Planning fee tables vote on east Blaine manufactured house code modification

By Grace McCarthy

About 30 individuals packed Blaine’s planning fee public listening to December 8 on a proposed zoning textual content modification that may enable massive manufactured house parks in east Blaine. After two hours of debate and debate, the fee tabled the vote for a future assembly.

Metropolis zoning code inconsistencies at the moment don’t enable manufactured houses in residential deliberate unit developments (PUDs) throughout the metropolis’s deliberate residential zone, which runs east of fifteenth Avenue to metropolis limits and from the U.S./Canada border to H Avenue Highway. Nonetheless, manufactured house parks lower than 5 acres, that means they aren’t a part of a PUD, are allowed in east Blaine.

Background

Whereas the general public listening to was on altering the zoning code inconsistencies, many of the public’s considerations surrounded potential manufactured house growth in East Harbor Hills. Builders Skip and Katie Jansen, of JIJ Company, requested the town to handle the zoning code inconsistencies initially of the 12 months. If the code is modified, the town would nonetheless want to contemplate approval for manufactured houses in East Harbor Hills or another residential PUD, Stacie Pratschner, the town’s neighborhood growth companies (CDS) director, beforehand advised The Northern Gentle.

“Actually what’s at situation here’s a discrepancy within the code,” mentioned Craig Parkinson, principal engineer of Cascade Engineering Group, who’s the builders’ consumer and likewise engaged on different Blaine tasks similar to Semiahmoo Highlands. “The [planned residential] zoning has a requirement in it that states tasks over 5 acres should do a PUD. So you probably have a web site that’s lower than 5 acres, chances are you’ll do a manufactured house park on it right this moment.”

The inconsistencies have been made inadvertently by means of varied code adjustments and adoptions since a 2001 ordinance on manufactured houses, Parkinson mentioned. In 2001, metropolis council adopted an ordinance to permit manufactured houses, parks and subdivisions in east Blaine. Manufactured house requirements have been modified in 2005 to stick to state regulation. In 2009, metropolis council revised the code for PUDs to exclude manufactured houses, and workers was unable to find out why that change was made, in response to the workers report for the December 8 listening to.

Parkinson mentioned the builders want to create single-family, multi-family and manufactured houses throughout the growth as a result of these will generate extra earnings within the present housing market. Metropolis code doesn’t enable single-wide or park-model houses in a manufactured house park. The park will need to have a minimum of 20 ft of a vegetation buffer and a city-approved landscaping plan, amongst different necessities, Parkinson mentioned.

“They give the impression of being nearly indistinguishable from stick-built houses,” Parkinson mentioned. “They’ve received landscaping. They’ve received streets that meet requirement requirements. They’ve open house facilities.”

Public listening to

East Blaine resident Shanna Leeland expressed concern concerning the builders’ notion that manufactured houses can be inexpensive. She argued households wouldn’t construct fairness as a result of manufactured houses depreciate and seniors dwelling on a set earnings can be prone to being priced out if their month-to-month hire elevated, a development Leeland was seeing throughout the U.S.

Of a few dozen individuals who spoke throughout the listening to, two supported the cellular house park: Paul Schissler, an inexpensive housing advocate from Bellingham, and Grandis Pond developer Ken Hertz, of Bellingham.

Schissler, a neighborhood growth planner, has been advocating for inexpensive housing in Blaine over the previous 12 months on behalf of a number of organizations together with Kulshan Group Land Belief, the Whatcom County Govt’s Workplace and Alternative Council. Schissler urged throughout the listening to that manufactured house parks may function as co-op housing the place the entire homeowners held a share of the park, against an funding firm doubtlessly buying the park.

“Manufactured housing parks might be owned by the householders,” he mentioned. “A home-owner affiliation can personal the land and lease the houses to themselves so it takes the chance fully out of the image and takes the concept that it’s a capital acquire sometime to be offered.”

After the assembly, Schissler pointed to Resident Owned Communities Northwest for instance of co-op manufactured house parks in Washington and Idaho.

