First on PhinneyWood: Fred Meyer Public Affairs Director Melinda Merrill just told PhinneyWood that the department store plans to do a major remodel of its existing Greenwood Fred Meyer store, rather than redevelop it into a retail and residential project.

The Seattle P.I.com broke the news on Monday that Fred Meyer had told the city that it was looking at remodeling instead of moving forward with the massive development that would have covered the entire site between 85th and 87th streets and 1st and 3rd avenues. In that article, Tom Gibbons, Fred Meyer’s Director of Real Estate, said the retailer hadn’t decided what to do.

Merrill tells PhinneyWood that Fred Meyer had planned to hold community meetings first to announce the plan, but that someone leaked the information.

“We’re very sorry that the information came out this way,” she said. “We really wanted to meet with the community first.”

Merrill said the latest design of the new store, which would have been built on a series of pilings to minimize disturbing the Greenwood Peat Bog, put the project about $13 million over budget. She said brand new stores – such as the one they built in Snohomish a few years ago – typically cost about $30 million. She said the price tag for the new Greenwood Fred Meyer was budgeted at about $54 million. (That doesn’t include the cost of about 250 housing units that developer Lorig & Associates planned to build, which would have brought the total amount to about $95 million for the entire development.)

The current Fred Meyer store will have a down-to-the-studs remodel and will house apparel and groceries. The building currently housing the Greenwood Market – whose lease ends in a few months at the end of 2011 – will also have a major remodel to house a Fred Meyer home and garden center. The remodel will cost about $15 million.

“We’re going to remodel the current store and look at this (redevelopment) again in eight to 10 years,” Merrill said. “It will be the coolest Fred Meyer around. It will have a lot of high-end products, a lot of cool things.”

Merrill said Fred Meyer will notify the community soon of public meetings about the project, as well as a remodeling schedule. She said Fred Meyer wouldn’t begin remodeling until at least the first of the year (which would give it a November 2011 opening), but that it could begin as late as the beginning of 2012, with an anticipated opening date of June 2012.

Two days ago the Seattle P.I. reported that Fred Meyer may be abandoning its plans to redevelop the site of the current store on 85th Street to include a massive one-level store, parking garage and housing units, and may instead simply remodel the existing store.

Fred Meyer officials have not yet responded to several messages left by PhinneyWood.

But this morning, Ted Panton, the lead architect for the project for GGLO, said that he and his team know just about as much as what’s been reported in the media. Panton, who lives in Phinney/Greenwood, said Fred Meyer hasn’t informed GGLO about their plans, and that he hasn’t worked on the project for about four months as it’s worked its way through the city permitting process.

The latest redevelopment plan had been to demolish the existing Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market. Both lease the land from Greenwood Shopping Center. Greenwood Market’s lease expires later this year, and Greenwood Shopping Center declined to renew it. Fred Meyer has a 20-year lease, with eight additional five-year renewals. Fred Meyer’s plan had been to build a 170,000-square-foot single-level store partly underground. A nearly 700-stall parking garage would be at the northeast corner, and about 250 housing units would be on the west side, plus about 25,000 square feet of retail space for other tenants along the south and east sides.

The city approved Fred Meyer’s basic design last September. At that time, Fred Meyer told the design review committee that single-story stores work best; while two-level stores bring in about 40 percent less revenue, cost more to staff and lose more to theft.

The P.I.’s story quoted city Department of Planning and Development staff as saying Fred Meyer’s new plan was to remodel the existing store to house groceries, jewelry and electronics, and to eventually turn the Greenwood Market site into a garden center.

Workers are installing temporary housing today for the Defenders of Greenwood who will soon move five blocks south to the lot at 6802 Greenwood Ave. N. while Station 21 is torn down and rebuilt.

As previously reported, the firefighters are moving from the corner of North 73rd Street and Greenwood Avenue North to the temporary station while their current station is demolished and rebuilt.

The new two-story Station 21 will have 8,576 square feet of space, including larger living quarters and offices for the firefighters, as well as more room for equipment. The city purchased a small piece of property east of the old station to make room for the new building.

There’s nothing like a discussion on neighborhood rezoning to bring out the passionate crowds. About 100 people came to an open house presented by the city’s Department of Planning and Development at Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church on Tuesday night.

The topic was the proposed rezoning of the Greenwood Town Center site (Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market on NW 85th Street), as well as surrounding residential areas. Several months ago, the Greater Greenwood Design Development and Advisory Group (GGDDAG), which includes some members of the Greenwood Community Council, proposed rezoning a 100-foot-deep swath across the street on NW 85th Street, NW 87th Street, and 3rd Avenue NW to allow for multi-family units. The idea was to provide a “step down” between the major development that Fred Meyer has proposed and the surrounding single-family neighborhood.

