Tag Archives: neighborhood plans

Urban Planning

Neighborhood Plan Update moves forward

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Part of the Beacon Town Center concept plan as seen in the proposed Urban Design Framework.
On Monday, April 11 the Seattle City Council approved Council Bill 117114. This bill moves the North Beacon Hill Neighborhood Plan Update “action plan and goals” into the Seattle Comprehensive Plan. (There’s other stuff in there, but this is only a summary of changes relating to Beacon Hill. Read it; it’s interesting. Really.)

Here’s the proposed Urban Design Framework for North Beacon Hill Town Center, created with input from you and your neighbors. Here’s the Neighborhood Action Plan.

Some of the “Key Action Items” include:

  • Maintain the remainder of parcels and storefronts north and south of the immediate station area along Beacon Ave. S. for new and small businesses.
  • Rezone key opportunity sites to encourage redevelopment of parcels around the light rail station in a manner that incorporates housing, commercial services (such as a grocery store and small businesses) and amenities.
  • Evaluate a height increase within the Town Center for some but not all properties that have a current height limit of 40 feet, allowing up to 65 feet with required street and upper level setbacks.
  • Where land use changes are considered, give particular attention to zone transitions.
  • Change the land use and zoning to support the envisioned mixed use development on the El Centro site.
  • Develop neighborhood design guidelines and an urban design framework plan for the North Beacon Hill station area. Framework elements could include building height options, incentive features such as affordable housing, open space, and pedestrian connections.
Meetings, Urban Planning

September NBHC meeting agenda

The postponed-due-to-the-week-long-library-closure September North Beacon Hill Council Meeting is happening this Thursday at 7pm in the Beacon Hill Library Community Room. Everyone is welcome, and if you’ve been to at least one meeting, you’re eligible to vote!

The agenda as posted on the NBHC website with some added emphasis:

  • 7:00 Introductions and Welcome
  • 7:05 Allison Schwartz, Transportation Planner, Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and Mike Podowski, Planner, Department of Planning and Development (DPD) will give an update on light rail station area parking and get feedback on the Restricted Parking Zones – how are they working for us. Q & A follows five minute presentations by each.
  • 7:40 City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, Chair, Seattle Public Utilities and Neighborhoods Committee: CC member O’Brien’s City Council Committee will be making a decision this month on the Neighborhood Plan as presented by DPD; he has asked for this opportunity to receive neighborhood feedback. Mike will also be soliciting members for the Action Teams which are forming to implement the Neighborhood Plan.
  • 8:10 Neighborhood updates
    • Beacon Rocks
    • Beacon Hill Business Association
    • Nomination of new North Beacon Hill Council Board Member
    • Resignation accepted from Shelly Bates, Board Member – thank you so much, Shelly, for all you have done for us!
    • Other announcements, events
  • 8:30 Executive Board Meeting (open to all, however only Board Members are allowed to speak and take any needed votes. If you choose to leave at this time, it’s understood!)
    • Election of new board member(s)
    • Updates on plans made at the August Board Social meeting
Local Events, Neighborhood Pride, Urban Planning

Potluck and planning on agenda for NBHC meeting 12/3

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Time to warm up those Crock-Pots and start prepping something tasty for the NBHC potluck! Photo by _e.t.
Time to warm up those Crock-Pots and start prepping something tasty for the NBHC potluck! Photo by _e.t.
The next North Beacon Hill Council meeting is a special one: a year-end potluck celebration to recognize community members who have contributed to the neighborhood this year, and to plan for next year. The potluck and social will be followed by the monthly business meeting. All are welcome to attend. You are a voting member of the Council if you have attended one meeting previously.

The potluck starts at 6:30 pm (1/2 hour earlier than the usual meeting time), Thursday, December 3, in the Community Room at the Beacon Hill Library, 2821 Beacon Avenue South.

The agenda, as forwarded by Council Chair Judith Edwards:

  • 6:30 – Social time, potluck
  • 7:00 – A time to honor those who have given so much (and finish eating!)
  • 7:15 – Business meeting
    • Estela Ortega, Executive Director, El Centro de la Raza: Future plans for development of S. parcel of El Centro property (25 minutes, including Q&A)
    • 12th Ave. and Stevens St. neighbors request to become an ad-hoc committee of NBHC in order to challenge City Light’s installation of obtrusive power lines (5 minutes)
      — vote required
    • Discussion of final draft, Department of Planning and Development’s Neighborhood Plan Update (15 minutes)
      — vote required to approve/disapprove
    • Letter to Council Member Sally Clark, Chair, Planning and Land Use Committee: Action to ensure that N. Beacon Hill Development Design Guidelines are employed in future construction (10 minutes)
      — vote required
  • 8:05 – Future focus: where should we put our energy in the coming year? What are the issues the community is concerned with?
  • 8:30 – Closure
Uncategorized

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
Opinion, Urban Planning

Planning Advisory Committee discusses draft neighborhood plan

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By Frederica Merrell,
North Beacon Hill Planning Advisory Committee

A rendering of the view down Beacon Avenue with 125-foot zoning. From the DPD website. What do you think of it?
A rendering of the view down Beacon Avenue with 125-foot zoning. From the DPD website. What do you think of it?
If you go to the City planning website and look at the draft Neighborhood Plan update recommendations, what do you see? There is a document on goals and strategies, some high tech drawings of various zoning options and a cross-section of a possible street improvement design. What does all this stuff mean and does it include everything folks on the hill have talked about? What should we tell DPD when we go to their input meeting on Sunday (or Wednesday night) down at the Asian Counseling and Referral building?

