Sunnyland demands hearing to discuss neighborhood plan

By Racquel Arceo

Sunnyland Neighborhood Association is yet to receive a date for a hearing to discuss their neighborhood plan.

In 2007 the former Washington State Department of Transportation lot, off East Sunset Drive next to Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Church, was sold to private owners David Edelstein and Greg Hinton.

The four-acre lot was previously a superfund area used for storing and containing hazardous material. According to co-owner Edelstein, the land is clean and safe.

“The state delivered it [the land] to us with a clean bill of health and the state of Washington guaranteed it was clean,” he said.

Since the sale, volunteers of the SNA assembled a neighborhood plan proposing new zoning for the area.

Edelstein said he is hoping for residential zoning but the issue is whether the neighborhood, the city, and himself and Hinton will agree on what sort of residential zoning should be given.

 “We spent many volunteer hours making the proposal,” said Pat McKee, SNA volunteer.

SNA has been waiting for a hearing date to be set by the Planning and Community Development Department for the city of Bellingham since presenting their plan on July 23, 2012.

McKee spoke to Jeff Thomas, Director of the Planning and Community Development Department on Feb. 5 to discuss the pending hearing but is yet to receive any commitment for a hearing date.

“That was my principal goal for the meeting, to set a date,” said McKee. “The first step in getting our proposal enacted in law is a planning hearing.”

The Bellingham municipal code requires department to process the SNA code in a timely manner, something that McKee feels he has not done.

“We are going to continue to put pressure on the planning director. [Thomas is] the person that has to assign staff to begin processing our amendment,” said McKee.

There has been speculation that the reason for the delay is the department is trying to first revise the Infill toolkit. The code under revision is currently used for only multi-living housing and will be reworked to accommodate single family housing as well.

“I don’t feel there’s any need to delay consideration of our plan,” said McKee. “Once the planning commission begins to consider our proposal they can suggest changes which could involve some of the new toolkit codes.”

McKee has also attempted to bring the situation to the mayor Kelli Linville hoping she could speed up the process and help get a hearing date set but he is yet to hear back from her.

“We are asking for a planning commission by March 31,” said McKee.

Once the zoning of the land is settled, there are no official plans for what the land will be used for.

“We have tried repeatedly to come up with plans for what the neighborhood and city think should be built there,” said Edelstein.