Overruling the Staff recommendation opposing action on the SE Quadrant Docket Request, the City Council approved moving forward with it. The City Council also approved a revised Staff recommendation putting the issues raised by the Docket Request on a parallel track of examining the issues at the Council’s Economic Development Committee.
The Council also decided to expand the Quadrant’s Docket Request issues to the entire Town Center.
The Sammamish City Council tonight on a 7-0 vote directed Staff to proceed toward crafting a Development Agreement and, if necessary, an emergency ordinance to clear the way for Ace Hardware to relocate to land immediately south of the Starbucks and bank at NE 4th St.
The agreement and ordinance is targeted to be presented to the City Council on January 8. A public hearing will be required and there are a whole host of issues that have to fall into place.
This is not a done deal by any stretch, but progress is being made and the Council effectively overruled the Dec. 4 Staff conclusion that it was too late to do anything.
I want to emphasize, however, that the Administration, Staff and Council have worked for a year to try and find a solution for Ace. For those who may have seen the movie Argo (a very good movie, by the way, even if over-dramatized at the end), there was a line in it that said “This is the best bad decision” we have. This property where Ace wants to relocate falls in this category. It’s a lousy choice to build on because of all the environmental constraints. But it’s the best bad decision left to Ace and to the City.
Ace has become a city institution. When scores of people appeared before the Sammamish City Council Dec. 4 to support Ace Hardware, many people spoke of the employees as family and the store as a key, integral part of the community.
I could not help but think of Floyd’s Barber Shop in the Andy Griffith Show.
With luck and dedication, we may see the City and the Ace principals make it work.
There is absolutely no sense of urgency or problem-solving for locally owned, small businesses in the City Council packet going to the Council tonight.
It’s as if small businesses, other than Ace Hardware, do not exist in the City’s mindset. These are left to the whim of Regency, the absentee landlord who has made it clear our locally owned small businesses can go to hell.
Despite the loss of several small businesses at the Sammamish Highlands center, and the doomsday countdown for Civilized Nature now started, there is nothing in the council packet to suggest the Administration is looking for solutions and alternatives to help small business.
I find this lack of foresight to be appalling. The Administration last week pretty much said everything can wait to the 2015 Comp Plan rewrite, three years away. Implementation of a rewrite would not happen until the following year, four years away. This leaves small businesses entirely at the mercy of Regency.
Our City Council must step in and fix this. But will it? It’s hardly shown much foresight, either.
The Sammamish staff will recommend to the City Council tonight that action on the Ace Hardware development plan be deferred to January.
In the Council packet in advance of tonight’s meeting, Staff writes,
“Continue to work with the applicant team and report back to the City Council in January, 2013 with options to consider the request.”
With respect to the Docket Request by landowners for the SE Quadrant, the Staff recommends to the Council:
“Address the items included in the proponent’s submittal in the upcoming Economic Development Strategic Plan process which will develop specific steps to catalyze implementation of the Town Center Plan. These steps may include programmatic efforts, infrastructure plans, and amendments to the Town Center Plan and associated development regulations.”
I’m unclear if this is adequate or whether the Planning Commission needs to be involved. We’ll have to wait and see what Staff says at the Council meeting tonight.
There were three “Docket Requests” submitted to the City from citizens seeking amendments to the Comprehensive Plan. One was from Ace Hardware, which as I’ve reported in a previous post was a placeholder and which is superseded by the preferred Development Agreement proposal. Another was from the landowners in the Town Center’s Southeast Quadrant. And the third had to do with how density is treated.
Staff urged the Council to reject all three requests, saying the Ace was too difficult to achieve given wetland issues and timing and that the other two should wait until the 2015 Comp Plan rewrite.
The recommendation to put off Comp Plan changes of consequence to 2015 may have some merit under ordinary circumstances. But we have what I call an “economic emergency” right now.
Regency owns almost all the commercial space in the heart of Sammamish (only the Saffron complex is owned by someone else) and it’s now clear Regency doesn’t give a hoot about local businesses. Ace Hardware, the Sushi restaurant and Rancho Grande are being pushed out in favor of national retailers. Several other local businesses are gone. Civilized Nature is going.
The lack of alternative commercially zoned space is killing opportunities for our local business.
And, unfathomably, the City Administration has not on its own initiative proposed identifying properties in the city outside the Town Center that could be rezoned commercial and which do not have the regulations associated with the Town Center that, as we now know, make it virtually impossible for small businesses to locate there.
Recognizing this, last January I submitted a long list of ideas to the City Council to redress some of these issues. The proposal was put on the shelf.
With the time for Comp Plan amendments now upon us, the City Administration did not come forth with a single idea to redress this, but instead says wait until 2015.
This is ridiculous. Even more so, it seems that nobody on the City Council suggested changes, either. Where is our leadership? Where is the vision?
At the December 4 City Council meeting, I provided public comment resubmitting my January list of suggestions and urged the Council to direct staff to include rezonings on the current Docket Request. This submittal is below the jump. the January memo is here.
The City Council is to make decisions regarding Ace Hardware, the Docket Request from the Southeast Quadrant, the other Docket Request and, I hope, my December 4 suggestion all at the December 11 meeting. I urge citizens to appear again to support affirmative action on these. It seems the City needs the proverbial 2×4 upside the head to get the message. It’s astounding that we have this economic emergency that is devastating locally owned businesses and neither the City Administration or the Council has taken any action to meet this emergency.
Sammamish Comment 