Hospital Announces Plan to Consume Laurelon

At tonight's Citizens Advisory Council, gasps of dismay met the Hospital's announcement of a new expansion "alternative." This "alternative" would eliminate the condo community of Laurelon. Most of the 130+ audience members looked appalled to hear the Hospital boldly announce a plan to eliminate 136 units of moderately-priced housing and a garden-filled community of retirees, families and independent spirits.

The Hospital sure took the City's inexplicable invitation to expand boundaries to heart.

The hospitals new "alternatives" are covered briefly here. The Laurelon "Alternative" (#4) is shown at the top of this post. "Alternative" #3 (below) shows shuffling of tower layouts, bringing rooftops to 160 feet, still unprecedented in a low-rise, residential neighborhood:
Alternative #3b (below) shows a northward migration of towers.
"Alternative" #2 was one of the initial proposals, with 240 foot towers:
The final image shows Alternative #1. It includes the existing campus, plus the emergency wing whose construction is already covered under the existing Master Plan.
To put these alternatives in perspective, make sure to read the community's proposed suite of alternatives. The Citizens Advisory Council unanimously asked the Hospital to consider these alternatives, without success. These provide scope for growth while maintaining the livability of a residential neighborhood.

Tonight one concerned neighbor took the initiative to hand out his own proposal: CHRMC Expansion: On-Site Construction or a Second Campus? The Hospital keeps brushing aside the second-site option without a thorough explanation. Is it ignoring a 350-bed opportunity to establish critical mass at a second site and expand access to in-patient care?

Note: 150+ Total Attendees = 130+ Audience Members plus 20+ Officials/Committee Members

(Update: Looks like the Seattle PI didn't catch the Hospital's plans for Laurelon in its story.)

How Not To Do Community Outreach

This evening at the Citizens Advisory Council meeting, a Seattle Times reporter tried to find out the community's thoughts on the Hospital's new proposal. Well, it's kinda hard to have an opinion about a proposal that the Hospital spent all day hiding from its neighbors (but not, of course, the press). As of 8:30pm, the proposal is finally posted.

We've excerpted from a letter sent by Jeannie Hale, President of the Laurelhurst Community Club Board of Trustees, to the City leaders. Take a look at how the Hospital's "communications" department does community outreach:

Dear Mayor Nickels and Directors Chao and Sugimura,

This morning, the Laurelhurst Community Club (LCC) Board of Trustees learned that Children’s would be presenting two new alternatives for study in the environmental impact statement for its proposed expansion. We immediately emailed Children’s to ask for information about the plans so our land use consultant could review the plans prior to the Citizens Advisory Committee meeting tonight. Nothing was provided. In the meantime, we heard from three reporters about a media event that had been scheduled for 1:45 p.m. today. Still no word from Children’s. I showed up with another LCC trustee and one other neighbor. We were not allowed to attend the media event. Guards were on hand to keep us out.

Children’s told me that it was a private media event conducted on private property and we were not allowed to attend. It is remarkable that Children’s would consider a media event private. ...

We encourage you to do all you can to encourage Children’s to work with the Laurelhurst community and all neighbors.

Reminder: Attend the Pre-Halloween Citizen's Advisory Council Meeting

Please join your neighbors at the upcoming Citizen's Advisory Council Meeting on Tuesday, October 30th at 6pm at the Center for Urban Horticulture (3501 NE 41^st Street).

Your participation is key to demonstrating community concern and influencing the outcome of this planning process. This week's meeting Agenda includes:

• Time for public comments
  
• The Hospital's response to Carol Eychaner's presentation at the 9/27 meeting
  

Community Response to the City's EIS Planning Report

It's time to study up for the pre-Halloween CAC Meeting and review the Laurelhurst Community Club's blistering evaluation of the Department of Planning and Development (DPD)'s EIS Scope Report.

