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.

Don’t forget that Tuesday night is the meeting on a proposal to rezone certain areas of the Greenwood Town Center. The city’s Department of Planning and Development meeting is from 6-8 p.m. at Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church at 7500 Greenwood Ave. N. For a refresher on just what it’s all about, see our June 8th story.

The rezone proposal would:

• change the shopping center zoning from commercial to neighborhood commercial
• the height limit in the shopping center from 40′ to 65′
• change the zoning on 3rd and 87th from single family to low-rise multifamily
• change the height limit on 85th from 40′ to 65′

Meeting Agenda:

6:00 - 6:30 p.m. — Meet and Greet

6:30 - 6:45 p.m. — Overview Presentation

6:45 - 8:00 p.m. — Open House/Public Comment

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.

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 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.

Fred Meyer’s plans to demolish the existing store on NW 85th Street and replace it with a mixed-use development are moving forward. The company has submitted its Land Use Application to the city’s Department of Planning and Development.

Land Use Application to allow a 4-story structure containing 170,000 sq. ft. of multi-purpose convenience store (Fred Meyer), 26,300 sq. ft. of ground level retail with 250 residential units above and a three level parking garage structure in an environmentally critical area. Parking for 682 vehicles to be provided. Project includes 85,000 cu. yds. of grading. Existing structures to be demolished.

The next step is a SEPA (State Environmental Policy Act) Environmental Determination. The public can comment on the application through Jan. 20.

This comment period may be the only opportunity to comment on the environmental impacts of this proposal.

PhinneyWood has covered this project extensively in the last year. The city’s Design Review Board approved the overall design in September.

Northwest Hub, an online news source for land use, environmental and real estate news, published an in-depth article today examining Fred Meyer’s proposed redevelopment of its 85th and Greenwood store.

Northwest Hub commends neighbors and the Fred Meyer development team for vastly improving the design from an unsightly big-box scheme, but faults the city’s land use codes for keeping the project from being as great as it could be.

Design review is intended to be a key tool in implementing the “Urban Villages Strategy” of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan, locating the majority of growth in compact, mixed-use, walkable urban hubs that serve as the focal point of community life. The redevelopment of the Fred Meyer site in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood is a crucial step in seeing that vision for the Greenwood-Phinney Ridge Urban Village come to fruition. But the project’s early design guidance—the first official step in the city’s design review process—failed to correct for an incoherent, prescriptive code and appeared to work at odds with realizing the urban village vision.

More than 100 people packed the Ballard High School Library Monday night for the second Early Design Guidance meeting of the city’s Design Review Board. After three-and-a-half hours of presentation, public comment and discussion, the Board approved Fred Meyer’s basic design, with a number of comments for them to incorporate into their refined design for the next stage, which is a Recommendation Review.

Scott Kemp from the city started off the meeting by saying, “Design is a very individual sort of thing. It’s very situational, but it’s also very subjective. We can’t accomplish everything.” With Fred Meyer wanting one thing, and some members of the community wanting another, “We want to stimulate as good a design as we can possibly get,” he said.

PhinneyWood went over the new designs with a member of the architect team last Friday. You can read that report here. In a nutshell, the new Fred Meyer would be about 160,000 square feet on one level, mostly underground (about five or six feet would be above ground). On top of the store would be about 200 apartments on the west side of the site, about 25,000 square feet of retail for other tenants, a public commons area, a three-story parking garage, and several smaller parking lots.

This is a far cry from Fred Meyer’s initial idea of just remodeling their current store into a “big box.” “That was not received very enthusiastically, to say the least,” Tom Gibbons, Fred Meyer’s Director of Real Estate, admitted with a laugh. So they went back to the drawing board and came up with “a more sophisticated plan,” he said, which they first presented to the community last December.

After the first EDG meeting last month, architects with GGLO said they took many of the community’s comments to heart. Fred Meyer technically presented three options to the DRB, but it really only likes one, referred to as Option A. Option B is similar to Option A with a little different housing options, while Option C is a two-story Fred Meyer with less housing.

“I think the on-street experience is pretty negative,” GGLO Principal Chris Libby said of Option C. “You’re kind of subject to walking between loading docks and parking garages. It’s really not a deal for Fred Meyer. It’s not something that they want to do.”

While the DRB asked a few questions about Options B and C at tonight’s meeting, they clearly focused on Option A as being the best one.

