So if you live in the urban village, you may have received a mailing from the city inviting you to “Join us for conversation about housing, parks, transportation and snacks!” If you were looking for a meeting to respond to the draft zoning maps, this is an opportunity to do so. From the city’s website:
NE Neighborhoods Open House: Affordable Housing Neighborhood Maps + Other City Services TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2016, 6 – 8PM
Location Ravenna Community Center
6535 Ravenna Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98115
Come join us for casual conversation around proposed changes to your neighborhood to generate more affordable housing, improve transportation services, and parks investments. Snacks and drinks will be provided. All are welcome.
We will be sharing the following Urban Village maps:
– Fremont
– Greenlake / Roosevelt
– Lake City
– Northgate
– Upper Queen Anne
– Wallingford
For additional information on the meeting, including the “other city services” that will be discussed, see the link here.
Personally, I wish the city would be more forthcoming in their mailing about what was actually being proposed. The friend who shared this mailing with me lives in a single family zoned area that the city wants to jump up four zoning designations to Low Rise 3. She is aware of what is happening, but many are not. Please continue to talk to your neighbors about what is happening, and if this is an important topic to you please attend this meeting and make your voice be heard. If nothing else, there will be snacks!
Additional Information:
Visit the city’s website here to view the draft Urban Village maps and participate in a survey.
If you are unfamiliar with how to read the maps, please click on the section that says “Learn more about how to read the map (+ video).”
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They can’t tell us how insanely overcrowded Seattle schools will be if all of these upzones happen, but there will be snacks! Fantastic.
Is HALA still in the discussion stage or is this a transfer station-like meeting – we don’t want your input/feedback, we’re here to tell you how it’s it’s going to be’?
The only point I can think of where our “feedback” made any difference, was the uproar when a Seattle Times columnist leaked a HALA proposal to allow townhomes etc. in SF zoned areas. Summer of 2015. That was withdrawn – but slipped back in via 2035 Comprehensive Plan policy 7.5, and you could also argue, via O’Brien’s changes to ADU codes. Queen Anne sure is saying that, and has held up those changes in an appeal of their fraudulent SEPA “determination of non-significance.”
But I digress. A good deal of the principles behind the upzones has already been adopted, but the upzones themselves haven’t. They may be holding their breath waiting to see if there’s real public backlash, but I doubt it, unless a major media outlet really takes the bit in its mouth, and lately there hasn’t been much of that.
AKA the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center.
You know when the put “and snacks” in italics, they mean business…
There’s even more reasons to go to this meeting. In addition to HALA the Parks Department is holding a “listening session” on their new proposals to define the gap between what is needed and what exists. As I understand it the acceptable gap is proposed to be widened considerably so they don’t need to provide more if the population increases. Be sure to stop by the Parks Dept table and tell them we don’t have enough already and changing the parameters so they don’t need to do any more is just pansy.
Good luck! that went down without a whimper when they adopted the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. What do you think, are “parklets” and painted streets with chairs and tables acceptable substitutes for parks with soil and vegetation? If I could get hundreds of people to harangue this administration about parks issues, that’s the one I’d pick. They seriously think parklets and street right of way in general are the future.
From a 2035 Comprehensive Plan presentation:
I found it interesting that one of the city staffers I talked to at last weeks’ meeting (didn’t get his name) said that nothing about HALA had been decided; not sure I believe that.
The Wallingford table was crowded – most others less so; no one at the Lake City table.
Who came up with this HALA idea in the first place??