Roger, spot upzones are disfavored for a host of good reasons.

People living in that particular well-established neighborhood apparently don’t share your sanguine take on massively increasing its density. Are you aware that sudden increases in density result in adverse social dynamics?

http://www.ratbehavior.org/WildRats.htm

There are economic arguments as well against some kind of grandiose upzone there. The market for condo units around here hasn’t found its bottom yet, and there’s a huge number of new rental apartments being built already in Seattle. Moreover, the one substantial “TOD” effort along the light rail line (the Othello St. Station apartments) got big tax subsidies to go in there and it is far from a big success.

Today's Crosscut is so rich in irony that just reading two articles probably caused a spike in my cholesterol count.

In Floyd McKay's article, we read about the heroic residents of Bellingham who are trying to prevent big money interests from ramming a coal port down their throats, and who cite local control of the local environment as their issue.

In this screed by Valdez, he taunts, with ill-disguised contempt and condescension, the Roosevelt-area residents who are trying to prevent big-money interests from ramming Sisley's towers down their throats, and all but gloats at their failure so far to do so. But aren't those residents also citing local control of the local environment?

Of course they are. Qualitatively, it is the same argument. But whereas the coal-port opponents are considered environmental freedom fighters, the Roosevelt residents are considered NIMBYs (the density cult's N-word).

Now be honest here, readers. Raise your hands if you oppose the coal port, but also support Hugh Sisley's upzone. We know that you're out there. We also know that you are a pack of damn fools.

"Opponents of the rezone say the issue was not density — that is welcoming more development and new people to the community — but the view from 65th."

Not true. We welcomed, and even added more density than the Mayor or the DPD. We were trying to preserve the one area where we have a view; from Roosevelt High with a view to the west to the Olympics and to the south, to downtown.

"Sisley and his management practices, blighted houses, and profits weren’t the issue."

Again, not true. We all know these brothers are a problem but the real issue is who the City trusts and does business with. Do you trust people who have repeatedly, over 20 years, violated city zoning laws?

"The answer is that zoning changes will make Roosevelt more livable for the neighborhood's current residents: Boosting the neighborhood's development capacity means more people in Roosevelt's commercial core, more customers for local businesses, and the replacement of blighted and abandoned buildings."

You don't get to make that judgment if you don't live here. That's YOUR assumption/belief. Mr. Valdez does not get to be the sole judge of what a neighborhood wants.

65 foot "towers."
That's preposterous.

Surely you jest, Ivan.

No, David, I'm not jesting one damn bit. The residents and the school community wanted the school, and the students therein, to be lit by the sun. 65-foot buildings block that, just as effectively as 665-foot buildings would. If you want to quibble over how high a building has to be to be considered a "tower," be my guest. You're debating semantics. But the sun-blocking effect of a 65-foot building is not debatable.

" this shift no doubt provides cover for journalist-posing PR types":
NO Doubt at all!

"the bigger question: What will Seattle do about encouraging more growth around transit citywide and will our land use policies favor people who got here first, or the residents of Seattle's future?"

No. That question would be: planning for whom, by whom? At one time it was answered but with time comes undoing—http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/san_francisco.html

RCW 36.70A.020
[Current and original Growth Management Act] Planning goals.
... The following goals are not listed in order of priority and shall be used exclusively for the purpose of guiding the development of comprehensive plans and DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS:
... (11) Citizen participation and coordination. Encourage the involvement of citizens in the planning process and ensure coordination between communities and jurisdictions to reconcile conflicts....
[emphasis added].

