Changes championed by District 3 representative and comprehensive plan chair Joy Hollingsworth that would scale back potential dense housing growth around her district’s Swedish Cherry Hill campus are part of the final sweep of proposals this week as the Seattle City Council finalizes a 20-year growth plan.
Publicola was the first to report on Hollingsworth’s proposed rollback of a plan that would have split the area around 18th and Cherry across new zoning areas.
CHS reported a year ago on the proposal to “fill in” the Squire Park neighborhood hole by splitting it across a more densely zoned Capitol Hill/First Hill Regional Center and the Central District Urban Center as part of the new 20-year growth plan.
Hollingsworth’s new proposal would maintain current zoning for the Squire Park areas bounded by 14th Ave on the west and 18th Ave on the east between E Pike and E
Alder and the area between 18th Ave on the west and 20th and 21st Ave on the east between E Pine Street and E Alder:
The area proposed to be removed from the center includes the Swedish Medical Center Cherry Hill hospital Major Institution Overlay, between E Cherry Street and E Jefferson Street. South of this area and between 18th Avenue and 21st Avenue is zoned Neighborhood Residential. The remainder of the area is zoned Lowrise 1 and Lowrise 3 multifamily zones. The area includes a mix of multifamily, single-family and institutional uses.
The council analysis says the areas being removed add up to 173 acres — or, as Publicola puts it, nearly 50 blocks.
While the proposed rollback is coming late in the process, the Cherry Hill blocks wouldn’t be the only areas of the city or District receiving special treatment.
Nearly 70% of new construction expected under the updated growth plan would be constrained to “Regional Centers,” the plan’s designation for the city’s most densely populated, high transit areas — Downtown, Lower Queen Anne, South Lake Union, University District, Northgate, Ballard, and First Hill and Capitol Hill —- or less dense but still highly developed areas like 23rd Ave from Union to Jackson.
Pressured by opposition from some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, many areas lined up for increased density were also downsized. CHS reported this summer on the city’s revisions that reduced nine of the city’s 30 proposed Neighborhood Centers including Montlake, Madison Park, and Madrona.
Squire Park and Cherry Hill are now ready to join that list.
The proposed rollback will be part of a roster of final amendments debated this week following last week’s Friday of public comment on the proposed comprehensive plan update.
In District 3, another Hollingsworth amendment would add an additional new Roanoke Park “neighborhood center” to the roster of 30 areas planned to be given the new transit-oriented zoning designation that will allow development of apartment buildings in neighborhoods with frequent bus service. The new Roanoke neighborhood center on the north of Capitol Hill would stretch from to E Howe to 520 between Harvard Ave E and 12th Ave E. In the council memo on the proposal, 520 is incorrectly identified as I-90.
Also included in the debate this week is a sprawling amendment proposed by Magnolia to Downtown rep Bob Kettle to introduce a public safety layer to the comprehensive plan process that would “reduce violence and the incidence of crime, and increase the sense of security throughout the City” through coordination with the Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire.
The current 20-year planning process has played out over two years as Seattle’s twin crises of housing affordability and homelessness have continued to grow. In the meantime, core areas of the city have continued to rise as some of the wealthiest areas in the county, state, and nation.
Hollingsworth and the comprehensive plan committee will meet for two days beginning Wednesday afternoon to finalize the amendment packages.
You can review the proposed amendments and learn more about the proposed comprehensive plan changes here.
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So, Hollingsworth’s proposal is to increase housing next to two noisy, polluting freeways, not within walking distance to much of anything, but to reduce potential housing near, jobs, services, groceries, restaurants, etc.
This is the opposite of good planning, but I expect nothing less from the council member who tried to lower minimum wage and thinks fencing off parks is the solution to any problem. She literally has no clue about anything except what wealthy donors tell her to do.
Fencing parks is lazy and stupid. Instead of a all hands on deck moment?
You mail it in…
#1 Show up sweep.
#2 Fence park
= giant blighted area for weeks and months that nobody can use.
Why not just move a vacant building from a lot we want cleared to that space until we figure out how to keep the homeless out of a park?
Two birds one stone. Work smarter not harder right? No need to sweep. They see a building coming? They’ll move or end up like the Wicked Witch of the West!
We ain’t in Kansas anymore. We are in Bruce’s world. Where nothing is real and everything is a new possibility.
So uhhh what wealthy Harrell donor lives in the middle of that donut…?