MUKILTEO — A condominium development stands east of Ulla Rudd’s property, which overlooks Possession Sound and the Olympic Mountains from the top of a wooded gully.
Townhomes are about to be built just south of her land at the end of Island View Lane, and commercial growth has also occurred off her eastern border.
But when Rudd and her neighbor tried to rezone their properties with about 3.5 acres of buildable land from single-family to multifamily residential, they ran into a web of red tape.
“We would like to go forward, like everyone else can,” said Rudd, who has owned her property since 1986. “That’s all we ask, and so far we have not been able to do that.”
People who don’t want a multifamily development built on Rudd’s property found a loophole in the city’s road code to block her proposed rezone. The way the road code is written, the roadway that serves the Island View Ridge condominiums and then leads into Rudd’s property should not be serving more than four homes, Mukilteo senior planner Glen Pickus said.
City planners are considering designating the roadway — and others like it in Mukilteo — as what is called a private drive aisle, which could serve multifamily housing. Currently, the roadway through the condominiums is designated as a fire lane, and it’s a driveway through Rudd’s and her neighbor’s land.
The Mukilteo City Council is planning to discuss changes to the road code at its meeting scheduled Monday.
Also, Rudd and her neighbor are the first landowners in Mukilteo who need to complete development agreements with the city in order to rezone their single-family residential land. By requiring a development agreement, the city can have more control over growth that happens there.
The city began requiring development agreements for residential land rezones earlier this year, Pickus said.
Mukilteo Mayor Joe Marine believes it makes sense to require development agreements for rezoning residential land.
“If we’re going to put in the density, let’s make sure (the project) works,” Marine said.
Rudd wanted to rezone her land last year, and Rudd said planning staff recommended approval to the planning commission. City officials advised her to wait a year. They told her the planning staff would be more likely to recommend approval of her rezone if the city could first sort out its road code and whether to require development agreements for residential rezones, Pickus said.
“The roadway issue was Âreally complicating things, and we needed to fix that code anyway, regardless of the rezone,” he said.
Rudd agreed to wait.
In the meantime, the value of her property has decreased and her taxes have increased, Rudd said.
Three developers offered to buy her land last year, but they didn’t want to go forward with the purchase unless the land was rezoned, she said.
“We have no reason or motive why we would want to wait another year,” she said.
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