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Community group tells City Council it should play bigger part as Sound Transit sells light rail land

Community group representative Hillenbrand address the Council committee Wednesday.

Community group representative Hillenbrand address the Council committee Wednesday.

The Seattle City Council’s land use and planning committee Wednesday dug into the deal between City Hall and Sound Transit to set requirements for the development of thousands of square feet of Broadway being planned for housing, retail and community space surrounding the future Capitol Hill Station.

UPDATE: The committee agreed to move the agreement legislation forward to the full Council for a final vote on August 5th. We’ll have updates regarding amendments to the development agreement — you can find the document here — shortly.

In the public comments proceeding the council session, community representatives from a Capitol Hill group working to help shape the development plans called for better inclusion and more transparency from Sound Transit in the process for selling off the surrounding Broadway land to the highest — and best — bidders.

Cathy Hillenbrand, who chairs the Capitol Hill Champion group’s steering committee, said her joint venture between the Capitol Hill Community Council and the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce has been “invited and dis-invited” by Sound Transit into the process for determining how the development agreement for the land will be put to use in the critical final step of selecting a developer or developers for the Broadway properties.

Hillenbrand also said that though Sound Transit has promised there will be space for the Broadway Farmers Market as part of the station development, the agency has been reluctant to contractually guarantee the space with the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance.

Hillenbrand asked the Council committee to include requirements for Sound Transit to include community representatives in planned workshops with potential developers.

Also raised during public comments were concerns about the potential agreement’s inclusion of exceptions to Seattle’s design review rules that would allow developments that meet the development agreements parameters to circumvent the standard design review process.

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[…] approval marks the fruition of a multi-year process lead by the city and a Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce-Capitol Hill Community Council joint […]