Bellingham Plan Chapters

In the last week of Sept, I opened an envelope from a consulting company that I assumed was advertising. As I glanced over the undated, 2-page letter, I was alarmed to read the 1-sentence notice that an 18-unit housing development was being planned in our quiet, rural neighborhood. The letter also included the address of the proposed development, an illegible diagram, and 2.5 pages of general information about Zoom. For more information, we had to register for a Zoom meeting to be held just a few days later, and conflicting with the important vice-presidential debate.

I quickly searched Google Maps to see where this property was and realized it was literally in my friends’ backyard.

I decided to join the Zoom and learned that, if approved by the City of Bellingham (and it likely would be), “9 Small-Lot Infill Toolkit houses and 9 ADUs” and “utilizing a cluster subdivision with a 50% density bonus ” (whatever that meant!) with associated access driveways will be squeezed onto the 1.6-acre property. The Zoom meeting was controlled by a contractor for the developer and neighbors were not able to see who else was on the call, nor post comments.

The news has been distressing to dozens or maybe hundreds of us who carefully selected, improved, and love our quiet, friendly, and rural neighborhood. In our case, a projected 27-54 additional adults will move onto that one lot, a 1900% increase! This density and traffic implications seems wildly out of proportion for our dead-end neighborhood. We have had to drop all our other concerns to focus on this development and spend our valuable time learning about the planning regulations, informing other neighbors, sending out questions and concerns, etc., before the plans are approved and construction begins.

*But what concerns me most is realizing that any one developer can purchase a lot and legally impact the lives and investments of so many others. There is something inherently wrong with that!*

The city should protect all taxpayers’ interests and ensure that new development maintains local character and is appropriate for existing neighborhoods. To throw that out under the auspices of “providing more housing” indiscriminately only encourages people with means to leave the city because they have no voice in the character of their own neighborhood. Approving all new development also encourages developer greed, rapid, slip-shod construction, and more short-term residents who don’t add to the health of the community yet require its resources.

We all realize the importance of housing, and most would support development projects with a density and housing type appropriate to our existing neighborhoods and its infrastructure. But please respect our rights to live in the neighborhood that we have so carefully invested in.

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We need a public hospital to handle the increase of people across our city that is also secular. We need better mass transit (including a trolley system) that doesn't rely explicitly on bicycling. We safe street crossing across several streets that blink because of our intense winter season for pedestrians.

That old hospital needs to be brought back to life somehow. We badly need a second option and that location is ideal.

Mayor Lund is promoting business/residential development and planned growth throughout Bellingham - while providing livable walking/cycling transportation modes; these are admirable proposals.
She is also addressing chronic homelessness, addiction and income inequalities.

As a car-free, 35 year resident of this area, what is most critical is maintaining the greenways, environmental nature and health of this pristine corner of the Pacific NW.
People move here, live here because of this.

We can not provide ultimate growth, development while maintaining this quality of life.

Thank you.

I would like downtown to be less car centric

Please build and put funding toward affordable housing. Housing prices whether it be rent or mortgage is untenable. Please make more resources for the unhoused. Please increase public transportation while keeping green energy in mind.

When planning for housing and transportation expansion, please consider that we also need more doctors. The lines at clinics used to be long, and now they are even longer. I was so hoping that the new building at the hospital was an expansion of the hospital, but it turned out to be a parking lot. People spend HOURS waiting for help.
Thank you for thinking of people!

Please put in new sewage treatment plant in north Bellingham. It seems misguided to push everything towards southside when growth is to north.

In regards to parks and open space, I would like to see way less plastic playgrounds and lawn. We already have plenty of playgrounds and lawns that barely get used in our parks. Yet it is always touted as some great thing, to have an environmentally dead lawn and an even more wasteful playground equipment. We need more passive recreation. Walking, running, and birding, and less human racetrack and circus in our parks. Our parks need to preserve nature within them, because it’s probably all we are going to have left as development goes crazy.

The building and real estate industry pumped all kinds of money into marketing the solution to housing prices. Not surprisingly, they influenced government officials to lax the permitting process regarding environmental cost/damage. Even gave it a name of a ‘crisis.’ I would love to hear what the end game is.

More and more public transit is needed. We currently have areas with very poor service (Sunnyland/James Street for example).

Another critical need is covered outdoor play areas for children in our wonderful neighborhood parks. Rain, snow, even the beating sunshine.... please provide this opportunity in our parks.

Let's preserve nature with open, green spaces for everyone.
Yes, we will pay for it by our taxes.
We need more public transportation via regular bus service, walking and cycling pathways.

I am concerned developers are proposing family apartments and then changing the plans to student housing. I just learned that 755 Lincoln Street was going to be a mixed-use development with two six-level multifamily buildings (165 apartments total, mostly one- and two-bedroom), a restaurant, office space, and a two-level parking garage with self-serve storage above. It is now being proposed as nothing more than student housing. We don't need more student housing. WWU can provide that. They can build more dorms. We need affordable family homes. This building will not be that. Children and parents need privacy. Studio apartments don't qualify as family homes.

There is also the issue of these apartments charging for parking, when rent is already so high.

I am also concerned about this rental money staying in whatcom county to help our community not zipping off elsewhere.

We need more housing to be Priority 1, 2, and 3! I am not in a position to dedicate much energy to any of the other priorities and proposals in your plan when I am paying 60+% of my income in rent. I appreciate your movement toward increasing density in zoning. We need more of that. I appreciate your initiative to streamline the permitting process. But we also need the City to move the needle on rent costs by directly constructing its own social housing by the thousands of units. Private developers may incrementally increase construction if regulatory obstacles are streamlined and zone densities are increased, but the shareholders behind these developers have grown addicted to their current profit margins and are not going to build as much housing as we actually need, because quantity is the way to deal with housing costs. Not the construction of "affordable" housing per se, but the construction of SO MUCH housing that prices have to stabilize and come back down. I am paying over $1,300 for a studio unit. This is untenable! Build more housing. That's my only recommendation, and my sincere plea. The people of this city are suffocating under housing costs. BUILD MORE HOUSING! Issue bonds, raise taxes, do what you've got to do to get the money. I will pay my share. But we need more housing. Build big apartment buildings, 20+ stories, in core urban areas, and aim for 5 – 7 story apartment buildings along all arterial corridors and other identified growth zones. Duplexes are not going to solve the problem and should be considered a solution only for single-family home redevelopment. Give us a real plan for 50,000 units of new housing within the next 15 years, at least half of which should be City-funded social housing, and this insanity will begin to calm down. Use the land you have. Buy new land. It doesn't matter where the housing is built so much as that it is built at all.

Make a Pedestrian bridge from the top of Broadway, where it dead ends, to Bellweather Way linking downtown Bellingham with the new waterfront Trail. Also, please put a bike lane on James Street.