Sunnyland Deja Vu

Guest writer Judith Green is a resident of the Sunnyland Neighborhood of Bellingham.  

In March, 2012, Northwest Citizen published an article by guest writer Mike Rostron titled, Sunnyland Neighborhood Asks for Support.  Not much has changed since then.  We in the Sunnyland neighborhood are still “fighting city hall.” In my letter to the Planning Commission, I included many quotes from his article and the responses generated by it.

The neighborhood proposal for re-zoning the area known as the Department of Transportation (DOT) lot, initially submitted in December of 2008, will finally be considered by the City Council on July 21, 2014. The Bellingham planning department, has created their own competing plan as an alternative.  They want to change the zoning in a single-family neighborhood to accommodate the Infill Toolkit, which the City Council approved for use only in neighborhoods zoned multi-family. They are recommending a Residential Multi (RM) Duplex rezone.

One of the problems with this designation is that the number of units is within a range, with a lower and upper limit.  On the city website, their proposal lists 34* Maximum Primary Housing units, the lowest number in the range, with a possibility of 49 at the high end.  What is not shown in this number is that within the housing types allowed, a carriage house can have an apartment above a garage and detached accessory dwelling units (ADUs), neither of which are counted in the total number of units. The recommendation states this would allow “…the property owner to design a development proposal that achieves the maximum density …”  and that  it would be a  “… minimum acceptable alternative considering the enormous infill potential of the site.”

The Growth Management Act requires Comprehensive Plans to include a housing element “…ensuring the vitality and character of established residential neighborhoods.” In their proposal, the planning department states that multi-family zoning is in keeping with neighborhood character. What? Are they kidding? Just saying it does not make it true. How does putting a multifamily development in a single-family area preserve neighborhood character?  They have put forth an untruth in order to pretend to meet the requirements of the GMA. This disingenuous ploy/spin is an example of a city department that is out of control and lacks respect for the people they purport to represent.

The owner of the property is a development group known as Sunset Commons LLC, whose stakeholders are David Edelstein, Greg Hinton, and their spouses. They have planning consultant Bill Geyer representing their interests. They do not support the planning department’s current proposal for medium density. When they submitted their own plan it was for a high-density development. It has been suggested that SCLLC, in addition to higher density, doesn’t want to be restricted by any design standards that would be imposed by using the Infill Toolkit. 

In August of 2008, the city hired a Seattle urban design firm to hold a Design Charrette and, adding insult to injury, spent our tax dollars to put forth a plan that reflected their vision of an infill opportunity. Mr. Edelstein participated in private meetings with the presenters, but the Sunnyland Neighborhood Association was not given the same opportunity. Nor was our proposal given the same attention to detail in the site and building graphics, with embellishments like foliage. Their vision was not acceptable to the neighborhood stakeholders or property owners.

I have a question for property rights proponents. Do developer’s rights trump those of the collective property owners in a neighborhood?  We will lose value in our homes, which for many of us, represents the total of our life’s work and assets.  Do we want to perpetuate the national precedent here in Bellingham, where the rich take from the middle class and become richer while the rest of us become poorer? 

David Edelstein bought this piece of public land. New zoning for private use stipulates that the best use be determined by all stakeholders. The Sunnyland proposal, which was the result of participation by many people from the neighborhood, agreed to 28 houses. This is a higher density than the rest of the neighborhood and represents infill. As the developer, how much profit does Mr. Edelstein need?  Isn’t the profit from 28 houses enough? Is it the neighborhood’s responsibility to take a negative financial and livability hit so he can realize his wildest profit expectations?

In addition, I understand he has not been building houses to sell, but builds them and keeps them as rentals.  I don’t know what his intent is with the DOT property, but if he is given his way, upper Sunnyland could become home to high-density rental units.  Maybe he wants to rezone it and sell it.  What is clear is that he will not be living here, and is only concerned with his own profit.

I refer readers to an article published on NWCitizen’s website on July 26, 2012 by Larry Horowitz called, We Have Met the Enemy and {S}He Is….  The person he talks about in the article is still on the council. Hopefully, this person has considered the issues brought up in Larry’s article.  Has {s}he grown enough these past two years to be willing to actually listen to the reasons Sunnyland doesn’t want to accommodate the proposed development supported by the developer and planning department? At a City Council meeting, I heard this person say that {s}he doesn’t “…understand why an owner can’t do what he wants with his own property.”  The reason is, because he is just one owner, and the rest of us, who are also property owners, are affected by what he does.

It is well known that people want to live in single-family neighborhoods.  Where is the wisdom of destroying an old Bellingham neighborhood to create a ghetto for, in the words of Larry Horowitz (in response to Mike Rostron’s article on NWC in March of 2012), “…some stranger … who may (or may not) choose to move here someday?”  Who is looking out for the best interests of the people who live here? I thought that was the job of our elected representatives and the staff who work for them. 

 Please stand with the Sunnyland neighborhood, and voice your support for the fair, appropriate, and reasonable proposal to the City Council. Emails can be sent to ccmail@cob.org