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| Up for sale, but at what price? One of the buildings on the 31-acre Army installation next to Discovery Park. Photo by Justin Mills |
One planning meeting down. Four to go on the road to deciding how much housing the homeless will get at Fort Lawton.
That’s how fast things are now moving as Seattle starts to draw up redevelopment plans for the old Army Reserve installation on the eastern edge of Magnolia’s Discovery Park. But in the four community workshops the city has scheduled in the next four months, many complex details — and conflicts — will need to be ironed out over what to do with the 31 acres that the Army plans to unload by 2011.
Surplus government property such as Fort Lawton can be deeded over for free for certain public benefits, with federal law giving homeless housing top priority. But many neighbors of Discovery Park who attended a March 29 planning workshop said they want open space, with some suggesting that homeless housing could bring domestic violence, substance abuse, and unwanted social services to their neighborhood.
As the designated reuse authority, the city is currently working to draw up three site proposals. They will be presented to the City Council in August, with the city to submit a final plan in November to two federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Defense and Housing and Urban Department. The DOD has the final say and is not obligated to accept the city’s plan, according to Mark Ellerbrook of the city’s Office of Housing.
The Defense Department also wants money — one reason the city is looking at a mix of homeless and market-rate housing in which the private developers will put up some of the capital for the land.
“As a big picture, we’re looking at mixed-income [housing] with a lot of market rate to make this work,” says Brian Sullivan, the lead site planner for Fort Lawton.
The problem is the DOD won’t say how much it wants for Fort Lawton. For the past year, city staff have been asking the agency to name a price, Ellerbrook says, but he doesn’t expect the city will get one until it submits a redevelopment plan. Tax records list the assessed value of the fort at $105 million, minus a cemetery and newer Army Reserve building that the Veteran’s Administration has applied to take over.
Last fall, in a separate deal that raised protests from homeless advocates, the city paid $11 million for surplused Navy housing in the center of Discovery Park’s 530 acres. The city plans to raze the Capehart housing to create more park area.
The city named the Seattle Housing Authority as the Fort Lawton’s lead planning agency in February after reviewing initial site proposals submitted last year by the housing authority and four other groups. Among them, the Downtown Emergency Service Center had proposed a 75-unit project for the chronically homeless, and United Indians of All Tribes proposed developing market-rate condos, for sale low-income housing, and 169 units of permanent housing for homeless seniors, families and single adults, along with a Native American college, day care, auditorium, and community space.
The housing authority plans to hire consultants this month to help it assess the site and is now working with the Cascade Land Conservancy, Habitat for Humanity, and Homestead Community Land Trust on a mix-and-match of its and the United Indians’ proposal. It could include self-built, market rate, and affordable for sale housing, with permanent units for homeless families and native elders.
Seattle’s Archdiocesan Housing Authority will develop the homeless housing, with United Indians’ partner Alesek Institute working with the elders and the YWCA providing case management. The women and children it places at the site, the YWCA’s Jeanice Hardy told about 45 attendees of the March 29 meeting at Magnolia Lutheran Church, will come from a transitional housing program it runs.
There are no unit numbers at this time, Sullivan said, but the City Council has capped the number of affordable units at the site at 200. But, “This is not a homeless housing plan. This is a community plan,” he told the group. “It’s a master plan that is for the benefit of the entire community.”
During the meeting, Sullivan asked participants to state their expectations for the project within certain categories, including housing and the impact on the community and the environment, with many neighbors of Discovery Park listing open space, tree preservation, and heron and wildlife habitat as major concerns.
Participants then voted for their top priorities by placing dot-shaped stickers on lists of goals written on large pads at the front of the room. On the housing list, the participants’ top choices were “keep current zoning,” “develop as little as possible,” and “no housing.”
Later, an attendee asked about the screening process for the homeless housing and if the site would be safe enough for Girl Scouts to go door to door selling cookies. Another asked what would keep women at the site from allowing abusive men they had left into their new homes at Fort Lawton.
“No one really knows how to safeguard against that,” Hardy said. But the women placed at Fort Lawton, she added, will have already been in the YWCA’s transitional housing program for a year to a year and a half.
“It hasn’t been our experience,” Hardy said, “that folks who’ve been with us for a year go back to their abuser.” |
