LAKE GOODWIN – When a winter storm blows trees onto a fence at her farm, Lynda Allan doesn’t worry about removing the debris.
“By noon that day, every one of them has been cut off (with a chain saw) by a man I haven’t even met before,” she said.
That type of country hospitality has been the norm since Allan moved to her farm north of Lake Goodwin about 15 years ago, she said.
Allan and other residents say this rural way of life would be wiped out if any of three large-scale developments being considered for the area are built.
The McNaughton Group of Edmonds is proposing to build at least 640 new homes – and as many as 6,000, to go with a four-year university – in about 31/2 square miles of sparsely populated land north of Lake Goodwin.
The largest of these plans would create Snohomish County’s first “mini-city” – with its own homes, workplaces and shops – since such developments were sanctioned by the county last year.
People who live in the area say even the smallest of the plans for the Lake Goodwin area, what is known as “rural-cluster” housing, is anything but rural.
“It’s the enormity of this. It’s an assault on the Seven Lakes community,” said Ellen Hiatt Watson, 41, who lives near Lake Howard.
Watson has started a Web site to oppose the developments.
Rural cluster housing allows more homes to be built in exchange for building them closer together to preserve open space around them.
Currently, the area is zoned for one home per 5 acres of land. Property owners have built on average one home per 2.8 acres since 1995 in rural cluster developments in Snohomish County.
The McNaughton Group says these types of clustered housing developments can create a greater sense of community, and leave more open space, than the current pattern of random suburban sprawl prevalent in the county – or even the current zoning in the Seven Lakes area.
The McNaughton Group is one of the largest land development companies in the Puget Sound area, with dozens of active projects in urban and rural parts of Snohomish County.
The company buys property for future subdivisions, wins county approvals to create individual housing lots and sells those lots to home-building companies.
Mark McNaughton, managing member of the McNaughton Group, says the county area including the Seven Lakes will grow. It’s a matter of how.
“It’s a special opportunity to do something in the county,” McNaughton said. “Does the county want to see something that’s a well-planned urban community or don’t they?”
McNaughton, 50, said the company owns more than 2,200 acres in the area, 2,032 of them contiguous. It bought 540 acres from the state Department of Natural Resources for $15.1 million in an auction in 2005, according to the department.
The company has applied to build 640 homes in 13 clusters north of Lake Goodwin, said Brian Holtzclaw, attorney for the McNaughton Group. Two of these clusters have received approval from the county. All the homes would be built under current rules on lots averaging 1 acre in size.
But the company is thinking bigger still. It’s applied to the county for a rule change that would allow it to build up to 1,700 homes in what’s called a “rural village.”
Or, it could scrap those plans and build the mini-city of up to 6,000 homes – and 15,000 people.
“There is not a better place in the county for a fully contained community,” McNaughton said, citing its proximity to I-5 and a rail line.
A handful of fully contained communities have been built in Western Washington on former timberland, including prominent ones near Redmond and Snoqualmie in King County. Those developments cover thousands of acres and include thousands of homes.
In 2005, Snohomish County approved plans for allowing up to 15,000 people in a possible fully contained community – an instant urban city plunked down in a rural area complete with homes, jobs, schools, stores and open space.
McNaughton said the larger developments, by allowing smaller units, can create more affordable housing, with some units priced in the $200,000s, while basic rural cluster housing will hover in the $700,000 to $800,000 range.
And the McNaughton Group’s land is one of 70 sites in Snohomish County submitted to the state for consideration for a University of Washington branch campus.
Whether the college comes or not, the company will consider building the mini-city if the idea gets support, McNaughton said.
The deciding factor?
“We’re looking for a lot of input,” he said. “We’re looking for community input of all kinds.”
Short of that, the rural village concept of 1,700 homes would preserve more open space by allowing the lots to be built on smaller lots of one-half acre, Holtzclaw said.
“It’s more insulated from the people who live in the area,” he said.
A county decision could be made as soon as next spring but more likely won’t be made until 2009 because of the scale and complexity of the proposal.
Allan, who has horses and free-range chickens, noted that one of the clusters of new homes would be across her dead-end street of 192nd Street NW.
Her rooster crows all night at full moons and porch lights, she said.
“He thinks it’s time to get up at 4 a.m.,” she said. “That ought to go well with the housing development, don’t you think?”
In addition to rural character, opponents worry about traffic, lack of water and pollution from septic tanks. Sewers are not allowed in rural areas under the state Growth Management Act.
The McNaughton Group says more homes bring more relief. If the company builds either of the larger two plans, it would pay to improve I-5’s Arlington interchange and connect 212th Street NW with Happy Valley Road. The parcels the company is eyeing for the college lie just east of Happy Valley Road.
The road improvements would take traffic pressure off the overloaded I-5 interchange at Smokey Point, company officials said.
Regarding septic tanks, the basic rural cluster plan would require septic tanks, but either the rural village or mini-city would allow the company to build a self-contained sewage system complete with treatment plant for the development, they say.
And regarding water, the McNaughton Group is considering paying for a new, 13-mile water main from Everett to the development. They don’t have cost figures yet.
Republican County Councilman John Koster said he is concerned about proposals to bring so many houses to the areas north of Lake Goodwin.
“I’m not real excited about putting rooftops out there if there’s not some assurance of some employment, if the proposal they put forward is (a fully-contained community),” he said.
Marysville, Arlington and Stanwood city leaders have opposed the developments. Those at the McNaughton Group say they’ve met with Marysville and Arlington officials and understand their concerns, especially about roads, water and septic tanks.
“We don’t disagree that these are issues and should be looked at,” Holtzclaw said.
None of the developments will happen overnight – they’ll be market-driven, company officials said. They say they’ll design the developments to maintain more rural flavor than most other clustered tracts.
If either of the larger two projects can’t be built, McNaughton says he’ll build the rural clusters, with less affordability, less open space and without the road improvements that come with the others, he said.
“If it’s a high-end rural cluster development and not something that’s more special, it won’t be my fault,” he said.
Watson, the Web page designer, isn’t buying any of it.
She says she’s received more than 200 responses to her online survey, and only four of those who’ve responded say they support the development.
“The improvements are not improvements; they are destruction,” she said. Watson said she believes that while the state Growth Management Act allows rural clusters and mini-cities, “it was intended to keep growth in the urban areas.”
Watson’s family moved to the Lake Howard shoreline when she was 13, she said. Her parents personally built their three-bedroom home – “every nail” – where Watson lives with her husband, their two children and her mother.
The inside, adorned with intricate, craftsman-style woodwork, more resembles a home built in the 1870s than the 1970s.
“We love the old things – it’s that sense of family,” Watson said. “There’s a story behind it, a life behind it.”
The rural lifestyle, she said, is “a gift, not just to me but all the people who live here, and we have to protect it.”
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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