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A Fair Trade
[caption id="attachment_10505" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Richard Conlin"]
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During tomorrow afternoon's environment committee meeting, City Council president Richard Conlin will introduce a proposal to that would allow developers to buy up development rights from rural farmers and use them to build taller and denser housing in the center city and around transit stops.
Conlin's proposal is an expansion of the city and county's (now-defunct) transfer of development rights (TDR) program, which allowed developers to buy up development rights from landowners in rural King County (specifically, the watershed that provides Seattle's drinking water) and use them to build taller buildings in the Denny Triangle. In exchange for payments from developers, the rural landowners agreed to keep their land rural instead of subdividing it for exurban sprawl.
The program—which resulted in three new buildings in the Denny Triangle—saved hundreds of acres of rural land that could have otherwise been subdivided and turned into megamansions, strip malls, golf courses, and parking lots.
Without TDR, "If you're in rural King County and you have an 80-acre farm, under rural zoning you could subdivide it into five-acre lots and get 16 McMansions on it," Conlin says.
Two primary differences between this year's proposal and the previous TDR program, which expired in 2008. First, instead of protecting Seattle's watershed, Conlin's proposal would be aimed at the city's "foodshed"—i.e., nearby farms that help provide Seattle's food. Second, the economic climate is much different now than it was in 2001, when the first TDR program passed.
That program cost the county about $500,000 in street improvements and other amenities around the new density, county TDR program manager Darren Greve says. (The money comes out of a dedicated fund that's separate from the main county budget).
Whether the county will be willing or able to spend that much this time is an open question. "That's all going to be negotiated [and] contingent on how many development rights would flow into the city," Greve says. However, Jeff Pavey of the Cascade Land Conservancy, who until recently served as the group's program manager, says he expects money will become an issue "when the money [that currently pays for the program] is gone. Then it becomes a question of, Are we going to replenish that money?"
Another still-unanswered question: How extensive will the new TDR program be? Conlin says the council is "looking at a much wider area" than the Denny Triangle this time around—"potentially South Lake Union and other transit-oriented areas." If the council got ambitious, they could achieve a lot of the goals of the Transit-Oriented Development bill that failed last session in Olympia. That would require fighting against inevitable neighborhood pushback—something most council members, including Conlin, have seemed increasingly reluctant to do.
[/caption]During tomorrow afternoon's environment committee meeting, City Council president Richard Conlin will introduce a proposal to that would allow developers to buy up development rights from rural farmers and use them to build taller and denser housing in the center city and around transit stops.
Conlin's proposal is an expansion of the city and county's (now-defunct) transfer of development rights (TDR) program, which allowed developers to buy up development rights from landowners in rural King County (specifically, the watershed that provides Seattle's drinking water) and use them to build taller buildings in the Denny Triangle. In exchange for payments from developers, the rural landowners agreed to keep their land rural instead of subdividing it for exurban sprawl.
The program—which resulted in three new buildings in the Denny Triangle—saved hundreds of acres of rural land that could have otherwise been subdivided and turned into megamansions, strip malls, golf courses, and parking lots.
Without TDR, "If you're in rural King County and you have an 80-acre farm, under rural zoning you could subdivide it into five-acre lots and get 16 McMansions on it," Conlin says.
Two primary differences between this year's proposal and the previous TDR program, which expired in 2008. First, instead of protecting Seattle's watershed, Conlin's proposal would be aimed at the city's "foodshed"—i.e., nearby farms that help provide Seattle's food. Second, the economic climate is much different now than it was in 2001, when the first TDR program passed.
That program cost the county about $500,000 in street improvements and other amenities around the new density, county TDR program manager Darren Greve says. (The money comes out of a dedicated fund that's separate from the main county budget).
Whether the county will be willing or able to spend that much this time is an open question. "That's all going to be negotiated [and] contingent on how many development rights would flow into the city," Greve says. However, Jeff Pavey of the Cascade Land Conservancy, who until recently served as the group's program manager, says he expects money will become an issue "when the money [that currently pays for the program] is gone. Then it becomes a question of, Are we going to replenish that money?"
Another still-unanswered question: How extensive will the new TDR program be? Conlin says the council is "looking at a much wider area" than the Denny Triangle this time around—"potentially South Lake Union and other transit-oriented areas." If the council got ambitious, they could achieve a lot of the goals of the Transit-Oriented Development bill that failed last session in Olympia. That would require fighting against inevitable neighborhood pushback—something most council members, including Conlin, have seemed increasingly reluctant to do.
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