Libby said the design team made many changes that the public commented on at past meetings. “People did not like the mass of housing on top of the garage, so we’ve… moved all of the housing to the south third of the site,” Libby explained. “We’ve taken all vehicle access off 87th. We’ve widened the alley substantially for truck access in, and then they’ll exit out onto 1st Avenue. We’ve got slightly larger apartment buildings, which is a little better for the property manager to manage and construct.”

They also recreated the old 2nd Avenue NW and 86th Street through the site. 86th Street would be a wide pedestrian walkway from 3rd Avenue NW to 1st Avenue NW. 2nd Avenue off 85th Street is a driveway for cars with sidewalks, leading to the parking garage at the north end of the site.

“As far as the community plaza, we need to get activities happening around it,” Libby said. “It could be food vendors, coffee shops, retail opening to it… as well as flea markets, farmers markets, that sort of thing.”

Some neighbors wanted to know why Fred Meyer couldn’t build a two-story store like they have now.

“I’ll tell you why,” Gibbons said. “One thing that isn’t working is clearly two-level stores. These stores generate 40 percent less sales revenue than a single story store. On top of that, it costs us twice as much to operate in staff costs and shrink, which is theft and spoilage.”

Gibbons then said that if Fred Meyer can’t get the Master Use Permit to build the kind of store they want, their fall-back strategy is to just do a major remodel of the current store and turn it into a big grocery store, which wouldn’t require a Master Use Permit. Someone in the audience said, “Is that a threat?” to which Gibbons replied, “That’s not a threat, it’s just reality.”

GGLO architect Ted Panton said the property’s new West Portal, which is centered around the new 86th Street, would incorporate public and residential space with landscaping. “It would be like Harbor Steps downtown,” he said.

But at least one DRB member didn’t like the enclosed bridge over 86th Street that would connect the two apartment buildings. Libby and Panton explained that the bridge was necessary so they could have an elevator in just one building, instead of both. Adding a second elevator well would take up too much space. In the current design, the elevator would be on the corner of 85th and 3rd Avenue NW.

Below is the Design Review Board (far back) questioning GGLO Architects Chris Libby and Ted Panton.

As expected, several dozen people in the audience had questions and comments. And many times, the DRB chair had to remind the audience that the Board’s sole purview was design, not traffic or environmental issues, which come into play at a later stage of the process.

Several people asked if they could reinstate the townhouses fronting 87th Street in front of the parking garage. “Our challenge is it’s now become so isolated from a management standpoint, in terms of security,” Libby explained.

One man who lives on 78th Street and shops at Fred Meyer said he felt Fred Meyer had done a good job of working with the community. “I think this is a good solution. Having retail along 85th is significant, but I do agree that it will be tough without parking along 85th. I think the parking garage is in the best place in can be.”

Kate Martin, a landscape designer and former president of the Greenwood Community Council, has been very vocal in the past regarding her displeasure with the project. Tonight she thanked the design team for incorporating some of the public’s comments, but expressed her dismay that the design seems to her to have little regard for the peat bog on which it will be built.

“As a planner, the last thing you’d do from a hydrology standpoint is put a building underground,” Martin said. “The water moves through to the Greenwood bowl from every direction. It’s a huge risk to show us projects that only show us the building underground. I say analyze first and design later.”

She also wants to see the housing returned to 87th Street in front of the parking garage, because the neighborhood is hoping to turn a parcel across the street into a pocket park at some point. That park would be all about the Greenwood Bog, and having it across the street from a plain parking garage sends the wrong message.

One man in the audience, who is an architect or designer, said he liked this design better, but he doesn’t want them to rely on landscaping to make certain portions look better. He said his design professors always told him, “Try and never rely on landscaping around a building. It should be a beautiful building or garage or whatever it becomes, before you add the landscaping.”

Other major issues brought up were truck access into the site (currently slated as a one-way from 3rd Avenue and exiting onto 1st Avenue, but many people want it back on 87th Street); better accessibility for both bikes and wheelchairs; since the work would happen in phases, what happens if the residential phase falls through and we’re stuck looking at a blank store roof just a few feet above ground; truck access for the small retailers other than Fred Meyer (on 85th where they’d partially block traffic, or on 1st Avenue, where they’d have to use hand trucks to move merchandise); and the long distance from the parking garage to Fred Meyer or the other stores.

On a side note, a group of protestors stood outside the school entrance before the meeting, protesting Lorig & Associates, the residential property developers of the project. Holding signs that said, “Say no to Racism,” they passed out leaflets protesting Lorig’s alleged hiring practices. Bruce Lorig was at the meeting and said he’d look into their concerns.

Don’t forget about tonight’s Design Review Board meeting about the proposed Fred Meyer redevelopment on 85th St. The meeting is at 6:30 p.m. at Ballard High School’s Library.

