YNA Planning Committee

Revised 2017-09-07 0341

The York Planning Committee has been very active and accomplished much over the years. Some of the tasks they have taken on include:

• Successfully defended against “block-busting” effort in 2004 in the south section of Area 5 otherwise known as the Area 5B rezone effort. The neighborhood was able to demonstrate the flaws and fallacies in the proposal thereby averting traffic issues and removing the incentive for to allow otherwise good housing stock to decline as a block-busting prelude to scrape-and-build upzoning without regard to neighbors during the period of decline. Since the block-busting effort failed the existing housing stock was generally repaired and reinvigorated.
• In 2005, residents recognized that while Area 5 was zoned as Multi-Family it had been built out predominantly with Single Family structures resulting in a predominantly Single Family character. Utilizing the City’s Type VI process, the Planning Committee successfully led the way to rezoning Area 5 as Single Family in 2006 managing the majority of the planning process including notifications and public meetings.
• YNA and the Planning Committee updated York’s 20-year-old Neighborhood Plan. Initial steps were taken in 2007, coming to fruition in 2009 and 2010. Aside from the Area 5 rezone, York’s Plan had not been updated since 1980. Key points of the update included:
  • Updating the vision statement and other policy statements.
  • Identifying traffic and walkability issues not currently addressed by the Neighborhood Plan.
  • Zoning improvements to Area 9 providing more use flexibility in an effort preserve historic structures and allow non-historic yet sound structures to be repurposed without having to tear them down.
  • Worked with the largest stakeholder in Area 2 rezoning it to allow mixed use and provide incentives toward that end. This created acreage of heretofore land that was unavailable for housing or infill. This created new inventory with new development started in 2016!
• YNA’s Board, the Planning Committee, and Sehome Neighborhood Association (SNA) initiated and spearheaded the Samish Way Urban Village (SWUV) planning. They created the SWUV Task Force and partnered with the City’s Planning department seeing the SWUV planning to completion. YNA and SNA drove innovations including:
  • Acreage of new infill opportunity in York increasing possible inventory estimated at around 800 Multi-Family units.
  • Graduated roof heights in “transition zones” from York’s southern Single Family Area 5 to into adjacent Multi-Family, Commercial, and Mixed Use zoning.
  • Pushing for allowing mixed-use design elements.
  • A mixture of traffic calming elements while retaining the arterial nature of Samish Way.
• YNA was successful in obtaining lit crosswalks on Lakeway and, in partnership with Sehome Neighborhood Association, another on Samish Way, creating safer pedestrian passage across the arterials through York and into Sehome.

YNA Planning Committee Minutes and Reports are available on the YNA Minutes & Reports page.