Monthly Archives: February 2010

Opinion

Opinion: The appeal process and not showing your hand

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by Frederica Merrell

There has been significant interest in the appeal that I filed with the Hearing Examiner’s office on January 29. I love that people in our community are engaged, reading, and looking at what is going on around them. Our Beacon blog is an amazing venue for keeping up on stuff that’s important to us and not likely to be followed anywhere else.

An appeal is a quasi-judicial process with rules and procedures. The Hearing Examiner runs the show and our examiner Sue Tanner is very capable and experienced. She is charged with impartiality, efficiency, expediency, transparency and equal access to all, even those without a lawyer or legal training (like me). There are lots of areas where appeals are used, including the appeal of an environmental determination (SEPA appeal) like mine.

So there is the person filing the appeal (me), the agency or party whose action triggered the appeal (the city’s Department of Planning and Development, or DPD) and the Hearing Examiner. Other people can enter into the discussion too, and anyone can come watch any step of the process down at the Hearing Examiner’s office on the 40th floor of the big tower at 700 Fifth Avenue (Seattle Municipal Tower). I assume the records on the process are all open to the public.

Last week, I had my Prehearing Conference. This is a time to meet, go over the paperwork that is being filed, make sure everyone has each other’s addresses, and create a mutually agreeable calendar for the steps being taken. I noticed that most of the time was taken up with the calendar. In order to do the calendar all the likely steps in the process have to be laid out. Right now, DPD is going to find some information for me and also try to narrow the scope of the appeal. They felt it was too broad. I will get some time to look at the information they provide and respond back. We will both draw up a list of “exhibits” that we want to share with each other in the hearing. We will both draw up a list of “witnesses.” The time frame for all these steps are laid out and we came to agreement on a hearing date of April 7 at 9:00 am. Anyone who wants to watch the hearing can come.

The excellent media folks at our blog asked me some specific questions about the appeal. An appeal is kind of like a poker game. One important strategy for winning the game is not showing your hand. So I’m not going to answer a lot of specific questions right now while I am in the middle of the process because I want to win my hearing determination! I do encourage you to read information that is readily available. If you haven’t read the full appendix of the North Beacon Hill Update, you might want to do that.

Some other great stuff to look at: check out City Council committee meetings on a good computer where you can see the videos. I recommend the last couple of meetings of Councilmember O’Brien’s Seattle Public Utilities and Neighborhoods Committee (SPUNC) and Sally Clark’s Committee on the Built Environment. Her last meeting was particularly interesting and I am going to go back and look at the whole thing again. This is a very interesting process to me because I have never filed an appeal before. I am learning as I go. If you want to know why I filed the appeal, come to the hearing! That is where I lay out my arguments before the Hearing Examiner and DPD makes their arguments too. Until then, we don’t reveal our arguments. Hope to see you on April 7!

Frederica Merrell was the North Beacon Hill neighborhood planning co-chair from 1998-2000, and is the co-author of Seattle’s Beacon Hill.

Clean and Green

Valentine’s Day cleanup Sunday

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Cleanup map
Meet on 30th between Edmunds and Dawson

Pat McGannon has organized a litter pick-up and clean-up event along the east edge of Mid-Beacon Hill. Pat’s announcement follows:

Do You Love Our Neighborhood as Much as We Do? Then Join Us!

For What?: A neighborhood cleanup. We will be collecting litter from the streets and public stairs.

When?: Valentine’s Day, Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 10:30am

Where?: The cleanup will include Dawson (between MLK and 30th Ave South), 30th Ave South (between Dawson and S. Edmunds), S. Edmunds (between 30th Ave S. and Mount View Dr.), Mount View Drive (between S. Edmunds and Alaska), and the stairs that connect 30th Ave S to S. Ferdinand below.

Why?: To make our neighborhood a cleaner and safer place to live.

How?: Gloves, grabber tools, orange safety vests, and garbage bags will be provided to make litter collection safer. Once the trash is collected, bags will be brought to a central location for the city to pick up.

Details: Meet at the top of the S. Ferdinand stairs (on 30th Ave S) at 10:30am to sign in and get your supplies. Gloves can be kept, but the grabber tools and safety vests will need to be returned to Pat McGannon at 2942 S. Edmunds St. by the end of the day. Donate as little or as much of your time as you would like. If you live on a bordering street not covered by our current cleanup, but would like to personally clean that street, then you are welcome to get supplies from us.

Questions? Contact Pat McGannon at pmcgannonmail-cleanup@yahoo.com or at 216-236-4321.

Urban Planning

14th and Bayview early design guidance meeting

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14th & Bayview development map
Seattle Department of Planning and Development
A development is being proposed at 14th and Bayview, project #3005359. DPD’s summary describes the project briefly as “a three-story building containing 18 residential units and religious institution assembly space at grade.” The single family home there would be removed and replaced by the new structure.

