By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
As an all-star group of community activists and businesspeople gathered for the first in a new series of meetings to map a vision for The Triangle – the mostly industrial/commercial area east of The Junction, bounded by 35th/Fauntleroy/Alaska – what wasn’t discussed loomed almost as large as what was.
The two-hour-long meeting was about three-fourths through when Harbor Properties‘ Denny Onslow angled into the issue: “The parking issue is the 500-pound gorilla in the room. We can’t ignore it, or say we’ll address it later.”
Harbor has one of the biggest stakes in The Triangle right now, with what is currently the biggest in-progress construction project in West Seattle, Link, which will supply about 200 of the potential 2,000 new residential units the area might eventually hold, and will not solve “the parking issue,” as it is designed with fewer than 1 space for each of those units.
But the Triangle already has its parking-challenged moments, even before new residents start moving in.
Before we dig into the issues, let’s look at who’s on the advisory group that’s scheduled to meet several times in the next few months:
At the back of the photo is the DPD senior urban planner who’s the project lead, Susan McLain, who pointed out at the start of the meeting that she is a West Seattleite.
The roster she sent out the morning of last Wednesday’s meeting (noting these don’t list all of each member’s affiliations – many are involved with several groups/concerns):
Catherine Benotto, Seattle Planning Commission
Nancy Folsom, North Delridge Neighborhood Council
Steve Huling, property owner
Erica Karlovits, Junction Neighborhood Organization, Southwest District Council co-chair
Sharonn Meeks, Fairmount Community Association
Susan Melrose, West Seattle Junction Association
Patti Mullen, West Seattle Chamber
Brandon Nicholson, NK Architects, Southwest Design Review Board
Denny Onslow, Harbor Properties
Chas Redmond, Morgan Community Association, Sustainable West Seattle, SW District Council co-chair
Josh Sutton, West Seattle YMCA (WSB sponsor)
All were in attendance. In the gallery – chairs ringing the edge of a meeting room at the Senior Center of West Seattle, the expected venue for subsequent meetings too – were about 10 more people, including Brian Hawksford from the office of City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, a West Seattle resident who’s been closely involved in discussions of The Triangle for the past few years. The city also had an SDOT rep at the table, Casey Hildreth – from the department’s “Complete Streets” group — and a consultant, architect David Hewitt, who explained he’s been looking at The Triangle “a long time” on behalf of Harbor Properties, with whom he’s worked on projects including the relatively new Junction mixed-use Mural (WSB sponsor).
You can call this a restart; as McLain acknowledged in preparatory materials for the meeting, and as you can see on the city’s West Seattle Triangle webpage, area issues were addressed at a meeting almost a year and a half ago (the city’s minutes are here; our coverage is here). Many of the same people are involved now in terms of the advisory group members (just compare the names listed in our 2008 article), but it’s a mostly different cast on the city’s side.
Back to the “500-pound gorilla” and other issues: Much time was spent discussing what should be discussed/decided. And the interests/priorities listed by each participant as part of their self-introductions revealed a host of intentions: Land use, design, areas to congregate/socialize, pedestrian-friendliness, livability, connectivity with other neighborhoods, addressing the fact that Fauntleroy Way can be perceived as a “barrier” between neighborhoods … Huling even wondered aloud about the name, saying that “Triangle” makes him think of “Bermuda Triangle.” (McLain said, “Certainly, whether this is the appropriate name long-term, is a good issue.”)
Inbetween “official” efforts, the neighboring Fairmount Community Association has continued to evangelize Triangle advocacy – organizing walking tours like this one last October and another, with Councilmember Rasmussen, a month later – and Meeks (its president) summarized, “This is a onetime opportunity we’ve got – it’s sat there, as it is, since I’ve lived there” – 27 years.
The official scope, as laid out by McLain: Addressing land-use issues such as height and density, “the kind of street environment we want to see, shape and size of future buildings,” with an eye toward developing a draft by fall for community review, and a proposal by year’s end for the City Council. The streets’ role could result in a “concept plan that can be part of the city’s right-of-way improvements manual,” according to Hildreth, who said that could get as granular as details on what type of street trees should be in the area. (Four of these “concept plans” are already on the books elsewhere in the city – you can check them out here.)
