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closePlanning sounds boring. But in truth, the future of our communities depends on it.
And nowhere is such planning more exciting right now than the Bellingham discussion about the future of Samish Way west of Interstate 5.
Community members and city officials are holding regular meetings now talking about how the area that is currently a wide road with a few restaurants and hotels can become Bellingham’s next densely packed urban neighborhood.
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SAMISH MEETINGS CONTINUE The next city-sponsored neighborhood meeting on the Samish Way urban village is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. July 10 at the Elks Lodge, 710 S. Samish Way.
Bellingham city officials say they hope to have the plan finalized by early next year, with the plan presented to the City Council for approval by next summer.
What’s at stake in those discussions is not just what that area will look in 50 years and how the community can guide that redevelopment, but also whether the city’s push for new “urban villages” is possible.
If it can’t work along Samish Way, where sparse development is oriented toward cars, then it may not work in any of Bellingham’s existing neighborhoods. Samish Way is a test case for two reasons.
One, the area is not a significant player in population growth today.
While there have been a couple new gas stations or restaurants in recent years, much of the development along Samish Way is exactly the same as it was in the 1970s, or before. It owes a lot of its current makeup to its long history as part of old Highway 99. Life along Samish has remained remarkably the same.
Yes, some of the restaurants have come and gone, and some of the motels have different owners and monikers.
But as Bellingham has added tens of thousands new residents in the past 25 years, not one of them lives along Samish. There is no place for them to live along Samish Way west of the freeway. That has to change.
The future of Bellingham, as outlined in growth plans and the desires of the citizens, is a more urban place in which the sprawl of the last 30 years stops and is replaced by redeveloped neighborhoods that are friendly for pedestrians and bicyclists and make transit a viable option.
In that kind of future there is little room for sprawling properties with big parking lots. Those lots need to be redeveloped with parking in, or underneath, buildings that include shops and offices and places to live.
Two, unlike in other parts of town, the neighbors of Samish Way almost universally support redevelopment.
While some neighborhoods resist potential infilling, the members of the Sehome Neighborhood, in which this section of Samish Way sits, provided almost all of the leadership on this issue.
They held meetings, talked to neighbors, worked with the adjacent York neighborhood and came up with a lot of the vision of what the future of Samish Way could be.
A lot of their ideas, as presented on their Web site at http:// www.sehome.org/default.html, are the inspirational base of what could be a future vibrant neighborhood that could match downtown, Fairhaven and Barkley for attractiveness and community usability. This is no small feat given the problems most neighborhoods having reaching a consensus about any issue.
So Samish Way is primed to be the first big experiment in urban village redevelopment in the city. It will not be easy.
It will require bold leadership from city officials to take the necessary steps, such as rezoning currently occupied properties, to make it happen.
We hold out hope that the citizen leadership shown on this issue will bode well for a Bellingham future that truly reflects the kind of community citizens want to live in.
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