Capitol Hill’s largest institution of higher learning has expansion on its mind. And in order to do so, Seattle University needs Seattle City Council approval of its Major Institution Master Plan (MIMP), a lengthy document that details the development the university anticipates during the next two decades.

It’s part of a long and ongoing process, one element of which includes an important public hearing next week. Seattle University’s first MIMP was first adopted in 1986; its current plan was approved in 1997. The latter plan expanded the institution’s boundaries by 11 acres. Work on updating the plan has been going on for 18 months.

Why go through such effort? Beyond being required by law, its because the university is getting bigger. In something of a MIMP mission statement, the university states its intentions are: “To address anticipated future increases in student population and improve development to meet those needs with a vision for the next 20 years.”

Seattle University reports that as of 2007 there were 6,764 full-time equivalent students, a 54-percent increase since 1995. Full-time equivalent faculty then stood at 1,177, a 29-percent jump since 1995. The trend is both expected and intended to continue: In the near term, Seattle University anticipates that more than 10,000 students will attend the institution.

The university’s new MIMP includes a combination of planned and potential redevelopments and specifies that SU’s Major Institution Overlay (MIO) — the area in which the university may operate, which includes its own property, city property and private property — expand by 2.4 acres.

While the overlay isn’t slated to grow a great deal — to put that into some perspective, Seattle University’s current MIO footprint is roughly 77 acres — work within the campus is considerable. A combination of planned and potential development, if completed, will add approximately 2.14 million square feet of on-campus building space through renovations and new development.

To the bullet points:
• Up to 505,000 square feet of planned near-term development is expected to occur within four years.
• Roughly 715,000 square feet of potential near-term development may occur within seven years.
• Up to 925,000 square feet of potential long-term development may occur within approximately 18 years.
• A net increase of 577 parking spaces is planned for the near term.
• Approximately 57 percent of the campus is to be devoted to usable open space.

Concentrating on the near term, the MIMP specifies that the university will, among other things:
• Build additional academic facilities;
• Add student housing;
• Increase pedestrian access across the East James Street and East Cherry street corridor;
• Improve pedestrian paths;
• Replace surface parking with structured parking and increase usable open space;
• Strengthen the presence of the university along 12th Avenue, particularly the northeast corner of 12th Avenue and East Madison Street (where the current self-storage facility is located).

The devil is in the details, of course. And those details are contained in the MIMP and Draft Environmental Impact Statement, a combined document more than 2-inches thick. As you might expect, it contains many charts, many numbers, many maps and many illustrations. CHS is working on getting digital copies of these documents and will make them available as soon as we get them.

The MIMP, and specifically the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, goes over the construction impacts that can be expected, as well as the university’s approach to dealing with them. Space does not realistically permit listing them here. But given that the event horizon for Seattle University’s expansion is nearly 20 years, and that the institution lies within or near the Pike-Pine neighborhood, Squire Park, First Hill, the growing 12th Avenue corridor as well as south Broadway, how the university deals with construction impacts is of considerable importance to numerous neighborhood constituents.

Having spent a few hours perusing the document I can share that it’s fairly straightforward and reasonably easy to follow. Should you wish to have a look, copies of the MIMP and DIES can be reviewed (but not checked out) at Seattle University’s Lemieux Library, the Central Library downtown, the Douglas Truth Branch library at 2300 East Yesler Way, the International District/Chinatown Branch library at 713 Eighth Avenue South, and at the University of Washington’s Suzzallo, Allen and Architecture libraries.

Importantly, the public hearing to go over the Seattle University’s MIMP as well as the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, takes place on Wednesday, June 3, at Seattle University’s Teilhard de Chardin Hall, room 142. It runs from 5 to 8 p.m.

Also worth noting, public comments are accepted through June 22. Send them to the Department of Planning and Development, attention Lisa Rutzick, 700 5th Avenue, Suite 2000, Seattle, WA 98104-4019.

More later on this subject, to be sure.

2009, as you may know, is an election year. But forget the mayoral race or the chance to choose the next King County Executive. Next month brings the opportunity to elect board members for the Capitol Hill Community Council. You can find out more about the elections and candidates on the CHCC Web site.

The community council experienced a rebirth last year following nearly four years of dormancy. That dormancy was the result of the lack of people willing to keep the organization going. When longtime council president Ann Donovan stepped down after something like four years at the helm, no one volunteered to fill her shoes. Ann had become virtually synonymous with the council, the person everyone associated with the organization, including those working at the city.

