Susanna, Author at Wallyhood

Amendments to Wallingford upzone legislation

Susanna February 19, 2019 4 Comments

The City Council is currently reviewing the upzones being proposed under HALA/MHA. For more background on this discussion, please click on my author name and that will link you to more articles on housing than you will probably care to read.

Important dates:

February 21st: public hearing on MHA (zoning changes)
5:30 pm at the City Council Chambers, City Hall, 600 4th Avenue
Definitely arrive early if you can to sign up to speak.February 25th: MHA Committee will vote on amendments and will vote the bill out of committee. But an important note: the “committee” is made up of…

Don’t forget to vote for the school levies, ballots due Tuesday 2/12/19

Susanna February 10, 2019 9 Comments

Have you voted yet? With the abominable snow storm dominating everyone’s thoughts, don’t forget to turn in your ballots! This election is an easy but important one, there are only two questions on the ballot, and they both relate to school funding. My children and I think you should vote “yes” on both levies to help fund the schools.

Seattle schools have been chronically underfunded for years, and with our explosive population growth, the schools are virtually bursting at the seams. There is a significant need for more funding. The money would go towards replacing or modernizing eight schools, among …

Public Hearing February 21 for the HALA upzones with final Council vote on March 18

Susanna January 10, 2019 12 Comments

The upzones are coming! The upzones are coming! (Can you picture me riding my horse through Wallingford and sounding the alarm just like Paul Revere?) But seriously, the City Council is moving forward.

On January 7, the City had the first of five special committee meetings to discuss the HALA MHA upzones. A public hearing has been scheduled for February 21 and a final City Council vote is set for March 18. Yikes.

There’s currently a glut of empty luxury apartments and increased density is driving gentrification in historically minority neighborhoods like the Central District, but the City moves forward …

Wallingford targeted for more housing growth than most other urban villages under HALA

Susanna January 28, 2018 210 Comments

As I reported in November, the City has released the “Preferred Alternative” maps for proposed zoning changes under HALA (if you don’t know what HALA is, you can find out more here). What I did not have in my hands when writing about the Preferred Alternative maps the first time, was the figures for just how much new development Wallingford could expect under these proposed zoning changes.

As you can see in the document linked below, Wallingford is targeted for a whopping 95% increase in housing growth under the latest proposed changes! This is a big jump from the 39% …

The City reveals “Preferred Alternative” zoning changes for Wallingford

Susanna November 20, 2017 100 Comments

Micro apartment buildings throughout the Wallingford Urban Village? It’s possible under new zoning recommendations recently released by the City. Even though Mayor Ed Murray has left office, his Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda or HALA lives on. The HALA upzones (known as Mandatory Housing Affordability or MHA) are being championed by our own District four City Council member Rob Johnson, who is chair of the City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Zoning committee.

A key part of this housing agenda is zoning changes to allow for larger, denser developments throughout the City. In exchange for allowing developers to build more …

The life and death of our Neighborhood Plan

Susanna October 23, 2017 171 Comments

I’d like to tell you a story about the life and death of our Neighborhood Plan. The story starts back in the 1990’s. It was a time when Seattle was still a small big city before Amazon took over a whole neighborhood, when we were the center of a musical grunge scene and flannel was everywhere (well, maybe that last part hasn’t changed).

If you are old enough, you may remember this version of Seattle. But while the cool kids were listening to grunge there were some other groups, of likely the more bookish variety, that were involved in some …

Join the Wallingford Community Council for a Waterways Walk on Saturday, October 7th at 3-5 p.m.

Susanna October 2, 2017 3 Comments

From the Wallingford Community Council:

Join us on a family-friendly walk along Lake Union to learn about the public access points on Lake Union. Free and open to the public.

When: 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. on Saturday October 7th, 2017. Rain or shine.

Where: Waterway 22 (bottom of Stone Way North). We’ll meet where the Burke Gilman Trail intersects with Stone Way, in the parking lot area by Solsticio – N. 34th St). Then about 3:15 p.m., we’ll begin to work our way east toward Waterway 15 (just to the west of Ivar’s, NE Northlake Way/4th Ave NE). For those …

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