're literally giving away houses /s
- joemcb 7y agoSo true! If you don't build denser housing in urban areas, the people just disappear and cause zero environmental impact living further out in suburban sprawl where they drive everywhere.
- ganitarashid 7y agoThere will always be more people. There is only one environment.
- lazyasciiart 7y agoI think you completely missed the point of that comment.
- ganitarashid 7y agoNot really. Housing should be more expensive than is is now, both in cities as well as in suburbs. We don’t want growth, we want less growth. High prices will slow growth which is a good thing for the environment.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago> There will always be more people What are you picturing, government enforced house sharing?
- ganitarashid 7y agoI don’t think anything would have to be enforced. Look at San Francisco or NYC. Most people wouldn’t want to have a family of 3 kids there because it’s too expensive.
- lazyasciiart 7y agoNo - they live in the suburbs of new developments and drive in to work there. Massively, unarguably a worse impact on the environment than building some condos downtown. It's like you think people will say oh well, can't afford San Francisco, I'll move to Detroit!
- seltzered_ 7y agoYou have to think about complexity rather than just construction impact. Taking this argument leads one down a problematic 'Tragedy of the commons' path. As someone else said, not building may just create more sprawl somewhere else and increase vehicle miles travelled. You're also ignoring some historical covenants that might have excluded race from certain neighborhoods. References: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1102604887223750657 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1102604887223750657 on 'tragedy of the commons' https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1141456562512207872 https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1141456562512207872 work done on historical racial restrictive covenants.
- lonelappde 7y agoThe racial covenants (and blockbusting and redlining) need to get mentioned more to refute the bogus pseudo-nativist argument that whoever moved to town first has the right to control housing policy.
- lazyasciiart 7y agoI think you may not have read the article.
- jld 7y agoSee also: Burke Gilman Missing Link, an extension to fill a 1.4 mile gap in Seattle's most popular bike trail, halted very much the same way by a concrete company who has used environmental laws to argue that its business would be impacted because its drivers can't be trusted to drive trucks near people biking.
- ptmcc 7y agoTo weaken their argument further, there are already a ton of people biking on that street already without good, safe infrastructure. For those not in the know, it is quite literally a "missing link" between two ends of an otherwise pretty great separated bike path.
- fooblitzky 7y agoThe one that gets me is Warren Aakervik - he retired long ago, but still comes into the office of Ballard Oil for the sole purpose of delaying the Missing Link. It's a poor legacy to work so hard for, in a city packed with inspiring examples (e.g. Myrtle Edwards). https://www.kuow.org/stories/bike-trail-critics-see-opportunity-in-delay https://www.kuow.org/stories/bike-trail-critics-see-opportun...
- mehhh 7y agoHe would be far from the first Ballardite to work hard to fight progress. IIRC there is a whole exhibit at the Ballard Locks on people who moved to Ballard and Fremont to "escape the city", under the premise that 45th would never be electrified in their lifetimes. For most of this group, they were in for a rude awakening when City Light built out Fremont and Ballard.
- fooblitzky 7y ago"[Ryan Vancil] argued that the SEPA delays on Mandatory Housing Affordability, the Burke Gilman Trail, and Fort Lawton were due more to his office’s unusually high caseload." - Yes, that explains the 20 year delay on the BGT Missing Link. Just high caseload folks. Not continuous lawsuits invoking SEPA from a handful of selfish business owners.
- mehhh 7y agoSalmon Bay Sand & Gravel has done everything they can to block the missing link from being built. I just want a usable bike trail to Golden Gardens, rather than the fragmented mess that is bike lanes in Ballard currently :c
- loeg 7y agoLanes are actually under construction now from around the locks (where the west half of the burke terminated for 20 years) to 24th ave. (To be clear, I am in full agreement with you.)
- erickhill 7y ago>Redeveloping Magnolia’s Fort Lawton was first floated in 2005 and the possibility remained a tension point in the community for over a decade as the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to move forward on a major affordable housing project at the old Army Reserve Center site earlier this year. I live two blocks from this area. The concern many in the neighborhood have goes something like this. The city is viewed to be deep in the pockets of developers, who cash in on valuable public lands but put no effort towards supporting new or improved infrastructure. So, a new housing project will be built into Magnolia. There are currently only 3 bridges that connect Magnolia to the city. One of those bridges - The Magnolia Bridge - is falling apart and the city says they don't have the funds to repair it. This would lead many to assume it will be demolished at some stage in the near future (hopefully they aren't waiting for tragedy to strike first). Even without the new housing project, squeezing the population from 3 bridges down to two would be a nightmare. Add hundreds of families into an already crowded peninsula and the lack of that 3rd bridge is hard to fathom. Not to mention Magnolia was bypassed for easy access to the future light rail, too (which we also pay for). So yes, build more housing even if that means Discovery Park, one of the crown jewels of Seattle, will get filled with more humanity. But at least invest in the infrastructure and schools in a more balanced way to support all of those new folks and the ones who live here. You can probably imagine why tempers are rising.
- GoodJokes 7y agoMore humanity in parks is a good thing. Parks are for people. Sorry, you can’t keep it for yourself. I agree with other commenters. This masked NIMBYism or you have been hoodwinked by the real NIMBYs. Same difference at this point.
