The group of Casino Road neighbors who spoke to the Planning Commission May 6 outside of the police building that includes City Council Chambers.
Photo courtesy Alvaro Guilen
EVERETT — The thousands of people that make up the Casino Road community today are worried of being pushed out. A light rail station is coming to the area within 10 years, and developers have noticed.
The City of Everett is in the final stages of setting its citywide “zoning plan for the next 20 years. “We are looking long-term, the big picture,” city planning director Yorik Stevens-Wajda said.
A briefing will be at City Council May 21. The final decision is set for June 18 at the Council meeting.
Casino Road residents are asking for protections. Done right, it will set a stable future for the uniquely situated home of 20,000 or so people. Many live, work and shop in the immediate area.
Antonio Fajardo grew up here. Casino Road is special, Farjado said at a May 6 city meeting. “As Everett continues to grow, there is uncertainty of what it holds for them.”
Locally already, “there is some displacement happening (now) because rent is going up,” said Alvaro Guillen, the director of the Connect Casino Road organization.
In one case, a California real estate company bought an apartment complex on Casino Road, freshened it up, and raised the rent, Guillen said.
The station would put more pressure on rent prices.
“That’s why we’re trying to be aggressive on housing,” Stevens-Wajda, the city planning director, said. “... some will be able to outbid the existing residents. We’re focused on building housing so it doesn’t come at the cost of existing residents.”
In the city’s “Everett 2044” plan, a large number of areas all over the city are being opened for denser housing in the city plan.
For example,all the land along Evergreen Way is set to allow up to 15 floors in the plan.
In late March, Connect Casino Road presented recommendations to add safety nets. A group of expert organizations developed the ideas.
The city has responded.
In early April, planners designated a rule in the “Everett 2044” plan that the area around Casino Road will require one-fifth of the units in all future midsize and large apartment buildings are priced as affordable housing, and to stay that way for 50 years.
It’s one of seven items the groups asked for. A few other notable ones have been added into the citywide plan, too.
Stevens-Wajda estimates his staff have met with Casino Road groups more than 30 times over the past two years.
“We heard loud and clear affordable housing is No. 1” and that “there (is a) risk of displacement,” Stevens-Wajda said.
The future light rail station will be placed somewhere near Casino Road and Evergreen Way. Exactly where isn’t decided yet. The Casino Road-area station might be placed at the corner where the Shell gas station is, or on the land of the Casino Square shopping center, or on the opposite side of Highway 526. Maps show these three as options. A decision by Sound Transit on which may come next year.
Sound Transit is taking public comments on its siting plan through most of June.
Timeline
The City Council will hear a briefing about the plan this week. The city’s planning commission will finish its recommendations to the council Tuesday, June 3.
The first three Wednesdays of June will have council deliberations about the Comprehensive Plan with an expected vote at its June 18 meeting. A public hearing will be at the June 11 Council meeting.
Planners are trying to beat a July 1 deadline when a new set of state rules come into law which would require further reworking Everett’s comprehensive plan.
More work coming later
After the citywide plan is voted on, planners aren’t done.
The city is scheduled to take perhaps nine months looking closely at the Casino Road area’s individual needs. Stevens-Wajda said he anticipates it would start as soon as this fall. It is called a subarea plan.
A Casino Road subarea plan has been part the department’s long-term intent for years, Stevens-Wajda said. A different one will also be about the industrial area of southwest Everett.
Part of this work is to form consistent plans and regulations around light rail stations, Stevens-Wajda said.
Two of the planned light rail stations coming into Everett will basically bookend Casino Road.
Shaping redevelopment
The city’s Planning Commission May 6 faced a full room of concerned residents from not just Casino Road, but also the Boulevard Bluffs area and from a corner of north Everett near Legion Park. They heard an hour of public comment.
Casino Road neighbors were brought by a shuttle.
“Today, I am scared,” Daniela Perez said through a Spanish interpreter. “...of what can happen if the best decisions are not made” that could force her and her three children out.
Another said her husband works two jobs to afford staying housed.
