A state legislative bill, HB1490, which seeks to mandate growth around light rail stations has been quite controversial. Although largely symbolic the folks who win will have garnered political 'coup' - a strange practice in Seattle.
Mayor Nickels has come out opposed to the bill, but this is really just political posturing on his part - angling against Councilmember Sally Clark. Everything being equal I'd probably choose Nickels over Clark, but Nickels himself has enough baggage to make him unfit to serve. Clark does not yet have that baggage, but definitely has the potential to be even worse - as this issue would suggest.
Clark's support of this bill should be viewed in the context of her role in neighborhood planning - as staffer to Tina Podlodowski the 'Microsoftie' who took over the effort after outspending and defeating neighborhood candidates. Neighborhood planning is being fastracked for exactly the same neighborhoods that have been the subject of HB 1490 - enthusiasm for the effort is lacking, as documented in this article. including outright opposition from the official neighborhood. Perhaps the history of Ms. Clark and her crew has something to do with this?
Ironically, the neighborhood of one of Ms. Podlodowski's opponents, Roosevelt, just north of the University of Washington - has not been included in these conversations - probably to their relief. Yet this is actually the neighborhood that merits densification the most - the area folks fought hard for what, at the time, was estimated to cost 100 million dollars. The business district their is nice, but not very big - call this, rhetorically - one million per business in a neighborhood surrounded by single family homes.
Any neighborhood planning that does not respect the historic nature of a successful single family neighborhood is doomed to fail. HB 1490 does nothing but provide cover for those who would ignore this history out of incompetence and not much more.
Growth should happen in areas that are zoned for it - but the authority to make the decision needs to be vested in the area, not in the hands of the downtown developers operating through Seattle City hall. The ability to make such decisions does require training - for both neighbors AND designers. There are people out there on both sides that are good enough to do this.
There are also people that are not, including, apparently, Sally Clark. Keeping them around only does one thing, make money for the Downtown lawyers - the developers and the neighbors will both be less for this engineered fight.
One last fact from 'institutional' memory - do consider that the law firm of Podlodowski's former employer was also the legal counsel for Sound Transit.
Go Figure!