- Analemma_ 7y agoThis is NIMBYism trying to conceal itself with faux-progressivism ("but big developers! infrastructure!"). The more requirements you tack on to any kind of housing development, the more expensive it becomes to build housing, and so projects on the margin get killed and rents go ever-higher. That's not acceptable. If Magnolia needs new infrastructure, that should be handled by the city government, and funding for it should come from city-wide property taxes or municipal bonds. Tying infrastructure funding to individual housing projects is silly, and if I'm being cynically honest, I have a feeling it's a fig leaf to mask that the real goal is to just kill the project entirely.
- rdiddly 7y agoI always puzzle over headlines like this. So they're reining in the quashing, OK I think that adds up to being pro-development. It's worse when the appellate court reverses the lower court's denial of the motion to suppress the debunking of the rebuttal.
- autokad 7y agoi disagree with the general sentiment: "build more dense housing". Yeah, what we need is more condos with 1k HOA fees for housing affordability... We need more single family housing. There is plenty of space, just that all the commercial buildings are so squat. Furthermore, the lack of subways means half the city is paved roads
- nostrebored 7y agoI've downvoted this because it contains no sort of reasoning. It's essentially "I feel". Obviously a restricted supply of housing with reasonable commute times via public transit affects the middle class in Seattle. There's a supply/demand problem created by people fighting for zoning regulations in areas like Queen Anne that are actively hostile to anyone who doesn't live there already. Wanting to live in single family housing near the city and enforcing it legally is exactly why public transit projects like subways become impossible. You need to have critical pockets of density before it becomes a sensible investment.
- autokad 7y agoyes, that's very useful for discussions. down vote people for saying what they feel. this isn't a research paper. > "Wanting to live in single family housing near the city and enforcing it legally is exactly why public transit projects like subways become impossible. You need to have critical pockets of density before it becomes a sensible investment." Also, Philadelphia has a ton of single family homes, and one of the best subways in the country. You are just simply wrong.
- nostrebored 7y agoThe thing is that your feelings are completely unmoored from reality add contribute nothing to the conversation. If you backed any of your statements up with some sort of thought it might be useful, but there's just nothing. Going off of this comment it might be a trend. If you'd like to discuss any of the actual arguments I'd be happy to. I had a lot of time to reflect on it while I lived in a 2br house with a garden a mile from 4th and pike! Edit to address your edit: Philly is an aberration. Obviously when presenting why to build a subway you have to present data to make your case. When an entire block has the housing density of a single apartment is a harder case.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago> Campbell is opposed to the reform that would restrict her ability to utilize SEPA appeals in the future. I suspect a lot of supporters of this change would be willing to drop it in exchange for somehow banning her personally from having anything to do with any future appeals.
- KoftaBob 7y agoThe magnitude of negative impact that NIMBYs have on our economy is mind blowing. So much income is sucked up by insane housing costs, income that could otherwise be utilized on things that aren't rent seeking landlords hoarding money.
- dev_dull 7y agoIf Seattle is not careful they’re going to end up on the same situation as the Bay Area: extremely expensive building projects due to red tape that take forever to complete and only house the rich. Yeah you can build here, but have you completed all your environment impact studies? And posted notice of tree removal with requisite public comment period? And have you set aside 30% of the units for low income and raised the price on the rest of the the units to make up for it? And are you ready to comply with rent control laws? And are you supplying 2 parking spaces per tenant as required by law? And is your business chartered in CA with requisite taxes and fees? Did your bidding process include businesses owned by historically underrepresented groups? Have you kissed the ring of your local union leaders? Did you make sure your exterior design complies with neighborhood matching decor laws? Oh my god you're not going to cut down that 50-year-old redwood are you?? Wait why aren’t we building more apartments again?
- dmix 7y agoPretty much every city in North America is like this to varying degrees. I've always wondered how Toronto manages to build a hundred giant buildings while most cities only have a few going at a time, with a few exceptions (note NYC has 3x the population of Toronto): https://www.remonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Diagram_High-Rise-Construction1.jpg https://www.remonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Diagram... I'd imagine if there wasn't this sort of arrangement basically every growing city would be developing 10x more buildings than they currently are (at least).
- cbowal 7y agoIf that chart is accurate it seems that Canadian cities across the board are building more high-rises. I wonder why.
- zdragnar 7y agoReduced heating costs perhaps? Heating from -40 to room temp is much, much more expensive than, say, air conditioning in the southern US. If you are not averse to sharing some walls, it makes sense. Personally, I don't think I could go back to apartment living, but I will also readily admit that I am not a good candidate for "normal" in most regards.
- sverige 7y agoSeattle practically invented NIMBY lawsuits, and their backwards laws have always enabled it. A lawyer friend of mine was making money on one side or the other of these lawsuits in Seattle back in the late 80s when we were both still young. He's rich from them now.
- ak217 7y agoAs a California resident, this is all very familiar, except our equivalent NIMBY-enabling law is called CEQA. Can someone knowledgeable about CEQA/SEPA compare and contrast the two?
- danschumann 7y agoI'd like to see zones where citizens can opt out of regulations in order to receive cheaper products. Think "opportunity zones" for deregulation.
- lonelappde 7y agoThose zones are called cities, which pass laws for themselves. A state has a wide range of cities.
- danschumann 7y agoCities can't opt out of state and federal regulation. Well, I guess they can ( marijuana )... but it's kind of a gray area. For instance... a city can't say murder is legal on a certain day (like a purge city). That would be heinous. They can't say that the FDA need not inspect things in a certain city, so long as they are bought and consumed within said city(this is my main point). Like raw milk