Tag Archives: Ace Hardware

Staff recommends more time on Ace, to January

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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.

 

Sammamish needs to act now for more commercial zoning–not wait to 2015–due to ‘economic emergency’

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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 One was from Ace Hardware, which as I’ve reported in a previous post was a placeholder and which is superseded by the preferred Development Agreement proposal.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.

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Details of the Ace Development Plan and the initial Staff Response rejecting the plan

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Here are the details of the proposal by Ace and a land-owner to develop property immediately south of the Starbucks at NE 4th St. The plan involves a land-swap between the City and the property owner.

The key issue is that both parcels are highly constrained by wetlands, George Davis Creek, and buffers. The property owned by the developer is considered unbuildable due to wetlands. The City property has some buildable land but officials consider it too small for the Ace project. It’s also currently used for two storm water retention ponds.

The Ace proposal calls for swapping the ownership, with Ace rebuilding the ponds on the swapped property. The full, five page proposal is here: AcePlan120412.

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Treat land owners the same, Galvin asks–and he’s right; give him his Docket Request hearing

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At the very end of the Council meeting last night (which eventually will be on the City’s website), John Galvin commented that while he favors action to keep Ace Hardware in business, the expedited approach and focus on Ace raised concerns over fairness and treatment of his Southeast Town Center project, and the Docket Request for increased density.

Staff recommended denial of his Docket Request, and it recommended denial of the Ace Hardware docket request. (More on this in an upcoming post.)

Setting aside for the moment that the community turned out in droves in support of Ace and nobody other than the landowners in the SE quadrant has turned out in support of Galvin, and that Ace owner Tim Koch is respectful and Galvin is a poster child for anger management requirements, this time Galvin is right. (See his appearance during the two hour public comment section of the same Council meeting.)

The Council should override the Staff recommendation and send the Docket Request to the Planning Commission for consideration.

In 2009, Galvin and his fellow landowners submitted a Docket Request to upsize the commercial allocation from 90,000 to “up to” 300,000 sf, plus some density increase, in the SE Quadrant of the Town Center. The Council rejected the application and in my view properly so. The Town Center plan hadn’t even been completed in September 2009, when Galvin submitted the Docket Request and regulations hadn’t been adopted when the Council rejected the request.

This is three years later. Galvin and his colleagues have asked for reconsideration of the 2009 Docket Request, along with a host of changes to regulations.

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City Council on Ace: We got the message; action, next meeting Dec. 11

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Mayor Tom Odell said the Sammamish City Council “got the message” from two hours of public comment in support of Ace Hardware at the Dec. 4 council meeting.

The Council will consider the proposal by Ace at its Dec. 11 meeting for a land swap immediately south of the Starbucks at NE 4th St. Tim Koch, owner of Ace, hopes to enter into a Development Agreement that will streamline the review and application process with a goal of beginning construction in February or March, in time for his lease expiration on August 28.

The Council asked Kamuron Gural, the Community Development Director, to produce a matrix that identifies Problems and Solutions involved with the land swap and the parcels, which are highly constrained by sensitive areas and buffers.

At the very end of the City Council meeting, Odell–speaking to the few people remaining in the audience and those watching on Comcast 21, that the Council received the message in support of Ace. Deputy Mayor John James said that he would like to see one last effort to accommodate the proposal than see it die without trying. City staff recommended against a Docket Request submitted by Ace. The attorney for Ace called the Request a “placeholder” required due to timing and Ace really wasn’t interested in the request, preferring a Developer Agreement instead.

Some kind of action is planned for the Dec. 11 Council meeting.