A divide remains between two groups on the future of a chunk of the Four Corners subarea plan known as the northwest quadrant.
On one side are the business owners who exist in the pocket off Maple Valley Highway along Southeast 264th Street.
On the other side is Maple Valley’s City Council and Planning Commission.
Somewhere in between is a compromise.
For now, the northwest quadrant is the only section of the plan which has not been finalized and adopted, with it being kicked back to the Planning Commission for evaluation and discussion.
In the meantime, the current business park zoning remains, but only as an interim solution until the City Council adopts some kind of zoning change for the quadrant.
Interim zoning was approved again in April by the City Council. It will be in place for a year with the expectation that the council will adopt some kind of new zoning for the northwest quadrant based on recommendations from the Planning Commission.
“We still haven’t crunched through and decided what kind of zoning we want,” said Maple Valley Mayor Noel Gerken. “The Planning Commission gave us a broad recommendation. We have some work to do as far as what kind of zoning we want to put on the ground.”
Work began on the Four Corners subarea plan in early 2006. The idea was to provide a blueprint for future development of the commercial hub on the south side of town to help spur economic development. City officials recognized in late 2005 that eventually new residential construction — a major source of revenue for city coffers — would slow down.
Therefore it was, and continues to be, crucial for Maple Valley to make the city more attractive to developers who would bring in more business. Plus that would bring more of what residents want to such as places to shop, hang out, eat and spend time with their families.
“Nothing is happening there and nothing’s happened there for years,” Gerken said. “There’s a lot of vacant land. It’s really underutilized. We’re going to have to change the zoning to get something happening.”
Glenn Akramoff, chairman of the Planning Commission, said there are some key points that have held up the process of approving the northwest quadrant in the past year or so.
One was the location of a road proposed to run through the quadrant as part of a possible festival retail zoning option that would create a downtown feel of sorts with mixed use buildings that could have retail on the ground floor with offices or residential above that.
It has been compared conceptually to Kent Station or Mill Creek Town Square.
“When it comes back to us, we should work on the location of the road,” Akramoff said. “One of the questions that the businesses had brought up was, ‘If we can’t be here, then where?’”
Leslie Westover, who runs Westover Auto Rebuild with her husband, explained that their business is not financially viable anywhere else. She hopes for compromise but feels like the city doesn’t want any of the existing businesses to remain.
“What we would like to see happen is for the businesses that are here to be allowed to stay here,” Westover said. “And for them to allow us to expand our building footprints if we would like to. Then, just allow market forces to take control. What they want to do is zone us out and ultimately keep us from being able to expand our footprint.”
Westover pointed out the economy is the reason why there is vacant and underutilized land. Her neighbors have property just waiting to be developed, but can’t sell it or lease it.
Her husband started their auto collision repair shop 25 years ago. Westover said they decided to move inside Maple Valley city limits 11 years ago and they were told that what is now known as the northwest quadrant was the only place they could set up shop.
For the city to move ahead with the concept that has been developed, Westover added, her business and a handful of others in the quadrant will end up being non-compliant. She’s not sure the city will find a way to allow businesses to stay there if that kind of zoning is approved.
On top of that, Westover said, “they want to put a road that goes straight through our businesses.”
Sue VanRuff, executive director of the Maple Valley-Black Diamond Chamber of Commerce, explained the board has support business owners in the northwest quadrant as they have made an effort to have their voices heard in the past 18 months.
“There’s still a lot of concern in the direction the council’s moving,” VanRuff said. “They’re really hoping to influence the council to re-think the northwest quadrant. There’s nothing wrong with the uses that are being proposed there… there’s all those other properties where they could go.”
Once the Planning Commission completes its work on the city’s transportation improvement plan it will begin evaluating the northwest quadrant, Akramoff said, potentially in late June or early July.
“I wanted to keep it moving because (the businesses) are kind of in a no man’s land,” Akramoff said. “They can’t move forward until this is solved. The hard part for everyone is that certain people didn’t feel like they were included.”
The trick will be balancing the needs and wants of the business owners with residents and the city.
“There’s going to have to be some compromise, there has to be some dialog,” Akramoff said. “The businesses need Maple Valley to be healthy, too.”
Still, the business owners have a right to be there and that can’t be ignored, he noted.
But, the commission and the council need to figure out what should be there in 25 years.
“There is no central area in Maple Valley,” Akramoff said. “It has to be created, even if it’s in two places, unless the city wants to remain a bedroom community.”
Gerken explained that the City Council’s goal is to establish permanent zoning by the end of this year.
Not only is this plan about economic development, Gerken said, but “we’re also doing it for a sense of place and gathering areas and community.”
“Now is a good checkpoint to take a breath and make sure it’s the right thing,” Gerken said. “We want to make sure we make the right choices going forward. We’re going to do whatever we can for those businesses but the fact remains that we may want to, and, it’s likely that we will change the zoning so that (existing businesses are) non-conforming uses.”
Westover hopes the compromises and choices made about the northwest quadrant are fair to those who own and operate businesses there but she’s not overly optimistic.
While Westover and other business owners felt like they were able to persuade the council to take another look before changing the zoning there it wasn’t exactly what they wanted.
“We got a temporary stay,” she said. “What we saw that as was nothing more than a symbolic win. What we’re gong to have to do is stay on top of (the meetings).”
In this economy, Westover said, the city’s hope that a developer will come in, buy land, build on it then lease out the property is not realistic. She points to problems Tukwila and Burien have encountered on similar concepts.
Eventually, something will have to give. Westover said she hopes for compromise because the business is what will allow her and her husband to retire someday. That would mean staying put until it made sense to sell.
“We are so heavily invested here,” she said. “We have a good reputation. We’ve built up a good business. It would be financially impossible for us to move.”
And so the divide remains. Only time will tell if the gap can be closed during the next six to nine months as the final concepts and zoning for the northwest quadrant are developed.
