October 4

Community Council ends fight against buildings at N.E. 89th and Roosevelt

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The buildings going up in the “empty block” in Maple Leaf’s business district on Roosevelt Way Northeast will continue pretty much as planned, after a plea filed by the Maple Leaf Community Council was dismissed.

“Unfortunately, most of our case was thrown out,” writes David Miller, council president, in the council newsletter being delivered this weekend.

The partial block at Northeast 89th Street, which includes the Snappy Dragon, burned in a three-alarm fire on Thanksgiving morning 2001. (The Snappy was saved.)

The lawsuit, filed in the spring, argued the developers got around city planning rules on technicalities that allowed building about 13 townhouses or live-work units piecemeal instead of as one project.

“We thought we had a great case, but a city attorney brought forward a surprising, and, frankly, completely unjustified interpretation of the land use code, in our opinion,” Miller writes.

Developers and the council were able to reach a deal that avoids Miller’s most eye-catching claim (in seattlepi.com):

Worst of all, on recycling day there will be 39 (yes, THIRTY NINE) recycling, trash, and food waste receptacles clogging the sidewalk on Roosevelt — right in the middle of the business district. This is absolutely unacceptable….

Now Miller writes the council has settled with developers on using dumpsters or other joint receptacles. “While not exactly a perfect outcome, we’re happy we were able to avoid the nonsense of having 39 receptacles blocking the sidewalk.”

For more details see the October-December newsletter, which should be landing on your porch soon.

Editor: Thanks for the comment below, David. For those who want more, here’s a link to the council’s March lawsuit.

About the author 

Sara W

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  1. Any news on the Green Skunk on 94th & Roosevelt? Seems a little close to Olympic View. Not opposed to these shops but need to be in the right places which this place is not.

  2. Have also heard that the same developer bought the home and land parcel at the corner of 15th & 89th, and has intentions of putting 2 properties on this single piece of land. Can anyone comment on or confirm this bit of neighborhood news?

  3. Hardly any of the design review stuff is codified. Sure, if someone were to dig deep into the original permit it says for the life of the project but……. I have called about required trees that died, etc.,etc. Also, since that stuff isn’t codified most people don’t even know what was required unless they keep an active file cabinet of all permits. Get DPD to codify the important stuff. Once a building is up all the rules get broken. Access gets opened up. Windows get covered. Its never ending. AAARGH!

  4. @Observer – DPD said they’d take a look at changing regulations to prevent this. We pointed out there already ARE regulations to prevent this. Design Review would prevent it if DPD would enforce Design Review regulations.

  5. We can always do good old fashion protests with signs when they begin to sell them. This will make their holding costs rise and drop their profits.
    Maybe Snappy can turn up the exhaust fans so the homes can be filled with the smell of the deep fried wantons.

  6. I appreciate that they will use dumpsters (appropriately corralled?) rather than a large number of smaller totes. There is a town home development on 5th NE just north of Northgate Way that crowds it’s sidewalk in just this way.

  7. @Sue – That’s for the apodment issue and not this situation.

    @Tim – I joined the council in 2005 because we got a bunch of residential where there should have been higher zoning for mixed use (the old North End Glass lot that split up our business district). In my time we’ve never been anti-growth, though we’re often labeled that and my “fan club” that follows me around certainly paints me that way. This development is “live/work”, which shouldn’t be allowed in the Northgate Overlay. These units can either be residential or commercial. The developers say they plan to lease/sell them to commercial clients, but would give us no guarantee as part of the settlement. (FYI, check this document for a good idea of how MLCC advocates for growth. We’re proud to have kicked off this conversation about Neighborhood-Oriented Transit at Northgate. http://www.mapleleafcommunity.org/files/Northgate/2012-02-07_MLCC_Northgate-Area-Comments.pdf )

  8. There are still street level codes such as “b. Transparent areas of facades shall be Figure a was designed and maintained to allow unobstructed views from the outside into the structure or, in the case of live-work units, into display windows that have a minimum 30-inch depth. ” We need to figure a way to make micro permitting undesirable.

  9. Given the headline, I want to be very clear here: We were not “against buildings” at this location. We were very happy to see the land bought and development arrive.

    What we were against was DPD, yet again, not enforcing its own codes for Design Review and requirements on the property pertinent to the fact the development is within the Northgate Overlay District (NGOD). Both Design Review and holding to NGOD rules would have made the development better for the neighborhood and the future businesses we hope will locate there.

    When we initially objected to the lack of design review, DPD agreed with us. This was June of last year. In November, the developer reconfigured to try and avoid Design Review. DPD agreed with them, despite the fact the code is very clear that if you build more than four dwelling units (there are 8-10 on the site) or more than 4,000 sq ft of commercial (there is nearly 12,000 on the site) you have to go through Design Review. Because the developer split these six buildings into six different permit applications, DPD treats them as separate projects — even though anyone with a lick of sense can see they are related.

    This is called “piecemealing” or “micropermitting” and is a scourge across the city that leads to lack of sidewalks, missing pedestrian safety improvements, traffic problems, and a host of other negatives. We figured this was an excellent test case since it was so textbook — and a really important issue for Maple Leaf since this is in the heart of our Roosevelt Way NE Business District.

    Peter Holmes, our City Attorney, office argued that we had to file for a Land Use Interpretation in order to have standing to sue. That would have had to be filed within 14 days of the permit APPLICATION. This is a complete twisting of a land use code section that’s supposed to apply only to developers.

    At the 14-day point after the permit APPLICATION, DPD ***agreed with Maple Leaf*** this project was subject to Design Review. It wasn’t until the developer modified the project in November — FIVE MONTHS (150 days) later that Design Review came off the table. At this point, we couldn’t have filed for a Land Use Interpretation even if we wanted to since it was more than 14 days after the permit application was filed.

    For reasons passing understanding, the judge thought this made sense and tossed our arguments about Design Review and the violations of the NGOD — never ruling on them.

    As described in the article above and in the newsletter that you should see over the next week, we settled because we know we had to do SOMETHING to avoid 39+ cans on the Roosevelt Way NE curb.

    To answer the obvious question… Yes, we would have loved to appeal and we and our legal team strongly believe the judge’s ruling would have been overturned. I figure the odds were about 70-30 in our favor. The problem is under our state’s land use appeal rules, if we got unlucky and lost the MLCC would have been liable for the city’s AND the developer’s attorney’s fees. That would have run into the six figures and we cannot take that financial risk.

    We welcome development on this property. We hope the developers honor their committment to the MLCC to put businesses and not residences on the ground floor so our Roosevelt Way NE Business District gets three more businesses for our neighbors to visit.

    I just wanted to make sure everyone understands not only why we filed suit, but why we lost. More importantly, that were were NEVER against development on this site.

    David Miller
    President
    MLCC Executive Board

  10. David,

    Thanks for the explanation., and glad to hear the council isn’t totally anti-growth. Here’s hoping that they actually build mixed commercial/residential space on the street level.

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