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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Fred Meyer Greenwood Expansion – March Public Review Scheduled

Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) is holding a public meeting to gather comments on the Fred Meyer project in the Town Center. This meeting is focused on information relating to soils and hydrology issues and to receive comment on other environmental issues.

A geotechnical report has been submitted by the developer which identifies the soils on the site and will allow designers to accommodate for the soil conditions.

It will address any peat found on the site and the potential impacts and/or recommendations for anticipated construction.

Electronic copies of the project are not available. Hardcopies may be obtained from the DPD Public Resource Center, 700 5th Avenue, Suite 2000 (206) 684-8467. The Public Resource Center is open 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.

MEETING LOCATION:
A public meeting to review this application will be held on 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.
LINKS:
Fred Meyer Meeting Bulletin

Peat Settlement Issues

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Upzoning in Greenwood: How it can impact your home’s value.

Around 35 Greenwood neighbors showed up to the Greenwood Library on Tuesday night to discuss a new zoning proposal for the neighborhood’s urban core. Although the Greenwood Community Council has no power to change zoning on its own, it serves as liaison between Greenwood residents and the City Council. GCC president (and, currently, sole board member — contact him via the GCC website if you’d like to get involved!) Trevor Stanley emphasized the importance of getting input from the neighborhood before talking to City Council members.
The proposed rezoning plan would upzone the entire area around the planned Fred Meyer development project in Greenwood’s urban core, including some single-family houses that border the current Fred Meyer lot. Upzoning would mean taller buildings and more potential to bring new developers to the area, but it would also mean that those single-family dwellings could be replaced by Ballard-style townhouses.

Some neighbors expressed concerns that an upzone could also mean increased property taxes for residents who chose not to sell their lots to developers. Barbara L. Shale, of the King County Tax Advisory Office, addresse the issue by explaining that a jump from single-family to L3 zoning — L3 is the low-rise zone most commonly occupied by clusters of townhomes — wouldn’t increase anyone’s taxes overnight. She said that the value of a house often goes down when the value of the land itself goes up, and that taxes would likely stay about the same until the next physical property inspection of the area, in 2015 or 2016.

Although most of the debate was about the “buffer” of single-family homes, neighbors were also concerned about upzoning the commercial lots at the core of the Fred Meyer development. Proposed changes would allow buildings that currently top out at 40 feet to be raised to 65 feet. Although this is obviously attractive to developers, Stanley made it clear that the Advisory Group behind the zoning proposal was thinking about the future growth of Greenwood, not about Fred Meyer.

Fred Meyer’s plans for a new shopping center don’t actually include or require any zoning changes.
“I’m going to sorely miss Greenwood Market,” Stanley said, “but that’s not something [the GCC] have any control over. That’s not something we’re trying to have control over.”

The neighbors at the meeting felt they hadn’t been given enough time or information to make a decision about the new changes, so they unanimously passed Resolution 2. That resolution opposes the changes “at this time,” and urges the City Council to “demonstrate community support for [future changes] and the notify those impacted by the change.”

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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 Design Survey Results

As the Design Review Board approved the Fred Meyer Greenwood Design with comments from the audience, our survey showed the public roughly 57% supporting the project to 43% opposed. Some great comments from the survey are listed below:

Survey Quotes:
Why do I support the project? Because it has financial backing and will happen. GG.DDAG dreams of mix use development on this site are nice but unsustainable.

Combining the store and grocery makes sense, since they’re both already Kroger and shopping all together is convenient, and the current set up is pretty ugly (but I hope the combo would retain the local feel of Greenwood Market as well as good organics and bulk sections). But the neighborhood does not need 300 new apartments. Traffic is bad enough already, and new condo projects all over town are sitting incomplete with no buyers. A quick Craigslist search comes up with 285 apt listings with keyword Greenwood.

We don’t need a superstore in a small retail area.

Megastores are an abomination.

Can’t wait for this project to happen! We need a decent, low-price grocery in this area and to in-fill around Greenwood to build a better neighborhood.

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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.

Click Here to take survey

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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