Guillen said the group is not against new housing or redevelopment.
“We welcome investment, but want to make sure people here benefit from that investment,” Guillen said.
The concern is if this is done wrong, it will tear the fabric of the community and its commercial services.
Guillen said about 90% of the stores cater to the local Latino community. Will replacement residents need stores in Casino Square such as the laundromat, its grocery stores or the number of Spanish-speaking tax preparation offices and notary services?
About 10% of residents don’t own a car. Many families walk from home to shop and eat. For example, the Los Gavilanes market employs about 50 people from the local area, Guillen said.
The average resident in this area earns far less than the city average. Two out of three are renting. In the immediate area of west Casino Road along Evergreen Way, 70% speak Spanish as their preferred language.
The residents “deserve investment, not erasure,” Esmeralda Saelee of the organization Futurewise said.
“We are not an obstacle to progress, but the beating heart of this neighborhood,” Perez said through an interpreter.
Rezoning
The area immediately around the light rail station near Casino Road and Evergreen Way is being zoned for mixed-use high rises of up to 15 floors. Practically all of Evergreen Way will be changed to this zone allowing tall buildings.
Highway 99 is seen as a corridor. The light rail station at Casino Road and Evergreen Way is coincidental.
Alice Ann Wetzel, the city’s long-range planner, gave the Northgate station area as an example of how denser zoning could help redevelopment in the immediate Casino Road-Evergreen Way area.
A subarea plan specific to Casino Road is because light rail is coming, and the city wants to be sure to address displacement risks, Stevens-Wajda said.
Stevens-Wajda believes Sound Transit also understands the risks of displacement.
“We both want to see the station (area) develop into a vibrant place with homes for all,” he said.
Mandatory affordable housing
In the immediate area, a new rule would require all new housing with nine or more units to have 10% of the units be affordable to people earning 60% of the average median income, and another 10% affordable to people earning 80% of the average median income. These would have a tax incentive, but would have a 50-year mandatory requirement to stay affordable.
This type of zoning is called Inclusionary Zoning.
It would be a first for Everett.
Planners added this in a revision in early April to the Everett 2044 proposal.
If approved, the requirement would be in place in an area with boundaries of about one block north of the Boeing Freeway to the north, about Walter E. Hall Park to the west, across Evergreen to Interstate 5 to the east
and 100th Street to the south. (A similar affordable housing-as-mandate zone will be near the Walmart on Airport Road in the city plan; the county plans to have its own version across the city line, Wetzel said.)
The region’s builders’ association said making nine units the trigger point to mandate affordable housing is unfeasible, a representative told the planning commission May 6. They recommend upping the requirement’s threshold between the
teens to upwards of 20, said Russell Joe, representing the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.
Seven recommendations
Mandatory affordable housing was one of Connect Casino Road’s seven recommendations. The recommendations were developed together with three large nonprofit organizations: Futurewise, the Housing Consortium of Everett and Snohomish County and Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Puget Sound.
The other recommendations include setting housing goals that encouraging anti-displacement, to allow dormitory-style housing, incentivize family-sized apartment units, to incentivize building affordable housing on faith-owned church sites and to encourage corner stores.
City planners have already written some of these, such as permitting corner stores, into the plan.
“Staff are wide open to the concept” of incentivizing affordable housing on faith-owned sites, Stevens-Wajda said in an interview.
Guillen said the neighborhood has had 50 years of under-investment and marginalization.
According to Guillen, adopting every one of the seven recommendations “is the best opportunity the city has to make it right for the community,” he said.
“This is not just a planning area, this is people’s lives,” Guillen said. “This is people’s futures.”
Learn more
The city’s “Everett 2044” plan is online at www.everettwa.gov/2044
The website has all of the documents. There is also a map tool to compare today’s zones to the ones proposed in the zoning plan.
The briefing May 21 will be at 6:30 p.m. in the City Council chambers, 3002 Wetmore Ave. The hearing is scheduled for June 11 and final vote June 18 at the City Council.
