Today’s City Council meeting: WC annexation, Admiral Safeway, Junction project

March 28, 2011 4:17 pm
|    Comments Off on Today’s City Council meeting: WC annexation, Admiral Safeway, Junction project
 |   Development | West Seattle news

(VIDEO ADDED: This afternoon’s council meeting, in its entirety, from Seattle Channel)
Three notes of local interest from this afternoon’s Seattle City Council meeting (besides the major citywide headline, the Families/Education Levy going to the ballot):

WHITE CENTER/NORTH HIGHLINE ANNEXATION: We have been tracking this on partner site White Center Now. It took yet another turn today. End result: While the council is on record as saying it will make a final decision by the end of next February on whether to seek an annexation vote, amendments today make it clear that if Burien wants to start the ball rolling on annexing White Center and the rest of North Highline in the meantime, they won’t object. More here.

ADMIRAL SAFEWAY VOTE DELAY: As reported previously, City Council approval is needed for the change in one part of the Admiral Safeway project – doubling the number of apartments in the building on the site’s southeast side to 79, because the original plan for flex-work units could not get financing. After committee approval last week, the full council was supposed to vote today, but Councilmember Tom Rasmussen asked and received a 1-week delay, saying he wanted to review the public record.

HEARING SET FOR ‘ALLEY VACATION’ ON JUNCTION PROJECT: It’s been two years since the last notable public meetings related to Conner Homes‘ proposal for two buildings along SW Alaska between 42nd and California; the “underground alley vacation” that is part of the plan, facilitating the 2 buildings to share 1 parking garage, is just now reaching the council, which today agreed to set April 26th for the official public hearing on that part of the plan. (Council approval is needed since alleys, even just the underground sections of them – the aboveground section of this one would remain an alley – are considered public right-of-way.) SDOT’s street/alley-vacation specialist Beverly Barnett explained why this is coming up now (after the jump):

The timing delay was based on some work the developer did with members of the community who had expressed concern. Following the approval by the Southwest Design Review Board of the project, representatives of the West Seattle community contacted DPD to request additional discussion of items that the community felt were not addressed by the Design Review Board. Connor Homes spent a number of months in meetings with community representatives on design issues. That work was facilitated by Gary Johnson of DPD.

Late last year Conner Homes reached an agreement on these design issues and determined that the project was ready to proceed with the proposed vacation.

The agreement with the community was signed by Susan Melrose, Erica Karlovits, Rene Commons, Abdy Farid, Heather Leaman, Michael Godfried, and Rhonda Laumann.

If you want to testify, the public hearing on the alley vacation is set for 9:30 am April 26th at City Hall, before the Transportation Committee.

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