Land Use Planner Carol Eychaner explains that the DPD is out of line to conclude that the Hospital (CHRMC) can disregard the bulk of the alternatives proposed by the LCC. (Note that the Citizen's Advisory Council (CAC) voted unanimously to encourage the Hospital to consider these alternatives in its EIS.) Furthermore, Carol says that the DPD provides such "ambiguous direction" for the Hospital's EIS scope that the "DPD abdicates to CHRMC its role and responsibility as lead agency under SEPA. "

She concludes:

“…DPD’s decision to severely limit the master plan EIS alternatives and reject reasonable design alternatives that address significant impacts, is fundamentally flawed. Pursuing nearly identical, look-alike alternatives, all with very significant impacts, does not enable the SEPA process, but instead frustrates the public’s, CAC’s and the decision-makers’ ability to analyze development and mitigation options for the CHRMC site.”

Carol's report deserves a careful read. Only a few points are excerpted here:

“In its October 12 letter, DPD states that it will not revise its EIS scoping report to include any of the LCC alternatives in their entirety. DPD also refused to explore most of LCC’s specific design parameters that were not already part of CHRMC’s proposals, including, importantly, LCC’s restrictions on roadways in the landscaped perimeter buffers and on vehicle entrances to the campus (no new entrance points), LCC’s lower MIO heights, and LCC’s alternative rezone of the Hartman property. While DPD has required an alternative(s) with “lower overall height,” it did not specify any MIO height to be studied and provided no guidance as to how much lower the alternative should be, leaving this decision to CHRMC. As described in more detail on the following pages, DPD’s response to CAC’s recommendation, and rejection of LCC alternatives, is fundamentally flawed:

• It incorrectly characterizes the development potential in LCC’s alternatives.
• It is based on ambiguous and unsubstantiated conclusionary statements.
• It shirks its authority and responsibility under SEPA to require reasonable design alternatives that would reduce environmental degradation, especially for significant impacts.
• It encourages the development of nearly identical, so-called alternatives.
• It inappropriately abdicates the design of alternatives to CHRMC, providing little direction as to the required design parameters of the alternatives."

Carol goes on to provide detailed support for all of these points. For example, she shows that DPD is incorrect to claim that LCC’s proposal would limit new development to 250,000 square feet. Quite to the contrary-- multiple LCC alternatives lack a square footage limit. Her analysis indicates that square footage increases could range from 636,000 to almost one million square feet under different design parameters. Make sure to read the rest of Carol's report.

Patient Geography

A 2006 report by Children's Hospital, shows that only 17% of its inpatients come from Seattle.

Insight. Take a closer at the King County figures. Does the distribution of patients (Seattle vs. the rest of King County) match the actual distribution of kids in the county? If you run the numbers, Seattle kids appear as Children's inpatients 50% more often than they should based on population distribution alone. A host of things might contribute to this pattern, but having a single, Seattle location for inpatient care must surely play a role. The numbers suggest that having a single inpatient site reduces the accessibility of care in areas of King County outside of Seattle

Analysis Explained. According to this chart, 45% of all inpatients come from King County. According to a report by New Futures, 23.9% of King County’s kids live in Seattle. Thus, you would expect that 11% of all of Children’s inpatients would be Seattleites (11 is 23.9 percent of 45). Yet 17% of all patients come from Seattle. This suggests that Seattle kids are much more likely to get care at Children’s than other King County kids. In fact, Seattle kids are represented among Children’s inpatient population at a rate more than 50% greater than you would expect if all kids in King County had equal access to care at Children’s Hospital.

Buying Silence

The Hospital just bought a third home adjacent to its property. A Hospital official recently described these ongoing home purchases as "a super mitigation strategy" in the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Instead of acting in the spirit of the law (SMC 23.69.032) and working to ensure "livability and vitality of adjacent neighborhoods," the hospital is simply eliminating its neighbors.

You can keep an eye on the Hospital's ongoing purchases using the King County Assessor's eSales database. Note: For recent sales, the purchaser is only found on the Recorder's Office pdf tax records.

Location	Sold Date	Price
4XXX NE 45th St	6/12/2007	$858,375
4XXX 44th Ave	9/28/2007	$960,000
4XXX NE 45th St	10/10/2007	$960,000

A "Push Poll"

The Hospital has hired a PR firm to conduct a "Push Poll." This type of survey asks loaded questions intended to "alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll."

The Hospital has rather an upper hand in public relations (thanks for noticing, Crosscut). It doesn't really need to resort to loading questions.