Seattle's Comprehensive Plan in response to GMA, as adopted 7/25/94, Ordinance 117221
LAND USE ELEMENT
L8... Consider the designations to be preliminary, subject to further objective analysis in neighborhood planning....
L9 Permit through neighborhood planning processes, recommendations for the revisions of zoning to better reflect community preferences for the development between the zoning and this plan is maintained.
L13... Establish permanent urban center village boundaries as part of neighborhood planning.
L14 Establish boundaries for hub urban villages or residential urban villages as each new or revised neighborhood plan is adopted by the City Council...
L44 Preliminarily designate as residential urban villages areas identified in LU Figure 1... subject to further objective analysis through the neighborhood planning process.
L48 Permit residential urban villages to include those areas that possess the desired characteristics and infrastructure to support a MODERATELY dense residential population.
NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING ELEMENT
G2 Give all Seattleites the opportunity to participate in shaping the future of THEIR neighborhoods.
G4 Define a clear role for neighborhood plans in decision-making in Seattle.
N2 Establish a COLLABORATIVE neighborhood planning process that involves simultaneous consideration of both the City and neighborhoods working together.
N5 Establish INCLUSIVE planning processes in which neighborhood plans are created through the cooperation and contributions of all interested parties, including institutions, organizations and individuals of all ages, whether resident, property owner, business owner or employee.
N14 Ensure that all urban centers, urban villages and manufacturing/industrial centers are included in comprehensive neighborhood plans, which at a minimum do the following:
a. Review and amend or confirm the preliminary urban center villages.
b. Review and amend or confirm preliminary hub urban villages, residential urban village and neighborhood anchor designations.
c. Establish boundaries for hub villages and residential urban villages...
d. Establish growth targets in urban villages which either confirm or modify growth planning estimates...
[emphasis added]

A planner's eye version of how we did it (omitting "how Council saved the plan") here: http://www.rudi.net/books/13070

How Council saved the plan here:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19940716&slug;=1920580
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19940628&slug;=1917864

Views from a distance here:
http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/108/seattle.html
http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~tangotti/Seattle%20Neighborhood%20Planning.htm

Roger: For those of us unfamiliar with the history, can you explain this assertion: "If we take the opponents at their word, saving the view from the sidewalk on 65th is worth leaving the Sisley properties in their current state of disrepair..."?

Another mind-blowing essay from Mr Valdez showing his excellent knack for falsely spinning an argument. His biased reporting tarnishes the otherwise generally fine reporting found here on Crosscut.

First, Mr Valdez claims that "the City Council opted to up zone blocks in the center of the Roosevelt neighborhood". What in reality has happened is the COBE committee recommended the upzone. Full Council will take action again on the 30th. While portraying this as a completed Council action, he is misrepresenting the general tone coming from Council. First, 3 Councilmembers supported the lower heights on the Roosevelt blocks (the Licata amendment). Sally Bagshaw, one of those voting against, in an email to me, subsequent to that vote, stated "yes OF COURSE if the negotiations do not pan out to provide what we are requesting, I will not vote YES for the final deal". Tim Burgess before casting his vote against the amendment said he was doing so only because of the negotiations with RDG to get community input into the Roosevelt Blocks' design. Something that is still unclear is Burgess' greater role in supporting the 65 foot heights. He solicited from the Planning Commission their report in support of the 65 feet, perhaps looking for that political cover.

I do not know the current status of these negotiations, but what I have heard is that RDG is not yet making the community happy, and that a delay on the final vote may occur on Monday until some agreement can be achieved. But let's be clear: Council has left the community in a difficult, if not unfair, position of resolving a mess that the City has created and which Council has reinforced. I hope that the community, under duress and fatigue, does not relent in its goal for preserving the nature of Roosevelt High School as the preeminent community landmark. And I hope that Council honors its promise to help ensure that.

Sadly, Mr Valdez does not see the world through any aesthetic lens, only in number of units that could possibly be built. His ideological wonkiness trumps any rational thought in these matters. He clearly confuses the arguments over the impacts of heights on the High School by responding that there will be more people.

Also, Mr Valdez shrugs off the claim that Council is beholden to development interests over the community by raising the question "if the Council is so beholden to development interests, was the Roosevelt process so drawn out? Why didn't the final rezone plan include heights like those found near Vancouver, BC light rail, where 120-foot towers are common?” Of course this has nothing to do with the assertion, and as has pointed out elsewhere, just looking at the campaign contributions to certain Councilmembers and following their voting record shows where their primary interests lay.

With little effort one can find the campaign contributions from RDG (HB Management, GGLO) and its attorneys to McGinn and the sitting Councilmembers now weighing in these matters. Public records show behind the scenes efforts between Councilmembers getting these contributions, the administration and the Planning Commission (who’s vice chair works for GGLO, part of the RDG) to gin up the argument for the 65 feet in the Roosevelt blocks.

