The city decision on what to recommend be done with surplus Fort Lawton property is coming down to the wire after two years of stops and starts and objections that have almost become mechanical.
As the Local Reuse Authority, the city is expected to submit its Fort Lawton proposal to the federal government by November, said Seattle City Council member Richard McIver at the start of the second and last public hearing held before his Housing & Economic Development Committee on Sept. 4.
There was a smattering of support at the hearing for a plan that calls for - among other things - 30 housing units for the formerly homeless and 55 units for formerly homeless seniors. McIver said he would add language to the reuse plan to cap the total number homeless-housing units at 85.
But there were also previously heard objections at the hearing, objections that were also voiced in part in an Aug. 29 letter the Magnolia Community Club (MCC) sent to Mayor Greg Nickels and city council members.
As far as the MCC members are concerned, the best use would be to convert the Army reserve base into park property, according to the letter.
KC Dietz, a founder of Sustainable Neighbor Coalition, picked up on the same point at the hearing, saying the reuse plan is not supported by the 1972 Discovery Park Master Plan, which calls for all former military property to be converted to park use. She also worries that including housing at Fort Lawton could lead to "unchecked development."
The MCC letter concedes that the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act process requires the city to include homeless housing in the mix. "But we seriously doubt that, had the BRAC process not provided incentives to parties proposing homeless housing, that the area would ever have been considered a potential site for housing of any type, homeless or otherwise," the letter states.
While that may be, the BRAC process was abruptly sent back to the drawing board last year when the Army expressed concerns about not being able to sell off as much Fort Lawton property as possible to private developers, said Linda Cannon, deputy director of the city's Office of Intergovernmental Relations.
The MCC also objects to the reuse plan because it would allow 40 percent of the housing units to be town homes and also allow lot sizes for single-family homes to be smaller than the minimum of 7,200-sqaure-feet under existing zoning.
The proposed plan also fails to take into account the affect children from formerly homeless families would have on the neighborhood school, according to the MCC letter.
Magnolia resident Casey Kennedy picked up on the same point at McIver's hearing. Population is already outpacing school capacity in Magnolia, and bringing in more students from homeless families will only add to the problem, according to Kennedy, who has a son in second grade. "Sitting down several more students will not only bend the classrooms, it will break them," he said.
The MCC also slams the reuse plan because it doesn't provide for extra police and emergency services and also because it doesn't mandate improved public transportation.
"While the draft plan suggests that the 'quality of existing bus service is high,' it fails to account fro the distance between the Fort Lawton site and government and social services," the letter states in a footnote.
Traffic generally is at a tipping point already, according to Ron Piland from the Magnolia Neighborhood Planning Council. Speaking at the hearing, Piland said he was also concerned about fire and life-safety systems in Magnolia being able to handle the extra population at Fort Lawton. "I do not oppose homeless housing in any way," he stressed.
George Smith, a longtime Magnolia resident, favors the reuse plan. "Every neighborhood in Seattle ... has an obligation to address the lack of affordable housing," he said while at the hearing. "This is an opportunity we simply can't pass up."
"While providing homeless and low-income housing is an honorable goal, the Fort Lawton site is ill-suited for such a use," concluded the MCC letter, which again called for the property to be used for park purposes only.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
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