Environmental Review for Fred Meyer’s Greenwood Expansion

Thursday, March 11 is the next public comment on the environmental impact of Fred Meyer’s Greenwood expansion. This is an important project for our community and many have voiced concern on the impact to the peat bog.

Make sure to attend this meeting if possible and we’ll be sharing our coverage with the neighborhood.

MEETING DETAILS:
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. at the Loyal Heights Community Center, Room 2, 2101 Northwest 77th Street.

Written and/or oral comments may be submitted at the meeting.

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Where do you want Greenwood-Phinney’s next park?

There’s a good chance that the Phinney-Greenwood corridor will get a new park in the next few years. The biggest question isn’t whether the neighborhod should get a park, it’s where the park should go. If neighborhood residents have their way, it will be on the northeast corner of 68th and Greenwood. The site was formerly a service station, and will soon become the temporary home of the Greenwood Fire Station. After that, though, it could become a centrally-located park with a great view.

Nearly 70 neighbors got together at the Greenwood Library with representatives from Seattle Parks and Recreation to voice their opinions about which parcel of land the City should buy for the park. The parks levy gave the City about $24 million to spend on new parkland, split between 20 different neighborhoods that were identified as lacking adequate park space, including Phinney Ridge-Greenwood.

The 11,000 square-foot spot at 68th was not the only option on the table. Four other sites were discussed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

• Another 11,000 square-foot parcel at 83rd and Greenwood, which is currently a dry cleaner.
• .38 acres on 85th St, across from Fred Meyer. Formerly a Pizza Hut, now a chained-off vacant lot.
• 81st and Greenwood, across the street from the library. Currently home to three businesses.
• 87th and Greenwood, where there’s currently a wall, mid-block, that connects to a large parking lot in the rear of several businesses.

Of these other four sites, only the 81st and Greenwood location received significant support. As the Parks & Rec representatives pointed out, though, the City would prefer to purchase land from a willing buyer, and relocating three different businesses would be difficult.

68th and Greenwood seemed to be the overwhelming favorite because, aside from the fact that it’s not in use right now, it’s halfway between Greenwood and Sandel parks to the north and Woodland Park to the south. It also wouldn’t displace a current business, only a lot that several people described as “blighted.”

There was some concern about cleanup costs, because the site was formerly a gas station, but a neighbor who had looked into the matter told the audience that the underground storage tanks were removed more than a decade ago, and recent environmental assessments said the area isn’t contaminated. The assessed value of the land is just under $1 million, which probably falls within the city’s budget for Phinney-Greenwood parkland.

Parks and Rec stressed that they wanted to have a backup plan, but support for a park on 68th St. was nearly unanimous. There’s no official timeline yet, but the next step involves the City making an offer for the land.

More information about the parks levy is available from City of Seattle Parks, which should be updated as the project moves forward.

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6010 Phinney Development – Chemical Contaminants May Delay Project

The developers of the proposed 4-story mixed-use building at 6010 Phinney hired consultants to conduct an environmental assessment last month. Now the results are back, and things don’t look good for the future of the development. Geotech Consultants Inc. drilled 22 feet into the ground under the property and found significant levels of PERC, a common dry-cleaning chemical.

After decades as the home of Phinney Ridge Cleaners, the site has accumulated an amount of PERC that was found to be above cleanup levels in 9 of the 11 borings. That means the developers of the 6010 project will have to do something about the soil before construction starts on their proposed mixed-use development.  The study offers two possible methods for cleanup: either the soil can be dug out and removed entirely, or the PERC can be removed by chemical treatment.

This study doesn’t call for any immediate cleanup action, but Geotech did recommend further testing to find out the exact depth, area and volume of the PERC in the soil. For the moment, the situation doesn’t appear to be serious. No spills or releases of PERC at 6010 have ever been reported to the Washington Department of Ecology.

Fortunately for both the developers and local residents, the study also didn’t find very much groundwater on the site. Water is the main way PERC can spread, and cleaning up the site will be easier and safer without it. The chemical evaporates in the air and doesn’t spread quickly in soil.

The developers haven’t said how this affects the timetable for the project, or their chances for getting a master use permit, but the current businesses on the property aren’t going anywhere for a while. Roosters Breakfast Club agreed to a new three-year lease on Thursday, according to the restaurant’s owner, who said he had already started scouting out possible new locations.  He also said that the business owners on the block haven’t seen the results of the Geotech study, so although it appears the cleanup issue and the lease extension are related, we can’t confirm that yet.

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Design Review Board approves plans for Greenwood Fred Meyer

Fred Meyer’s plan for a massive expansion of its Greenwood store got the stamp of approval from the Design Review Board at Ballard High School on Monday night. The Board heard a mixed bag of comments from around 100 neighborhood residents, but no overwhelming consensus about any particular design change the neighborhood would like to see. In fact, the new design for the 160,000 sq. ft. store, with 680 parking spaces and 200 apartment units, seemed to address a lot of the issues that came up previous public meetings.

