The so-called Magnolia Neighborhood Planning Council filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court Oct. 13 to block housing from being built on surplus military property in Fort Lawton.
The plan calls for the construction of up to 261 units of housing that include 85 units for the formerly homeless. Homeless housing was a sore point for many Magnolians, according to comments made over several months at a series of public meetings.
The city submitted the City-Council-approved reuse plan to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development the same day the lawsuit was filed, said Julie Moore, a spokeswoman for the city's Office of Housing.
Drawn up by well-known land-use attorney Richard Aramburu, the suit claims the city made two mistakes in the federal Base Closure Act and Realignment Act (BRAC) process, which governs the conversion of surplus military property to public and private use.
The first was that the city, as the Local Resue Authority, failed to follow the Discovery Park Master Plan, which was amended in 1986 to call for the property to be used "as park and residential space, not residential use," the lawsuit states. The second mistake, the suit adds, was the city's failure to consider environmental impacts of the housing development under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA).
Environmental Impact Studies under SEPA are typically prepared after specific plans for development are drawn up, although there are sometimes exemptions to that rule when federal property is involved, according to City Attorney Tom Carr.
Furthermore, Carr said, following the park's Master Plan is not mandatory, and the Master Plan is trumped by the city's Comprehensive Plan, which calls for concentrating growth in urban areas. Federal law also specifically calls for homeless housing to be included in the development of surplus military property.
"I don't think there's much merit to the lawsuit," Carr said.[[In-content Ad]]
