Greenwood Sidewalks

9:30 am – 11:00 am at the Greenwood Neighborhood Service Center.

Draft Agenda:
* Introductions
* Pass the Hat
* Main Agenda Item:

Land Use Committee: Greenwood Town Center Draft Rezone Proposal Presentation followed by Q & A

Background - The Greenwood Community Council Land Use Committee has been working for the last 4 months with a larger group called Greater Greenwood Land Use, Design & Development Advisory Group to build an advocacy position for Greenwood that would be applied to any redevelopment that occurs in the future around the town center.

Redevelopment proposals for the Greenwood Town Center currently involve Fred Meyer’s development team, but the work we’re doing involves parcels beyond the 600’ x 600’ parcel from 1st Ave NW to 3rd Ave NW and NW 85th St to NW 87th St. The groups have been focused on analysis of the current zoning on and around that larger site and the question is whether changes in zoning would encourage development that would better address the aspirations of our Neighborhood Plan & other planning to-date for that part of our neighborhood.

The general issues we have focused on so far are rezoning and site configuration ideas that would encourage development of a compact mixed-use higher density walkable and bike-able urban village town center that relates well to the urban village its in and the adjacent Greenwood business district and residential areas.

We cannot dictate exactly how sites redevelop, but in this case rezoning is a tool that could be used to help encourage better development than what we might see if we don’t rezone. Most of the areas being considered for a rezone are currently zoned for auto-oriented commercial, C1-40, some are NC-2 40. Auto oriented single use development is not consistent with the goals of our Neighborhood Plan and other planning to-date.

Already, some comments have addressed the question of where zoning changes should occur. Typically, zoning changes happen at alleys or in places that allow both sides of a street to be compatible. In our neighborhood, most of the changes do allow both sides of a street to be compatible, but along 3rd NW across from the town center and along NW 87th St across from the town center, there is a disconnect from one side of the street to the other from commercial to single family. If there is interest in looking at those situations, other zoning designations could be considered to bring the 2 sides of the street together in the future.

The presentation will be an opportunity to hear about the work these groups are doing and adequate time will be made available to offer insight, input, and generally to ask questions about it.

This link to a Walkable Greenwood Urban Village google group will allow you to access the zoning proposal (and other Greenwood planning documents). The proposal is in 2 parts due to the file size. You can print from those files if you wish.

Since the document is a working draft, there are already some edits to the proposal under consideration and we’ll describe those, but it would be great to gather more input from this upcoming Community Council meeting before we revise the document.

http://groups.google.com/group/walkable-greenwood-urban-village

Even if land use issues are not your top priority, it would be great if you could come to this meeting to be brought up to speed on this issue and offer your comments for consideration.

* 1 Minute Updates
* Adjourn

The Neighborhood Street Fund awarded last year to complete the 150′ of sidewalk, planting strip, curb, and gutter from half-way up N 90th to the corner of Phinney Ave has some glitches. Although the section of sidewalk just west of the proposed segment is pretty much textbook right of way improvement with a 5′ planting strip (the minimum for street trees) plus a 6′ sidewalk, the proposed new segment doesn’t fit because of some historical platting issues.

Greenwood Sidewalks was awarded $100K to plan and design a project for parts of Greenwood currently missing sidewalks.

A PDF of the final application containing the full project description is available: {Click here to download}

WHO? Greenwood Sidewalks is a grassroots neighborhood group working on a plan to make it easier, faster, and cheaper to get our neighborhood connected with sidewalks. There are currently about 200 blocks in Greenwood without sidewalks.

WHAT? This is an application for City of Seattle, Department of Neighborhoods Large Project Funds. It is a planning project that would produce a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know go about getting sidewalks including information about all the different kinds of street edges, planting strips / buffers, sidewalks, and drainage solutions out there including traditional and lower cost attractive alternative approaches, what they cost, how to pay for them, who can build them, the environmental implications of each type, and what kind of maintenance they need to keep them looking good and working well. We produce a 2:1 match of their money ($100K) with the value of our time ($50K) and supplement the cash needed for the project with other sources of money including possible funding from the city, county, state ($35K - $100K).

WHEN? Our application deadline is April 14th. If we are awarded funds, we will start the project sometime close to the fall. The project will take about a year. We plan to follow up the project with an effort to build a series of demonstration blocks so that we can showcase the many types of solutions available to us which hopefully will inspire others to jump on board with a plan for their block. We need 10 – 20 blocks to participate in those pilot demonstration projects.

WHERE? Here in Greenwood. The project boundaries are N 85th St to the south, 8th Ave NW to the west, Holman Rd / 105th to the north, and Aurora Ave N to the east.

HOW? Consultants will be hired to lead the project, but it’s the people on the 200 blocks without sidewalks that make it happen with their willingness to participate as community volunteers, through materials donations and by giving their professional expertise to leverage the consultant’s time.

• Mark your calendars for events and join in.
• Identify and email us your block leaders and co-leaders.
• Pass emails along to neighbors, friends and others that might be interested.
• Help us by distributing information to as many people as possible.
• Help by inviting people to join in.

We are writing to let folks know that we are meeting weekly at this point.
We have submitted a LOI (Letter of Intent) to the Department of Neighborhoods for a Large Project Fund. This is a grant request for $100K. We are needing to come up with matching funds to come to an end dollar amount of $187K. This project has two phases; the first is design and planning and fundraising and the second phase is implementing in pilot project blocks.