The design review meeting is scheduled for 6:30pm on Tuesday, February 23rd at the Wellspring Family Services building at 1900 Rainier Avenue South.

Chris Bailey wrote about this project on the mailing list:

This is a complex project with full design review and is a good opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the design guidelines developed for North Beacon Hill. You can find the neighborhood design guidelines here.

Thanks to Robert Hinrix and Chris Bailey for the info!

Recreation

It must be spring; everyone wants to play soccer

Get out on Sundays for some pick-up soccer on Van Asselt‘s turf field, starting this Sunday, the 14th at 2pm. What you should bring, where to meet if the field is occupied, and more is in the Craigslist post.

Earlier in the week, another call for Beacon Hill soccer players was spotted as well:

Need some female soccer players for Friday night games on a co-ed team. If you are married and would like your husband or boyfriend to play that would be fine also. We like to ensure we have subs. Currently our team is in winter and have a few players that can’t play in the spring. Team has some seasoned players and some beginner level ones. Give me a call if Friday nights work for you! Deanna 🙂 206-293-5656 deannasharon@hotmail.com

(Emphasis added.)

Opinion

Opinion: It’s about zoning

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Neighbors posted comments on zoning and street configurations at the Neighborhood Plan update open house last September. Photo by Wendi.
On Tuesday, February 10, the Hearing Examiner’s Office conducted a prehearing conference regarding the appeal filed by Frederica Merrell to vacate the Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) for the North Beacon Hill Neighborhood Plan update. There was also a prehearing conference for the appeal against the Othello update. The North Rainier (a.k.a. Mount Baker) appeal will be heard by the Hearing Examiner on February 16.

These meetings are the first of many steps to examine the merits of the identical appeals filed by separate individuals against the Neighborhood Plan updates. These meetings are costing City of Seattle taxpayers money and taking staff time away from other DPD business. They are also delaying any progress on the work plans associated with the Neighborhood Plan Updates and halting any development and/or design plans for the sites involved.

El Centro de La Raza has lost $75,000 in funds offered to help them begin preliminary community outreach to discuss design and development ideas for their property. They cannot begin to move forward on developing their site until there is some indication that zoning issues will be resolved. El Centro is a valuable community partner. They would like to develop their property in the best interests of the neighborhood. They cannot begin the conversation about how to do that until the zoning issues are resolved.

Let’s be very clear: the Neighborhood Plan Updates are totally, completely about zoning. The entire point of the Neighborhood Plan Updates—the only reason they were ever developed—was to discuss zoning in the specific areas around the light rail stations. They were not intended to be and will never be replacements for the extensive Neighborhood Plans our communities have in place.

All other issues are red herrings. Concurrency is a completely unrelated issue to the upzone conversation—apples and oranges. The Neighborhood Plan validation process is also completely unrelated—a completely separate process.

This is the core of El Centro’s counter-appeal. DPD can clearly demonstrate that these appeals are too general and many of the complaints are outside the jurisdiction of the Hearing Examiner’s office and outside the scope of the update.

From El Centro’s Motion to Dismiss:

“El Centro de la Raza makes a motion to dismiss this appeal because Ms. Merrell appears to be raising issues related to the passage of the North Beacon Hill Plan, rather than the adequacy of the City’s environmental review. The North Beacon Hill Plan has not been adopted by the City Council yet. No changes to the Comprehensive Plan, nor to the zoning code, have yet occurred. Therefore, any issues related to the North Beacon Hill Plan itself, or related to any potential future zoning change, are not ripe for the Hearing Examiner’s review. In addition, any issues related to the Growth Management Act are not properly before the Hearing Examiner and must be dismissed.

In the alternative, El Centro suggests to the Hearing Examiner that the appeal is essentially limited to a single legal issue: whether the City properly exercised its discretion under WAC 197-11-055, 197-11-060, and 197-11-228 to complete proper environmental review of comprehensive planning documents. We ask that the Hearing Examiner dismiss all other issues raised by Ms. Merrell, as such claims are related to the unadopted plan or possible future zone changes. ”

Unfortunately, it’s going to take weeks (if not months) of public employee time away from actual projects to address these appeals. These appeals are an expensive time-wasting strategy with an end goal of keeping things in limbo.

Development will happen, but it’s going to take years and millions of dollars longer because a very simple zoning question—one that has received a significant amount of community feedback—is not being answered. That’s a shame.

(Melissa is a columnist for the Beacon Hill Blog and recently wrote about speeding drivers on the Hill in her column “Walking with Tica.”)

