Decision clears way for sale of old gymnasium, on condition parking for Hay staff is preserved
Seattle Public Schools has done an abrupt about-face in its efforts to get a design departure to eliminate 14 parking places next to the former Queen Anne High School gym on Galer Street.
Although hardly anyone uses them today, reserving 14 of 24 parking spaces for John Hay Elementary School staff was part of the deal 20 years ago when the school was built. It was a tradeoff that allowed the school district to not include as many required on-site parking places.
But now the district wants to sell the old gym building and the property it sits on to a housing developer. Problem is, preserving parking for school staff will knock down the price of the property anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000, according to Ron English, general counsel for the school district.
A reconvened Design Departure Advisory Committee held a series of three sometimes-contentious public meetings about the issue earlier this year. The 12-member committee included English, neighborhood and school parents, representative of the neighborhood and representatives from the Department of Neighborhoods and Planning and Development.
A final report the committee issued in September calls for the school district to keep its word. The report concedes that a traffic-and-parking study conducted by Heffron Transportation concluded "that parking [supply] was sufficient to warrant granting the District relief from this [parking] requirement."
The majority of the committee disagreed. The report notes that current land-use codes call for developers to include 1.2 parking places for each residential unit, but public testimony indicated that most multi-family units require parking for at least two vehicles.
The committee also came to the conclusion that the immediate area near the school would continue to grow as more multi-family units are added to the mix over time. Because of that, the committee concluded that "there was little reason to believe that the future would trend towards reduced parking demand and utilization of on-street parking."
The loss of up to $400,000 for the school district if the parking requirements were kept wouldn't provide enough benefit to the city to warrant any change in the longstanding arrangement, the report adds.
English, from the school district, wrote the minority report and questioned the committee's data and methodology. "[The report] ignores the parking counts and staff survey which establish that the 14 designated spaces have not, are not and likely will not be used by district staff because there is on-street parking much closer to the school," he wrote.
But English sent out a Nov. 2 e-mail to committee members announcing that the school district was withdrawing its request to eliminate the 14 parking spots.
"It's very surprising," committee member Mary Hegdahl said of the late-breaking decision. "That's just odd to me. I thought the school district would approve [the departure]," she added. "In a way, the whole process ... has been interrupted now because the school district has changed its mind."
The neighborhood and the majority of committee members were strongly opposed to dumping the parking requirement, English noted. "We decided we would accept that judgment and move on."
The district still stands to make millions when the property is sold, he said. English added that the 14 parking places for Hay staff could end up in an underground garage the staff members could access with keycards.
Requests for proposals will be sent out in January to potential buyers of the old gym property, and the potential buyers will have four weeks to reply, he said.
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