Citizens seek design say in county

Published 1:00 pm Wednesday, June 5, 2002

So, what does the future hold for Island County: Fast food joints or small-scale farms, commercial eyesores or agricultural edens, space, sprawl or perhaps something somewhere in-between?

For some folks, there is no appropriate in-between, and they now want to make sure people have an official say-so on protecting their countryside from poor business designs.

Concerned that the state highways running the length of Whidbey Island could turn into a sprawling commercial wasteland much like Seattle’s notorious Aurora Avenue, the citizens who comprise the Island County Smart Growth Coalition have asked the planning department to be let in on future development decisions.

The coalition, as it is familiarly known, is just the latest incarnation of the long-standing Growth Management Coalition, said Chairman Tom Fisher on Wednesday. The group represents the concerns of islanders who feel that too much unreviewed commercial development could sully the bucolic appeal of Whidbey Island, especially the “scenic corridor” formed by state highways 525 and 20 that traverses the length of the island.

Bring public in early

“We want to bring the public into this process prior to businesses being vested,” Fisher said on Tuesday. In proposing a new county ordinance, the coalition is attempting not to supplant the county’s existing Comp Plan, but rather to further safeguard that its goals are achieved.

Fisher said that without direct involvement by the community through the auspices of design review boards, many commercial developments might fail to preserve the uniquely rural and historic nature of their surrounding communities and environments.

As an example of the kinds of structures the coalition finds antithetical to Island County’s rural character, Fisher pointed to the new Shell gas station at Fish Road and SR 525 in Freeland — which he likened to a “hovercraft” — as well as the storage facility at the corner of Woodard Ave. in that same area.

Planning Director Phil Bakke, who has worked extensively with coalition members in the past, said Thursday that he empathizes with those who want to preserve Whidbey’s rural character, adding that he is not at all interested in the “Aurora-ization” of the county. However, Bakke said, he feels the Comp Plan sets up strict enough guidelines to accomplish everything the coalition wants.

Comp plan

said sufficient

“The goals of the Comp Plan are going to be achieved with existing standards,” Bakke said. He added that there are already in place very stringent standards for such things as commercial signage, lighting and the appearance of commercial building structures.

“It’s our experience that it is lighting, signage and vast, long strips of commercial development that create that Highway 99 look,” Bakke said in reference to claims that the county is heading toward an Aurora-like sprawl. “I don’t want that to happen here either, but what would Aurora look like if for every mile of commercial development there were 15 miles of houses?”

Bakke pointed to the existing design guidelines in the Comp Plan, which indeed place high priority on keeping the appearance of commercial structures “similar in height, size, placement, style, materials, colors and design to residential or agricultural structures.”

For Fisher, however, such guidelines need another degree of stringency, and one that allows more community involvement.

“Staff’s argument that ‘If it isn’t broke don’t fix it’ is not persuasive,” he wrote in a May 28 memo to the Planning Dept. “Existing Comp Plan and (Island County Code) language has had little if any real effect in stopping or even amending several recent developments that have almost universally been criticized for designs inappropriate to place and insensitive to community concerns. To claim that the existing county-wide ordinances offer sufficient protection of our rural, local character is to ignore evidence to the contrary.”

Design review

boards sought

At last Tuesday’s Planning Commission meeting in Coupeville, Fisher pitched a new amendment to the county’s Comprehensive Plan that would allow the coalition more input on important development issues. The idea, which Fisher admits is “amorphous” at this point, is that two distinct Design Review Boards would be set up to scrutinize future site plans for any business looking to plant itself on the island, prior even to the property being vested. The districts would coincide with Commissioner Districts 1 and 3, leaving out Dist. 2 which essentially encompasses the Oak Harbor region.

In particular, the review boards would concern themselves with what are called Rural Areas of Intense Development, or RAIDs. Such commercially zoned areas, including Freeland and Clinton, were designated by the Comp Plan to help prevent sprawl into the countryside, though Fisher said that further safeguards should be erected even within these areas. It is the coalition’s contention that pre-screening all business projects set to take place in existing RAIDs will better protect the rural look along the highways. In turn, Fisher argued, this will help promote tourist trade, an import aspect of the county’s tax base.

