Clock Is Ticking on Point Wells Project

The bill sponsored by 32nd District Reps. Ruth Kagi and Cindy Ryu to limit development at Point Wells will have a hearing Friday, February 11 at 8 a.m. at the State Capitol in Olympia.

The bill is HB 1265. Watch live online here.

The bills would limit development in locations like Point Wells to the density of nearby cities unless there is an interlocal agreement in place on impacts of the development with the surrounding jurisdictions.

Shoreline city staff has been crafting additional amendments to the bill the last several days in preparation for the hearing, city planning director Joe Tovar said.

State Sen. Maralyn Chase sponsored an identical bill SB 5421 in the Senate. Her bill is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday, February 15, at 1:30 p.m. before the committee on government operations, tribal relations and elections.
 
 Blue Square Real Estate had their pre-application neighborhood meeting January 27, where they presented plans for four urban villages, 3200 condos and 100,000 square feet of commercial space. The proposed development is in Snohomish County, but the only way to the location is through the Richmond Beach neighborhood in Shoreline in King County. Only 500 a trips per day occur on Richmond Beach Drive right now leading into Point Wells. The number of trips on the two-lane road would increase to about 10,000 per day by the time the project was completed in 2030.

Blue Square's plan is to submit an application to Snohomish County for permits on March 4 in order to vest the project under the current urban center zoning rules.

The cities of Shoreline and Woodway, however, are trying to negotiate with Snohomish County to put a six-month moratorium on the process, slowing it down, arguing that vesting under urban center guidelines are premature, Tovar said. Tover said the city wants to engage in problem-solving now instead to ease some of the legal wrangling that is going on now and is likely to continue. One thing the city of Shoreline wants is to lead the study of the traffic impacts that would be paid for by the developer, instead of the developer determining its scope and assumptions. 

Tovar and some Richmond Beach residents believe that a mixed-use development to replace the oil tanks and asphalt plant at Point Wells would be fine, but disagree with amount of units Blue Square wants to build since Shoreline would bear the brunt of the impacts on roads and other services. 

Tover stated that the 3,100 units proposed on the 61-acre Point Wells site is nearly half as many as there are in downtown Bellevue, a true urban center, that is 400-plus acres.

Blue Square maintains that the new development would be mostly self-contained with its own retail, school, fire and police outposts from Snohomish County. Residents would be limited to one vehicle and alternative means of transportation such as Metro buses, a Sounder line and bicycles would be part of the mix. 

The Shoreline City Council may vote Monday, Feb. 14 on an ordinance based on a Planning Commission decision change the status of Richmond Beach Drive to a local street instead of collector arterial thus limiting the number of trips per day allowed under the city's Point Wells Subarea Plan to 4,000 instead of the 8,250. 

Blue Square opposed that redesignation saying it violates the Growth Management Act and city code, and that it was not the result of a "deliberative process."