Submitted by Walter Neary, Lakewood.
A funny thing happened on the way to incentivizing developers to put housing instead of businesses along Gravelly Lake Drive. Now the rest of the city is under consideration as well!
You may recall that earlier this year, the City Council told the planning commission to re-examine the idea of incentivizing housing along Gravelly Lake Drive from the mall to Clover Creek. The matter is coming back to the City Council on Monday in their study session (click here for agenda).
Some things haven’t changed. It’s clearly easier to encourage apartments than destination businesses to fill some of our many empty lots. And to drive away businesses and public institutions that now exist along Gravelly Lake Drive.
It appears the city staff is encouraging the council to tell the planning commission what to decide – to create the housing incentive, and in just one part of town. This seems at odds with the idea of sending the subject back to the commission for a public hearing.
Here’s what is going on. Members of the planning commission have raised this idea: if it’s great to have higher densities downtown, how about sharing that with the rest of the city? Apartments and condos in other places! Why limit the apartments and condos incentive to downtown?
And so apparently these planning commissioners need to be curbed.
In the PDF I’ve shared, the report looks at other parts of the city. You might see if your neighborhood, such as Oakbrook, is in there.
The staff comes back and says, “Nah, best to put more housing downtown.”
“Though we could adjust some zoning in other places.”
Sure, why not? They’ll have the City Council in the room Monday. Who needs anyone else? There is no opportunity for public comment Monday, though I suppose we can send letters. I see at least one factual error – it says the council voted against the incentive, and they didn’t. They sent it back to the planning commission, with instruction there should be notice to neighborhoods of matters that affect them.
So the council sent it back to the planning commission.
Who apparently have to be told how to think.
NIMBY means “Now I’m Making Bucks, Y’all”
Look, we all know people need housing. Why not share it with the whole city? This incentive is going to help. The report says, “Most developers need the (tax incentive) in order to make projects financially feasible to build.” Weirdly, they left off the names of the developers who told them that, and it sounds like the city staff saying it like they’ve been building housing.
You might say, “Walter, come on. People need apartments. You have lived in apartments” And it’s true, to me personally, increasing densities in the downtown area is not a bad thing. City leadership is doing me a huge favor. I can sell my home now for someone to put multiple homes on it. That eases my mind during my coming retirement. Thank you!
Interestingly, if I stayed as a UW employee instead of retiring, my wife and I would qualify for the ‘affordable housing’ encouraged by these incentives. So there are all sorts of gifts to me in this housing density decision.
Developers love it when proponents of higher densities give them more opportunities to build.
So it is a financial reward to me. And developers make a lot of money. What’s the problem?
For one thing, if we have this incentive, we should offer it through all of Lakewood. If JBLM troops need housing, that means JBLM troops need housing. A soldier desperately in need of a home doesn’t need Lakewood splitting hairs over this neighborhood or that.
The staff report says downtown is preferable as the location for many reasons such as “Efficient separation between Central Business District and abutting parcels.”
Apparently when a three-story apartment building is built next to someone’s house, that’s called “efficient.”
And you can get away with saying that when there’s no public hearing at a study session.
Leaving the public behind
What is troubling about all of this is that I was around for the start of cityhood, and apparently we’ve lost some lessons along the way. Not to mention losing the public.
The city is once again discussing specific areas Monday, and there was no notice to the neighborhood – or actually, to the whole city which is now under consideration. Specific neighborhoods in other parts of the city are mentioned.
So at least now, I don’t feel so alone.
The report mentions the possibility of incentivizing development in Oakbrook and other parts of town.
Do you live in Oakbrook, Springbrook, Tillicum or Woodbrook, and do you have an opinion on anything in this report? What parts of your area might be eligible? Here’s an example of what they’re showing for where Oakbrook could have the affordable housing incentive. You can find all the maps in the staff report. I guess that’s your job.
Here’s the zoning they are contemplating for specific parts of town:
‘Desiring more local control’ – so very 1996 of you
Ironically, some people have not forgotten we became a city so citizens could express opinions. In fact, this month, the Lakewood City Council is considering a new budget. The budget message says this:
“In 2026, Lakewood will celebrate its 30th anniversary of incorporation. The City incorporated in large part because community members desired more local control, particularly on issues of public safety, land use, and parks and recreation.” (emphasis mine)
So I have hope. Someone in City Hall knows that taxpayers and others care about being involved in land use decisions.
Let them eat cake
The budget, by the way, notes that the city should set aside some money to help celebrate the 30th anniversary.
Hopefully the 30th anniversary bash won’t just be a City Council study session. I’m sure the public would love to be involved and see signs we remember anything about incorporation.
How will they design the 30th anniversary cake that will celebrate how Lakewood attracted more condos and apartments with limited public process? Perhaps in the spirit of all the apartments going up around us, it will look like a big plain boring box cake in two colors. Cakes, like housing, are there to be “efficient.”