We've just heard that you can call in and take the poll yourself to see what's going on. Call (425) 271-2300 and ask for the Children's Hospital survey. Please note that answer choices are known to be misleading and you are forbidden from changing your initial answers. This makes it especially tricky to answer according to your intentions, so please take care.

Both neighbors and the Community Club have repeatedly requested lists of poll questions and answer choices. One neighbor was flatly refused. All other inquires have gone unanswered. Why hide?

The City's EIS Scoping Report

The City Planning Department recently released its EIS Scoping Report. This document contained surprising, disturbing guidance for the Hospital, plus the results of the public comment period. Highlights:

1) The City encourages the Hospital to consider growing outside its existing institutional boundaries

The City tells the hospital to consider four alternatives, including "No Action," and the two existing proposals. For Alternative #4, the Hospital

"...should consider...spreading beyond the existing boundaries if acquiring land for development appears to be feasible."

This is an astonishing recommendation given that Seattle's Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Code both clearly "discourage the expansion of established major institution boundaries" (Comprehensive Plan, LU 186, SMC 23.69.002.E).

There is no question that the Hospital is actively seeking to expand its institutional boundaries. In fact, the Hospital is actively trying to gobble up 136 units of moderately-priced housing at Laurelon. The City should be red-flagging this behavior, not encouraging it.

We can only hope that the Hospital takes the City's words in the spirit of the Code and hears them as guidance to develop a second, in-patient site.

2) Considering a slate of massive proposals is A-okay

According to the City, the Hospital should consider only proposals that achieve the Hospital's objective of adding 500-600 beds at the Laurelhurst site:

"In identifying reasonable alternatives, the SEPA requirement is: “Reasonable alternatives shall include actions that could feasibly attain or approximate a proposal's objectives, but at a lower environmental cost or decreased level of environmental degradation.” (SMC 25.05.044 D.2) Evaluating an alternative with substantially less development ... would not attain or approximate the objective Children’s has defined."

Note, of course, that SEPA certainly does not exclude the consideration of smaller proposals. CAC may wish to point this out as it pushes the Hospital to consider real alternatives.

3) The City received an exceptionally large number of comments during the scoping period.

Compare the result of this comment period with the recent comment period for the 520 bridge replacement. The 520 bridge generated only about 6 or 7 times as many comments as the hospital project.

Wow. On a daily basis, the 520 bridge affects far more people than the Hospital. Furthermore, the 520 comment period was heavily covered in the news, lasted almost twice as long and drew comments from a wide geographic area. It also addressed a real EIS, not just a plan for an EIS. Compare:

520 Bridge Replacement

• Focus: An actual, draft EIS covering real alternatives.
  
• Duration: 74 days during the late summer and fall.
  
• Public communication: 2 public meetings during the comment period. 31 outreach events at fairs and festivals, plus heavy media coverage by all outlets, occurred during and before the comment period.
  
• Result: 1734 unique submissions from the greater metropolitan area, across the state and even abroad.

Hospital Towers

• Focus: EIS scoping, not an actual EIS
  
• Duration: 42 days. All comment occurred during summer months, when many families were preoccupied with kids out of school.
  
• Public Communication: One public meeting on EIS scope held on day 17.
  
• Result: 257 unique submissions.

4) Comments panned the Hospital's proposals.

"The majority of the comments were in opposition to the height or size of the planned development. Many also expressed opposition to new entrances to the main campus from either NE 45th Street or NE 50th Street."

4) Another 30-day comment period will follow the publication of the Draft EIS in March 2008.

(Update: Added a clarifying sentence at the end of Section #1 after receiving a question.)

Laurelon Condos Are Officially Moderately-Priced Housing

Update: We've updated the title of this post to reflect concerns voiced by a Laurelon resident. To clarify-- Laurelon condos do not meet Federal standards for affordable housing. We never claimed they did. This post used Mayor Nichol's criteria for affordable housing (as reported in the PI), not federal standards, to call Laurelon "affordable."

Nevertheless, we know full well that Mayor Nichols is pushing the limits in what he calls "affordable housing." For this reason, we're replacing the term "affordable" with the term "moderately-priced" for Laurelon throughout this site. This terminology matches what is used in the Preliminary Draft EIS, so there should be no controversy.