After hearing from angry neighbors, the council backed off on the part of the proposal that upzoned the residential areas, but the city decided to go ahead and get neighborhood input on the entire proposal.

The proposal is divided into three subareas.Virtually everyone seems to agree on rezoning Subarea #1, which includes the site currently occupied by Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market and their parking lots, from C1-40 (commercial that promotes 40-foot high “big-box” stores and large parking lots) to NC-65 (neighborhood commercial that is pedestrian and transit friendly and encourages mixed-use developments up to 65 feet tall.)

Proponents say rezoning Subarea #1 will protect the neighborhood in case the Fred Meyer development doesn’t go through (their current design for a mixed-use development adheres to the general neighborhood commercial guidelines).

The controversy comes with Subarea #2 and Subarea #3. Subarea #2 would rezone a 100-foot deep parcel along NW 87th Street from 1st Avenue NW to 3rd Avenue NW, and along 3rd Avenue NW from NW 88th Street to NW 85th Street from Single-Family 5000 to Lowrise 3. That would affect dozens of single family homes.

Subarea #3, which includes the old “Checkers” building on the corner of NW 85th Street and 3rd Avenue NW, and the area south of NW 85th Street between Palatine Avenue North and just west of 3rd Avenue NW, would be rezoned from NC2 P-40 (neighborhood commercial, pedestrian overlay with a 40-foot height limit) to NC2 P-65 (increasing the height limit to 65 feet).

“What you’re doing here tonight is very difficult,” City Councilmember Sally Clark told the crowd at the beginning of the meeting. She said talking to neighbors about zoning is hard, especially as a neighborhood grows and changes. The idea is that someday when you leave that neighborhood, “what do you leave behind as a map?”

Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark (right) talks to concerned neighbors.

DPD Senior Urban Planner Andrea Petzel started off the meeting by emphasizing that each of the three subareas is being treated as separate entities.

“Each of these subareas is being considered separately. It is not a package deal,” she said.

Two people from the GCC or with knowledge of the proposals were stationed at each Subarea station to answer questions. People wandered around the room, writing comments (mostly negative) on sticky notes and placing them on the appropriate drawing.

Leslie Moynihan’s house on the southwest corner of 3rd Avenue NW and NW 87th Street was featured in a photo on DPD’s presentation board because it will be inside the rezone area.

“We bought a home on an arterial street and we understand the implications of that,” she said. But she says the wide street acts as a natural buffer and there’s no need for a step-down area, especially since it would be just feet away from a single-family home. “Moving the buffer into the middle of a single-family block doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Neighbor Brian Hart agreed. “I think the street is a much more natural buffer than the eight feet to my neighbor’s house.”

Hart’s house on NW 86th Street and 3rd Avenue NW would be just outside the buffer area, meaning his house could be just feet away from a taller multi-family building. He and other neighbors think there’s plenty of empty multi-family space in the neighborhood, and we should fill that up before changing the zoning that could add even more. “Ask me in 10 years. Maybe it will be really different,” Hart said. “Now I don’t think that it’s necessary.”

Janet Dockery lives on NW 87th Street inside Subarea #2 and went door-to-door informing neighbors of the proposal and about the meeting.

“I like my neighborhood and I like the single-family homes,” Dockery said. “I like the character of the neighborhood…and I sure don’t want to live next to one of those things,” she said of taller, multi-family buildings.

She says any stepping down in height should be done inside Subarea #1, with higher buildings in the middle of the Fred Meyer site and lower ones along the edges.

“People say they like their neighborhood. It’s affordable single-family houses and they understand there’s going to be some density in the middle,” she said. “But moving it into the single-family block is really upsetting to some people.”

Neighbor Matt Heilgeist agreed. “It seems everything is a foregone conclusion these days, like it’s going to happen no matter what. And most of my neighbors feel the same way,” said Heilgeist, whose house on NW 87th Street would be just outside the rezone area.

There’s still time to make your voice heard on the proposal. The DPD is collecting feedback through July 15. You can take an online survey (only one per IP address). DPD will then develop a draft of rezone recommendations and will present those to the GCC in August. DPD will finalize those recommendations in September. If DPD does recommend any rezoning, it will then begin a SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) review, along with an email comment and appeal period in October. Rezoning Subarea #2 would have to go to the City Council as part of a Comprehensive Plan Change to the Future Land Use Map in late 2010 or early 2011, followed by a city council public hearing sometime next spring.

