The riot that took place in Bellingham on the evening of 12 October should be a wake-up call for the city. This riot was not the first in that area and was facilitated in large part by a concentration of students from WWU with other young renters and visitors in rentals close to the university campus, the availability of social media for instant communication, the unrestricted availability of alcohol and the lack of supervision in any sense of the word. This situation is a culmination of decades of neglect and laissez-faire code enforcement with the de facto creation of a student ghetto that surrounds the university and chokes out any livability for families whose presence in apartments and in interspersed single family homes might have had an attenuating effect on the young renters.
Let us turn our attention then to the University Ridge development proposal. There has been considerable opposition to the ill-advised development to house almost 600 students in a privately owned dormitory complex (proposed by Ambling University Development) in the Puget Neighborhood. The process began earlier this year with a public meeting involving residents of the Puget and Samish Neighborhoods. Project approval now rests with the Hearing Examiner after many comments from the public, most of which appear to have been ignored or brushed aside in the staff reports and the SEPA declaration from the Planning Department. [You can peruse documents (SEPA/Staff reports) and citizen comments regarding University Ridge on the city's website here.) This ghettoization is a result of a severely broken planning process, but that is an issue for another day.
With the most recent riot in mind, consider then the deliberate creation of four dormitory buildings on five acres (surrounded on three sides by single family homes) where hundreds of students, some of drinking age and many not, will live and party, essentially without meaningful supervision. Note that it took the police department with all their equipment, the support of the Whatcom County Sheriff and the WWU Police several hours to bring this dangerous situation to an end. What then is the plan for preventing such a riot at University Ridge when the developer-promised “24 hour management staff” breaks up a party of drunken students who then become angered? With the availability of a much vaunted (by the developer) outside recreation area where large groups can congregate, these confrontations could easily degenerate into a riot fueled by the proximity of hundreds of students and their visitors. Terrified on-site staff would have time only to hit an emergency call button and flee the complex. To expect more from these staff members is not in the realm of reality.
What are the consequences of such an incident at University Ridge? What happens when police presence essentially traps nearly 600 people and their visiting friends in a limited area during a riot? Remember that there is only one entry/exit to this complex. What happens as the inebriated attempt to flee over fences and walls and through the adjacent woods, wetlands and backyards? My emails to the Chief of Police and the Fire Chief asking for an evaluation with respect to University Ridge regarding the problems of police and fire protection were never answered. Alarmed at the prospect of the creation of this dormitory complex, other residents of the area wrote to the Bellingham police and fire departments. They, too, received no response.
There has been no apparent consideration of how Ambling’s “management team” will deal with a riot when the complex will be staffed with service level workers while the Ambling hierarchy sits in their comfortable homes and offices in Georgia, far from the fray. How will this company even be able to afford insurance for such a catastrophe? Are they even thinking of such a problem? How will Ambling respond to parents whose innocent children are placed at risk for the sake of making money that will essentially flee the state?
This project is a disaster waiting to happen.
The silence from Lottie St. is deafening.
Comments by Readers
Abe Jacobson
Oct 20, 2013Excellent account, thank you Mr. Conoboy.
The underlying question seems to be, the tacit decision of Bellingham to allow the creation of student ghetto’s in the private sector, to provide rental revenues, property taxes, etc. None of those benefits would be available if the University were encouraged/allowed to install adequate on-campus dormitory housing. For example, the vast and underutilized space west of Fairhaven College could be developed with multi-story dorms, equipped with underground parking. There is no intrinsic acreage constraint that would prevent WWU from housing its students on campus.
The plus side of a return of student housing to on-campus dorms would be to allow all of Bellingham to be family-friendly without disruptive and troublesome “party houses” invading residential neighborhoods. The negative side of this, at least from the landlord sector, would be loss of a captive revenue stream, a revenue stream that is easy to harvest with minimal effort and no entrepreneurial outlay. So far, it seems that the Mayor and Council of Bellingham have consistently sided with the idea of intruding student ghetto’s into the private neighborhoods, favoring the landlord sector and hurting the quality and family suitability of neighborhoods.
Abe Jacobson (not a landlord)
Dick Conoboy
Oct 20, 2013The cost to build dormitories on campus is now prohibitive. Had the university incrementally built dorms over the last 40 years, we may not now be talking about this problem. Just adding a hundred or so beds to the on-campus Buchanan Towers recently cost $14 million. The cost per new bed is astounding. Attempting to house on-campus even 50% of the 10,000 or so students who do not live in the dorms is extremely problematic. Given the current room and board costs, students tend to flee the dormitories in the spring for the perceived freedom and lower costs of living in the city. At that time the university is experiencing substantial lost revenues on their dorms.
Delaine Clizbe
Oct 21, 2013Dick,
You assert “This situation is a culmination of decades of neglect and laissez-faire code enforcement with the de facto creation of a student ghetto”. What does code enforcement have to do with a drunken riot? You have overstepped big time with this opinion and it makes your whole “license and inspect rental properties campaign” laughable.
A couple of points:
Not all of the twenty somethings involved where college students.
The landlord did their part by including in the lease a clause that prohibits large parties.
The landlord immediately worked with the police and made it known that those involved would be evicted.
I hope that others can now see the absurd obsession you have with making “students” and “landlords” pay for whatever “violations” you dream up.
I will continue to judge that MOST students, renters and landlords are good people. I refuse to apply you negative glasses and prejudge these groups of people.
Dick Conoboy
Oct 22, 2013Delaine,
Nice to hear from you again. It has been a while.
The problem to which I was referring was that since the 1970s the university has built no on-campus housing of any note. The zoning of the area around WWU, in large part, to “multi-family high density” has favored the creation of a student ghetto. Moreover, many of the old, large single family homes have been chopped up into apartments, however, nobody really knows to what extent and to what degree of conformity to codes. Students tell me of bedrooms being doubled in number by the placement of plywood partitions and such with a concomitant loss of emergency exits in windowless bedrooms. This is a code enforcement problem that should worry any renter.
The main point at which I was driving is that the consolidation of so many young renters, be they students or not, favors incidents such as we saw on 12 October. Once an incident begins, many onlookers can be drawn into the fray especially if fueled by alcohol. We see this phenomenon after high stakes sporting events wherein the celebration goes sour. That is what we saw on the 12th. I am also afraid that by recreating a high concentration of young renters in a project such as University Ridge, we reproduce some of the conditions that led to the incident in the Sehome neighborhood.
I do not understand your statement about “making “students” and “landlords” pay for whatever “violations” you dream up.” Perhaps you might be more clear about what you mean by violations that I have dreamed up.
I am prejudging no one. I think most of the students are fine citizens. They have been guests in my home for dinners and BBQs for the last decade or more. I have worked with them on many occasions. They serve with me on the Mayor’s Neighborhood Advisory Commission and have also attended meetings and reported on the Samish Neighborhood issues (I am a Samish Board member) for their journalism courses and for the Student newspaper, the Western Front. It would be lovely if you could join us in these organizations to work on the many problems confronting Bellingham but I note that, unfortunately, you live in the county and are ineligible.
Delaine Clizbe
Oct 24, 2013Nice try Dick on trying to make me sound like an outsider. Yup! I live in the far off land known as Whatcom County, where I mind my p’s and q’s, take good care of my tenants, serve on one citizen committee and work for a living. Yup I’m the enemy for sure:)!
Dick Conoboy
Oct 25, 2013Delaine,
A while back Representative Barney Frank (Dem - MA), frustrated by total irrelevance of a response at a town hall, said this to his interlocutor. “On what planet do you spend most of your time? Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table… I have no interest in doing it.”
Regards,
Dick