But those on hand wanted to make sure important points weren’t missing from the plan. Like Steve Huling’s reminder that “communication” should be on the list: “Any time a group like this gets together, they start talking about how they’re going to spend my money, my tax dollars. How do you communicate to the property owners? Am I going to be displaced? … Communication is a huge part of this. … If you have a business there, people are going to want to know how does it affect me and my employees … You’ve mentioned zoning twice now. What do you mean by that? I know what I’ve got [regarding zoning] now, but if you have plans to change (it) … I’ve got a lot of property in the process of being sold or leased. What do I tell these people about what’s going to happen? … We as a family have longer-range plans for some of this (land). How does (this process) affect what we are going to do?”
McLain said, “We definitely have a process for our outreach. We’ve been meeting with property owners over the past few months. … We’ll hold meetings before we make recommendations to the City Council, and we’d love to sit down with you again.”
West Seattle YMCA’s Sutton interjected, “I think we all have a stake in zoning.” Junction Neighborhood Organization’s Karlovits added, “The transparency point is huge,” and observed there are other major Triangle landowners not represented in the advisory group.
Eventually, the concerns about the group’s scope made way for viewing of a presentation by architect Hewitt, who noted his firm is “donating some of our time” to the project, believing The Triangle will become a “sweet, wonderful neighborhood at some point.” His firm also has been involved with the Metro RapidRide “C Line,” which is planned to run through The Triangle along SW Alaska.
Described by Hewitt as having been “put together for a variety of uses,” the presentation (too big for us to upload in its entirety) is dated in spots – particularly the slide with an outlook for various potential developments in West Seattle, some of which are no longer in the works, or which have stalled (e.g. Whole Foods/Hancock/etc.). But it outlines a vision for a “walkable, safe neighborhood,” with an enhanced “pedestrian landscape.” One striking point involved the concept of having two different types of streetscapes, given that The Triangle has two different types of streets, 80-90-foot-wide north/south streets and 50-60-foot-wide east/west streets = here (photographed from our laptop screen) are two concepts:
(“Woonerf” is explained here.) Looking at street concepts opened up a box of hot issues again. With RapidRide coming to The Triangle, Sutton wondered what would be done to discourage “park and hide,” an issue with which Junction neighborhoods have struggled, as people drive from other parts of the peninsula to catch the buses going directly downtown. Karlovits agreed that could be an issue, saying the recently completed parking review in The Junction “only made things worse.”
That’s when Onslow declared parking to be “the 500-pound gorilla in the room.”
“I agree that it’s one of the big issues,” said McLain, “but it’s bigger than (this group). Maybe we could organize a separate meeting specifically to talk about (it).”
Clearly, though, it was also a sizable issue for those in the gallery; JuNO’s Rene Commons called it “huge” and suggested underground parking for commuters, voicing a hope – frequently heard at many a neighborhood meeting – that SDOT would “reconsider park and rides.” The one park-and-ride that does exist in the West Seattle area, under The Bridge, isn’t safe, pointed out Diane Vincent, saying you can leave your car for the day and wonder if its window/s will be intact when you get back to the lot. Another observer identifying herself as an area resident said she’s concerned about parking for employees of neighborhood businesses. Onslow wondered about a public/private partnership, with parking that had specific daytime uses and different nighttime uses, but also noted, “To dig a hole for parking gets really expensive.”
(You probably won’t be surprised to hear that a suggestion to turn the “Hole Foods” hole into a park-and-ride, with a “nice park on top,” came up next.)
That, it was agreed, would “take the lid off” potential Triangle ideas – a phrase Onslow had used earlier, particularly in relation to the streetscapes: “Part of the opportunity before us is, take the lid off, change the grid … One-way (streets)? Walkable (streets)? What do you want to do? Stop and say what CAN you do, then we can find all the reasons why we can’t.”
The group meets again April 14th – same time and place (6 pm, Senior Center of West Seattle) as of this writing. McLain said the agenda would include looking at Triangle streets’ “character” plus “traffic pattern and flow.” And about that 500-pound gorilla? We’ll see if it turns up in the room then too.
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