From the Dec 4 – Dec 10, 2003 issue

News

Street Fight

West Seattle Residents Balk at New Housing

by Amy Jenniges

Last year, Dave Rimple, president of the neighborhood council in Puget Ridge--a little swath uphill from Delridge Way Southwest in West Seattle, near South Seattle Community College--was the only person attending council meetings. After two in a row all by himself, he suspended meetings until further notice. "We haven't had a genuine neighborhood council meeting in quite some time," says Rimple, a thirtysomething guy who's lived in the neighborhood for two years. But on November 20, the council sprang back to life, thanks to the neighborhood's hot-button issue: A low-income housing develop- ment slated to break ground in late spring on Delridge Way, on the western border of the working- and middle-class residential neighborhood.

The Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association--a West Seattle nonprofit--has plans for a $5.9 million, 21-unit townhouse-style development on a heavily wooded three-acre lot. The neighbors don't like the project, dubbed Croft Place, citing the development's entryway on 21st Avenue Southwest--a quiet, almost rural road with no sidewalks or curbs--as the biggest problem (they're all for low-income housing, they say, and that sentiment seems genuine). Neighbors say the development would double the population and the traffic on that portion of 21st, and they would rather see the project's driveway spill out on busy Delridge Way. To draw attention to their concerns, neighbors have an arsenal of other issues: drainage (there's a wetland on the site), the new buildings' proximity to existing houses, loss of trees, an apparent lack of handicap accessible units in the plans, and poor community outreach by DNDA, as compared to the group's other neighborhood projects.

Neighbors tried appealing to the city, but the city council approved the project in September. As a last resort, neighbors filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court; a hearing is scheduled for March 15.

DNDA's executive director, Paul Fischburg, says he hears the neighbors' concerns loud and clear, adding that the project has already been scaled back to lessen the neighborhood impact (originally, plans called for 28 units and a daycare center). But the driveway can't move to Delridge Way, he says, due to the lot's steep slope. "It's physically not possible," Fischburg says. With that in mind, he has been trying to make amends with the neighborhood. At the November 20 meeting, Fischburg gave an update of the project, and says he did his best to address the concerns. "We wish that there was a way that we could make people happy," he says, "but it doesn't look like for many people that's in the cards."

amy@thestranger.com