All in all, the DRB meeting was less eventful than people following the situation might have expected. The group from Fred Meyer opened their presentation by trying to reassure the audience that they’re committed to the community, but the opposition they seemed to be expecting never turned up. Although there were a handful of constructive suggestions to improve the design — better bike access, more entrances to the store, space for a farmers’ market or other local event — nobody was up in arms about any particular element of the proposal.

As Fred Meyer’s Real Estate Director, Tom Gibbons, pointed out at the beginning of the meeting, the design has come a long way since the company proposed a generic big box store back in 1997. Fred Meyer is in no hurry to return to the previous two-story version of the new store. Pushing an “urban village” model appeals to the community, but it’s also motivated by profits. The project’s designers acknowledged that the foot traffic generated by an open, walkable space with retail storefronts and kiosks is going to make or break the store in Greenwood.

Now that the plans for the building include sinking it as far into the ground as Greenwood’s peat bog will allow. The bog is a still a concern for some residents. Former Greenwood Community Council president Kate Martin showed up with a map of the bog, and used it to illustrate the point that water is always going to travel in and out of the area, and Fred Meyer is building at its own risk. In response to other neighbors’ concerns about the bog and the depth of the building, the Board assured everyone that the peat had been thoroughly studied, and that the building wouldn’t be approved if it was too low to meet code.

Several people felt that new building needed more parking, especially with 200 apartment units and new retail that could attract a lot more cars to the area. The Board shut these comments down, though, because parking isn’t a design issue, except that the code requires a minimum number of spaces. The 680 proposed spaces for Fred Meyer meet code, but there’s nothing from adding more if it turns out to be necessary.

For a play-by-play of the meeting, check out phinneyridge.org’s liveblog from Monday night.

Update: A Seattle attorney criticizes - point by point – the city’s design review process and it’s result on the Fred Meyer Greenwood project, sub-optimization of result.

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Fred Meyer Greenwood Development – Design Update

The Fred Meyer Greenwood development is one of the major stories of community interest to both the Greenwood, Phinney Ridge, and surrounding neighborhoods. Community feedback regarding pedestrian access, urban design, vehicle access, traffic, environmental protections, and handicap access have led discussion at extremely active previous community meetings. On behalf of Fred Meyer stores, we interviewed Bruce Lorig and the development team regarding the modified proposal for the Greenwood Market and Fred Meyer combined sites to understand how they had responded to the community’s feedback thus far. You can view the full detailed proposal at this Greenwood Market – Fred Meyer Development link. This report is all of the information shared by the development team in anticipation of the community’s feedback on Monday at the Ballard Library. The development team provided one preferred option to focus on in the review, although 3 options were drafted.

The major design element is that the Fred Meyer store will occupy a primarily underground space, with only four feet of the height of the store appearing above ground. The store will be approx 15 ft underground on the 85th St side, although the 5ft that is above ground will not actually “appear” because it will be wrapped with retail and housing. The full 20 ft of store height will be visible from 1st Ave, and from the proposed extension of Morrow Lane. What this means is that top or “lid” can be divided with housing units and retail facing 85th – so that pedestrians can walk throughout the housing grid. It does mean that the “lid” is at a height from the street ranging from 20 feet on 1st avenue to 6 feet on 3rd Avenue which requires a ramp, elevator, or stairs to reach that level of the development. There are a good variety of ways to walk through the housing development (approximately 200 rental housing apartments) and small retail spaces (25,000 square feet in total) that are above ground.

Vehicle Access Design Changes:
Vehicle access is proposed on 1st avenue at two ground level points, 3rd avenue for the lower level, and via 85th street through the rough center division of the housing area. This is intended to respond to community feedback that entry from 87th street would be destructive to the home environment for houses on 87th and nearby.

Pedestrian Access Design Changes:
Pedestrians may enter on all four sides of the development: on 87th, 1st Avenue, 3rd Avenue, and 85th. This is intended to respond to community feedback that the 160,000+ square foot Fred Meyer for Greenwood would block movement through the development lot. It remains that there is no access near the 85th Street bus stop. The main entrance to the Fred Meyer store will be via 1st Avenue through a pedestrian plaza. You can also enter the store via the parking lot in the rear, from a set of stairs.

Height and Scale:
The development will mix heights ranging from four stories at the 85th Street frontage to the lowest levels at the back of the development’s parking lot. The parking area which will be buffered by trees was focused towards the back of the development at 87th to protect the integrity of housing on that street. Housing was eliminated on top of the parking garage as part of the design changes from the previous community meeting.

