@ Westwood-Roxhill-Arbor Heights CC: The no-$ urban village

Spotlight topics at this week’s Westwood-Roxhill-Arbor Heights Community Council meeting included how the area’s “urban village” has fared in city spending, plus, potential White Center/North Highline annexation.

27 people were in attendance, per the official count taken by WWRHAH’s Joe Szilagyi. Co-publisher Patrick Sand was there for WSB and these are his toplines:

URBAN VILLAGE: WWRHAH leaders were at last week’s briefing on “urban villages, 20 years later,” in which the Westwood-Highland Park Residential Urban Village was one of two of the West Seattle “urban villages” (along with The Junction) included in the study. (Find the original 1999 neighborhood plan here.)

The key takeaway: The city hadn’t “invested” anything in the Westwood-HP area over the years. The area also hasn’t seen even the modest amount of predicted growth.

The slide above is from the deck shown at the urban-village presentation – see the full slide deck here – which centered on a report commissioned from a consulting group led by former City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck. WWRHAH, which you may recall is a relatively new group, will continue working to change this going forward, with millions of dollars of investment now in the pipeline (such as safety improvements along the SW Roxbury corridor).

Potentially playing into that:

WHAT IF WHITE CENTER/NORTH HIGHLINE IS ANNEXED? Back in December, the City Council put itself back on the record as officially interested in having the unincorporated area vote on whether to join the city – but as a early-stage technicality that had to happen by year’s end, in order to preserve eligibility for the state-supported tax credits that would help an annexing city cover its costs.

Tuesday night’s WWRHAH discussion was not intended to review pros and cons, but to note some of what’s at stake. Chris Arkills from King County Executive Dow Constantine‘s office explained that the remaining unincorporated urban areas such as White Center must either be annexed to a city or incorporate as cities themselves, because the county is not able, for multiple reasons, to continue providing urban services, even at the relatively low current level. Burien had proposed annexation in 2012, but it wasn’t approved by voters, and with recent changes in its City Council, is not expected at this point to pursue it again.

DELRIDGE MULTI-MODAL CORRIDOR PLAN: SDOT’s Sara Zora was at WWRHAH for a version of the presentation we covered in our report on January’s Delridge District Council meeting.

P.S. For more details on all of the above and then some, the official minutes from Tuesday’s meeting can be found on WWRHAH’s Facebook group – here’s the link. (10:30 am update: They’re on the group’s website now, too.) Next meeting is 6:15 pm Tuesday, March 3rd, at the usual place, Southwest Branch Library.

1 Reply to "@ Westwood-Roxhill-Arbor Heights CC: The no-$ urban village"

  • DW February 5, 2015 (1:39 pm)

    Follow the money, if you want see city priorities — 20 years. All lives matter, remember.

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