Kent City Council members focused on a controversial rezone in North Park near the ShoWare Center during a Tuesday workshop discussion about a new downtown development plan.
City staff updated the council about the downtown plan, but the council will not vote on the issue until November.
The city’s Land Use and Planning Board voted 4-3 last month to keep a half block between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, south of Cloudy Street, zoned for townhouses and condos rather than changing it to commercial use. City staff had recommended a rezone to commercial as part of an overall Downtown Subarea Action Plan designed to revitalize downtown over the next 10 to 20 years.
“If the vision is for 10 to 20 years why piecemeal it?” said Councilman Les Thomas, who prefers to see the area rezoned, at the workshop. He added maybe a Burger King or similar-type business could be built on the property.
Council President Dennis Higgins said the council has received numerous emails from North Park neighborhood residents opposed to the rezone of the 10 properties because they want to keep the area residential.
“It’s just 10 properties but if the neighborhood doesn’t want it we need to take that into consideration,” Higgins said.
City planner Gloria Gould-Wessen explained why staff recommended a rezone of the 10 properties.
“The rationale is Fourth Avenue is a busy street and at the Cloudy intersection is where you can go into the ShoWare Center,” Gould-Wessen said. “The conversations at the staff level were how to stimulate development in the area.”
Gould-Wessen said a developer would need the potential of the larger piece of land in order to have the size of a development to make it worthwhile to build. Staff expects a developer would want to build on the land because it’s so close the city-owned arena that is home to Seattle Thunderbirds hockey games, concerts and other activities.
“ShoWare is like an anchor store and development could occur in the area,” Gould-Wessen said.
Councilwoman Deborah Ranniger asked staff specifically about the North Park rezone because the area had become “a hot spot” with so many concerns raised by residents.
The downtown plan is scheduled to go to the Council’s Economic and Community Development Committee for approval on Oct. 14, said Planning Director Fred Satterstrom. It is expected to go to the full council for approval on Nov. 19.
Staff and council are updating a 2005 downtown plan that already accomplished goals such as the development of the Kent Station shopping mall and Town Square Plaza park. Much of the focus of the new plan is to increase residential housing downtown and bring in more retail businesses.
“We need to encourage higher density residential development downtown,” Satterstrom said to the council about how Kent will handle population growth over the next 20 years because single-family neighborhoods are limited in how many more people they can accomodate.
The five-story Platform Apartments under construction at the corner of Fourth Avenue North and West Smith Street is expected to open in the fall of 2014 with 166 units and looms as the type of development city officials hope makes downtown a destination.
“The Platform Apartments is the first big step to test urban-style housing,” said Ben Wolters, city economic and community development director.
As a second phase to the downtown plan, city staff plans early next year to submit other proposals to encourage economic development, including what’s known as the Meeker revitalization initiative. Staff is studying whether to give developers exemptions and waivers of certain fees in order to get them to build along Meeker Street between Second and Fourth Avenues.
The city of Auburn recently granted waivers to developers to build in its downtown, Wolters said. He added staff in the winter will present a citywide economic development strategy to recruit more retail stores to Kent.
“We’re losing sales tax dollars to other communities,” he said. “We need to make downtown a place where people want to live, work and play.”
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