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 12^th Street bridge. I pointed this out to Vince Biceunas, the Fairhaven Neighbors president, and showed her that their 7^th 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 12^th street bridge is out includes the route from Harris (through the middle of Fairhaven!), up 4^th 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 4^th 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 12^th 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.