The current council — let’s call it CHCC II: The Resurrection — came about in the months following the murder of Shannon Harps on the last day of 2007. It was evident there was a need or a benefit in having a Capitol Hill community group that would serve as something of an umbrella organization for residential interests on the Hill, much like the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, itself reformed after a lengthy dormant period, is trying to do for the Hill’s business community.

In its first year, the new community council created new bylaws, addressed issues it plans to take on and generally worked to define itself and the role it intends to play. The group sponsored a Halloween Walk on Broadway, established a Discount Dollar program for local merchants, supported fundraising efforts for the Summit and John Park and is working to create a Capitol Hill Pride Festival, among other good intentions.

Why Capitol Hill needs a strong community council
Is a community council important? Sure. For one thing, light rail is more than just looming on the horizon. In case you somehow haven’t been along Broadway in the last few months, light rail construction has begun. The community council can, along with other Capitol Hill community organizations, help keep an eye on the project and be another point of contact for the agency and another voice to advocate for the neighborhood. More neighborhood advocates is a good thing

On balance — and this is my opinion — the first year has been something of a success. New people, and thus new energy, came into the organization. But for the organization to remain viable that trend needs to continue.

Hence the coming elections.

Time to step forward
As of this moment, several board positions lack nominees. And only one race is even contested, that of president, where current CHCC VP Charlette LeFevre is running against Jen Power, who many know from her active involvement in Unpaving Paradise and from the POWHAT neighborhood group.

What’s needed are people who are able and willing to sign up for the ride. It’s an often thankless task — community activism is usually a slow slog toward tangible results. But it would be a shame if any momentum gained during the last year is lost through lack of participation. That lack of participation doomed the previous version of the community council in 2005

Details: The deadline for nominations is May 26. That evening there will be a candidate presentation at the Cal Anderson Park Shelter House at 7 p.m. The elections will be held on June 25.

Any takers? Interested prospective candidates should send e-mail to [email protected]

Last night’s meeting of the Seattle City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhood’s Committee served as a reminder of the challenges of trying to preserve Pike-Pine.

The council is working on a plan to help preserve the neighborhood’s historic character in light of recent development projects that have torn down older, smaller buildings and replaced them with structures that are aesthetically and functionally at odds with the neighborhood’s look and feel. The proposal aims to provide various incentives to developers that would encourage them to preserve the neighborhood’s older and character-forming buildings rather than tear them down and put large, generic structures in their place.

An often-cited example of what doesn’t work: The 500 block of East Pine Street, where several character-defining businesses like Kincora’s, Man Ray and the Bus Stop were lost when their buildings were torn down to make way for a monolithic development that virtually everyone who saw the proposal opposed. Following a lawsuit and the economic downturn, the developer’s plans are on hold and the bulldozed property is a glaring and vacant neighborhood eyesore.

The council plan, among other things, expands the boundaries of 1998’s Pike-Pine Overlay District and renames the area the Pike-Pine Conservation Overlay District. The proposal provides incentives to preserve older “character” buildings, not just landmarked ones, and references the neighborhood’s history as Seattle’s auto row.

The session was devoted to receiving public comments on the land-use proposal. And the vast majority of those comments related to the Polyclinic and its expansion plans, which call for tearing down an old auto warehouse on the 1100 block of Broadway, plans that would be greatly impacted if the plan is adopted.

Lloyd David, the Polyclinic’s executive director, asked that the council exclude the parcel at 1158 Broadway from any zoning changes because the clinic’s plans were based on previous – rather current – zoning. Pike-Pine developer Liz Dunn countered that the changes being discussed were on the table well prior to the Polyclinic’s potential expansion. She voiced a concern many share when commenting that the proposed zoning changes may not go far enough to actually preserve many older buildings.

“These are not landmarked buildings, but they give the neighborhood its character,” she said. “I’m not sure these incentives are sufficient to prevent demolition.”
Dunn suggested the council consider a mandatory review of any proposed demolition of a building more than 75 years old.

As for the future, councilmember Tom Rasmussen, who sponsored the legislation, said that two more meetings will take place before the council takes its vote; that vote could come during the summer. And the current efforts are under the banner of Phase I in the process. Discussing the transfer of development rights, which many consider essential to neighborhood preservation, as well as considering stronger design guidelines, is slated for the chronologically labeled Phase II.