The city’s Department of Planning and Development is holding a public meeting on June 29 to discuss the proposed rezoning of the Greenwood Town Center site in the heart of Greenwood. The Town Center includes Fred Meyer, Greenwood Market, Bartell Drugs, Top Ten Toys, Blockbuster, and the new Sedges retail/residential building.

The proposal also includes upzoning some surrounding areas, including about 100 feet deep on the south side of NW 85th Street, west side of NW 3rd Avenue and north side of NW 87th Street.

Trevor Stanley, president of the Greenwood Community Council, says the rezoning proposal came about through community meetings over the last several years. When Fred Meyer proposed to knock down its current store and replace it with a larger, mixed-use project, the GCC and another group, the Greater Greenwood Design & Development Advisory Group (GG.DDAG) found that current zoning in that area was inconsistent and could lead to the wrong kind of projects.

Fred Meyer’s current zoning is C-1 (commercial zoning that encourages large parking lots). The proposal is to change it to NC3-65 (Neighborhood Commercial with a 65-foot height limit), which would encourage taller buildings and a larger footprint, instead of a sea of asphalt parking.

(Fred Meyer’s plan is to demolish its existing store and replace it with a much larger store, along with about 250 apartments and other retail space, plus a large parking garage. The city approved Fred Meyer’s basic design last September.)

Under the proposal, the area just west of 3rd Ave. NW and north of NW 87th Street would be changed to L-3 (Lowrise), which would allow town homes with a height limit of 35 feet. Stanley says this is the same height limit as a single-family home, but the allowable lot coverage would be greater, although buildings could not come right up to the property line.

“It could be good because it could stimulate development along that area, which has had a lot of problems attracting anybody to come in there,” Stanley said. “To date, that area has sat in a sort of derelict state. We want nice stuff there, but it has to be profitable or it won’t be developable.”

The rezone proposal also would change the zoning on the south side of NW 85th Street to NC2P-65, which allows buildings 65 feet tall, but limits the footprints of those buildings.

Stanley says he understands the concerns of homeowners south of NW 85th St. who worry about a tall development being built right next door. But he says since the single family homes there are built partially up the hill, the 65 feet height limit is not as daunting as initially thought.

“Yes, that’s a big building, that’s absolutely right, but there’s another 15 feet of grade up to the top of that hill, plus there’s an alley in between. So you can’t say it’s 65 feet above your house. But, it would be tall,” he said. “It’s just trying to encourage the right thing. And the right thing is…subjective. It needs to be dealt with, it’s just a matter of how we deal with it.”

The now vacant lot of the corner of NW 85th Street and 1st Ave. NW that used to be a Pizza Hut years ago, would be included in the NC2P-65 zoning. We reported last summer that a new restaurant would be going in there, but that apparently fell through. Last week, a trailer with the sign “Hot Bean Espresso” was parked there. (PhinneyWood has been unable to find any business license or building permits with that name. If you have any information, please share it below in comments.)

Several months ago, the Greenwood Community Council applied to the Seattle Parks Department’s Opportunity Fund to purchase the site for a park, using money from the 2008 Parks Levy. Stanley said acquiring that site would cost about $1.5 million. While the property owner told Stanley he might be interested in selling that site, he hoped to sell it along with the two adjacent lots (currently an empty lot and an old house) as one big package.

Stanley says an urban park next to the Greenwood Town Center would be a perfect fit. “It’s going to increase the quality of life in general for the Town Center to have a nice little green space,” he said. “It kind of activates that space. And it’s horribly ugly the way it is right now. We want to be proactive to help encourage the right stuff, or else we’re going to get the Hot Bean Espresso stand.”

The DPD zoning meeting is from 6-8 p.m., Tuesday, June 29, in the Fellowship Hall of the Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, at 7500 Greenwood Ave. N.

Don’t forget that Seattle City Councilmember Sally J. Clark is holding an information-gathering workshop on creating better townhouses and apartments on Saturday morning at Taproot Theatre. The city is changing the code to make such multi-family housing better fit into neighborhoods.

The meeting is from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. on Saturday at Taproot Theatre, 204 N. 85th St. Council staff will highlight some of the hot-button issues, such as parking requirements, building heights, density limits, code simplification, and design review requirements. Then the public will have plenty of time to put in their two cents’ worth. Coffee and doughnuts will be provided.

The Green Bean Coffeehouse, which has been sharing space with Greenwood Sip & Ship for the last few months since its former building was burned down by an arsonist, will soon move into the old McDonald’s building.

