Myers Parcels in southeast West Seattle: Sale decision closer; comment deadline set

myersfate

The city has made its next move toward potentially selling off most of the undeveloped land in the southeasternmost corner of West Seattle that’s known as the Myers Parcels.

It’s circulating this document declaring almost one and a half million square feet as surplus – three parcels on both sides of Myers, as shown above – and asking for your thoughts on what to do with it. (There’s a page for each parcel/address – 9501 Myers here, 9600 Myers here, 9701 Myers here.)

This has been in the works for years; one year ago, we reported on a citizen campaign gearing up in hopes of saving at least part of the site as parkland. But the city says its departments have evaluated it and weren’t interested.

The site is part of a former gravel pit purchased by the city in 2003, with part of the land becoming the Joint Training Facility. A commercial sale for part of the leftover land fell through, but the parcels remain zoned for “C2” commercial development up to 6 stories. When we wrote last year’s update, the city told us it had millions of dollars left to pay off on the land via a “bridge loan”; since then, the mayor announced last November that $5 million from the sale of unspecified property at the site would go toward the city’s efforts to help people without homes. (That money was being advanced via a different type of loan to be paid off with sale proceeds.)

A sale would require City Council approval. And first, the city is asking for your thoughts on the property’s future. The notice suggests directing those comments to Daniel Bretzke at daniel.bretzke@seattle.gov or by postal mail at City of Seattle – FAS, P.O. Box 94689, Seattle 98124-4689.

P.S. Thanks to the reader who tipped us about this after receiving a notice from the city, which hadn’t been sent to media.

18 Replies to "Myers Parcels in southeast West Seattle: Sale decision closer; comment deadline set"

  • coffee February 9, 2016 (4:57 pm)

    Why wouldn’t the city long term lease the land to a developer who then could build housing that would be affordable for lower income residents?  I would think that would be a much better use of the land than selling it.  I’m never in favor of selling assets to pay something that is a short term fix.

  • Pat February 9, 2016 (6:06 pm)

    Whatever the City tries to do with these parcels, they will face a very steep, uphill battle to get buyers. The property directly south of the Training Center is a designated wetland by the Army Corps of Engineers and there are oodles of restrictions that come with that.I also know that there are Departments that DO have at least some interest in this property if for nothing more than an expansion of the Joint Training Facility. Of course this refers to the 9601 Meyers Way property.

    • Cass Turnbull February 11, 2016 (10:32 pm)

        Somehow, without doing anything, the central flatland part is good to go, environmentally speaking. They will keep the inaccessible parts as environmental mitigation. It helps that the guy who blew the whistle on the city the first time died. Who did they convince? John Beal wasn’t in his grave a year before they tried to sell this part. And now the City is back trying to cash out. Makes sense in a way. What doesn’t make sense is that the City is broke and selling our assets, while the town is flooded on money. This should be kept for the future. We have left the kids with a trashed world ecology, should we really handing over an ecologically compromised City too?

  • canton February 9, 2016 (6:24 pm)

    How about a secure park & ride with rapid transit into town.

  • canton February 9, 2016 (6:31 pm)

    There was one years ago, but the demand wasn’t there, maybe now.

  • Community Member February 9, 2016 (6:39 pm)

    I wish the city would do some preferential tax incentives to bring some JOBS to the area.  Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc are overflowing office buildings all over the region – wouldn’t it be nice to have some of the region’s job base here?

  • JayDee February 9, 2016 (7:06 pm)

    I am assuming the slot between the northern and southern parcels is a street ROW. Maybe if they sweetened the pot by connecting the street or Roxbury maybe it would be more attractive? 

    • Sevenless February 10, 2016 (12:18 pm)

      It’s a City Light utility ROW with high-tension lines running from the Duwamish Substation into Delridge.  There’s also a very steep drop-off where Roxbury dead-ends east of Olsen – the engineering required to connect any road through there would far exceed the sale price of the parcels.

  • Marianne February 9, 2016 (8:45 pm)

    Currently the parcels on the east side of Myers Way are used as homeless encampments.  The shoulders on Myers Way are used for RV camping.