Space Alignment with Neighborhood:
The housing units / apartments on the above-ground lid of the Fred Meyer Greenwood store are split into streets so that pedestrians and vehicles can pass through. There are a number of ways to move through the development via a grid, although it is not perfectly aligned to the existing street grid. Morrow Lane will also extend through the development to allow vehicles to pass fully through the alleyway (with parking spaces alongside) between 1st and 3rd Avenues.

Environmental Impacts / Peat Bog Risks
Community members have raised issues regarding the environmental impacts of the peat bog in the area. The developer noted that there are stricter environmental regulations in place today, versus the rules from when Safeway developed nearby. Many believe that the Safeway store had severe negative impacts on the peat bog in the area, by blocking water flow through the peat. This may have caused damage / settling to nearby housing due to changes in soil density. The developer noted their priority to understand the water flow through the building site today, and to ensure that the curent water table (which is 1-2 feet below the store’s planned level) needs to maintain water flow. The existing Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market are alredy built on top of peat, and how this development impacted the peat bog (upon its original construction) is unknown, prior to the current peat bog regulations being developed. The developer has set up numerous monitoring wells and soil logs on the site and is continuing to study the soil hydrology.

The current Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market stores are leased on an “air rights lease” from Greenwood Shopping Center, Inc. The lease for the Greenwood Market expires in 2011, and they have chosen not to renew at the current lease rates. The leases are written as 20 year leases with 5 year extension options.

This area of Greenwood has been designated as an Urban Village, with a goal of concentrating density in the area, convenient to major transit links. The planned site developer – Lorig – has developed over 2,500 apartments in the Seattle area, much of which is focused on student housing. This includes development of Thorton Place, Pike Place Market, and Ujimaya.

The Fred Meyer store is planned to be appproximately 160,000 square feet in a one story plan. Fred Meyer’s other stores (including Redmond) have demonstrated that a second story for the Fred Meyer stores both have much lower sales (by as much as half) and much higher maintenance costs to deliver goods to the 2nd story. The company has determined that a 2 story Fred Meyer at Greenwood is not an economic option to pursue.

Only four feet of the store will be above ground, with the remaining 16 feet below ground, depending on the side of the development that you are facing. The full 20 foot height of the building will be visible, above grade on 1st Avenue. The focus of the new plan is to allow multiple routes for vehicles to enter and multiple routes for pedestrians to pass through the housing grid. In addition – the design works to avoid impacts to the housing on 87th Street. Fred Meyer will also feature a seperate Garden Center with plants and gardening supplies near the small business retail area (above ground) which will have a “sunlight” roof to allow light to pass through to the plants.

Another big change was to eliminate the previously planned housing on top of the parking garage. Now the parking garage remains at the rear of the property – with two stories of parking and a top (3rd floor) for 3 total areas for stacked parking. Note that parking will be shared for the apartment tenants, and the store’s customers. There are 700 parking spaces planned — keeping in mind that we would estimate at least 200+ spaces to be filled by the apartment tenants. The intent here is some alternation of tenants heading to work versus Fred Meyer shoppers, and the store eventually closing. We could see some demand competing for these parking spaces and the average family tenant may have more than one car.

Lorig noted there is no rezoning required by their analysis for the current design of the Fred Meyer complex, named “Piper Village West” after the current Piper Village housing adjacent to the site. The current relatively narrow sidewalks on 85th would also be widened. Where the housing borders the street, a 15 foot setback will be planned that leverages a landscaped berm to buffer pedestrians and traffic from the apartments.

There is currently over 500,000 square feet of retail space in the Greenwood area, and a moderate degree of both vacancies, renovation, and out-of-date / uneconomic retail in the area by the developer’s analysis. The size of the Fred Meyer planned is very similar to the retailer’s presence in Ballard and other Seattle neighborhoods. The independent retail section is now continuous along the 85th street heavy traffic corridor for visibility of these businesses.The independent retailers would have 3 stories of housing atop their stores to make maximum denisty use of the land.

We wanted the community and surrounding Greenwood neighbors to be aware of the proposed changes and will continue to update the story with additional detail as it breaks.

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The Greater Greenwood Design Advisory Group has proposed in June 2009 that the proposed development be rezoned to Neighborhood Commericial. The detailed Fred Meyer Greenwood Design rezoning proposal can be found from the link which includes a number of drawings for the alternate vision of the site.

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6010 Phinney Design Approved – On-Site Report

Our neighborhood team was on-site at the final review of the 6010 Phinney building design which will make major changes to the Phinney Ridge neighobrhood area.

