Panel: Lease-lid lift violated law

Kayla Webley
2004-03-12
The Daily

Last week a decision from the Growth Management Hearings Board ruled the City of Seattle and the UW in violation of the Growth Management Act (GMA) requirements for the June ordinance that lifted UW's lease lid.

"What the Growth Management Hearings Board is saying is that even though there was a public process to change this piece of legislation, it wasn't what they consider to be a GMA process," said Teresa Doherty, assistant vice president of regional affairs.

According to Doherty, the lease lid is a limit on the number of square feet that the UW can lease outside its major institutional boundaries. Under the lid, the UW is allowed to lease 550,000 square feet within the primary and secondary impact zones surrounding the campus.

According to Doherty, the lift was part of the mayor's revitalization plan.

"The thought being that if you get rid of the lease lid then the University has certain needs to lease more space, and our goal would be to lease more space in this area close to the University," she said.

Doherty said by having extra space to lease faculty and staff could move closer to the Ave., bringing them economic benefits as well as cutting traffic.

"We would want to have more faculty and staff living in the area since we already have a lot of students living in the area, Doherty said. "But if you increase it with faculty and staff who might have a longer term, they might stay longer in the district, and then you would increase the residential ownership of the area."

However, because of the Growth Management Hearings Board decision, the revitalization could be on hold.

"The city and the University were treating this as a contractual agreement. It was a contract between two organizations. A contract is not a development regulation from what we believe, but because the Growth Management Hearings Board found otherwise; there's a difference of opinion as to what the law is here," she said.

In order to keep the amendment valid, the city must meet the GMA's public-notice and public-participation provisions by August 2004.

"By August 1 we are supposed to go back to the Growth Management Hearings Board and say 'we think this is what you are saying and this is how we plan to resolve it."' said Doherty. "The decision itself it says that the City Council has to go back and re-do the public participation on this particular piece of legislation."