As Mayor Bruce Harrell evaluates alternate options to town’s stalled 2019 Fort Lawton redevelopment plan, there is a chance to each domesticate new inexperienced areas and create inexpensive housing. The town ought to seize this second to assist extra folks sooner and enhance Discovery Park for generations to come back.
When the US army left most of Fort Lawton in 1972, Discovery Park was born. A 34-acre parcel stays, consisting of the deserted stays of the Fort Lawton Military Reserve Middle. This house is positioned between two essential inexperienced belts of biodiversity: Discovery Park and the Kiwanis Gorge. That is additionally the place town’s 2019 plan proposes 238 models of inexpensive housing.
Almost 5 years later, the mission has not damaged floor attributable to skyrocketing prices and a considerably flawed timeline. After just a few extensions, the U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement has given town a Dec. 27 deadline to reply to questions concerning the utility. Properly, the mayor has ordered a serious reevaluation of the Fort Lawton plan.
However with Seattle’s affordability and homeless crises deepening day-after-day, households want options now.
Redirecting cash from the Fort Lawton plan may home extra folks in much less time. Simply take a look at the numbers. The town’s 2019 plan would solely present 1.46 inexpensive housing models per spent 1 million {dollars}. In distinction, Lake Metropolis’s 69-unit Tony Lee constructing produced 3.05 inexpensive housing models per sq. meter. 1 million {dollars}.
In reality, the price of constructing in Fort Lawton is extraordinary. Since 2019, the plan’s funds has elevated from $90 million to $162 million, with practically three-quarters protecting infrastructure alone. To make this parcel livable, town must spend $122 million on stormwater administration, roads, water, sewer and energy traces alone.
Some say merely constructing extra housing in Fort Lawton would decrease the skyrocketing value per unit. unit. Nonetheless, this might solely enhance the general value of the mission and require further approvals from HUD, additional delaying an already prolonged public course of.
Pals of Discovery Park suggests a greater manner ahead. Our proposal integrates your complete 34-hectare parcel into the park. We pledge to lift cash to responsibly demolish and revegetate the Fort Lawton Military Reserve Middle. Naturalization of the land could be far cheaper than costly, ongoing upkeep of the infrastructure.
Discovery Park is the crown jewel of the Emerald Metropolis, a pure sanctuary that draws greater than one million guests every year. A really regional park, it serves folks from all walks of life throughout Seattle. With our metropolis’s inhabitants anticipated to exceed 1 million by 2044, we should broaden equal alternatives to attach with nature.
Extra inexperienced house in Discovery Park is healthier for everybody. Wildlife may extra simply journey between the park and close by Kiwanis Canyon. As an alternative of flooding close by homes, rainwater would seep by way of the bottom. Greater than 40 bushes on the chopping block would even be preserved — the identical “extraordinary and vital” bushes that the Metropolis Council voted to guard by passing the City Forest Preservation Ordinance.
Reforesting Outdated Fort Lawton can also be a once-in-a-generation alternative so as to add practically 21 new acres to Seattle’s declining tree cover, shifting us nearer to town’s objective of 30% citywide cover cowl by 2037. Bushes present vital cooling and provides folks some respite from a quickly altering local weather – a future that features bigger wildfires, longer smoke emergencies, elevated flooding and the extinction of extra species. Whereas Seattle has many alternatives to create extra housing, alternatives to broaden our inexperienced areas are extraordinarily uncommon.
The Discovery Park Grasp Plan comprises this admonition: “There should be a deep dedication to the idea that there isn’t any extra invaluable use of this place than as open house.”
As town weighs the place to go, we hope the mayor will select a greater path for Discovery Park and the folks of Seattle.