- Hungry Girl visits Lunch Counter
- ColorsNW on the Presidential vegetable garden and the Beacon Ave P-Patch
- House values down 12 percent in Beacon Hill notes the Ballard News Tribune
- Eat The State is looking for south-end distributors
- And don’t forget about the Transit-Oriented Development meeting Saturday starting at 9
Category Archives: Urban Planning
North Beacon Hill neighborhood planning workshop next Saturday
The North Beacon Hill neighborhood planning workshop we’ve mentioned before is next Saturday. Judith Edwards sends this timely reminder:
“What do you want Beacon Hill to look like in five years? Ten?
What about the plans that were made at the Pancake Breakfast last November? What’s happening with Jefferson Park? What kind of development is going to occur on the Hill? These and many more topics will be explored in the City of Seattle Neighborhood Plan Updates meeting on Saturday, March 28th. Your ideas are important! Please join your neighbors to talk about the changes that are coming to Beacon Hill, and the changes you would like to see.‘Child care will be provided, as well as Interpretation services in Amharic, Cantonese, Khmer, Mandarin, Oromifa, Spanish, Somali,Tagalog, Tigrinya and Vietnamese. If you are in need of special accommodations or interpretation services, please contact Kerry Wade at 206-733-9088, or email her at kerry.wade@seattle.gov.”
This meeting is to begin the process of possible revision to the North Beacon Hill neighborhood plan, in light of possible changes from the arrival of light rail.
Need to get an idea what’s at stake? The existing neighborhood plan is online, here. The survey answers from last year’s Pancake Breakfast are here. (Thanks to David Gackenbach for sending us the latter file.)
Commentary: Is It neighborhood planning?
(The existing neighborhood plans for the Beacon Hill, Othello, and Mount Baker light rail station areas are in the process of being revised. Frederica Merrell attended the recent Othello neighborhood plan update and has some things to say about the process, and the upcoming North Beacon Hill meeting.)
By Frederica Merrell
The City held its first “neighborhood planning†update meeting for the Othello neighborhood on Saturday, March 14. I went to observe part of their process. I was interested in whether the meetings were representative of the community; how scope, planning areas, and discussions were organized; whether people were provided with information on the previous plan recommendations; and whether comments were accurately recorded. For people interested in how our update process on Beacon Hill might look initially, here is what I observed (I didn’t stay for the wrap-up).
I arrived at about 10:00 am; about one hour after the meeting had started. I spoke with a consultant at the door who told me that the first hour was dedicated to an introduction and a summary of the previous plan effort. I asked if the participants were provided with the neighborhood plan. There was one summary of the plan at each of six tables. None of the plan summaries were translated. There were no copies of the matrix of recommendations provided to participants.
Continue reading Commentary: Is It neighborhood planning?
NBHC meeting to tackle density topic
The North Beacon Hill Council meeting this Thursday will include discussion of the Transit-Oriented Development bill, HB1490, and the changes and density that the light rail station may bring to North Beacon Hill.
The meeting and discussion, as with all NBHC meetings, is open to all residents of Beacon Hill.
Time and location: 7:00 pm, Thursday, March 5, in the basement of the Beacon Hill Lutheran Church, 1730 South Forest (just east of the Library). Ample parking is available.
Here’s the full agenda:
- 7:00 Hellos and announcements
- Jefferson Park Festival, June 27 – volunteers?
- Picnic and Pi̱atas, July 18 Рvolunteers?
- 7:10 Light Rail and Neighborhood Changes:
- HB1490 Pro and Con, Update
- Bill LaBorde, Transp. Choices Coalition
- Jenna Walden, Community Activist, Othello Neighborhood Council
- 7:20 A time for questions and answers
- 7:40 Lyle Bicknel, Seattle Department of Transportation, and leader of the SDOT and Dept. of Neighborhoods team which is working with the Neighborhood Policy Advisory Committee (NPAC) – an update on what’s happening
- 7:50 Questions and answers
- 8:10 Seattle Police Department and/or Shelly Bates
- 8:20 Comments and concerns
- 8:30 Close
Thanks to Judith Edwards for sending out the agenda!
Neighborhood plan update meeting March 28 at El Centro
The existing North Beacon Hill neighborhood plan for the light rail station area is in the process of being revised. As we have seen recently, the topic of density and transit-oriented development in the neighborhood is controversial. You can make your voice heard in the process of rezoning and changing North Beacon by attending the City’s neighborhood plan update meeting on Saturday, March 28, from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm at El Centro de la Raza, 2524 16th Ave South.
Reader Opinion: North Beacon needs higher density
By Andrew Smith
Recently House Bill 1490 has started a discussion in our region over density and transit-oriented-development. Originally the bill required cities to create zoning packages that would have allowed increased density in a half-mile radius around all light rail and commuter rail stations. In a recent revision, that requirement was scaled back to apply to only communities defined by the Puget Sound Regional Council as “growth centers”: Auburn, Downtown Bellevue, Overlake, Everett, Federal Way, Kent, Lakewood, Lynnwood, Puyallup, Redmond, Seatac, Capitol Hill, Downtown Seattle, Northgate, the University District, Downtown Tacoma, and Tukwila. I imagine many in Southeast Seattle breathed a sigh of relief when they read that, as many in that area were very concerned about increased density changing their neighborhoods. However, I’d like to make the case for increased density in these areas, focusing my argument on Beacon Hill, and point out that while increased density could change the neighborhood, that change might be a better change than what will happen if density is prohibited.
