Letter to the Editor: Proposed development of Point Wells property in Snohomish County

To the Editor:

So quickly we forget! In the recent past when residential neighborhoods were developed at Woodway Meadows in Snohomish County, most of their vehicle traffic was "dumped" across the county line through the quiet community of Richmond Beach. Local residents had virtually no voice in preserving their quality of life as it was changed by actions of a neighboring municipality in adjacent Snohomish County.

On a daily basis the residents of Richmond Beach cope with increased traffic congestion and little has been done to mitigate the effects (witness the continuing dysfunctional intersection at 15th Ave NW and Richmond Beach Road as an example). The changes are permanent and also felt by the entire City of Shoreline.

And now we're facing the prospect of making the same error again! Only this time the potential impact dwarfs the effects of an earlier decade. Diverting the traffic of the vast Point Wells project through Shoreline --- and specifically through Richmond Beach --- will deteriorate quality of life to a degree that we can only imagine in our dreams, in our nightmares.

Does it make sense to develop one new community at the cost of irreversibly damaging another???

Richmond Beach is one of the treasured neighborhoods in our City of Shoreline and one of the established jewel communities of the Puget Sound metro area.  Can we abide deliberate and sanctioned degradation?

We residents of Richmond Beach are realistic and recognize that we don't live in a museum-community that will remain static forever. We want progress and we will change.  Yes, the Point Wells property will eventually be developed and we expect that harmonious development next door to us will some day benefit our neighborhood, too.

We need strong, assertive advocates and appeal to Shoreline City Government to protect the entire city and this valuable neighborhood from an absentee developer and a callous neighboring county.  The advocacy shouldn't stop there because so many other jurisdictions have a stake in what happens to little old Richmond Beach.  Let's also hear from King County, State of Washington, state Shoreline development agencies, and others.

Robert Hauck, MD

Shoreline