HOUSE OR PARKLAND? Fauntleroy Community Association’s fact sheet for beachfront house by Cove Park

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Next Tuesday night brings the public meeting Seattle Parks promised for community comment on its potential “trade” with King County for 8923 Fauntleroy Way SW, a 35-foot-wide strip of beach with a single-family house, adjacent to community-maintained Cove Park, which is immediately north of the Fauntleroy ferry dock. The county bought the house to use as a construction office and staging area during the Barton Pump Station Upgrade project, which was finished last year. It’s talking with the city about trading the house for use as parkland if in exchange it gets a street vacation for land that’s part of the pump station. We covered a Parks presentation about this at the April meeting of the Fauntleroy Community Association. At its May meeting, FCA decided not to take a position on the possible trade but did commit to creating and circulating a “fact sheet” about the situation, and that’s what you can review at the top of this story.

The meeting, meantime, is at 6:30 pm Tuesday (May 24th) in the Emerald Room at The Hall at Fauntleroy on the south side of Fauntleroy Schoolhouse (9131 California SW). In-person input always has a big impact, but if you absolutely can’t make it, you can comment via e-mail to chip.nevins@seattle.gov.

Claudia May 18, 2016 (11:24 pm)

There is also a survey you can fill out to tell the Parks department and Councilwoman Lisa Herbold if you would like the Parks department to proceed with the project, or if your recommendation is to allow the house to go back to private ownership. You can access it through: http://covepark.wix.com/covepark , but attending the meeting and showing your support would be the best thing to see it happen!

Claudia May 18, 2016 (11:30 pm)

Unfortunately the fact sheet says nothing about how many people enjoy going down to the water from the community and what a great asset it would be if the Park size was increased and cared for by the Parks department rather than just considered a “street end.”

Salt Spray May 19, 2016 (12:10 pm)

It is a fact sheet. No editorializing. The FCA is providing objective information to help community members understand how complex this issue is. They will be better prepared to make an informed decision, rather than a purely emotional one.

John May 19, 2016 (8:15 am)

I wonder what the thoughts are of the homeowners next door?

Sevenless May 19, 2016 (1:22 pm)

Not to be lost in this is the fact that Seattle property owners are also county taxpayers, so although it might no longer be a tax-generating parcel if the swap occurs (thus infinitesimally increasing the tax burden on other city properties), those same taxpayers also benefit from the infinitesimally small reduction in the county burden.

That said, I can’t imagine either of these numbers is more than a few pennies per year on even the most highly taxed property in the city.

Jon Wright May 19, 2016 (5:08 pm)

A few pennies? I would be amazed if the total even amounted to a single penny for any property in the city.

Jon Wright May 19, 2016 (1:22 pm)

I remain convinced that all the energy spent pointing out the potential tax revenue lost is a smokescreen by the NIMBYs to try to dupe us into believing that they are just concerned about the city’s finances and are definitely not NIMBYs.

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