Tacoma News Tribune

‘Inside the Editorial Page’ Blog

To Northeast Tacoma: Don’t shoot!

Posted by David Seago @ 05:29:06 am

To Northeast Tacoma residents convinced our editorial board unfairly “tilts” in favor of developing the North Shore golf course: Hold on! We met Wednesday with representatives of Save NE Tacoma, a group fighting the golf-course conversion plan. They persuaded us we made a mistake in our Sept. 6 editorial about the issue. We’ll be doing a follow-up editorial or column in print. Our error was saying that the developer, Sound Built Homes, has the right to develop the 860-unit project now that the City of Tacoma has been forced, due to a legal blunder, to drop its appeal of a hearing examiner decision. (News story). That was incorrect. It was a mistake, not a manifestation of bias, but I can see why Northeast Tacoma residents were peeved.

In fact, whether the developer has a legal right to develop the property is still very much in dispute and is likely to be decided in court. Gary Huff, attorney for Save NE Tacoma, contends the owner of the golf course is bound by the terms of a 1981 city approval to leave it as open space. Huff points to documents showing that city officials counted the golf course as open space when they determined that the original development qualified as a “planned residential development.”

The current developers, who only hold an option on the golf course, maintain they can satisfy the open space requirement without the golf course; they do so by counting private yards and driveways as open space, Huff says.

Huff says city planners have over the years adopted an informal standard that allows this loose interpretation. But it has never been made an official rule and is inconsistent with the rule on the books, which says open space should be “usable landscaped recreation areas.” In short, if the proper standard for open space is applied, the proposed North Shore development cannot meet the requirement and the application should be denied, Huff maintains. He has other arguments as well, which I won’t go into here.

When the city recently dropped its appeal that ended the dispute over whether the developer’s application was “substantially complete.” That only means that the city now must proceed with review of the project application, including review by a hearing examiner. Save NE Tacoma will contest the application at various points in this process. The parties may go directly to court and ask for judicial interpretation of the open space rule.

Bottom line: We shouldn’t have said the developer “has a right to develop.” Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. The opponents raise serious legal questions that will have to be resolved before the project can proceed.