On December 17, the city council narrowly approved
legislation
that will reduce the size of large commercial and retail buildings that
are allowed in the city’s industrial areas, including the area
surrounding Georgetown.
The legislation, aimed at preventing commercial encroachment on the
city’s threatened industrial and manufacturing sector, was opposed most
vociferously by Council Members Richard Conlin, Jan Drago, and Tom
Rasmussen, who called the legislation the biggest downzone in the
city’s history—a reference to the fact that it would reduce the
size of commercial developments in noncommercial industrial areas. The
proposal was also opposed by residents of Georgetown, who felt excluded
from the process and expressed concerns that it would hinder economic
development
in the neighborhood.
However, the legislation would not impact Georgetown directly,
includes large buffer zones around the neighborhood, and would only
prohibit commercial developments larger than 25,000 square
feet—precisely the sort of big-box developments most
neighborhoods in Seattle oppose. The legislation wouldn’t have any
impact, in other words, on neighborhood-scale businesses such as
independent shops, bowling alleys, and grocery stores. “I fail to see
how Georgetown would suffer under these protections,” said Council
Member and sponsor Peter Steinbrueck.
The industrial sector is the largest employment sector in Seattle,
providing more than middle-class jobs—the type of jobs, Council
Member Richard McIver noted, that are accessible “to people who might
not have a PhD.” Industrial land is in high demand by manufacturing and
other industrial businesses—at the moment, Seattle’s industrial
areas have a low vacancy rate of about 2.5 percent—and its use by
industry is threatened by encroaching commercial tenants who want to
take advantage of cheaper land in industrial areas. The commercial
vacancy rate is much higher at 9 to 10 percent.
But this year alone, commercial companies filed applications to use
nearly 800,000 square feet of industrial land for commercial
purposes—effectively removing that land permanently from
industrial use. For example, Amazon.com, which is expected to move onto
property owned by Vulcan in South Lake Union, was recently courted by
developer Wright Runstad, whose client Henry Liebman owns a large
industrial property in Sodo.
Steinbrueck’s legislation came attached to a resolution calling for
more study of the new law’s impact on Georgetown. Still, Conlin,
Georgetown business owner Kathy Nyland, and other opponents argued that
the study should come before, not after, the zoning legislation. They
argued, in other words, for
more process.
Conlin, making a typically Conlinite case (and going so far as to
quote a Swahili proverb—in Swahili) argued that the city should
spend more time deliberating about the legislation. “This is really
about, are we going to have the right kind of due process?” Conlin
said. Ultimately, Conlin’s attempt to delay the legislation until late
January—after Steinbrueck will be out of office—failed,
leaving Steinbrueck victorious in one of his last legislative acts on
the council.
Steinbrueck also prevailed in his effort to amend Mayor Greg
Nickels’s Vulcan legislation, which would, in effect, partially exempt
Vulcan from paying in to affordable-housing in exchange for taller
buildings on the South Lake Union property for Amazon. Steinbrueck’s
amendment reduces the value of
the giveaway from around $5 million
to just over $1 million. 