BranBar, LLC is seeking a rezone near Cooper Crest Neighborhood
Above: Sal Munoz, president of the Cooper Crest Neighborhood Association, walks on the sidewalk of Cooper Crest Drive NW, a narrow street that leads to property owned by BranBar, LLC. He was one of several individuals who testified at a hearing last week against a proposal to rezone BranBar property for a housing development. The BranBar development would be using Cooper Crest roads, as there is no other way in or out of the neighborhood.
By Janine Gates
The slow death by a thousand subdivisions of the environmentally
critical Green Cove Basin watershed continues in west Olympia with the possibility
of a land use rezone, and with it, the possibility of yet another housing
development.
A request to change the zoning of about five acres
at the west end of Crestwood Place NW from residential one unit per five acres
to another category called residential low impact (RLI), would allow up to 20
single family dwellings on the property.
There is no actual land use application for the
property pending before the city, so it is difficult to ascertain the full
impact of the proposed rezone, but neighbors of the adjacent Cooper Crest
neighborhood are upset.
The undeveloped, heavily wooded property, owned by BranBar,
LLC, of Covington, is represented by Brandon Anderson, and was annexed in 2006 from
Thurston County into the City of Olympia, along with the Sundberg property off
Cooper Point Road.
These annexed areas contain the only areas of the
city zoned residential one unit per five acres, which was a remnant land use
designation prior to annexation.
The RLI designation is intended, the city says, to
protect sensitive drainage basins.
The RLI definition states that it accommodates some
residential development within sensitive drainage basins at densities averaging
from two to four units per acre, provided that the development configuration
avoids stormwater and aquatic habitat impacts.
The actual density for this parcel would range from
10 to 20 units. Lacking an actual application, the city settled on assuming the
maximum would be desired.
The site lies in the Eld Inlet watershed within the
2,626 acre Green Cove Drainage Basin, considered to be critical aquifer
habitat. The Green Cove Creek basin has its own comprehensive plan, adopted by
Thurston County in 1998.
For more information about this watershed, see Little Hollywood’s story, “Housing Development Threatens West Olympia’s
Green Cove Basin,” May 9, 2016, which focuses on Parkside, a preliminary
plat application currently before the city that proposes to subdivide 30 acres
near Cooper Point and 20th Avenue into 65 to 75 single family lots.
Above: Cooper Crest Drive NW, currently a dead end labeled as a future neighborhood collector, leads to the BranBar, LLC property. The street is surrounded by wetlands, which are labeled as protected by the City of Olympia.
BranBar
The City of Olympia is supporting the BranBar rezone
and issued a state environmental policy act determination of non-significance on
June 22 for the proposed project. The comment deadline was July 6 and the
appeal deadline was July 13.
The determination was not appealed, but several residents
of the Cooper Crest Neighborhood Association showed up in force at a public
hearing in front of Hearing Examiner Mark Scheibmeir on July 25 at Olympia city hall to express
their opposition to the rezone. The hearing lasted three and a half hours.
Scheibmeir, who said he made a site visit to the
neighborhood and the property earlier that afternoon, said he would issue a
decision in a timely manner and has up to 14 calendar days from the date of the
hearing to do so.
Several speakers mentioned the Green Cove Basin
Comprehensive Plan in their testimony, but it was only after Lisa Reiner,
president of the nearby Burbank/Elliott neighborhood association, asked him
directly if he had read the plan, that he responded that he had not, and in
fact, no one had provided him a copy. He requested that city staff provide him
with a copy of the document.
Residents brought up issues primarily related to traffic.
“….Although I’ve known and appreciated the
environmental sensitivity of this area for years, it was not until I began
reading, viewing maps, and comprehending the cumulative developments in the
basin over the last 20 years that I became alarmed. My original testimony plan
focused almost exclusively on traffic with only a brief mention of
environmental issues,” said Russell “Rusty” Horton, an original resident of the
Cooper Crest neighborhood, in an interview with Little Hollywood after the hearing.
Horton says the Green Cove Creek and Basin are
special areas worthy of protection.
“In Cooper Crest, only a few hundred feet from the
BranBar parcel, I have personally seen nesting Bald Eagles fledging their young
in multiple years, coyotes, owls, hawks, long and short-tailed weasels, deer,
cougar, pileated wood peckers, rough-skin newts, and salamanders. The water
from BranBar drains directly to Green Cove Creek where the sensitive mudminnow
and salmon and trout species spawn. I realize these are not all threatened
species, but they are all indicative of the balanced ecosystem we want to see,”
said Horton.
Little
Hollywood asked Cooper Crest Neighborhood Association
president Sal Munoz why the neighborhood did not appeal the state environmental
policy act (SEPA) determination.
He said the $1000 appeal fee for the SEPA
determination was difficult to pull together in a short period of time.
