CAMANO ISLAND – Many residents do not want a hotel on north Camano Island.
That much is clear from the testimony and organized opposition to a proposal by developer David Platter to build a 40-unit Best Western hotel at Good Road and Highway 532.
For the third time in three years, Island County hearing examiner Michael Bobbink ruled recently that such a large hotel is not allowed under the county’s “rural village” zoning.
However, Platter hasn’t given up. He claims that he should be allowed to build the hotel because of an exception the Island County commissioners made several years ago to allow a hotel at Coronet Bay on Whidbey Island.
In the rest of the rural village zone, big hotels are not allowed, the commissioners decided. That’s not fair, Platter said, because the U.S. Constitution requires equal treatment.
County planners and Bobbink have declined to address the constitutional argument because they feel it is more appropriate for the courts to decide the issue, said Josh Choate, deputy prosecuting attorney for Island County.
“The hearing examiner and the planning director, it’s not within their authority,” Choate said.
County officials have stuck to interpreting the zoning rules, Choate said.
But from Platter’s perspective, they ducked a key issue.
“The county’s had two chances to get it right, and in both cases they chose not to,” he said.
A Skagit County Superior Court judge sided with Platter on the constitutional issue. Island County in turn appealed that decision to the state Court of Appeals, which is expected to take up the matter in the next few weeks.
Even if the appeals court agrees with Platter, the deputy prosecutor said the remedy should not be to allow big hotels in the county’s rural village zone. No one has built a hotel at Coronet Bay, so an easy fix would be to prohibit hotels there as well, Choate said.
The privileges that Platter claims have been extended in Coronet Bay “may be on the books, but nobody has taken advantage of those,” Choate said.
That would honor the commissioners’ original intent for the rural village zone, as well as the many residents who have testified that they do not want large hotels on the island, Choate said.
That seemed like a reasonable solution to Allison Warner, president of Camano Action for a Rural Environment, which has strongly opposed Platter’s project.
“He can’t claim that someone else got some goodies that he doesn’t get,” Warner said.
If someone doesn’t like a zoning code, he or she should ask the county commissioners to change it instead of challenging it in the courts, she said.
In the meantime, Platter tried to hedge his bets by submitting a similar but separate proposal in an effort to comply with the rural village zone’s approved uses. But Bobbink shot down that proposal in his recent decision. The zone only allows smaller lodgings associated with cultural centers, he ruled.
Platter also has appealed that decision in Skagit County Superior Court.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
