2005/12/05 Council Agenda Packet

Planning Commission Meeting February 15, 2005 Page 15 ............_........ for four years the hospital and the college have discussed the sale of the nine acres to the hospital for their expansion. The land remains for sale. We happen to think given the location of this nine acre parcel distant to the South from our main campus that there are ways to use property in the area of Broadway that would make more sense for our college than the development of the nine acres in the middle of the residential area of North Everett. The hospital will make its own decisions about how it views that property but I think that this decision this evening that is presented to you all centers for the most part around what is the most efficient and least expensive way for the hospital to extend its granted, needed, and well merited development. They own the Donovan houses, they paid in the range of two million dollars for them and one assumes that they are paid for and to use that land represents an economical and reasonable alternative from a business standpoint. The development to the North across 13th Avenue is an adjacent property, the hospital has already moved across the street to begin its cancer center and it does not take a whole lot of imagination to understand that there are architects everywhere who could design an alternative to the nine acre parcel that would work every bit as well as the alternative that has been so brilliantly presented this evening for the eastward alternative. It has been suggested that dealing with a potential purchase of the college property would involve long term bureaucratic decisions with Olympia that would take as much as two years. We believe that is an inaccurate statement and we the college have communicated with our state community college board of trustees and learned that a transaction mutually beneficial to the hospital and college could be completed within a year at minimum and perhaps even a lesser period of time. So the time delay we don't think it is a problem as it has been stated to be. There is a need for growth in the future and I challenge anyone in this room to deny that if the hospital spends the 400 million that they have said they will spend in their development to the East, what happens after that? Do they quit? Do they quit developing after having spent the 400 million? I think not, I think they will need more room as population increases. There are residences everywhere but today there exists a nine acre tract of largely vacant land to the north and the interests of this community and this, the residents of that area, the interests of the College, the interests of us all may well be being overlooked by virtue of the business and economic presentation that is before you this evening and it may be that this Commission would entertain an alternative that would suggest delay in the decision to consider what is a very viable option for the hospital across the street to the North. 3 minute break Nick Eckert, 2807 Victor Place, stated that he was the prior president to the Riverside Neighborhood Association and used to sit on the council of neighborhoods. He asked that the Commission consider both the written and verbal comments and to further consider who gave comments from within the North Everett community and who gave comments outside the North Everett community. He stated that most of the issues he had heard were irrelevant to the rezone and comprehensive plan issue. The PEMC vision of service to the community, quality of care, and number of beds needed are irrelevant to the issue. What is relevant is consistency with land use. When PEMC started buying up the Donovan properties they should have requested to rezone the property but did not. In the mid to late 90's, the Planning Department started looking at different zoning in the City to make it more consistent with use. There were multiple situations in the city where property owners had changed over the years where residential or industrial property had changed use and those areas were rezoned to make them consistent with use. The consistent use of the Donovan neighborhood is residential. That is what the city designated it for and if PEMC wanted that to be anything but residential, it should have rezoned it earlier. The second issue is the concentration of services. The City of Everett