The building, on Greenwood Avenue and about North 86th Street, has been empty for several years and many people have complained about it being an eyesore, with frequent graffiti markings. The lot will someday be developed by Greenwood Shopping Center Inc., the same folks who built the new Piper Village mixed-use development and who own the land under Fred Meyer. In the meantime, the property developers had hoped someone would lease the building for a few years.

You can read all about it in Sanctuary Church’s newsletter. The church owns the Green Bean.

More than 50 residents of Greenwood and Phinney Ridge packed a meeting room at Loyal Heights Community Center Thursday night for an environmental review of the proposed Fred Meyer project on 85th Street.

This meeting focused on soil and groundwater issues only, not design. (The city’s Design Review Board approved the project’s preliminary designs in September.) The project includes not only a Fred Meyer store but up to 250 residential units and about 20,000 square feet of other retail, and will be called Pipers Village West.

The meeting began at 7 p.m. and was scheduled to end at 8:30 p.m., but lasted until after 9:30 p.m. The first 45 minutes was given to the project team to explain their hydrology studies of the site. The remaining time was given to neighbors to voice their concerns, which many did – vigorously.

The main issue revolves around the fact that approximately half of the project will be built on the Greenwood Bog. The peat bog covers a large area of downtown Greenwood. Issues arise when water is removed from the bog – called “dewatering” – causing houses and streets to sink.

GGLO Architect Ted Panton started off by explaining the concept of “infiltration” – which is when water moves from the surface into the ground in a variety of ways, whether through pervious paving or gutters or landscaping. Moving the water back into the bog is a good thing, because you want to keep it hydrated. It’s when you remove water from that compressible soil that it causes sinking.

City Planner Scott Kemp, in the background on the left, and GGLO Architect Ted Panton, in the background on the right, go over hydrology issues.

“This is one of the largest peat bog occurrences in the Seattle area, and that is really the critical issue for this project,” said Michael A.P. Kenrick, a hydro-geologist with GeoEngineers Inc., who was hired by Fred Meyer. “We want to try and preserve the existing nature of the peat. Everybody recognizes the significance of that soil. It’s very compressible. The whole emphasis here is to protect the peat and keep it from losing moisture.”

Kenrick said they have drilled 30 “bore holes” in various sites around the project and installed monitoring wells to get soil samples. He said that was a very high number of bore holes for a project such as this. They look at whether the soil is silt, sand, clay or peat, and how wet it is. The project needs to stay well above the water table, which is the area of saturation.

The bog area contains three different layers of soil. The top thin layer is peat. In some areas the peat is about three-and-a-half to four feet; the thickest location is about eight-and-a-half feet. The middle layer is silt. The bottom layer is glacial till, also called hard pan. The Peat Settlement Prone Areas Ordinance prevents them from constructing anything below ground water elevation.

Hal P. Grubb, director of engineering services for Barghausen Consulting Engineers Inc., hired by Fred Meyer, said the existing Fred Meyer site is almost entirely covered with impervious surface. Storm water is now collected in downspouts and catch basins in the parking lot, and routed straight into the city storm drain system on 87th Street and 1st Avenue. Then it travels to the north and out to Puget Sound, with no control or treatment measures, which is common for older projects.

However, the new project would collect it and meter it out either into the ground or into the city storm water system. The idea is to put as much of the collected water into the peat as the peat will accept – thereby keeping it hydrated – and put any overflow into an underground retention vault. Water in the vault would be metered out into the city system. The vault would be large enough to handle so-called “100-year event” flooding before it overflowed.

Many neighbors brought up sinking issues they believe were caused when the Safeway was built on 87th and Greenwood a few years ago. Some neighbors said they had to pay to jack up part of their houses and that their basements routinely flood.

Kate Martin, a long-time vocal critic to the project, has long complained that putting most of the proposed one-story Fred Meyer underground would cause irreparable harm to the bog and surrounding areas. She called it a “submarine superstore.”

Kate Martin argues that the project will harm surrounding properties.

“We knew that dewatering in and around this area damages public infrastructure and private property, because when peat is robbed of its water source because of dewatering, peat dries, compresses and sinks and anything resting on it goes down with it when it sinks,” Martin said. “Greenwood has been sinking and continues to sink.”

She said there has been a lack of data and science surrounding the project, and that too many assumptions are made. She – and many others in the audience – wondered why the city had not yet ordered an Environmental Impact Statement. Currently, the project only needs a Determination of Non-Significance (DNS).

City Planner Scott Kemp said the city had not yet made the decision on whether an EIS is needed, and that the first step is to approve or deny the DNS. One woman in the audience asked for a show of hands as to who wanted to see an EIS. Nearly every hand went up.