Continue reading Reader Opinion: North Beacon needs higher density
NBHC meeting tonight
While it was on our events calendar we did forget to point out the agenda for tonight’s North Beacon Hill Community Council meeting until just now.
North Beacon Hill Community Council Meeting Agenda
When: Thursday, January 8th, 7:00 – 8:30
Where: Beacon Hill Library Community Room
- 7:00 Welcomes, announcements
- 7:15 Presentation by the Department of Transportation on the proposed parking plan for the Beacon Hill and the McClellan/Mt. Baker light rail stations.
Community input is being asked for on:- restricted parking around stations
- parking permits for neighborhood residents
This is an important meeting to attend. SDOT will make a decision on the parking plan in February. Please join us in providing SDOT with our community’s needs prior to the decision making process.
- 7:35 Open to questions and answers
- 8:00 Seattle Police Department
- 8:10 Community Concerns
- 8:30 Close
Sorry for the late notice, folks!
Thanks to Amie Patao for posting it at north-beacon-hill.blogspot.com and Chris Bailey for sending it to the mailing list.
Parking changes coming soon to light rail station area
The parking changes will be installed on a rolling basis this Spring, and should be complete by the time the light rail begins service in July. To park in the RPZ without penalty at that point will require an RPZ pass, which will cost $45/two years, with a discount available for low-income households.
We note something interesting in the FAQ about these changes: “Enforcement will also increase to help those new regulations function properly. Increasing enforcement will affect all types of parking violations, including vehicles parked too close to driveways or blocking fire-hydrants. Please obey the law.” The new RPZ may have some unexpected consequences for some people in the area who have become accustomed to relatively lax parking enforcement in this neighborhood.
If you have an opinion about the changes, there are several ways to tell SDOT what you think. An open house is scheduled for Saturday, January 10, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm at El Centro de la Raza, 2524 16th Avenue South. Other open houses are scheduled to be held at New Holly and at the Starbucks building in Sodo.
You can take an online questionnaire about the parking plan. Read the mailer, then fill out this questionnaire.
Additionally, you can email your comments and questions to lightrailparking@seattle.gov, or comment by phone at 206-684-8186. You may call Sound Transit’s language lab hotline at 1-800-823-9230 for translation if you need to speak in a language other than English.
The newest grocery store on Beacon — or is it?
There is a big building at the junction of Beacon and 15th, a large building that seems as if it ought to be a major retail destination in our North Beacon Hill business district and urban village. But it’s not. It’s a warehouse. There is nothing visible inside but piles of boxes, and a small paper sign.
This is interesting, because the site is zoned Neighborhood Commercial 2 P 40. Neighborhood Commercial 2, or NC2, is “a moderately-sized pedestrian-oriented shopping area that provides a full range of retail sales and services to the surrounding neighborhood.” Typically an NC2 land use might be a coffee shop or drugstore. 40 means that the zoning allows 40-foot tall buildings to be built there. P means that it is a “P-zone” — a pedestrian-designated zone, which is designed to encourage pedestrian activity in a neighborhood business district by requiring ground floor uses that attract pedestrian activity and interest. This means things like retail stores, restaurants, hair salons, etc., but not research labs, administrative offices — or warehouses.
Regardless of the building’s P-Zone status, warehouses and wholesale showrooms are not allowed in NC2-zoned sites. This building has been used as a warehouse for some time now. The business based there, Hui Intertrading, is a rice wholesaler and importer, who supplies many local restaurants with their rice.
Hui Intertrading’s use of the building as a warehouse has been a thorn in some folks’ sides for quite a while, as was the earlier similar use of a building directly across the intersection. And people have filed complaints over these violations of the land use code, in August 2004 and May 2008. For a while, a land use notice board appeared on the building, listing a proposed change to retail use, but the board eventually came down with no noticeable change in the use of the building.
After the earlier complaint, the building failed 11 city inspections before finally passing one in February 2008. After the most recent complaint, it took 4 inspections before it finally passed, and the case was closed — in other words, it’s no longer considered to be violating land-use codes. But, have you been by there lately? It’s still a warehouse. Nothing has changed.
Oh, wait — except for that small paper sign I mentioned earlier:
It’s just a pile of boxes behind the sign, with no sign of any retail activity or retail fixtures.
Could it be that putting up a sign like this is all you need to be a retail business and get the Department of Planning and Development off your back? Business owners, take note!
On the other hand, despite appearances, maybe it is a retail shop. Has anyone tried to shop at this “food grocery retail store”? Please tell us how it went.
Complaints to the DPD may be filed online.
(Can you imagine this building as an old-style movie theater with a nice big neon marquee? I’ve always thought it looked like it should be one.)
Light rail = increased home values on North Beacon?
The article mentions a similar effect in other markets, with single-family home values showing increases ranging from 2 percent in San Diego to a blistering 32 percent in St. Louis. The article also suggests that it is not just station location that causes the biggest increases, but transit-oriented development (TOD) that adds to the attractiveness of the area. North Beacon and Mount Baker (Rainier and McClellan) will have their stations soon, but will the TOD follow? Will we see a similar increase in housing value here on Beacon Hill? The Othello and Columbia City stations are already seeing some development, but there hasn’t been much up on top of the Hill or at the foot of McClellan.
Thanks to Seattlest!