This morning, Mayor Durkan announced that the city has agreed to terms with Alexandria Real Estate Equities to purchase the Mercer Megablock property in South Lake Union, along with the adjacent city-owned property at 615 Dexter Avenue N. The deal will net the city $143 million in cash, plus a package of additional public benefits that together the city estimates will total somewhere between $275 – $305 million.
A lot more happened this week that I didn’t get around to writing about. And on Monday the Mayor will release her proposed 2019-2020 budget. So before everything else fades into obscurity, here’s some quick takes on all the other stuff.
This morning, the Council voted out of committee an ordinance that would extend for another six months the temporary moratorium on several forms of commercial development in the Aurora-Licton Springs Urban Village.
Continue reading Council poised to extend moratorium on Aurora-Licton Springs commercial development
The Hearing Examiner’s Office has been adjudicating nine separate challenges by neighborhood organizations to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the city’s city-wide MHA upzones. After a hearing on May 31 to discuss several motions for summary judgment, last Friday the Hearing Examiner issued rulings — and it largely went in favor of the city. The appeals are far from resolved, and won’t be until early fall, but several issues were taken off the table as potential flaws in the FEIS.
Today the City of Seattle published the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for its proposed redevelopment of the Fort Lawton property in Magnolia.
The city has published a feasibility study on establishing a “safe consumption” site in Seattle, and for the first time we have a sense for how much it might cost.
Continue reading City delivers safe consumption site feasibility study
Last Friday I interviewed new Council member Kirsten Harris-Talley on a topic that is coming up with increasing frequency in City Hall: community-based organizations (aka CBOs), who they are, their role in our community, and their relationship with city government.
Continue reading Interview: Harris-Talley on Community-based Organizations
With little fanfare — and in some cases less attention than they deserved — four other notable bills (besides the Uptown MHA upzone) were passed into law by the City Council today.
Continue reading Other legislation that became law today… quietly
The Council’s Planning, Land Use and Zoning Committee is holding a public hearing tonight on two issues: the proposed MHA rezone of the Uptown urban center, and some potential changes to the way that design reviews are done.
Many of the Council’s public hearings are perfunctory: the Council members already have a good idea how they plan to vote, and the most that commenters can hope for are to get some minor tweaks to the legislation. But as of last Friday when the PLUZ committee met to discuss the two topics, there are some big open issues that the Council is scratching its collective head over.
Continue reading The Council is holding a public hearing tonight. This one matters.
On June 8th, the city published a Draft Environment Impact Statement (DEIS) for the “city-wide” implementation of the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program. It’s 462 pages of dense material. Here’s your cheat sheet.
Continue reading Understanding the MHA Draft Environmental Impact Statement