Those were the questions the North Beacon Hill Planning Advisory committee tried to answer Thursday night. We looked at the drawings and carefully read the Draft Goals and Strategies. We talked about the street design. Here is what we concluded in the very short period of time we have before the meeting this weekend:

There are a lot of things missing that were discussed several times in our big meetings with DPD in May and March. The document is pretty scanty, considering how much has been talked about. We are worried that all the good ideas aren’t going to get captured, organized, and analyzed. Please go look for yourself and see if you think it is complete.

Public Safety:
In spite of the fact that public safety was mentioned numerous times in meetings, there is no public safety component. Specific strategies for improving safety that have been voiced are:
Extend the Alcohol Impact Area to Beacon Hill (bans sale of cheap high-alcohol content beverages), add Parks Rangers to Beacon Hill playground/park near Beacon Hill Elementary School and Jefferson Park (the Parks Superintendent supports this recommendation and has stated so in meetings), and support legislation from Councilmember Burgess to ban aggressive panhandling, specifically at: grocery stores, gas stations, and near schools, and at arterial intersections.
Continue reading Planning Advisory Committee discusses draft neighborhood plan →

Urban Planning

Neighborhood plan update meeting tonight

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The ad-hoc Neighborhood Plan Update committee of the North Beacon Hill Council will meet tonight at 7:00 pm to discuss the latest draft plan updates released by DPD for our neighborhood and prepare for the upcoming plan update open houses.
All are welcome. The meeting is in room 307 at El Centro de la Raza, 2524 16th Avenue South, just next-door to Beacon Hill Station.

(Thanks to David Gackenbach for the tip reminder.)

Urban Planning

Neighborhood plan update drafts to be displayed at commmunity open houses

Wondering about the status of the neighborhood plan update process? The city is hosting a couple of open houses to get your feedback on the initial drafts of the plan updates for North Beacon Hill, Othello and North Rainier.

The open houses are on Sunday, September 27 from 1:00 pm to 5:00pm, and Wednesday, September 30, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. Both are at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS) at 3639 Martin Luther King Jr Way South.

Interpreters will be on hand, interpreting Chinese, Khmer, Spanish, and Tigrinya from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm on Sunday; Amharic, Oromiffa, Somali, Tagalog, and Vietnamese from 3:00 to 5:00 on Sunday; and all nine languages at the Wednesday open house. The open house location, ACRS, is an accessible facility. If you need special accommodations, please contact Kerry Wade at 206-733-9088.
 
Thanks to Steve Louie for forwarding the info to us!

Urban Planning

DPD rep to preview neighborhood plan update proposals at August 20 meeting

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Frederica Merrell of the North Beacon Hill Planning Advisory Committee, a group formed to address issues connected with the city’s intended revamp of the North Beacon Hill neighborhood plan, sends this status report regarding the committee:

Last call for innovative proposals for our neighborhood plan update! The City is still proceeding at a rapid pace to complete our update this fall. Our last community meeting with the City is coming up in September (date unannounced yet). If people want to get a general or specific recommendation on any topic in the plan, it needs to get to the City pronto.

A small group of folks from the diligent North Beacon Hill Planning Advisory committee met with Councilmembers Sally Clark and Tim Burgess and Lyle Bicknell (our man in the planning department) to talk about the process and next steps. There was a lot of baffling lack of clarity about dates and next steps. No notes from the last big meeting held in May have been provided to the community. It seems clear that DPD is making it up as they go along and is probably having a really hard time keeping up with their own timeline.
Continue reading DPD rep to preview neighborhood plan update proposals at August 20 meeting →

Urban Planning

Your input needed for North Beacon Hill’s future

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Judith Edwards sends the following request:

Many of you were unable to attend the March 28th North Beacon Hill workshop on Neighborhood Planning held at El Centro de la Raza. We are one of three SE Seattle locations which will have updates to our neighborhood plans, due to our proximity to light rail stations. (This) link takes you to a simple survey that is being used to gather input from the residents of the community. It asks what you want Beacon Hill to be like in the future, what appeals to you about the Hill, etc. Please take the time to fill it out – it only takes about five minutes.

At the workshop, copies of our Neighborhood Plan were made available to each table group. Neighborhood facilitators helped groups to identify those improvements to the Hill that are part of the Neighborhood Plan. We also looked at those aspects of the plan which have yet to realize completion, for example Jefferson Park, a boulevard on Beacon Ave. that extends south to Jefferson Park, and other improvements. Please look at the plan on your next visit to the Library. An ad hoc committee of the North Beacon Hill Council is now meeting to define those elements of the Neighborhood Plan which have high priority. If you would like to join this committee, contact Freddie Merrill at frmerrill@seattleschools.org or Robert Hinrix at robphin@yahoo.com.

Your input to the future of Beacon Hill is important. Thanks for taking five minutes to fill out the survey.

Urban Planning

North Beacon Hill neighborhood planning workshop next Saturday

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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.)