Fred Meyer will present its revamped designs after community input from several meetings in the last few months. Last week I discussed the new designs with a member of Fred Meyer’s design team.

We’ll be at the meeting and will have a full report later tonight.

Fred Meyer will present its revamped plans for a new store on 85th St. at the Design Review Board meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Ballard High School library. You can view the entire proposal online here.

I sat down with Ted Panton of GGLO Architects this morning to go over those new designs and find out how the designers incorporated all the community input they’ve received over the last few months.

When Fred Meyer presented its three options at the last Design Review Board meeting in July, the DRB sent them back to the drawing board after seeing that two of the three options were basically throw-aways.

Panton said Design Review Boards typically know they’re going to get two options that no one really wants, and the third, best, option. But in this case the DRB wanted three viable designs. “They felt they needed to see a broader variety of site design options,” he said.

That’s something Panton said was actually a good thing, because he thinks the newer designs are a great improvement over the past designs after incorporating neighbors’ concerns. “It’s helped us coalesce a plan that really works for everyone,” he said.

Fred Meyer leases the site from Greenwood Shopping Center, which is owned by descendents of one of the area’s original families, the Morrows. Fred Meyer has a 20-year lease, with eight additional five-year renewals.

Complicating the design is the fact that the 7.31-acre site drops more than 16 feet from the southwest corner of the site to the northeast corner. About 75 percent of the Fred Meyer store will be underground, with other retail, residential and public spaces on top. The new design calls for about 680 parking spaces, as opposed to the original plan of 800.

While Fred Meyer will present three real options to the DRB, they still have their preferred option, Option A. Option B is very similar to Option A, but with some changes to the “lid” and housing. Option C is essentially a big, two-story building fronting on 85th Street with only 100 units of housing, a parking garage and large parking lots. Below is Option A.

Fred Meyer insists that a two-story building is not financially feasible for them, because studies show the second story of a large store gets 50% less revenue. Because groceries would have to be located on the first floor, that means furniture, clothing, electronics and other bigger-ticket items would be on the second floor, but wouldn’t be as profitable. Two-story stores also need more employees, increasing their labor costs.

After past community meetings where neighbors said they wanted to establish the old right-of-ways of through streets through the area, designers came up with a design that re-establishes 2nd Avenue NW and NW 86th Street to some degree.

NW 86th St. is now a wide walking and biking lane. The north and south residential buildings along 3rd Avenue NW will be connected by a two-level enclosed walkway that goes over the NW 86th St. pathway. This is the view to the east if standing on 3rd Avenue.

2nd Avenue NW will allow cars to drive from 85th St. into the parking garage, and will also have sidewalks for pedestrians. It will have a very slow speed limit, and will have a low rise street that goes up and over the Fred Meyer store.

What that does, Panton says, is subdivide the massive project into smaller regions or zones.

After residents along 87th Street expressed concerns about the town homes above and in front of the parking garage on the northeast corner, the designs have drastically cut back the number of proposed housing units from about 280 to just over 200. And all of the housing has been removed from that northeast corner and will be concentrated along 85th Street and 3rd Avenue NW, presenting a more residential “face” to those busy streets.

Those residential areas would have 10-foot sidewalks plus 10 feet for the housing’s yard/stoop areas.

The parking garage will be three stories, but the top story will not be covered. The conifers along 87th Street will be preserved, and will provide a visual buffer to the parking garage. There’ll be a new sidewalk, then a six-foot wide swath of landscaping, then a parallel parking lane next to the street.

Truck access has been moved from 87th Street to 3rd Avenue NW. The loading docks are now below grade. Trucks will move one-way through that route, and exit onto 1st Avenue.

“Once the trucks are on site, all the backing motion and the noise are all below grade,” Panton said. “This is the best low-impact solution.”

The Garden Center, which was originally proposed to be on the “lid” of the project next to a small parking area, has been moved down to the ground level next to the community plaza, now called Piper Commons, on 1st Avenue. The lid will now have two small parking lots dedicated to residential parking, plus a third lot that is open to all. Below is the Commons area.

A parcel on the north side, referred to as Parcel 3 in the designs, currently houses the Fred Meyer loading dock, but is not incorporated into the current designs. Fred Meyer leases it from a different owner (not Greenwood Shopping Center). Panton says that lease runs until about 2020, but Fred Meyer has determined it doesn’t need that parcel.

At Monday night’s DRB meeting, Fred Meyer will present its plans, then the public will have ample time for input before the board discusses the project. We’ll have a full report after the meeting.