Edgemoor Neighborhood Association
Neighborhood Plan Committee
11/15/2007
Last week we
discussed the findings of the Neighborhood questionnaire, did a preliminary
review of the timeline, the draft work program, and undertook a review of the
1980 Edgemoor Neighborhood Plan.
1. South and
Fairhaven Neighborhoods
It is
important to identify the relationships that we have with the adjacent
neighborhoods, particularly South (which includes Fairhaven Park where we meet)
and Fairhaven (which is the nearest shopping district with recreational
facilities, primary health care facilities, our firehouse, and so on).
South seems
to be behind us in the development of their neighborhood plan. Fairhaven is ahead. We went last Wednesday to the public open
house that we supposed to generate comments on their draft plan. Several items are disturbing therein. They propose and have as goals to eliminate
vehicular access to Marine Park. All
sorts of people use that park for recreation some of whom are handicapped, some
have little time to spend on getting there, and as the end of the Sea to Ski
and a launch place for personal watercraft to be walked to the water, vehicular
access to the Park is important. People
drive down to the cul-de-sac at the end of the access road, park in one of the
spaces facing the harbor entrance and just sit to enjoy the view. All those uses would be constrained or
eliminated by preventing vehicular access. Also, there is a stated goal to
eliminate the access ramp for trailed boats in the Fairhaven harbor location
directly east of the Coast Guard dock. I
do not know what the private fisher-people are then to do to get their
trailered boats in the water, as well as the other recreational boaters who use
the ramp now. These are two of the items
which are immediately obvious in dealing with the Fairhaven draft plan. I suspect there are other concerns as
well. A serious concern that I have is
that they make minimal mention of the 12th Street bridge. I pointed this out to Vince Biceunas, the
Fairhaven Neighbors president, and showed her that their 7th subarea
abuts the bridge on its West side, which implies that in effect they own half
of it. It should be important to them,
if for no other reason to be sure that a significant part of the business done
in Fairhaven comes from the residents of the Edgemoor Neighborhood. Vince said that the draft report is the
product of Glen Denkler and that she was not familiar with all its recommendations.
Also, our
emergency access if the 12th street bridge is out includes the route
from Harris (through the middle of Fairhaven!), up 4th Street which
is partially unimproved and has no sidewalks and includes a steep hill with
poor visibility on the South end at its attachment to Bayside, and East on
Bayside to Hawthorn and so on. Bayside
has a choke section on its East end with a narrow roadway. I do not know if the Fairhaven draft plan has
any mention of 4th Street.
As for the
South neighborhood, it is important to have their support in the effort to save
the Fairhaven Highlands.
We need to
agree as to how we deal with these concerns.
My initial
suggestion is to send comments as individuals.
I do not know what the Southside Coalition can do in this regard or if
we should send comments endorsed by the ENA.
We were unprepared to draft comments at the time of the public review.
2. The 1980 Plan
There are a
variety of concerns with the old plan.
We need to go over them. There is
no major constituency for play lots now, as far as I know there are no official
parks of any kind in Edgemoor.
A lot is
made in the old plan re Clark’s Point. I
gather that it is now off limits to the public and owned by the land
trust. At the least, the road in is
substandard and could not meet any emergency needs for the existing
residents. Access to the waterfront
is eliminated. The path to Chuckanut Bay is effectively impassible
and since parking is denied at the
cul-de-sac on the south end of Bayside/ Briar there is a further concern for
all but the residents of the nearby houses.
I do not
know anything about storm drainage in Edgemoor.
There has
been no progress in connecting the sidewalk on Fieldston from Hawthorn to
Willow.
No mention
is made of the constraints imposed by the 22 foot roadway with no sidewalks and
allowed vehicular parking on Bayside between Hawthorn and Acasia.
Possibly the
most telling part of the 1980 plan is the lack of reference to overbuilding in
Edgemoor via large houses requiring a variance, planned unit development via
subdivision regulations, minimal reference to existing natural features
including plantings, to design guidelines, and ADUs.
3. Task
Division
I am going
to suggest that we agree what we want to save in the old plan and how we want
to proceed with the update. Do we want
to update the old plan or rewrite it virtually entirely? Do we want to redo the subareas and if so how
and why?
We could divvy up the writing task to address:
1. Roads and
Streets including sidewalks and the 12th Street Bridge
2.
Waterfront access
3. Code compliance
(e.g. variances)
4. Other
utilities
5. Reference
to other plans (?)
I do not think we have a very big job. Most of what we want is to be left alone with
what we have with the exception of making access to the neighborhood safer. Seattle has an urban forest plan which we may
take a look at and offer as an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan.
4. Committee Structure
We need to have a record of our meetings and regularize these
meetings. Even time and place to be defined is a plan.