Urban Planning

North Beacon plan update appeal is one of three

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Frederica Merrell’s appeal filed recently against the Determination of Nonsignificance (DNS) of the North Beacon Hill neighborhood plan update (also discussed here and here) is not unique. The Beacon Hill Blog has been made aware that Merrell’s appeal is one of three nearly-identical appeals filed on January 29 by residents in each of the Southeast Seattle neighborhoods that recently went through a neighborhood plan update: Othello, North Rainier (Mount Baker), and North Beacon Hill. (Read the Othello appeal here, the North Rainier appeal here, and the North Beacon appeal here.) The appeals are nearly word-for-word identical, with only a few minor differences (such as the sections describing each distinct neighborhood and the appellants’ connection with them).

The Othello appeal was filed by Ron Momoda, Patricia Paschal, and Jenna Walden. The North Rainier appeal was filed by Pat Murakami and Barbara Marino. Most are well-known neighborhood activists in Southeast Seattle, and several were active last year in speaking out against House Bill 1490 and Senate Bill 5687, which would have created incentives and requirements for transit-oriented development and density near light rail stations.

The three appeals all request the same thing: that DPD’s Determination of Non-Significance (DNS) for each neighborhood’s plan update be vacated, and that DPD be required to take other actions including additional community notification, review, and validation, and environmental impact analyses.

The North Beacon appeal has been the subject of some heated controversy in the comments sections of the BHB posts linked above, with some commenters suggesting that the appeals are specifically intended to cause the entire update process to be scrapped, or that they were filed in order to block any upzoning or increased density, while some others say the update plan was flawed from the start, and that appeals such as this are a necessary and important part of the process of making this update work for North Beacon Hill.

El Centro de la Raza, who have had plans to develop their property just north of Lander Street, have filed their own motion to intervene and dismiss Merrell’s appeal.

The recently published Neighborhood Plan updates (the North Beacon one is here) were developed through a process that began in Fall 2008 and continued through 2009 with community meetings and open houses in March, May, and September.

(ed. note—Frederica Merrell occasionally contributes opinion articles to the Beacon Hill Blog.)

Life on the Hill, Photos

Zoning may keep 13th Ave coffeehouse closed

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Art's on Beacon Hill in the old DeVos Grocery building at 13th and Shelton. All photos in this post by Wendi.
Michael Perrone has a dream for an old grocery store near Maple Elementary School. In his dream, the old DeVos grocery store at 13th and Shelton, closed since 2005, would be a neighborhood gathering place, called Art’s on Beacon Hill. It would contain a coffeehouse with art on the walls, a jukebox, a player piano, and a performance studio. The building would be a resource and asset to neighbors in this mid-Beacon Hill neighborhood.

It hasn’t quite worked out as planned. Perrone painted, cleaned and decorated the old building, using vintage parts salvaged from the old grocery store in many places, and it looks just about ready to open. (In fact, an “Open” sign usually sits in the doorway.) But it remains officially closed, as it has since 2008 when the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD) notified Perrone that he could not operate a “community theater” in part of the building.

Old objects found when renovating the DeVos building decorate a vintage display unit in the coffee shop. Owner Michael Perrone's reflection appears in the middle.

The building’s history goes back a long way on Beacon Hill. Louis DeVos brought his family to the Hill in 1908, and in 1909, they moved into a house on South Shelton Street. A few years later, Louis bought the plot of land at 13th and Shelton and built a retail building there, first renting it to an Italian grocer, then establishing his own grocery business. The family business was successful, and eventually grew to include three stores including one at 2718 Beacon Avenue South (currently the location known as the empty “South China Restaurant” lot just south of Beacon Hill Station). Though two of the DeVos stores were closed during the Depression, the store at 13th and Shelton remained open into the 21st century, finally closing for good in August 2005. It was sold to Perrone as a “tear-down” in 2006.

Though the building had operated continuously as a commercial building since it was built in 1915, later in the 20th century the site was rezoned to SF5000 — single-family housing. Existing businesses such as the DeVos Grocery are allowed to continue in operation when their zoning changes, as a “non-conforming use.”

A jukebox and Perrone's dog Sebastian in the area of the building that was intended to be a coffee shop.

If the non-conforming use lapses for a certain amount of time, however, the building reverts to single-family, and a new business can’t go back to the non-conforming use. Seattle Municipal Code 23.42.104 B says: “A nonconforming use that has been discontinued for more than 12 consecutive months shall not be reestablished or recommenced.” There are certain exceptions, but it is unclear whether Perrone’s use of the DeVos building was what DPD required to maintain commercial status as required in the code. Perrone believes so; he did acquire a permit to install commercial-grade electrical service in the building, and he states that he also sold salvage from the building’s old contents to maintain commercial status until the coffeehouse could open.

In 2008, Perrone began using the building’s performance studio. In March of that year, the Beacon Hill Times/South District Journal (now South Seattle Beacon) ran an article about the plans for the former grocery, stating that it would be “a coffee shop, repertory theater and eventually an education center” and home to the Seattle Novyi Theatre repertory group.

