(Equity and Wolff projects in The Junction, photographed recently by Long B. Nguyen)
The discussion – sometimes contentious, sometimes thoughtful – goes on. How much development is too much development – or is there no such thing as “too much development”? Do “growth targets” set in the past mean anything – considering, for example, the greater West Seattle Junction area is reported to be already past a future target, with major projects in progress and more on the way? When we talked one-on-one recently with Mayor Murray, he said one way to revisit that will be through the Seattle 2035 process that’s just launched. A West Seattle meeting is scheduled, one week from Wednesday. But before we get to those details – here’s the mayor’s 1-minute response to our question of whether growth should be allowed to expand seemingly infinitely even if so-called targets are passed:
Now, details of the meeting, one of five open houses citywide:
April 9th, 6-8 pm, at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center (4408 Delridge Way SW). From the city announcement:
DPD is hoping to reach out to different neighborhoods and gather comments on the Planning Alternatives that are currently under discussion. Comments can be submitted through April 21, 2014.
DPD is scoping an environmental impact statement (EIS) that will evaluate the City’s Comprehensive Plan update. The EIS will examine the possible impacts under three different growth scenarios.
Consistent with regional growth projections, all three scenarios assume the city will grow by 70,000 households and 115,000 jobs over the next 20 years. All the scenarios follow the Comprehensive Plan’s urban growth strategy that aims to concentrate most of the growth in the city’s designated urban centers and urban villages. The alternatives differ in how the projected growth would be distributed:
Alternative 1 would evaluate most of the growth in the six urban centers, in keeping with the regional plan of concentrating development in centers.
Alternative 2 would still project a lot of growth in the centers, but would shift some growth to the urban villages in order to strengthen those neighborhood business districts.
Alternative 3 would evaluate more growth in the urban villages that contain existing or planned light rail stations.
The Comprehensive Plan the City ultimately adopts could combine aspects of each of these alternatives.
DPD is taking comments on these alternatives and the topics to be covered in the EIS until April 21.
Even more information about the alternatives is here, as well as how to comment on them now (in addition to commenting in person at the April 9th meeting).
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