Area specific

rules sought

“We want area specific guidelines,” Fisher said. “The best way to incorporate that is to establish a community group that would meet with the developer prior to any hard plans being set down on paper.”

As indicated in the coalition’s proposed amendment, which was originally submitted Jan. 31 and then amended in April, design review boards would be comprised in part by architectural and landscape professionals with an intimate knowledge of design issues. At least one member per board would also sit on the county’s planning commission. Membership would range from 5 to 9 members, Fisher said, in order to be inclusive of the whole local community.

Board objectives would include such things as making sure proposed commercial projects do not have a “deleterious effect” on neighboring properties or the nearby highway, that they preserve, whenever possible, the historic and rural nature of existing structures and that tree and soil removal is kept to a minimum.

Benefit seen to tourism

Fisher is quick to add that the concerns of the coalition are not entirely environmental. The primary focus of design review boards, he said, would be on encouraging commercial development and promoting tourism, albeit so long as such businesses toe the line on the guidelines set down in the Comp Plan. Such a process is not only aesthetically pleasing, it makes good business sense, Fisher added.

“It’s pretty much a win-win situation for everybody,” he said. “If the developer has a chance to meet with the public, they could integrate the input into their plan and save a lot of heartache down the road. There is the idea that established businesses will be protected, in that adjoining properties will be persuaded to show the same amount of concern for their surroundings. It’s a protection of existing investments, too.”

Fisher said that the whole process would expedite the permitting process and even save the county money down the road by circumventing confrontations and potential litigation.

“It would be a nominal cost to the county,” Fisher added, suggesting that perhaps such boards could be supported by some of the county’s approximately $400,000 in Rural Counties Funding, which the state has earmarked for the development of economic infrastructures.

Too expensive,

county claims

It is on this issue of government expense, however, that Bakke appeared to most disagree with Fisher’s assessment. He said the creation of review boards is “too expensive for my department to undertake in these budget times,” with the county facing a projected shortfall of approximately $2 million in its 2003 budget. Bakke added that whenever he talks about doing something new in his department, the first question asked is what he’s going to stop doing to support the project.

“Any way you paint this, design review committees are going to take time and resources,” Bakke said.

As for the question raised by Fisher of ongoing public involvement in development issues, Bakke said “a lot of the public involvement happened when the Comp Plan was drawn up,” and that beyond this, he rarely gets specific comments about particular projects.

“People are very black and white with their comments,” Bakke said, adding that the Planning Dept. is always seeking the specific nature of people’s concern. Usually, though, it’s an either/or issue of “we like it” or “we don’t like it.”

Bakke said he’s confident the Comp Plan, as it now works, has more than sufficient protections to address the coalition’s concerns about the potential degradation of Island County’s rural character. What’s more, he pointed out that his department recently changed the way commercial projects are reviewed, with Bakke taking a look at all site plans prior to issuance. This, Bakke said, is one more safeguard that didn’t exist previously.

Fisher, who said that he and Bakke are “not very far apart” on what’s best for the county, nonetheless feels that the way things happen now doesn’t quite cut it. There’s currently a disconnect between incoming commercial projects and the communities they’re meant to serve, Fisher said, and something needs to be done about the process as a whole.

“It’s not a very transparent process,” Fisher said, “and that’s not fair either to the public or to the developer.” He added that, as far as growth goes, “you can’t stop it, the only thing you can do is plan for it,” and that all the coalition is asking is to bring the public into the process a little earlier.

“It’s hard to see where an adversary of this can really come up with legit reasons why it shouldn’t be there,” Fisher said of the proposal to create design review boards, adding that such a “tried and true method” has met with success in at least 50 communities around the state.

“We want to involve the community at a point at which their input would be welcomed,” Fisher said.