The proposed four-story mixed-use building at 6010 Phinney Ave. is one step closer to becoming a reality, after being approved by the Design Review Board in a public meeting at Ballard High School on Tuesday. About 30 neighbors showed up to comment on the latest plans for a building that’s slated to go in where Rooster’s Breakfast Club, Daily Planet, Chef Liao and the Phinney Dry Cleaners now stand. The new design addressed a lot of neighbors’ previous concerns, but nearly every speaker at the meeting had the same big problem with the new plans: the location of the driveway leading in and out of the building’s underground parking garage.

Architects from Kilburn, LLC, ran through 14 different changes that attempted to address neighbors’ concerns from the previous Design Review Board meeting back in February. These included things like reducing the size of one of the building’s stair towers, using materials that more closely match other buildings in the neighborhood, and creating a transparent canopy over the sidewalk instead of a solid brick one. Ventilation between the ground floor and the roof has also been added, which will allow restaurants to move into the building’s retail spaces. While most of the audience were pleased with the changes, the location of the driveway remains a sore spot for neighbors.

The driveway was initially going to be located on Phinney Ave., but that changed at the previous DRB meeting in February. The board recommended moving it around the corner to 61st St., where there’s generally less pedestrian traffic. After that meeting, the architects redrew the entire plan from the ground up to accommodate the new driveway. The developers claim this nearly doubled their design costs. However, neighbors were concerned that a driveway on 61st would provide less visibility for cars coming out of the underground garage and pose a danger to pedestrians. The Design Review Board said that the sight triangle at the driveway was large enough to meet code.

Moving the driveway back to Phinney would also significantly break up the retail storefronts on the busiest side of the building. During deliberations, members of the Board said that they’ve been approving driveways on side streets with less foot traffic all over the Northwest. Neighbors argued that the Roycroft Condominiums, right across the street from 6010, use a driveway on Phinney. The Board discussed this point . The developers, for their part, say they’re just “taking the City’s lead” and doing what they can to comply with code.

The Design Review Board is only one step in the process of getting the building at 6010 approved. To secure a Master Use Permit and start building, the site also has to pass an environmental review. The results of the environmental testing should be available to the public next week, but developers said that preliminary reports show some contaminants in the soil. It won’t be clear how much contamination, or whether it’s from chemicals used at the dry cleaner that’s been on the site for decades, until the final report comes out.

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6010 Phinney Building – Phinney Ridge Community Council

The Phinney Ridge Community Council held its September meeting this Tuesday. PRCC meetings are open to the public, so neighbors can drop by to voice concerns about everything from zoning to parking to the Zoo.

The fate of the 6010 Phinney building — home to Rooster’s Breakfast Club, The Daily Planet, Chef Liao’s, and Phinney Ridge Cleaners — is back on PRCC’s radar because of an upcoming Design Review Board meeting. On Sept. 14, the public will have a change to weigh in on the proposed development, which includes 18 residential units, 2,700 square feet of ground-floor retail, and 23 parking spaces. The meeting takes place at Ballard High School from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

There was no love lost for the 6010 proposal at the PRCC meeting, as members voiced several potential concerns about the design for 6010 Phinney. In particular, a proposed curb cut on 61st St., instead of facing out toward Phinney, could cause parking problems and create a crowded alleyway behind 6010 and neighboring Zeek’s Pizza. Building on top of the current Phinney Ridge Cleaners site worried some at the PRCC meeting.

The dry cleaner has been in operation since the 1930s, and nobody in attendance had seen any kind of environmental report from the developer, assuring that the site was free of hazardous chemicals. Some also felt that the new development doesn’t fit the character of the neighborhood, decrying its generic “Belltown-style” design.

And, with another large mixed-use building already in place across the street, nobody was in a hurry to support something that would block out even more of the sun on the 6000 block. Losing the existing businesses didn’t seem to be as big a concern for PRCC as gaining almost 3,000 square feet of retail that could be extremely difficult to fill. With other mixed-use developments in the area still not full, people at the meeting were skeptical that the new building could attract small businesses with the same local flavor. Some would have preferred a more restaurant-friendly retail space, particularly since two of the businesses currently occupying the building are restaurants. 6010 wasn’t the only thing on the agenda, though.

Design Draft for 6010 Phinney

There was also a brief discussion of potential new park sites in the neighborhood. Phinney Ridge has been identified as one of around 20 areas in Seattle that lack open space, and there’s money in the recent parks levee to acquire some. PRCC is looking at a handful of lots to potentially throw its support behind, but that hinges on finding an owner who’s willing to sell to the City. So far, that hasn’t happened.

If you’re at all interested in the direction development is taking in Phinney Ridge, make your voice heard by coming to the next PRCC meeting, which should take place on Tuesday, October 6, at 7:30 pm at the Phinney Neighborhood Center. On the agenda: revisiting Phinney Ridge’s ongoing parking problems.

By:  Jay Hathaway

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