Letter to the Editor – South Kirkland Park and Ride is a misguided project
Dear Mr. Butcher:
Here is the testimony I presented last night to the Kirkland City Council regarding the Development regarding the South Kirkland P&R.
Hopefully you can share it with your readership.
Sincerely,
Shawn Etchevers
A stealthy Kirkland Planning Commission’s project to construct a 400 to 700 unit Residential Development on top of the South Kirkland Park & Ride is moving along under the radar of most Kirkland residents. I think this is a misguided project that should be stopped for the following reasons.
While the South Kirkland P&R does need more parking stalls for local BUS commuters, it is located in a well known traffic pinch-point. Adding over 1000 people into that small location, most of them with one or two cars and many with children, will inevitably lead to more traffic, few if any additional free parking stalls, provide an inferior quality of life for those additional residents and, possibly, even lead to more crime in the area. Those new residents, unlike those in the Redmond P&R, would be isolated from needed daily-support services as well as places to relax in their immediate vicinity, and will further burden the heavy traffic on 108th Ave NE and Lake Washington Blvd. Another problem is that the massive residential construction being considered will stand out as completely out of scale with the existing surrounding buildings and will destroy the current balance between buildings and trees in the area.
Kirkland should NOT try to increase the number of isolated and unsupported high-density residential units, affordable or not, scattered all around the city, because they will still require the use of a car to resolve basic daily needs. The lack of appealing dense residential areas in and around local downtown areas is the very reason why regional public transportation solutions are so elusive. Kirkland should focus on expanding and improving the density and livability of its downtown and a few other chosen areas already zoned for that purpose. The aim should be to create self-contained, walkable, urban villages that do not require any transportation within those core areas. These urban villages should provide key benefits such as housing for all household budgets, large parks, convenient walking, shopping, recreational and social opportunities with police security, as well as parking and good and frequent transportation options to larger shopping and work centers on the Eastside. This would attract and keep people truly interested in living in dense urban areas, provide more small-business opportunities, reduce the need to use transportation to carry out daily living activities and, hopefully, and provide them with a more pleasant quality of life.
However, it seems that King County and Kirkland are often satisfied with focusing on just one of these urban benefits at a time, rather than all of them simultaneously to create a well-balanced urban development project.
Who benefits from this type of development? Perhaps Bellevue and Seattle, if their aim is, in fact, not to offer affordable housing to the workforce they need in their own cities. What we do know is that neither Houghton nor Kirkland will benefit from it. So, why should Kirkland City personnel continue to spend scarce time and expensive resources working on dense, small residential points scattered all around the city instead of rationally increasing the density of areas already zoned for it?
Posted by Admin on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Filed under Letters · Tagged with Development, Letters, Parking, South Kirkland Park & Ride, Transportation
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Shawn,
The city council seems desperate to locate affordable housing somewhere in Kirkland. My guess is that they have given up on the Totem Lake redevelopment as a location any time soon and that is why they are putting the housing in your neighborhood. Even the council people who hate changing the comprehensive plan for any reason whatsoever have changed their tune on this one.
Downtown is too expensive to locate affordable housing, and Totem Lake is out. That leaves few options other than to say we just can’t build it now and let Bellevue, Redmond and Bothell increase the affordable housing supply for now.
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That is a problem that ALL cities around the world have. Yet, some manage to find a solution. What about, Juanita, Kingsgate or the P&R in Bellevue. If we continue to add scattered developments within low density cities, nothing will ever change. Similarly, if we push people to new low cost areas the sprawl will continue, new roads, more schools and more transportation problems will be created.
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Ooops … I hit the send comment button by accident before I was ready to post … anyway … just wanted to point out that this PAR has been noticed for months. Affordable housing is a top priority of the city council which has strong support in the community. This also happens to be a low- cost (to the city) opportunity to meet these important housing goals, a none too important consideration in these lean budget times.
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Sherry: In a way, urban development resembles a chess game. Every move of a piece has major consequences on what follows. If you’ve traveled around this country and overseas, you must have noticed major differences between cities, as well as between their surrounding, local ‘urban villages/neighborhoods’ or communities. Some are very homey and pleasant to walk around and to socialize and relax in. Others are cold and uninviting. How and why has that happened? Optimum urban balance does not take place by chance; it takes a lot of planning and discipline, as well as people with a vision for a better future. It costs cities a lot of money and trouble to correct errors once they have been made. Unfortunately, most cities simply follow the quickest and most expedient path, by allowing short-term private interests and investors to impose their will at the expense of long-term public interest. Then, they simply put up with those errors for a long time, if not forever. That can best be seen in the large, chaotic, low-income developments one sees around major city centers in the developing world and even in some parts of this country. Now, let’s get back to our region. Imagine what would happen if most, or all, of the current Park & Rides on the Eastside were developed just to accommodate low-income housing. Would those people being ‘served’ really be better off? Would their children or the entire Eastside community be better off in the long term? Do you think that this incredibly beautiful, Puget Sound region has been developed in the best possible manner for its residents? Just imagine one small change. What if most of the Puget Sound and lakeside beaches had been kept as public domain for parks and trails? Wouldn’t this have hugely enhanced the livability and beauty of this region and its urban areas? That option is now lost forever.
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I agree with Mr. Etchevers on this subject. Changing the zoning for this seven acre site to high-density doesn’t seem to make sense. It’s interesting and informative to look at land use maps of Kirkland to see where the nearest commercially zoned area is to the proposed site – it’s at Carillon Point (1.2 miles away) or Houghton Shopping Center (1.6) miles away. If residents would be willing to walk to Carillon Point, they could buy a coffee at Starbucks or mail a package but they couldn’t buy groceries, fill perscriptions, or do laundry. The proposal calls for shoe horning up to 500 units into this small area with no pedestrian access to retail facilities the residents would need on a daily basis. They would have to get into their cars and drive which defeats the whole purpose of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). Every other zoned high-density area in Kirkland (Downtown, Totem Lake, Juanita, and Bridal Trails) are supported by nearby retail amenities.
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