(Note: Please pardon the crazy new title of this post-- we had to leave most of the title intact to avoid breaking a plethora of page links.)

The mean sale price for Laurelon condos over the last twelve months appears to be roughly $245,000 (rounded up). Prices (listed in the table at the end of this post) were obtained from sold listings on Redfin.com and John L. Scott. All listed condos were 1 bed/1 bath.

Our Mayor recently proposed a new, 12-year property tax exemption for builders of "affordable housing." This tax break would be awarded to builders of condos priced up to $350,000 as long as the units are sold to couples with incomes up to $75,000. The PI's headine for this proposal: "Nickels wants to widen tax break on affordable housing" (7/25/07). The PI editorial board encouraged the Mayor, calling this proposal promising (8/3/07).

We conclude that Laurelon condos qualify as affordable housing in Seattle by the Mayor's criteria. We make no comment on whether $350,000 is actually an affordable sum for many Seattle residents.

Update Repeated: Due to confusion with federal standards, we now call Laurelon "moderately-priced" instead of "affordable" elsewhere throughout this site. No need to overstate a strong argument-- the Hospital's Preliminary Draft EIS agrees that such a "significant loss" of moderately-priced housing would be "hard to replace" in this area.

Address	Sale Price	Date Sold
4XXX 41ST AVE NE	$230,450	12/14/06
4XXX NE 46TH ST	$254,000	4/26/07
4XXX 41ST AVE NE	$255,000	6/22/07
4XXX 41ST AVE NE	$239,590	8/13/07

Expanding Institutional Boundaries: Laurelon, Talaris, Springbrook and Hartman

The Hospital predicts that its space needs will continue to grow rapidly after this newest round of expansion. Since Hospital insists on keeping all in-patient services in one place, what happens after its buildings rise to 240 feet?

Clearly, the hospital has a plan: expansion of institutional boundaries across 136 condos and who-knows-what else. So much for the city's guidance, as reported by the hospital: "the redevelopment of residential areas for institutional uses is discouraged as a matter of City policy."

The Hospital's intentions for Laurelon (see "Sought" in the picture below) and the Hartman site (see "Owned") have been made clear. The hospital also owns a partial stake in the Springbrook building (see "Partially Owned"). It has been busily expanding into this space and pushing out professionals serving surrounding communities. Many former tenants provided medical services at walkable distances from nearby communities.
Don't forget that the Talaris property is "Available." You can draw your own conclusions. Yeah, current covenants prevent a major institution from buying the property outright, but there are ways around that hurdle. For example, a donor group could purchase the site in the hospital's place and "lease" it out, perhaps as the site of a new parking garage.

We also can't leave out the hospital's recent purchase of surrounding homes (see "Home Purchases" for the general locations). The hospital recently told the PSBJ that it is making these purchases to buy the silence of potential objectors to its plans. Two purchases have closed already, a third is rumored to be close, and others have been discussed. These purchases may not expand the institutional boundaries, but they certainly seem contrary to the purpose of the Major Institution Planning process.

Before & After

The hospital's proposed Master Plan actually does provide a few revealing pictures, but it's a royal pain to sort through and compare them. No wonder the Times reported inaccurate height increments. You absolutely must be adept at toggling the resolution and your scrollbars. To make it easier, we've extracted several key images.

Let's start by comparing before/after heights for the existing site. Make sure to click on the images to see them full-size. Wow, the pictures are side-by-side-- who would have thought it possible? The lower lefts show regions whose height caps would rise from 50, 70 and 90 feet to 240 feet. Overall, you can see that about 2/3rds of the site would become zoned for 240 feet. So what does it look like for buildings to increase so much in height? Here's an intimidating diagram. You can just make out the existing, 50-foot buildings above the trees, below the new 240-foot towers. The right-hand scale differentiates height caps (MIOs) of 50 and 240 feet.No wonder the hospital is confident it can purchase and expand across the community of Laurelon, immediately to the right of this sketch. Laurelon sure won't feel particularly residential in the day-long shadow of these towers.

How High is 240 Feet? Take a Look.

The helicopter in these photos flew a 240 foot flight path to mark the rooftops of the hospital's planned 240-foot towers. Click on the photos to see larger versions.

