Archives for December 13, 2011

Committee vote on the Roosevelt Rezone likely this Wednesday (LIVE COVERAGE)

UPDATE (1:57 PM): Today’s Committee on the Built Environment meeting footage has now been archived by the Seattle Channel, and we include it here.

UPDATE (12:18 PM): The Councilmembers present at today’s meeting of the Committee on the Built Environment have voted to move the Roosevelt Rezone (with the 65-foot-heights on the blocks just south of Roosevelt High School) forward to a full council vote. Full council vote likely to take place on January 17, 2012.

For more details about the vote and today’s COBE meeting in general, read our archived coverage of the meeting below.

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Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 14, the Seattle City Council’s Committee on the Built Environment meets to discuss and possibly vote on the Roosevelt Neighborhood Rezone (Council Bill 117379).

The meeting starts at 10:30 AM in the Council Chambers of City Hall (600 Fourth Avenue) with the Chair’s Report, then moves into 10 minutes* of public comment before the briefing on the bill begins.

We will be covering the event LIVE, right here, starting around 10:30 AM. Our notes will be archived here after the meeting, as well.

Recent Background Information

Just last week at another COBE meeting, the Committee discussed four different rough design options for the three blocks south of Roosevelt High School, before showing a preference (five of the eight councilmembers in attendance) for Option 2: A zoning designation of NC2-65 with over 25,000-square-feet of open space at street level.

You can download the entire design presentation by GGLO, “Development Standards for the High School Blocks,” in PDF format (5.03 MB) here.

An image of Option 2 from the GGLO design presentation. The view is from NE 65th Street, facing north toward the high school.

The next day, COBE Chair, Councilmember Sally Clark, summed up the rezone process so far and clarified her position on it on her blog.

Councilmember Bruce Harrell weighed in as well, on his personal blog. While he states his prefererence for design Option 2 at 65-feet, it was his “understanding that throughout the long process of neighborhood planning, the surrounding communities consistently made it clear that these three blocks should be protected from 65 foot heights.” Councilmember Harrell did not state specifically how he would vote, he did say that “[W]hat matters most to me…is that communities are ensured that their local government is truly listening to them when deciding how this city should look in the future.”

Then, today, a curve ball

Only yesterday, Publicola teased that Councilmember Nick Licata would be adding an amendment to the Roosevelt Neighborhood Rezone bill which would leave the three most contested blocks out of the rezone altogether. Today, Licata shared his position on the rezone on his Urban Politics blog.

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*Ha!