Sno County Council hearing on Point Wells April 21

The citizen's organization, Save Richmond Beach, provides updated information on the proposed housing development at Point Wells, formerly an oil storage facility. Point Wells is a large, low-lying waterfront just over the border in Snohomish County. The only road to Point Wells is through Richmond Beach - Richmond Beach Road / 185th.

The Snohomish County Council will have their final zoning regulations public hearing on April 21 at 1:30 pm.

To help them better understand some of the proposed County land use regulations and zoning changes, the County Council contracted with the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Seattle Technical Assistance Panel (“TAP”).

The panel members, professionals in disciplines related to the County’s proposed urban centers regulations, reviewed the proposed ordinances and other relevant materials provided by the County and held a one day-long panel meeting to develop recommendations, which they presented to the County Council on Monday, April 5.

Some of the recommendations are in line with the concerns that have been expressed by Save Richmond Beach, Woodway and the City of Shoreline including but not limited to the following:

• Panelist Vlad Oustimovitch, VOKA Inc, stated "Point Wells is different than the other urban centers and that it would be appropriate to deal with it differently/separately/as part of a later process."
• Be mindful of regional transit and development patterns, both within and outside of Snohomish County.
• Getting to the next stage may require identifying different typologies for urban development, in addition to transit-oriented urban centers. These may include urban villages or master planned development.
• Address each urban center differently; one size does not fit all.
• Consider enhanced community participation process through formalized design review process.
• For transit to drive development, the transit needs to be high-quality (fast, reliable, predictable and comfortable). County needs to play a leadership role in establishing coordinated locations for transit routes and station areas.
• Walking radius for bus transit is 1/4 mile.
• Urban centers need "more than a regular bus line."

Based on these recommendations a series of amendments were released. They were discussed at a planning meeting on Wednesday, April 13. The council will make their decision at the hearing on April 21. 

Information for this story was provided by SaveRichmondBeach.org
Photo courtesy City of Shoreline