The first shot (below) looks east across the UW parking lot towards the hospital complex. Looks like 240 foot towers would be a bit out of place on this green hillside.
The second shot (below) shows the planned tower heights from Varlamos (on NE 45th street). It looks east towards the Hospital. The helicopter is directly above hospital buildings.
A hearty thanks to our crack team of photographers. Please send additional photos to coalitioninfo@gmail.com -- we'll post them ASAP. Many thanks.

A Voice from Laurelon

Our group has many voices. This member speaks from Laurelon. Make sure you read about the Hospital's plans for 136 Laurelon condos before you read her words:

"I’m a Laurelon Terrace Condominium resident, a retired 30-year teacher, and a volunteer at Children's Hospital and Laurelhurst Elementary. Before choosing to live here, I researched the whole North Seattle area for over a year. Many things contributed to my choice, but high among them were the convenient location, neighborhood ambiance, parklike grounds, cozy community, amenities like parking/pets and, most important, affordability. Nowhere else could I find everything above and a charming unit for a modest price.

I lived many places in my life, from Washington DC to Alaska. But I kept coming back to Seattle, where I spent half my school years. When I got ready to retire I knew this was where I wanted to live out my life. And when I saw Laurelon Terrace, I knew it was the place for me. I love it here, the place and the people. I chose my unit with an eye to aging, stairs, hardwood floors and easy access.

Yes, our condo dues keep going up. It’s an old complex that now needs maintenance on major systems. But for Seattle, I am in very affordable housing. I could never move anywhere comparable here for what I could find if I sold my unit.

Just like my Laurelhurst neighbors, the people who live and want to stay in Laurelon chose their homes carefully, whether they be young families, workers, or other retirees. Laurelon Terrace is a jewel that should be saved, not gobbled up."

Correction for the Times

The Seattle Times reported a misleading figure in its 9/27/07 article about the Hospital's proposal. It hasn't published a correction, so we'll do that here.

The Times wrote: "The roof of the tallest proposed building would be 90 feet higher than the roof of the tallest existing building."

The Hospital's tallest existing building reaches 80 feet above grade, while its tallest planned building will rise to 240 feet. In other words, the tallest proposed tower will rise 160 feet higher than the tallest existing building. This increase is rather a lot more than 90 feet. (N.B.: Several small buildings will grow by a much larger margin-- some will increase from 37 to 240 feet.)

How did the Times come up with 90 feet? The Hospital's FAQ, now unavailable, claimed the following:

"As the campus exists today, the tallest structure is 7 stories above grade, or roughly 80 feet above grade. Although we are still looking at ways to organize development on campus, assuming a 600 bed facility, the height of the buildings would be approximately 90 feet taller than the tallest building currently on campus.

So how did the Hospital come up with a 90 foot increment?

The Hospital only considered the height of the buildings on their uphill sides. Take a look at the figure published in the Times:


On the uphill side, sure enough, the height increment is only 90 feet. But is 90 + 80 feet really the height of this building? Few folks would say so. It looks like there's something rather taller (should we say "towering?") on the left side of this diagram.

You can see height increases just like this one on the last page of this Hospital document. Diagrams show at least one building whose height would actually rise --rooftop-to-rooftop -- from 50 to 240 feet. You can get more info on the range of actual height increments in Carol Eychner's report (a must-read).

Go see the Monster Towers in Miniature

The Hospital isn't getting the word out, so it's up to the rest of us. Info on public availability of the tower model still hasn't been posted on the Hospital web site, despite encouragement from the Community Club last week.

The Hospital's future Towers will be on display as tiny miniatures at the Laurelhurst Community Center (4554 NE 41st Street) on the following dates:

Saturday, October 13 from 12:30 to 2:30
Tuesday, October 23 from 6:30 to 8:30

Limiting Access to CAC Meetings is Not Cool. It's Illegal.

The Laurelhurst Community Club shared its recent letter with us:

Steve Sheppard, Department of Neighborhoods
Dr. Tom Hansen, President and CEO, Children's Hospital

Dear Tom and Steve,

The Laurelhurst Community Club Board of Trustees is concerned about the apparent violation of the Open Public Meetings Act and the Major Institutions Code at the September 26^th Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. The Open Public Meetings Act, RCW 42.30, requires that all meetings be open and public and all persons shall be permitted to attend. Seattle’s Major Institutions Code, SMC 23.69.032D2, also requires the advisory committee to hold open meetings. Due to poor planning, Children’s Hospital refused entrance to approximately 30 neighbors at the September 26^th meeting.

