(Rendering of new Alki Elementary entrance on north side of school)
Monday (July 1) is the day that Deputy Hearing Examiner Susan Drummond is expected to issue her ruling in the second appeal of a proposed zoning exception for the new Alki Elementary School. Thursday was the deadline she gave to the three parties in the case – the nearby residents who filed the appeal, Seattle Public Schools, and the city Department of Construction and Inspections – to file their closing statements, and all three did. You might recall that the only issue is whether SPS will be allowed to build the expanded new school with less parking than city zoning rules require. The rules require 48 spaces; the district originally sought to rebuild with no offstreet parking; a separate group of area residents appealed that and other zoning exceptions the city granted. Last August, Drummond ruled in their favor regarding the parking issue, ordering the district and city to go back to the drawing board on that. (Other exception appeals were either dismissed or settled.) The district subsequently revised the design to create 15 spaces on the southwest side of the campus; the city said OK, and then this appeal was filed.
The case was argued in a three-day hearing we covered in late May and early June (here’s our report on Day 1, our report on Day 2, and our report on Day 3), and now the ruling is awaited. The closing arguments are all in the case file – you can download and read the appellants’ argument here, the district’s argument here, and the city’s brief argument here.
Depending on what Drummond rules, a subsequent court challenge is possible; that was the first action the district took after the previous ruling, but a judge threw it out because it wasn’t a land-use decision, it was just an admonition to revisit the issue. Meantime, Alki Elementary spent the just-concluded school year in temporary quarters at the former Schmitz Park Elementary and will be there at least two more years. The school’s enrollment last year was ~271 (100 under the old Alki’s capacity), and the new school is planned for up to double that, counting two preschool classes expected also to be housed on the campus.
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