Make the 30th anniversary cake big, boring and tall. Don’t you dare disagree. What, are you against cakes?
But back to encouraging apartments and condos instead of retail and restaurants.
Let’s sum up:
- I’m not sure all this reconsideration is making things better.
- But it is certainly making the city government’s intent more naked.
This plan and the City Government’s actions are definitely not what my parents and other Incorporation advocates envisioned 35 years ago. The value of intact neighborhoods, with thriving small, local business, has been lost to greed and duplicity. Perhaps, when a three story apartment monstrosity is built on the site of our cherished Lakewood Library, citizens will wake up to the fact that we have lost control of our City and quality of life.
We are preparing to build like we are Seattle at a fraction of the size, quite literally there goes the neighborhood(s). Citizens do care and want this city to thrive, make it a city people want to come to and not avoid. We have two subpar grocery stores, a sprinkling of businesses and a ton of empty storefronts and pavement slabs, but housing seems like a great idea along Gravelly Lake Drive.? We need to wake up. We have to do better Lakewood, be leaders, not lensings.
*lemmings.
Mr. Neary’s concern over future apartment buildings and condo’s looking like a “…big plain boring box cake in two colors.” reminds one of Lakewood’s new “interim” library. Yes, the structure may be categorized as an “efficient” endeavor, but it is ugly and boring looking. And for how long will the box of the “interim” library really remain? It seems like the days of individualized, attractive architecture in Lakewood are gone; and any previous charm of downtown Lakewood is fading with it. If the downtown and business-zoned areas of Lakewood must be filled with plain boring boxes, please spare residential neighborhoods where Lakewood citizens have more of a choice of and control over their surroundings.
Underlying issues that Walter Neary sites for concern derive from the challenge of Lakewood as a generally neglected realm of tax resource by Pierce County preceding incorporation. Becoming a city was good. Even resistant lakeshore wealth finally agreed. Driven by affordable housing mandate, overcoming the inchoate pattern of our Lakewood quilt presents a challenge today surpassing 1996. Fragmented non-resident ownership interests and large industrial blocks, contend with pockets of resistant poverty and neighborhoods uncentered by park or school, each bound to see increasing need. Major rail and road intrusions together with lakes, wetlands and extensive state properties complicate urban geography.
City of Lakewood has been alert and innovative in securing supplemental and block grant and funding, and ensuring trust around managing public money. It has, subject to citizen response, been active and engaging for community outreach and an array of advisory boards and commissions. Where attention may have flagged, though “chemistry” of collaboration and commitment varies over time, this has seldom been a fault of city staff or council, and never a matter of willful neglect.
Last Wednesday, at that “ugly boring box interim library,” the beginnings of a Downtown Neighborhood Association seeded promise that some garden of creative attention to concerns expressed and opportunities possible will obtain toward long-term community benefit. Monthly meetings are planned through end of this year, and bound to continue with strengthening purpose ahead. Announcement will feature HERE in The Suburban Times, and we’ll all be wishing for the space, facility, resource, parking and grand presence of the “Tenzler Two” replacement permanent library defining Lakewood in years to come. A lot more about that, I’m sure – as patience and realization of necessity takes root, rising, hopefully, above unwarranted negation.
So, look for news, and show up. Learn what’s possible, what’s not, and what’s required OF US to make a difference. WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.
Friends of Lakewood Library BOOK SALE, St Mary’s Episcopal Church, 10630 Gravelly Lake Drive, City of Lakewood, Washington – 11AM to 4:30PM, SAT, 19 OCTOBER.
The purpose of citizen participation is to create a fiction of democratic accountability. Remembering that very often participation is managed by outside consultancies, who tend to feed participating citizens a pre-arranged narrative with pre-arranged choices. Recent examples of this were the ad hoc library and tree committees.
I know that it is often assumed that planning decisions are designed to benefit the citizens of Lakewood. The City of Lakewood is a bureaucracy and the rational bureaucrat will take decisions to maximize revenue, whether that be through grants or taxation. Revenue maximization allows the bureaucracy to support and expand itself. This can be done by increasing salaries and hiring new staff. There is no reason to think that this benefits anyone outside the bureaucracy, except developers and third party contractors.
Follow the money. Far too often local government is more concerned about “expanding the tax base” for the benefit of government. It’s like a pride of lions looking at a herd of zebras and wanting to expand the “protein base”. Great for the lions; not so great for the zebras. Their community development decisions are in part responsible for community problems, created by government then needing further government intervention as the “solution”. It’s how empires are built.
Do we really want to live in an area of wall-to-wall congestion? Even more cars coming into the area? And lastly, will we build structures that are higher than the trees?
Virginia, some of the zoning appears to be 90ft – or 9 stories, so yes, taller than the trees…..if we have any left on Gravelly Lake Drive by then. Density will be the death of our tree lined idyllic established neighborhoods if the city staff recommendations are followed.