From an e-mail sent late Friday from Paul Fischburg to the Northgate Stakeholder’s Group:
Dear Northgate Stakeholder,
It’s been a while since our last correspondence so I wanted to give you a brief update, primarily about our rezone and urban design framework.
First the good news: We have a scheduled a date with the Mayor and project partners for the ribbon cutting event at the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel and Thornton Place. Save the date: Saturday 6/6 from noon to 4 pm for an exciting event that will launch the opening of the site for the public including the trails and bridges of the Creek Channel and the public access areas of commercial portion of the development. We’ll be in touch as we pin down more details.
I also wanted to let you know that the Northgate Urban Center Park continues to move through the design process full speed ahead with the hopes of breaking ground this fall. This is a high priority of the Parks Department as well as the Mayor for its role in improving the Northgate community as well as providing jobs. Earlier this week, Parks received approval of the design from the Seattle Design Commission and the design looks great. One upside of the down economy is that we may be able to get more of the project included in the first phase than we anticipated when the construction industry was so hot.
As you all know, the Puget Sound economy is in the midst of recession that has led to a slowdown in growth, significant job losses and declining government resources. The federal government has initiated an extraordinary effort to stimulate the economy and the Mayor has responded by re-orienting several of us in his office to maximize the city’s participation in the federal stimulus. In addition, the Mayor has also proposed his own Seattle jobs forward program to strengthen Seattle’s economy.
These challenges have slowed our work on the Northgate Rezone and Urban Design Framework. We want to be deliberate about our next steps in light of the economy. With Kristian Kofoed’s temporary departure for a six month Fulbright sabbatical in Ireland, the Department of Planning and Development has appointed Gordon Clowers to work with me to complete this work. Gordon has more than a decade of experience as a senior planner with the City of Seattle. Gordon and I are committed to completing a detailed draft the Urban Design Framework and Rezone strategy and working with a small group of stakeholders to drill down into the details before we bring it to the full Stakeholders group as promised. I will be in touch early in April with a firm schedule of these steps.
Thanks for your patience.
Paul Fischburg
Senior Policy Analyst
Seattle Office of Policy & Management
600 5th Ave, 6th Floor
PO Box 94745
Seattle, WA 98124-4745
(206) 684-8395
paul.fischburg@seattle.gov
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