Echo Lake Associates, LLC, managing member Harley O’Neil is concerned about recommendations Shoreline city staff have made to the Planning Commission, which he says may impede development on the south end of Echo Lake.
O’Neil said although the City Council voted against locating a new city hall at the site, the Shoreline/South County YMCA and Crista Senior Housing remain interested in developing at the Echo Lake location.
“We thought originally the city supported what we wanted to do,” O’Neil said. “What is happening now is frustrating.”
Planning director Tim Stewart said the staff recommendations are not new.
“These are either proposals by Echo Lake that we have put as a condition or conditions of the contract rezone that staff has suggested and would go toward the planning commission and then on to the city council,” Stewart said.
O’Neil said one concern is that when the Planning Commission voted to recommend the R-48 land use designation be altered to Mixed Use, they included a provision for a 50-foot wide strip of land along the northern border to be designated as Public Open Space, which would extend from the Interurban Trail to Aurora Avenue. O’Neil said he is not sure why so much land needs to be taken.
Stewart said this strip was designated as Public Open Space in the city’s 1989 Comprehensive Plan. The Planning Commission recommended to the City Council that the land designation not be changed.
O’Neil said residential density will be limited to 350 units, with 40 percent of the units affordable to middle- and low-income residents. He said the partnership will not be able to charge rates that support housing and parking. O’Neil also said the partnership originally understood if they reduced the amount of commercial space, they could replace the reduction with residential units. He said limiting the number of residential units to 350, without the option to exchange commercial use for residential, is not reasonable.
Stewart said Echo Lake Associates requested 350 units in the development proposal, which prompted city staff to implement a 350-unit limit.
O’Neil said city staff recommended that 420 parking spaces be required within the residential structures and 600 parking spaces within commercial structures, which he said is burdensome because at this point the partnership does not yet know what type of residential and commercial structures may be built.
Stewart said Echo Lake Associates stated in their original proposal there would be 1,125 parking stalls.
O’Neil said he accepts city requirements on maximum impervious surface, but said city staff indicated 100 feet of wetland buffer can’t be included as part of the calculation. The partnership agreed to allow a 115-foot buffer, although the code only requires 100 feet.
Stewart said the proposed additional buffer would be allowed to be calculated as credit for pervious surface.
O’Neil said another condition is that on the north sides of buildings next to Echo Lake, the sides of the buildings facing the common open space must allow sunlight into open spaces. To do so, each floor shall be set back 10 feet farther from the floor below, which O’Neil described as a “pyramid.”
Stewart said this condition was stipulated after city staff received hundreds of letters regarding shading on the wetland of the buffer and concern if the wetland buffer had sufficient sun.
“That is a condition we feel strongly about to keep that space open and available to the sun,” Stewart said.
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