(GGDDAG) Letter
Greater Greenwood Design & Development Advisory Group (GGDDAG) Letter
The chairperson of the greenwood advisory group, Evan Bourquard, wrote a letter to address community concerns about the group’s proposal to rezone single family housing adjacent to the Greenwood town center. Click “more” below to view the letter.
Dear neighbors,
I’m writing on behalf of the greenwood advisory group (GGDDAG) to apologize for our lack of attendance at the recent Greenwood Community Council meeting and to let you know what changes are being made to the current Town Center rezone proposal as a result of the clear input we received from that meeting.
We are a volunteer organization of design and development professionals, working hard to bring our unique skills to bear on large projects for the good of the larger neighborhood. The initial rezone proposal was an offshoot of our efforts over the past year to engage and improve the pending Fred Meyer development by working directly with the developer, owner, and Northwest Design Review Board. During that process, it became clear to members of our group that the underlying auto-oriented C1-40 zoning was lowering the “starting point” for future and current development on this important site. To improve this situation moving forward, the rezone proposal was created and developed at a series of stakeholder workshops that were held last summer. However, it is clear that our initial proposal (which included the perimeter up-zones to promote higher density development around the central site) was more aggressive than it needed to be.
So, as a result our group has decided to remove both the perimeter up-zone of the single family (SF) parcels and the up-zone of the neighborhood commercial (NC) parcels south of 85th street from our current rezone proposal. We will actively lobby City Council and the City to remove these supporting “layers” from their own versions as well. The main goal of the larger rezone has always been to change the zoning on the Fred Meyer site from commercial (C1) (parking lots and gas stations) to neighborhood commercial (NC), which we feel is more in keeping with the character and future of downtown Greenwood. We plan to continue to urge City Council and the Mayor to provide the necessary funding to study and develop a final legislative rezone based on our proposal.
We hope to present the revised proposal at a future Greenwood Community Council meeting, and we are working with Trevor to stay connected. In the meantime, if you would like to receive regular updates on the activity of our all volunteer team, or if you are a design professional that would like to contribute, please email us at .
Thank you again for your passion and continued engagement.
Evan Bourquard, Chair
Greater Greenwood Design & Development Advisory Group
Evan, I’m confused….this letter states the perimeter layers will be removed from your proposal and yet when it will be resubmitted they are included. Which is it?
Everyone seems fine w/the Fred Meyer part, but not the impact to us single family dwellers.
Also, who exactly spearheaded the original proposal? My neighbors keep asking why and who, and I’ve never got a straight answer about that so i can inform them. Thanks, Diann
Hi Diann –
The initial idea for the complete proposal came out of a series of workshops that were held last year regarding the Fred Meyer project. In addition to the work we did with them to improve the proposal, we also developed the rezone idea.
We put that to the City Council earlier this year, and that’s when we started hearing the neighborhood opposition to the the SF and perimeter parts of the proposal, thus the letter, and that’s also when we made it clear to council that we opposed the perimeter portion (or at least don’t see it as the critical piece).
Since then, City Council decided that they wanted to put forward the entire proposal for neighborhood comment through DPD. My impression is that they felt the outreach we had done was not sufficient, and that the City had more resources to query a broader spectrum of the neighborhood.
That effort will culminate in the Open House public meeting in late June. We are involved (at Council request) to assist in explaining the pros and cons of each part of the proposal. However we are not pushing one way or the other on the perimeter – and remain focused on only advocating for the rezone of the core FM property.
Hope that helps.
EB