By Erica C. Barnett
City Councilmember Cathy Moore complained bitterly last week over the fact that—despite her frequent demands and a Change.org petition with more than 1,500 signatures—the Maple Leaf Neighborhood Center will remain in the mayor’s proposed update to the city’s comprehensive plan.
The designation would allow moderate density—3-to-6-story apartments— in an eight-and-a-half-block area directly adjacent to an existing commercial center. Despite its diminutive size, Moore has characterized the proposed center as a death knell for the area, saying she was not willing to “sacrifice my neighborhood” to allow rental housing in the area. (Moore lives elsewhere).
Moore spoke for ten minutes straight at last week’s meeting, at times seeming near tears as she described what she characterized as an abandonment and betrayal of her district by the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development.”
“I just remain incredibly disappointed,” Moore began. “I remain incredibly disappointed that the tremendous amount of public feedback that was given to OPCD was not really taken fully into consideration. And I would take issue with the characterization that you really listen to everybody.”
Moore went on to describe all the dense housing, including affordable housing, that’s going up along busy streets and next to light rail—”a tremendous amount of growth”—saying that this type of housing is “fantastic” and “supported by everybody” currently living in the district. Maple Leaf, she said, was an exception, “the only [neighborhood] in which there has been strong, vocal, consistent opposition.”
What about the neighborhood’s drainage capacity, transit access, the traffic all those new apartments would cause? Why hadn’t the city “walk[ed] the district” with residents who opposed allowing more people to live in the area?
“You’re not listening,” Moore said, “and I don’t understand, why is it? Is it because somebody is trying to put the screws to the council member for [District] 5 with some ideological position? … There has been an absolute hardcore resistance to this.”
At the very least, Moore continued, OPCD should “walk the damn neighborhood center with us and explain to the 1,400-plus people [who signed the online petition] why you’re unwilling to reconsider the boundaries, why you’re unwilling to look at other places that might be more appropriate and actually have people walking to the light rail that is so vital to our community.”
Michael Hubner, the mild-mannered OPCD planning manager who typically does the presentations at the council’s comp plan committee meetings, pointed out gently that the department has, in fact, done multiple walks with residents through every neighborhood center, including Maple Leaf, while mayoral staff Krista Valles pointed out that sometimes city departments make decisions individual council members don’t like. “It’s not that we haven’t been listening. We’ve just arrived at a different conclusion,” Valles said.
In other words: A legislator may really, really want something to happen, but sometimes they just don’t get their way.
Moore’s anti-apartment diatribe, which came during her first public appearance after announcing her resignation last week, was another example, among many, of her obvious frustration with how the legislative process works—even when something seems obvious to her, she doesn’t always get her way.
The version of the comprehensive plan the council is considering is much more modest than the proposals most of the current council including said they supported on the campaign trail in 2023, with half as many neighborhood centers and much more modest density increases than the preliminary alternatives OPCD floated that year.
Last year, the city’s Planning Commission declared that an earlier version of the plan would worsen inequities in the city and fail to address Seattle’s affordable housing crisis because it didn’t allow enough rental housing in enough areas. Advocates for housing, including many renters, have been saying the same thing about the comprehensive plan for years now. Moore has never demonstrated much of an interest in listening to them.
Funny to not see any comments here about the main point, “homeowners who want to keep their neighborhood the same.” Hey, I like rights. But is “keeping your neighborhood the same” a right? I think it’s pretty ridiculous personally, the product of extreme insularity and too much power that comes with the easy wealth of our real estate market.
Sure, you might disagree with my point of view, but that still does not mean anybody has a right to “keeping your neighborhood the same.” This is a large and growing city. Change can be hard, but grow up and share the burden with everyone else like human beings. Be members of the larger community rather than demanding the rest of the city bend to you “no change” demands. Seriously.