Semiahmoo resident April Hashimoto mentioned east Blaine faces the identical considerations that Semiahmoo residents delivered to the town’s consideration within the spring concerning the metropolis not being ready for large-scale growth.

“This textual content modification that’s the topic of tonight’s assembly shouldn’t be reviewed in isolation as one discrete approval,” Hashimoto mentioned. “It ought to be evaluated inside a planning context contemplating the entire penalties that ought to be triggered by its approval.”

Hashimoto collected 455 signatures on a petition for the town and Whatcom County governments towards unmanaged growth of the practically 500-unit Semiahmoo Highlands. The petitioners made it clear they weren’t towards growth; they only requested no approvals be made till the completion of a storm water plan, complete wastewater technique, visitors research and environmental affect research extra rigorous than the already required State Environmental Coverage Act guidelines.

Hashimoto mentioned in an e mail to The Northern Gentle that she by no means obtained a response from both the town or county, aside from one acknowledgement that the town had obtained the petition.

A number of residents voiced frustration, saying they believed they’d carried out extra analysis than the town. Group members requested for points on water high quality and provide, colleges, taxes and wetlands to be addressed.

The Jansens sat alongside their son Anthony, a venture supervisor at Henbart LLC in Seattle, throughout the assembly. Henbart develops, owns and manages actual property investments throughout the Pacific Northwest.

“It’s only a misunderstanding of what we’re attempting to do,” Skip Jansen mentioned after the listening to. “What we’re attempting to do is right an error within the code. The best way they’re attempting to make it look is that we’re attempting to vary the zoning and we’re completely not attempting to vary the underlying zoning. The underlying zoning permits precisely what we’re doing.”

Skip Jansen mentioned manufactured houses aren’t for everybody, however are an choice for others.

“It really works for a sure variety of individuals and it’s positively extra inexpensive than stick-built houses,” he mentioned.

Fee deliberation

After the general public listening to, commissioner Calvin Armerding requested workers if the town may prohibit cellular house parks to solely be operated as co-ops, against company or developer-owned land. 

“The sticking level of this entire course of boils again to who owns the land,” Armerding mentioned. “It considerations me that there are companies dedicated to amassing these sorts of issues however I do like the concept of a co-op.”

CDS neighborhood planner Stacy Clauson mentioned workers would wish to hunt authorized help as a result of the town usually doesn’t regulate a venture’s possession mannequin.

Commissioner Kevin Owens mentioned he wished extra time to analysis as a result of he had extra questions than when the assembly began.

“If we have been speaking a few venture that was 4.99 acres, we truly wouldn’t be having the dialog,” Owens mentioned. “All the similar points would exist. All the similar negatives and the entire similar potential positives, if there are any. That’s what I’m battling. Is the dimensions the truth that is affecting our willpower whether or not to amend the regulation or to to not?”

Commissioner James Deliver mentioned he was involved about future growth’s affect on water high quality, which Armerding mentioned was a wider growth situation and sizable east Blaine neighborhoods had already been authorised.

Commissioner Jerry Marczynski mentioned he’d like to seek out options to a number of the questions raised earlier than making a choice. He mentioned he wished to know if the planning fee may eradicate all future manufactured house parks inside metropolis limits.

“It is a broader dialog as a result of, from what I’ve heard from the neighborhood, that is about land possession,” Marczynski mentioned. “Us saying ‘no’ to this venture doesn’t cease the issue. It nonetheless sits there in a unique regulation.”

Commissioner Jessica Stone agreed that the planning fee wanted to transcend the zoning textual content modification in entrance of them, however mentioned they wanted to make an instantaneous determination.

Stone made a movement to disclaim the zoning textual content modification, seconded by commissioner Jennifer Plombon, however the movement failed attributable to a scarcity of majority (there are solely six members on fee as one seat is vacant). Commissioners unanimously authorised tabling the vote for a future assembly so extra analysis may very well be carried out. The commissioners are anticipated to deliberate on the zoning textual content modification throughout their January 12, 2023 assembly, which isn’t slated to have one other public listening to.

“That is actually thrilling for us,” Armerding mentioned. “I don’t suppose we’ve had greater than six individuals [attend a meeting].”