EDMONDS — The state Court of Appeals last week rejected the Edmonds Ebb Tide Association of Apartment Owners’ efforts to block the city from building a proper walkway on the waterfront near the ferry terminal, clearing the way for the city to pursue the project.
Residents in the five-story, 20-unit condominium building located between the Edmonds Waterfront Center and Olympic Beach Park had long complained of trespassers on their patio, instead of walking on the adjacent beach.
But for decades, the condominiums’ ownership has rejected the city’s plans to construct a proper walkway for beachgoers near 200 Beach Place.
In 1983, a 10-foot-wide, 100-foot-long easement across Ebb Tide’s private beach was signed between Edmonds and the building’s former owner, Olympic Properties. The walkway connects the Edmonds-Kingston ferry north of the building to a pier on the other side, redirecting pedestrian traffic onto the beach.
Because of the missing link, to pass the Ebb Tide, pedestrians must leave the paved walkway, climb down a set of stairs, cross in front of the Ebb Tide over a stretch of undeveloped beach, and then climb up another set of stairs to rejoin the paved path, attorneys for the city wrote in court papers.
“At high tide, the stretch of beach in front of the Ebb Tide is often underwater, which requires walkway users to leave the waterfront and pass along the back of Ebb Tide on Railroad Avenue,” the attorneys wrote.
Edmonds has wanted to build the walkway since the 1980s, but due to a lack of funding, construction had been delayed.
Edmonds again proposed a new walkway in 1999, but Ebb Tide rejected the proposal. The housing association rejected other “planned improvements” in 2016.
The city filed a lawsuit in 2017 in Snohomish County Superior Court, seeking a wheelchair-accessible route along the waterfront.
“This case is about the City attempting to avoid paying the Ebb Tide for the loss of its private beach access through eminent domain, despite an effective taking of the Ebb Tide’s private beach and tidelands and interference with views with an overreaching interpretation of its easement rights,” attorneys for Ebb Tide wrote in a trial brief late last year.
The case went to a four-day bench trial in late 2022. Judge Millie Judge sided with the city, granting the city a declaratory judgement for the right to build on the property — roughly 40 years after the original proposal.
Ebb Tide appealed a month later. The organization argued the trial court should have dismissed the city’s complaints on “ripeness grounds,” claiming its case had not been been developed enough for litigation.
On Aug. 21, a three-judge panel on the state Court of Appeals ruled “the trial court correctly concluded that the City has sufficient real property rights to construct a walkway within the easement area.”
The appellate court concluded the easement allows the city to build a continuous walkway as long as it did not extend beyond the elevation of the easement, “thereby addressing the ongoing trespass complaints,” the court wrote.
“This decision, as in the previous lower court ruling, supports our public’s right to a continuous public access path along our entire Edmonds waterfront,” Mayor Mike Nelson said in an email Friday. “I remain hopeful that the City can continue this missing piece of the publicly accessible Edmonds Waterfront Walkway without further legal delays.”
Real estate listings show one of the Ebb Tide units sold for $1.725 million in 2022. On Zillow, the neighborhood’s walkability score was rated at 67 out of 100.
Maya Tizon: 425-339-3434; maya.tizon@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @mayatizon.
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