The Open Public Meetings Act, passed by the Legislature in 1971, was part of a nationwide effort to make government affairs more accessible and responsive to the people. All public commissions, boards, councils, committees and other bodies are subject to the law. The legislative intent states in pertinent part:

“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” RCW 42.30.010.

The excuse provided to our neighbors was that the room was full or allowing more to enter would have violated the fire code. While these may be legitimate excuses, the bottom line is that sufficient space should have been provided to comply with the law. Both the Department of Neighborhoods (DON) and Children’s Hospital knew that the meeting would draw substantial interest from the community. Neighbors have said that DON told them not to attend the meeting because seating would be limited. This does not set well with the Community Club as we have gone to considerable lengths to get our neighbors involved in the Children’s master planning process.

The Community Club was told that if an overflow crowd attended the September 26^th meeting, the meeting could be moved to the hospital’s cafeteria. LCC subsequently learned that the day before the meeting, Children’s told DON that the cafeteria would not be available. The script disseminated via email by Children’s to its staff nearly two hours prior to the meeting states that they expected only 15-25 people from the public to attend, whereas about 100 people were allowed into the meeting. LCC learned that fire officials were on hand to limit entrance into the meeting room and that Children’s security was called to deal with irate neighbors and to keep them from entering the room. Many who arrived at the meeting early were not even allowed to enter the meeting room. This is not the way the process is supposed to work.

The clear implication is that Children’s is seeking to limit public participation in the master planning process. The Community Club has learned that Children’s asked DON that Citizens Advisory Committee meetings be held throughout the city in areas that would not be impacted by the proposed expansion. Wisely, DON rejected this request. LCC has requested that Children’s model of its proposed development be on display at the Laurelhurst Community Center to educate neighbors about the proposed plan. Instead, Children’s has selected two dates and it is doubtful whether the timing will allow notice to neighbors. Instead of honoring the LCC request to have the model available for our neighbors without restriction, Children’s plans to have the model in communities far removed from the impacts of proposed development. Children’s has not responded to LCC’s request to know if Rainier Valley, Rainier Beach, West Seattle, Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods have even requested that the model be available for their neighbors.

Now, Children’s has rejected LCC’s request that future Citizens Advisory Committee meetings be held at either the Laurelhurst Community Center or the Laurelhurst Elementary School cafeteria. Instead, as stated in the script disseminated by Children’s staff prior to the September 26^th meeting, future meetings would be held on its main campus or at its View Ridge office building. Meetings in View Ridge would discourage Laurelhurst neighbors from attending as most neighbors walk. We believe actions by Children’s to have meetings in View Ridge are intended to discourage participation by Laurelhurst neighbors—the major stakeholders in the process.

Aside from Children’s seemingly intent to limit participation by Laurelhurst neighbors in the master planning process, at minimum there must be compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act and the Major Institutions Code. We urge you to comply with these laws to maintain the integrity of the process.

Sincerely,

Jeannie Hale, President of Laurelhurst Community Club

cc: Mayor Greg Nickels, Seattle City Councilmembers, Suzanne Petersen, Ruth Benfield, Desiree Leigh, Children’s Hospital; Scott Ringgold, Department of Planning and Development

Note to readers: Since the issue is "process," not the substance of the Children’s proposed master plan, quasi-judicial rules do not apply and the Seattle City Council can become involved.

Update, 10/7/07: Four upcoming meetings of the Citizen's Advisory Council are now scheduled. Please use the highlighted list in this site's leftmost column to mark your calendars. Kudos to Councilman Tom Rasmussen for sending these comments to the Hospital:

"Because the Children's master planning process is of great interest to the residents and businesses of the surrounding neighborhoods, I urge Children's to hold all community meetings in venues that will comfortably hold all participants and observers. In order to maximize the opportunity for public participation I also urge Children's to provide the earliest notice possible of meetings and to hold all meetings at times and locations that are likely to be convenient to most people who would attend from the community."