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Thursday’s NBHC meeting agenda

From Judith Edwards, NBHC Chair:

The North Beacon Hill Council will meet Thursday, Nov. 5th at 7:00 PM in the Community Room of the Beacon Hill Library. All are welcome! You are a voting member of the Council if you have attended one meeting previously. The Council is our voice to city government, and your voice makes a difference.

This is an important meeting (as they all are!). Lyle Bicknell, Project Manager of the Neighborhood Planning Update team will present the results of the two open houses held in September to gain information on the plans prepared by the Department of Neighborhoods and Seattle Department of Planning and Development. These plans, which affect the area surrounding our new light rail station, are a response to input from the public meetings held here on North Beacon and the survey comments sent to the Department of Neighborhoods. It is important that your voice be heard, whether you agree or disagree, as these plans will be submitted for municipal code review by the end of the year.

Please note that board business and issues of concern to many community residents occur at the end our our meeting. You may choose only to stay for Lyle Bicknell’s report back, and a small break will allow those who wish to leave at that time to do so.

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009 Agenda
North Beacon Hill Council
Beacon Hill Public Library
7:00 PM

  • 7:00 — Welcomes and introductions
  • 7:10 — Lyle Bicknell, City of Seattle – Neighborhood Plan Updates followed by questions and comments from the floor
  • 8:00 — Community Reports and Concerns (2-3 minutes each)
    • Steve Louie, Neighborhood Coordinator
    • Neighborhood Planning Advisory Committee (Judith Edwards)
    • Greater Duwamish District Council (Matthew Stubbs, NBHC rep)
    • Neighborhood Planning Ad Hoc Committee
    • Jefferson Park Playground
    • Seattle Police Department – Safety (Shelly Bates)
    • Festival Street Opening (Curtis LaPierre)
    • Other
  • 8:30 — Close
Urban Planning

Baffling “neighborhood” planning continues

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by Frederica Merrell

(Freddie is heading up an effort to wrangle the city’s planning department, to get it to more fully engage with the community and develop concrete neighborhood-enhancing proposals, with an ad-hoc group of neighbors as the North Beacon Hill Planning Advisory Committee. At tonight’s committee meeting, Lyle Bicknell with the Seattle DPD was invited to come and discuss the next steps in the neighborhood planning process. See the event calendar for upcoming meetings. — Ed.)

The City is speeding to a conclusion on our neighborhood plan update! Lyle Bicknell, our man at Department of Planning and Development (DPD), came and chatted with 17 residents who attended the North Beacon Hill Planning Advisory Committee meeting tonight. He shared sketchy preliminary plan recommendations and described next steps for the process. Here are my best notes on what I heard. Please pipe in with your own views if you attended. We met at El Centro thanks to Executive Director, Estella Ortega giving us a nice space in room 307.

Mike Podowski from DPD, who is an expert on zoning, generously gave us 30 minutes of his time to start. We received a “primer” on the neighborhood commercial zone rules and proposed multi-family zone rules. He provided handouts and I am putting the extras at the library. I won’t go into all the details but here are points of note:

  • Most of the existing zoning in our urban center is neighborhood commercial (NC-40) with a pedestrian orientation.
  • We also have some multi-family zoning intermittently along Beacon Avenue and on 14th (L2, L3)
  • Within the lightrail overlay near the station, there is no requirement for parking to be built for new multi-family housing or for commercial development.
  • We have a pedestrian overlay which also precludes the construction of parking or street entry between any new business development and the sidewalk.
  • Many of our existing businesses do not meet this code but are grandfathered in, so the pedestrian character will only develop as new buildings are constructed.

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