“We don’t spend that kind of money casually and we
don’t know what the hell we’re doing – we just don’t know land use. We assume
it would have required the hiring of a land use attorney, and that would have
required a significant expenditure of money,” said Munoz.
Horton echoed that thought, and said he is looking
ahead to the next step in the process.
“While extremely frustrated that the SEPA document defers
all study until the rezone is approved and a development proposal is submitted,
I thought that any appeal effort might be better focused on an actual
development proposal SEPA - to try and force an environmental impact statement.
“Personally, I find it incomprehensible that we
cannot use our imaginations and study theoretical densities that would be
allowed by a rezone prior to the development proposal being submitted. We
should have a right to not give away a greater density designation without first
understanding its potential effects,” said Horton.
Above:
Cooper Crest Neighborhood Homeowners Association president Sal Munoz discusses
the history of the neighborhood near the BranBar LLC property. Here, Munoz describes how the streets were damaged by past BranBar, LLC activity to access their property. The road shows visible gouges.
Cooper
Crest History
“In my opinion, it is not wise or safe to add
additional burdens to our streets…it’s not just volume, it’s about the
character of daily life…this is a spot rezone to aid one owner at the expense
of others,” testified Sal Munoz, an original, 11 year resident of the Cooper
Crest Neighborhood Homeowners Association, at the public hearing on July 25.
Developed by Tri Vo of Triway Enterprises, the Cooper Crest neighborhood has had a long and
torturous history.
Touted as Olympia’s first so-called low impact residential
development, the neighborhood features 138 homes built close together and
narrow streets with multiple bulb-out curbs that constrict traffic.
Residents are tight-knit and appreciate the family friendliness of the neighborhood, but also struggle with the challenges and realities of the development.
Residents
immediately complained of shoddy workmanship and the area’s high water table,
resulting in poor soil drainage, causing extreme flooding issues. Most of those
issues have been corrected, but stormwater issues are constant, as most of the
development features varying elevations.
Most important to the neighborhood right now is the
fact that the BranBar development would be using Cooper Crest roads, as there
is no other way in or out.
A city traffic impact study by the city states that
the BranBar development would put the neighborhood at its fullest capacity.
Neighbors say the count conducted on March 8 by the
city was low by 40 – 60 vehicle trips, and did not take several factors into
consideration, such as several vacant homes, an extended vacation by a
resident, and cars accessing the mailboxes on Cooper Point Place.
In general, the narrow streets are usually clogged
with resident and guest vehicles, which, when parked in driveways, spill over
onto sidewalks. Parking enforcement issues are constant.
Traffic is bad enough when residents need routine
homeowner maintenance or other professional services, but they cannot imagine
construction crews for BranBar moving through their streets.
Currently, with cars parked on one side of the road,
each main access road is essentially a one way street.
Children routinely play in the street at Cooper
Crest. Neighbors, who govern themselves through a private homeowner’s
association, know to crawl through the neighborhood at 5 to 10 miles per hour.
Many are worried that residents and guests of the proposed BranBar neighborhood
will not be so careful.
Prabakar Manoharan, a 10 year resident of Cooper
Crest, testified at the hearing and remarked that he has never seen such narrow
streets anywhere in Washington State.
He said residents and their guests routinely use a
fire lane, originally meant to be gated and used only in case of emergency by
the fire department.
“Especially while entering the community, it is
inviting to use the fire lane as a short-cut for more than 60 percent of the
homes in the community,” said Manoharan. He said that he is sure that if the BranBar
property is rezoned, residents who live there would do the same.
“The fire lane was funded and created specifically
for Cooper Crest home owners and we maintain it. Has the city given a thought
on how to control excess traffic in the fire lane or does the city have any
future plans for the fire lane?” he asked.
He and others urged the city to create a separate
access point from 20th Avenue to BranBar, identified as Road 65 NW,
near Julia Butler Hansen Elementary School. The road would connect Cooper Crest
Drive and Crestwood Place to the corner of 20th and Road 65 NW.
“The only benefit in the whole rezoning process is
to the developer in saving some money from constructing an access road.
Approving such a project increases the burden for existing and new homeowners,
increasing the accident risks in the neighborhood. Please don’t be a part of
it,” urged Manoharan.
Rusty Horton, who lives on Cooper Crest Place, a
relatively minor street, says his street has become a de facto neighborhood
collector for the lower half of the neighborhood.
“It was designed for a maximum of 500 vehicle trips
per day…even now I have to deal with the speeding, safety, and access concerns of
a street that is functioning like an avenue. I especially worry about the
safety of my very active five year old and his young friends…Even without the
new 20 homes from BranBar, Cooper Crest Place is nearly at its design value and
will become a failing road if as few as eight new homes are built in BranBar,”
he said.