  • Cass Turnbull February 10, 2016 (10:21 pm)

     Myers parcels is the last largest piece of undeveloped property that could become a major park in Seattle. It should be the John Beal environmental learning center and the park developed as a natural area with rangers. That would supply a safe place for kids to play in the summer (when their parents may be working), training and summer jobs in the field or environmental restoration, and a community  gathering place. It is has three separate ecosystems. Chorus frogs, crickets, the redtailed hawk hunts there, song birds, killdeer, goldfinches, native butterflies, the once common garter snake.It would buffer the traffic noise and air pollution that wafts toward Greenbridge and the senior housing. The upper part has a spectacular view. The Myers land could be kept on ice until some administration with a set of balls gets elected and makes the developers to pay to develop John Beal Nature Center and fix our  crumbling infrastructure. .    Think long term for the community—-which do we want ? world class nature park, warehouses, or parking. The money for the  mayors worthy homeless program could come millions  set aside to make a better entry the Westcrest Dog Park. Or the tens of millions the Mayor is spending to make our streets safer with road paint, curb bump outs, and blinking lights at the crosswalks. Those things can wait. When the land is gone, it’s gone for good.  place for other   and to be sold is the flat, sunny grass land in the middle. It will most likely become Lowes warehouses. The complete property is 32 acres of wetlands, wooded hillsides and those meadows. The city has worked a deal so that the  ‘sensitive areas’ aren’t considered sensitive any more an d the flat land can be sold

    • Aristide Tosi February 26, 2016 (10:17 am)

      I agree. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a lasting impact on the direction of the City of Seattle if this public land was turned into a protected area and public park..

  • Ben Calot February 13, 2016 (8:35 pm)

    The 4 parcels on the east side side of Myers have been a nuisance for many years. The City of Seattle should sell (or donate) these parcels to a local non-profit or neighborhood group to be used for recreation. The steep slopes make the property useless for building, but the area could be used for hiking or mountain bike riding if the city didn’t mark it as “No Trespassing” (which only keeps honest folks out, the homeless still destroy the place).

    The City of Seattle has been a very poor steward of the land, and continues to allow trash and sewage to be dumped into the creeks on the property which feed the Duwamish. I can’t imagine a worse neighbor than the city has been.

  • Cass Turnbull February 14, 2016 (7:46 am)

        The  wooded areas where the encampments are will remain undeveloped. They will be used as the ‘environmental mitigation’ for building warehouses on the flat land.  So planned  development will not affect the current encampment/illegal activity situation.

  • Stephen Lamphear February 16, 2016 (2:08 pm)

    Is this within the same area where the city planned to build a ‘misdemeanor’ detention facility — right by low income senior housing?

    • WSB February 16, 2016 (2:10 pm)

      Part of the Myers property was under consideration for the jail that ultimately wasn’t built, yes, along with, among others, the former encampment site at West Marginal and Highland Park Way. – TR

  • Judi Carr February 22, 2016 (5:14 pm)

    I live in the Senior Housing development just north of this area.  I can’t think of a worse thing to do to this green space than selling it off to make money for people that have a lot of it already.   We need to protect our rivers, creeks and green-lands and commercial development along Myers Way is not the way to do it. 

    • Mary Fleck February 22, 2016 (7:51 pm)

      Judi, Seattle Green Spaces Coalition would like to talk with you and other neighbors at Arrowhead.  Your views are very important.  Please call us!  Mary Fleck  206-937-3321

  • Cass Turnbull February 24, 2016 (3:40 pm)

    The open flat grassland part of Myers, which is the part to be developed, will not become either rich people’s houses or a cute little mini-mall. It is zoned C2, that’s warehouses and things like that with lots of concrete parking for the trucks, and big boxy buildings of no use to the local residents. Will any of those jobs go to local residents? I don’t know. But I do know that the increased stormwater runoff, the diesel fumes and the truck noise will add to the toxic load already borne by this part of town.

    Directly above and west of Myers is open land owned by King County Housing Authority. Another 400 units of  low income housing are planned to be added to Greenbridge  making a total of 1,000 units. And the viewpoint at the top–which is part of the Myers land– is planned to be used for a very large senior living facility, called Wind Rose, or parking for City vehicles.                    I believe that absolves the area from having to do more to solve the low income housing problem. The people at that viewpoint  will look  out at a sweeping view of Seattle with meadows and trees in the foreground, or a landscape of giant concrete buildings, the Joint Training Facility and parking lots. Which would you prefer to live next to? Which will make that area a better place to live.

     

     

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