More New Yorkers who are landlords who got into the city council of Seattle acting like they know what the reality of the perspective of who rules Seattle always siding with the greedy landlords in their backstab on the working class and the multitudes of younger generations appeasing the sellouts who would rather shout about traffic instead of improving the functionality of their traffic lights purposely sabotage in the planning Commission to water down the integrity of the build-outs well Kathy Moore purposely put restrictions and weaponize the tree ordinance and the setbacks and undermined the incentives on purpose to backstab developers to make sure no affordable housing would be built by them
I have walked this neighborhood, too, almost nightly since I live in it, and after looking at this aerial shot again, I think the objectionable part of the new zone is that it’s done as a circle rather than the more obvious rectangle so that it encompasses much more of a single family neighborhood that it really should.
What is the point of including small parts of 12th NE and 8th NE in the rezone, other than to disrupt those neighbors? Having 6 story buildings (or whatever size will be allowed) on a small part of streets a block away from the main part of the commercial hub makes no sense at all to me.
As it is, 12th and 8th are low-rise streets that are pleasant to walk on. At least 12th, which ends in T’s at both ends (one end is a nice walking entrance to Maple Leaf Park), has been City-designated as some kind of walking street. The six or eight blocks closest to the park has sidewalks on both sides, which is a rarity North of 85th, and 8th is the same up to 95th. Having big buildings blocking the sky (I assume they’ll be able to be as close to the road as buildings now are on Roosevelt) will bring a canyon to those parts of those streets.
If this were a rectangle covering half of the blocks from Roosevelt, which should net at least the same amount of area for development, then that would make sense to me. The big circle doesn’t.
Decent story, but note for the writer about this quote:
“not willing to “sacrifice my neighborhood” to allow rental housing in the area. (Moore lives elsewhere).
The neighborhood is in Moore’s district, so there’s a legitimate understanding to what Moore means by “her” neighborhood. She didn’t say she lived there. The story could do without this subtle jab.
Need to solve the traffic congestion and parking issues FIRST before increasing density in Seattle neighborhoods. This should be common sense. Units going up should include 3 and 4 bedroom options to accommodate families. If you have 2 kids or even one kid if you work from home, a 2 bedroom apartment is too small. In fact, work from home folks and the car-less should get priority on the new units, as they contribute much less to the traffic congestion and parking shortage issue. Developers are being subsidized so they should not complain.
I’ve walked the entire area mentioned. It isn’t that hard (it isn’t that big of an area). A lot of it is developed already. It is a bit silly to say that the area needs to remain single family. A lot of the houses in nearby areas have already been replaced by newer houses.
It has excellent transit. It is served by the 67, one of the more frequent buses in our system. The 67 through-routes with the 65. Thus you have a direct, one-seat connection to Northgate, Roosevelt, U-District, the middle of the UW campus, U-Village, Children’s Hospital and other locations. It connects to Link at both Northgate and Roosevelt — not that far away.
It doesn’t sound like Moore is opposed to the whole “urban village” concept even though that is a reasonable idea. Maybe the whole city should have a bigger upgrade so that it doesn’t get concentrated in the handful of places that we designate. But if we are going to designate such places, this is a good choice.
This is a great take. Producing more units is a math problem. We can up density by a small amount everywhere, or we can limit higher density to neighborhood centers. Honestly the neighborhood centers would better appease the save-the-trees and lets-make-affordable-housing crowd, but I suspect the real policy is just get-off-my-lawn-I-don’t-want-any-change.
Thank goodness for HB 1110!
Need to solve the traffic congestion and parking issues FIRST before increasing density in Seattle neighborhoods. This should be common sense. Units going up should include 3 and 4 bedroom options to accommodate families. If you have 2 kids or even one kid if you work from home, a 2 bedroom apartment is too small. In fact, work from home folks and the car-less should get priority on the new units, as they contribute much less to the traffic congestion and parking shortage issue. Developers are being subsidized so they should not complain.
“work from home folks and the car-less should get priority on the new units” — this is kind of happening, just by no longer requiring as much parking be built as we used to. Back when developers HAD to provide tons of parking, the units would most likely go to people willing to pay for the included parking space(s). When there can be parking-less units, they’re going to attract people who don’t need parking, and therefore won’t add to traffic either.