More to the point however is the fact that real community involvement in the planning process has been diminishing since the Nickels administration, and Council actions have only helped reduce that engagement further. One can easily find that recommendations on the planning process have been ignored (see the Neighborhood Planning Advisory Committee's recommendation or the 5 minority reports on the south end station planning efforts and to get a feel for the top-down side show that planning has become under DPD) and many on Council seem strongly in favor of disenfranchising the community in any future planning.

Mr Valdez belittles the role of the extant population to have a meaningful voice in the planning process, and ridiculously argues it as whether existing community members “should win out” or should future residents (whom one presumes Mr Valdez must be championing) be more important. Of course these are at best false arguments that have been contrived by Mr Valdez and his fellow self-described and self-promoting urbanist pundits (like Dan Bertolet, whose missives spawned this whole debacle). They love to portray community activists as NIMBYs and anti-growth/anti-development, including John Fox (whose issue is loss of affordable housing, not density) as a means to give more credence to their point of view.

Posted above by “afreeman” are the underpinning guidelines that should have led Council to accept the Roosevelt plan for those blocks and really should be the guiding light for future neighborhood planning. (Of course, asking Council to adhere to the Comprehensive Plan is futile at times).

In Mr Valdez’s density-goggle vision, more people is the bottom line. What he and some on Council have ignored is the fact that the Roosevelt neighborhood have presented them exactly that bottom line, just in a different way.

Unfortunately, that is a precedent that COBE didn’t want.

Councilmembers should be pressed to take a different view in this matter - or a different job.

Should anyone be surprised that there's confusion about the word "density" when it's been sold to the locals as "Paris" for the last 20 years? As to whether or not the city council and local press is in the pocket of developers and special interests, the answer is "yes" and "yes."

Bravo, South Downtown

Good comment, South Downtown. I am glad that Crosscut has seen fit to bless you with an "Editor's Pick." There is hope yet for (some portion of) the media to better cover Seattle's governance problems. Mr. Valdez is not part of it.

The obvious solution to the problems presented by South downtown are district elections.

65 foot "towers."
That's preposterous.

Surely you jest, Ivan.

— David Sucher

David, stop being disingenuous. You know full well that RDG was vigorously lobbying for 15 stories (150') at the disputed site. 150' buildings would indeed "tower" over Roosevelt High School and the rest of the properties in the rezone area. It was community opposition to this "preposterous" proposal that removed from consideration. It is not hard to imagine the current developer controlled city council approving the 150' sans community opposition.

As always, Roger Valdez is talking big about things that are well above his level of power and influence.

The Roosevelt zoning debate is not a microcosm of a larger zoning debate. The city may look at a few more light rail station areas and consider rezones there, but most other neighborhoods will likely be unaffected.

The most important part of the Council's decision to overrule the neighborhood and put 65 foot zoning by Roosevelt High School is that members rejected calls for taller buildings. Sixty five feet will remain as the maximum height limit in most neighborhood commercial areas.

And consider this statement by Roger: "All sides of the debate agreed that more leadership is needed to answer the bigger question: What will Seattle do about encouraging more growth around transit citywide and will our land use policies favor people who got here first, or the residents of Seattle's future?" The role of neighborhood residents in planning their neighborhood's future hasn't been affected by this single political setback for Roosevelt residents.

There is simply no impetus or popular support for the sort of massive rezoning Roger and his developer cronies would like to see. Based on the makeup of the City Council, and the expected departure of Mayor McGinn after the 2013 election, there simply isn't the political will to forcefeed density to the neighborhoods.

Well spoken, Diane. Now make it happen.

Diane who?

Based on the makeup of the City Council, and the expected departure of Mayor McGinn after the 2013 election, there simply isn't the political will to forcefeed density to the neighborhoods.

There seems to be the political will in Olympia to "forcefeed" density into Seattle neighborhoods though.

A number of posters above tout the concept that "neighborhood input" should guide land use decisions.

Here's a bill that would create "transit overlay zones". One thing it would do is exempt from SEPA large projects near transit nodes. As state legislation, it would trump both city and county land use regulations (such as those listed above in one of the posts):

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?year=2011&bill;=2601

This bill would take away some ways for neighbors to object to large projects going in near them. Does anyone want to comment here on whether this bill might be going too far in that direction?