In April of that year, a complaint was filed with DPD about his use of the building for theater rehearsals and performances. Perrone says that DPD declared the site in violation, and also told him that he could not legally live in the caretaker’s apartment and would be fined $1500/day for illegally residing there, retroactive to when he bought the building in 2006. “I owe the city a million and a half,” he says.

The performance space at Art's.

Later in 2008, says Perrone, he gave up, feeling pushed into a corner. In frustration, he told DPD “fine, turn it into a single-family residence.” Currently, an open application is on file with DPD to do so.

In the meantime, Perrone still fights to save the building for his original intended use, with pro bono help from a lawyer who grew up in the neighborhood. He has a petition signed by over 150 neighbors who support his plans for the DeVos building. “Only one neighbor said ‘no,'” he points out.

Neighbor Dayna Provitt sent a message to the Beacon Hill Mailing List recently, appealing for help for Perrone:

“My husband and I were so glad to see the building purchased, and Mike’s attempts to put something into this part of Beacon Hill that might help bring a ‘neighborhoody’ feel to the street. … Here’s a guy who’s trying to bring some energy and community building to our neighborhood… and getting stuck in red tape. We’d hate to see this building go back to being an empty space again. … Maybe someone in the neighborhood can help him cut through the red tape and get his project going! Something useful in this space would be so great for our street.”

With no way to legally open the coffeehouse, Perrone has been unable to pay the building’s mortgage since August. It is currently scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure sale on April 2, unless fate intervenes and Art’s on Beacon Hill can open.

The player piano, mostly in tune, awaits coffeeshop customers and performers.

(More photos of the building after the jump.) Continue reading Zoning may keep 13th Ave coffeehouse closed →

Getting Around, Health and Safety, Opinion

Walking with Tica: Andy Rooney edition

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Photo by Dru Bloomfield (CC).
(For all you youngsters out there, Andy Rooney is a commentator on 60 Minutes.)

Hey Beacon Hill drivers: what’s the rush? I’ve been walking these streets for six years, enjoying the peaceful community, friendly neighbors, and quiet streets. Something changed lately… the streets are not as quiet.  Maybe the construction traffic for Sound Transit slowed traffic on McClellan, and now people are back to their Speed Racer habits.  It’s not just arterials, though.  Folks are flying down side streets, too.  My older dog and increasing belly are slow—is there some reason we should hurry?

Is your kid late enough to school that you need to rush a pregnant woman crossing 23rd? Did you forget to Tivo your soap opera, making it necessary to drive 40mph down 20th, narrowly avoiding parked cars and cats dashing across the street?  Is there any reason you absolutely must turn right on red as that senior citizen loaded with groceries is making his way across Beacon?

Unless you have flashing lights to go on top of your car or are driving someone to the hospital—SLOW DOWN!  Per SDOT: In Seattle, the speed limit on residential streets is 25 mph and 30 mph on arterial streets unless otherwise posted. Drivers are expected to know and obey the speed limit.

Pedestrians (and our pooches, strollers, toddlers) have right of way. Stop, look, and wait for pedestrians at intersections. Perhaps you could use that 20 seconds to meditate… or maybe you could hang up your cell phone, put down your sandwich, and remember that you’re in a metal cage capable of killing someone.

Other Andy Rooney editions that probably won’t be posted in the blog:

Why do teenagers text while crossing the road?

Is it too much to ask for people to pick up after their dogs?

You darn kids get off my lawn!

Volunteering and Giving

Help advance neighborhood internet access

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Update: This becomes even more timely and relevant with Google’s announced gigabit fiber-to-the-home trial plans announced today. Some additional coverage at Ars Technica. Please visit Google’s Request for information site and nominate Beacon Hill, specifically, and southeast Seattle generally, for this project. Thanks to Yifan for pointing to this in the comments!

Do you have substandard internet service from Broadstripe and want to help steer the development of our internet infrastructure? Tracy Bier contacted us hoping to find some folks from Beacon Hill to join a coalition of neighbors from several south-and-central Seattle neighborhoods working to move our access options forward:

Neighbors from Capitol Hill, Central District and Leschi have formed a group to advocate for improved internet and cable service in areas bound by a many-year-old franchise agreement between the Broadstripe company and the City of Seattle.

To balance the geographic representation of our team of volunteers, we urgently seek a neighbor from the Beacon Hill area who experiences the negative effects of below standard service from Broadstripe. We are also seeking a volunteer with legal experience in the technology field or a person familiar with fiber optic technology.

We know you are busy, nobody needs another volunteer pursuit but you might get some satisfaction from working with us. We are moving quickly on this, especially with the new mayor in place.

If you are interested in lending a hand, contact Tracy via email at atbier@msn.com or telephone: 206-322-8613.