LECHTANSKI.NET

So, there are these two housing growth issues going on in Bellingham. One has been going on for a while, and the other I just found out about this morning. Both of these projects have gotten the local community’s hackles up over one primary issue. Stopping the growth. Good luck. It’s not going to happen, and frankly it’s not fair to wish it so.

First: Chuckanut Ridge. For a year or so, I’ve been seeing “Don’t Let Bellingham become Bellevue” bumper stickers around town. This is as it pertains to Chuckanut Ridge/Fairhaven Highlands/100-Acre Wood… Different names being used for marketing and sympathy purposes. And a developer wants to knock down a bunch of trees and build a bunch of water-view houses. Activists are concerned about too much traffic, a negative affect on the aesthetic of the area and the environmental impact on area wetlands.

Second: a former WSDOT site on Sunset Dr. This is very near my house. Someone dropped a leaflet on our porch announcing with great concern that a developer is proposing to build 50 living units in the rather small site. Activists in the neighborhood are concerned 50 units is too much for the space, and will result in too much of a traffic increase and a negative impact on the neighborhood.

My house is 80 years old. But 80 years ago, my neighborhood was part of Bellingham’s sprawl. It was way out in the country, with the Cornwall trolley as the mass commuter into town. Now we’re about as downtown as you get. I wonder if anti-growth groups were around in 1920s Bellingham.

Anyway, so people opposed to the two developments above have been able to buy a house and live in the neighborhood of their choice. And now that the area has grown enough to accommodate their house and to produce a neighborhood of their liking, the growing must stop? They want only enough growth to support them?

Packing 50 units into the former WSDOT site is exactly what we should be doing! Density. It makes better use of the area’s utilities and resources, and you create a more populated area. It is the opposite of sprawl. The site is now an empty fenced parking lot, with waist high weeds growing through cracks in the cement. It’s not a blight, but it’s no nature refuge.

While I’m not a huge fan of knocking over 100 acres of trees, and I’m not partial to lots of traffic, who am I to say that people can’t move to the town I found great enough to call home? If the market commands it and a contractor is able to build and sell a neighborhood, so be it. It may not be a very modern liberal mindset on my part, but let the market work. (Yes, I am a liberal. No, that is not changing.)

And by the way, City government’s are very effective at being a pain in building contractors’ keisters. This is over things such as parking, traffic and nature. Sure they are not always right, sometimes corrupt and mistakes happen. But growth is going to happen. Growth is what’s next. Whether we like it or not. So make friends with it, pet it, invite it over for a drink. I hear drunk growth is really fun.