| Briefly Western seeks city council approval to vacate South College Way. Western plans to build a new road behind Fairhaven College on the hillside of the Sehome Aboretum. Western is not being honest and forthright about its plans. This would spend millions of dollars wrecking a valuable road, tearing up the arboretum and not add a single classroom. Western's Institutional Master Plan (IMP) shows the new road through the Arboretum on page III-23. This pdf is 33 MB. Or, we have posted pictures of the relevant plan on another page.
| Vacating South Campus Drive Home | Contents | Links | Info | Writers | ©2002NWCitizen.com Why South Campus Drive Vacation request should be denied These are additional points which counter the arguments Western's legal team made at the June 12 Hearing before Dawn Sturgold, the city hearing examiner. 1. It is apparent that Western is prepared to sue the city of Bellingham if the vacation of South Campus Way is not granted. Their entire 'planning' testimony at the hearing was controlled by their Seattle attorney, Tom Walsh. He is a multi-hundred an hour hired gun whom Western uses to intimidate city officials. Mr Walsh spoke for Western, he introduced each of the four Western staff people and told the Hearing Examiner exactly what each would say and then each read their statements - statements no doubt carefully prepared by or under the eye of Tom Walsh. Most telling, the Western staff testified to ONLY the legal points of city code which governs street vacations. Not one iota of extra information was presented. The point of the above is simple. Western is doing piecemeal planning, a violation of the Growth Management Act. Western is not working in a cooperative manner with neighborhoods and city planning as its press releases say, but is attempting to force its way regardless of impacts on neighborhoods or city traffic flows. Western is not presenting a plan - they are presenting a legal ultimatum. The city of Bellingham Hearing Examiner should not be intimidated by Western and should ignore the legal intimidation. 2. Western made much in their testimony of putting new roads on the edge of campus and reducing the number of roads through campus. I submit that Western is doing exactly the opposite. They are proposing to eliminating S. Campus Way which goes through a previous swamp - the worst place to build a sports playing field. Western is building a new boulevard on 21st street - where the ground is high, dry and flat - a perfect place for sports fields. 21st Street is as much in the middle of campus as is the present S. Campus Way. To follow Western's stated goals, the correct plan is to vacate 21st Street and put playing fields there. Indeed, this would allow one to two more play fields than trying to put them in the 'valley green', the old swamp. Western is spending up to $15 million dollars destroying the functional street and building new streets. The city should not permit this. For the record, it appears that Western is illegally renovating 21st Street. No hearings, no impact statements, no environmental reviews. All just paper approvals and a wink and nod. I was on the South Campus Task force in 1998 that spent months considering traffic flows on South Campus. It is obvious that Western is intent on implementing their 1996 Master Plan and creating a new north south arterial on 21st Street and eventually making 21st the formal entry onto campus. This street vacation of S. Campus Way is merely a step in the process. 3. No street should be vacated until a proven replacement is working. Nor should a vacation be granted ahead of time contingent of completion of a street or project. Rather, street vacation should be granted under the same processes as any other person's request would be handled - long after replacements are working fine. This whole planning process is so illegal as to almost defy analysis. It is amazing to hear the planning department representative say with a straight face that eliminating a street that carries 10,000 cars a day is not a "significant event". In closing, we citizens asked many questions of Western officials at the hearing. Time ran out and no answers were forthcoming. In six years of battling Western's illegal planning moves, I have never seen any answers to our most pressing questions. The Hearing Examiner should insist that Western address all the questions raised at the June 12 hearing. The Hearing Examiner should recommend denial the street request. Item number 1 of city codes governing street vacations is clearly not met. Posted June 21, 2002
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