Since I live in the neighborhood, I cannot claim to be totally impartial in this discussion, but I would like to point out that, if the first goal in this process is to increase density, perhaps we should turn our attention to the Sound Transit station itself, which does not include a provision for any additional development on top. The station itself is underground -- the ground level building will have some ticketing and public art (though no public bathrooms), but although it takes up almost an entire city block it is designed as a one-story building. Sound Transit has held two 'design-presentation' meetings so far, and at each one they've been disingenuous about the fact that, when it's completed, the station will be the lowest-rise, single-use building in the area. Even the four-story, mixed use project that is scheduled for the block southeast of the station, will "tower" over Sound Transit's lovely, glassy box.

Most of you probably know Pat Strosahl. But if you don't, he was a founder of the Vision Seattle a city-wide neighborhood movement active in the late 80's and 90's (that also ran neighborhood candidates for City Council under their banner). He also was an early member and I believe one of the founders of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association back then. His job and work have kept him busy in recent years over in Yakima. But upon hearing about the recent City Council decision on the Roosevelt Rezones, he sent this to Richard Conlin earlier this week. He gave me permission to share it with neighborhood folks so here it is. In a follow up email he spoke highly of and gave high praise to the incredible efforts of Roosevelt activists fighting to preserve the livability of their neighborhood. Please share with others who might like to hear again from Pat. His email begins here:

Hello Richard,

It is with the greatest disappointment that I read of your leadership in the disassembling and disrespect of a 20 years tradition of neighborhood planning in the Roosevelt Neighborhood. With it, you and the council are corroding a relationship with a model neighborhood that had probably volunteered for a greater density impact within well thought-out neighborhood design guidelines as any neighborhood in the city. Then to have you LEAD the council in riding roughshod over that thoughtful work (and for only a few extra stories in a few places) was frankly shocking to me. What a difference a decade makes, I guess.

Since I have been in Yakima, tending to my family business, I have watched in dismay, as an award-winning, nationally revered neighborhood planning program developed by local neighborhood and business people (including myself and Gene Wasserman) was gutted by Mr. Nickels, without, unfortunately, more than a desultory defense from the council... If neighborhood planning wasn't working, go ahead and kill it. But it did work — and throughout the 90's, governments in cities across the nation were asking Seattle for lessons in involving their citizens. I know it worked because I worked with many neighborhoods to develop plans — great innovative plans — that are being enacted in neighborhoods all over the city — even with the most minimal city support.

It has never been any secret that the neither Nickels' base in the Democratic Party nor downtown interests that formulated his campaign nor the environmental movement, had much love for this type of actual town hall style democracy — they always claim that it was just cover for anti-growth NIMBY's in spite of dramatic and constant evidence to the contrary in virtually every neighborhood plan turned in to the city.

The real reason for their hostility is that such democracy (with a small "d") disperses power to people and restricts their ability to control the game from a narrow access point in downtown. Communism and facism have both proven that there's ALWAYS someone who thinks they know better than the peons on the ground, and are ready to levy their will on the ones who actually live with conflicts and work to solve its problems daily to maintain safe and viable neighborhoods. The disrespect for the people that actually MAKE the city every day is palpable.

I had been under the impression that you did not share the power-seekers' resentment of neighborhoods. In fact, since our earliest chats, I have always told people that I believed you to be a firm believer in responsible self-government of neighborhoods within a neighborhood planning context. With the recent action on the Roosevelt rezone, however, you and the council are on the verge of dismantling a working neighborhood democracy, and years& hours of yeoman work in good faith to carry out the City's growth targets.

The message you are sending: Woe betide any other neighborhood that actually works with government planners to willingly accept growth. Their reward will be ... more.

The Vision Seattle political movement in the late 80's and 90's taught people of the city that at times the ONLY way to get big government know-it-all master-planners to pay attention was to threaten the jobs of elected officials. Through political action we achieved neighborhood planning, and through neighborhood planning we turned neighborhood resentment into energized neighborhoods in Seattle as partners with the government in helping the city grow gracefully. And it worked.

I hope and encourage my betrayed Roosevelt Neighborhood to once again be the foundry of a citizen political uprising against the forces that arrogantly believe they must instruct the peons in how to build a city: except this time, Richard, I'm shocked and dismayed that you'll likely be on the "other" side.

Still, I Hope, Your Friend, Pat Strosahl

P