“It’s a very fragile site,” the woman said. “There are impacts, impacts and impacts. I know you can look at all the numbers in lots of different ways. So who’s going to be helping me when I have to move out of the city when my house sinks and I can’t afford to lift it up? It’s a serious possibility for some of us.”

Many others in the audience wanted to know how they could get relief if their houses do sink during or after construction of the project.

“My house is already sinking. I’ve been there five years and I’ve had to raise my house an inch and a half on one corner,” one man said. “What are the assurances that homeowners around the area won’t be affected?”

“If you do the things right on the project itself, there shouldn’t be any impacts on surrounding sites,” Kenrick answered.

A woman who lives directly across the street from the site on 87th Street said the city pipes in the street in front of her house have burst four times in the last few years. Kemp seemed surprised by that. “As you’re building, are our water pipes going to burst again?” she asked.

Matt Heilgeist, who lives across from the project, says he assumes there will be some movement of his home during the project. He asked if the city could establish baselines and elevations for neighboring houses before the project starts, then compare them afterwards. Kemp said the city could look into that.

“My approach is to be as careful as we can. We really don’t feel like we have experts who are trying to fool us,” Kemp said of Fred Meyer’s development team. “They are spending millions and millions of dollars…and do seem to want to do what’s right.”

Note: The meeting was long and many, many people spoke passionately, and there’s no way I can cover everything that was said. So if you think I’ve missed anything important, please put your two cents’ worth in below in comments.

One more thing: If you received a notice in the mail about the meeting from the Department of Planning & Development, then you’re already on the official mailing list for this project. If you didn’t and you want to be on the list, email Scott Kemp with your snail mail address.

Don’t forget that tonight is the environmental review meeting for the proposed Fred Meyer redevelopment project on 85th Street. The meeting is from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Loyal Heights Community Center, 2101 NW 77th St.

We’ll be there and will have a full report after the meeting.

The Seattle City Council wants to create new rules for multi-family housing options. That includes townhouses, rowhouses and apartments.

Councilmember Sally J. Clark is holding a special meeting on March 20 at Greenwood’s Taproot Theatre.

It’s time to change the way we design and shape new lowrise buildings in Seattle. City Council will change the code to make quality, sustainable, well-designed multifamily housing that synchs with the neighborhoods where they are built – and we need your help! This is a prime opportunity for Councilmembers to hear your feedback.

The meeting is from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. on Saturday, March 20 at Taproot, 204 N. 85th St. Council staff will highlight some of the hot-button issues, such as parking requirements, building heights, density limits, code simplification, and design review requirements. Clark promises plenty of time set aside for hearing from constituents. Coffee and doughnuts will be provided.

For more information, contact Clark’s office at 206-684-8802 or sally.clark@seattle.gov.

The next step in the Greenwood Fred Meyer redevelopment proposal is an environmental review meeting next Thursday, March 11. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at the Loyal Heights Community Center, 2101 NW 77th St.

As we’ve reported previously, the development on 85th Street will demolish the existing Fred Meyer and Greenwood Market, and build a 170,000-square-foot single-story Fred Meyer, with about 250 residential units on top, and about 26,000 square feet of retail for other tenants. A three-story parking garage, and a few small parking lots, would provide parking for nearly 700 cars.

The preliminary designs passed through the Design Review Board last September. Next week’s meeting will focus on environmental issues, since much of the land is on top of Greenwood’s infamous peat bog.

Written and/or oral comments may be submitted at the meeting. This meeting is to receive public comment and provide information relating to soils and hydrology issues and to receive comment on other environmental issues.

(This drawing by GGLO Architects shows the public plaza area from 1st Avenue Northwest, looking to the northwest.)

Update Tuesday: Here’s a link to a summary of the rezone proposal, with drawings of the affected areas. And there are a number of great clarifying comments below from those involved with the proposal, as well as neighbors.

Earlier: The Greenwood Community Council is meeting Tuesday night to discuss a possible rezone of areas adjacent to the proposed Fred Meyer redevelopment on 85th Street. The meeting is at 7 p.m. at the Greenwood Library, 8016 Greenwood Ave. N.

The council is proposing the city “upzone” the areas adjacent to single family residences west of Third Avenue Northwest and north of North 87th Street to L3, which would allow three-story multi-family buildings.

The zoning is intended to be a kind of buffer between the large Fred Meyer/residential development and the rest of the neighborhood, but some neighbors are complaining in online discussion groups that it would put a tall multi-family building right up against a single-family home.

The public is invited to the meeting to learn more.