Obviously the small signs, that's, you know, we're gonna, yeah, it is mine.
Let's talk about the forested buffer for a minute.
I want you guys to know that we actually, with regard to the lakefront, over here,
this property over here, this is something we have taken very seriously.
We, you know, we have met with community groups, you know, over at North Lake.
You know, we've talked with, you know, conservancy groups.
We actually had one gentleman drive all the way up from Portland.
I met with him earlier this year.
And so, you know, we have been working very hard to make sure that an IRG has
talked about their commitment to, you know, that property.
But your specific question, Dr. Resolts, is about how that property is labeled.
And do we have, where is Scott?
We wrote it down to one of the names of, and we're following those questions.
Actually, Scott, you need a microphone here.
Can you please stand up and identify yourself and say what you just said?
No, we listened to your question, so we're going to take those notes down
and we'll get back to the mayor for his responses.
We'll get back to it.
As someone knows that we don't know.
I made that comment at the first meeting.
Scott, the question is, why would we not know that already?
And we've also got Jim Harris here as well.
We don't know the shoreline designation.
We don't know the shoreline designation in the following.
Okay, all right, so we're going to get you guys, how many people here signed in?
Do you guys sign in?
And did you give your email addresses?
Okay, and we also have email addresses for the folks that sent in comments.
And so we've got that as an email group as well.
So what we're going to do, you guys, what we don't want to do, Dr. Brown,
and for everybody here, you know, we don't want to give you bad information.
So we're going to make sure we got the right information and we'll get it out to you.
Okay, again, this is a continuation of a discussion of a dialogue, of a conversation.
So we'll get you that information and make sure that what we say is absolutely rock solid,
something you can take to the best.
Okay, please.
Thank you.
My name is Mary Sankron.
I'm your neighbor.
I live in unincorporated King County.
And I just want to congratulate you guys for doing such a great job of researching and...
You're not alone. There's a whole surrounding community here that is concerned.
And I want to thank you, Mayor Farrell, and City Council for listening.
I've been sitting in on several of the City Council meetings.
And honestly, I thought they were pretty calm and, you know, people are upset.
But I think everyone has conducted themselves.
With a lot of grace.
You know, a few people got angry.
True.
So I can't even speak to all of the numbers and legal documents.
But as a neighbor and a part of the community, there's just a lot of concern.
And I think people have expressed this pretty well.
But my big question, when was warehouse or ever an industrial site?
And you were talking about giving out the right information.
At one of the first City Council meetings I went to, one of the staff people got up
and talked about how they've been involved in the real estate process.
And I thought, how did this property ever get sold to somebody with the word industrial in their name?
Why do they think that this is acceptable?
When I bought a piece of property, I know I can't, you know, put up a store in a residential neighborhood.
So a lot of people have been asking for a time, I guess it's called a moratorium,
to take time to get the information correct before things proceed.
I'm seeing IRG and Orc Bay and Preferred Freezers spending a heck of a lot of money pouring into this.
We're all wanting to know and be part of the process.
I have to say this piece of property is the face of Federal Way.
I grew up in down I-5 for a long time. I'm a native Washingtonian, but I was in Oregon for a while.
This beautiful piece of property is the most attractive and enchanting part of this town.
To turn it into an industrial zone would be like, you know, putting smokestacks up the space needle.
So just please remember that. So that's my question.
Why does anybody think it's an industrial zone?
And can we get an answer about that and how we can address it?
And the other issue is trucks and traffic.
I understand that, you know, a corporate park needs people to come and go, but it is overwhelming.
I am a prisoner in my home from two o'clock on because if I go out, I can't get back.
So those are my two issues.
That's great. And you know, thank you very much.
Thank you.
You know, actually, hidden inside the question is exactly, I think, and I guess I had so many,
probably 200 jury trials in my time as a prosecutor.
Times in which I'd get about two thirds of the way through the case and I'd be like, oh my God, now I know what happened.
Now I know what caused this person to assault this person or what caused this person to do X, Y, Z.
I think, you know, at the core of this, at the core of what has happened is that warehouse were obviously decided they were going to leave.
They had trumped down, their whole corporate process had changed.
They decided they were going to sell the property. They sold it for $70 million.
They did not set aside certain pieces of this land for conservancy.
They sold it. They sold it at $70 million. The whole kid in Kabood.
Okay. That's important to remember.
But I think also, as this happened, and we were trying to figure out, okay, how can we get somebody to come into this,
or come into our community? How can we replace these jobs?
You know, we didn't go out and recruit IRG.
Warehouses recruited IRG.
And they had a whole bunch of other folks.
One of the things, and I think that she actually hit on something, that you're absolutely right.
No one thought of this property as industrial property.
I didn't. As I sat in my office as mayor and I thought, how can we get the best possible use out of this property?
How can we attract jobs? How can we keep this property beautiful?
It never once dawned on me that this was going to turn into some sort of industrial site because it's not an industrial site.
And because of the way it had been used.
So when we were thinking about this, and we're taking a look at this, they say hindsight's 20-20.
There's no better example than this.
Because as I was looking at this and thinking about IRG, I used to say to myself, I am not going to change the zoning of this property.
I am not going to change the zoning of this property.
Somebody wants to come and try to put housing here, wants to put something else here.
I'm going to be the rock in the river, just like we were when they tried to put five lanes in front of the most beautiful steel lake in our community.
Myself and Dini Duclo were the people that stopped that.
They were going to take one of the most beautiful sections of our city and destroy it for its future.
We stopped that.
And so we also stopped just earlier this year.
We stopped that refinery in Tacoma.
It wasn't until the City of Federalist stood up and said, no.
So I think what you guys are doing is beautiful.
I mean, I think it's absolutely great that you guys are doing this.
But I need you guys to know, and why the conversation is important is,
they never donned on us in a million years that people would think about this as an industrial site.
And so what we were really worried about was multi-family housing or housing.
And one of the companies that was interested, we would hear rumors, was some big housing builder or developer.
And I just said, well, okay, well, we're not changing the zoning.
And so I think you've got to kind of approach it from that point of view is that I agree.
That was exactly my viewpoint as well.
So the concomitant agreement does contain that language that allows certain light industrial, certain warehouses.
That's why I said certain light.
And that's what this process is about.
We didn't recruit energy.
We didn't recruit Orca Bay.
We didn't recruit refrigerator.
We received an application.
And we're reviewing it.
So that's, what's that?
Yeah, turn it down.
I didn't bring the city attorney here.
So have they already bought the property?
They've already bought it.
They're attorneys have, are you saying have their attorneys reviewed this?
I already bought the property back in, you know, back earlier this year, back in February.
And they know it's not zoned for that.
Is that what you're telling us?
Well, there's a, we have received, this is the core of what I'm talking about.
We've received an application.
We are processing that application.
There's a claim that it doesn't allow this.
We are working our way through this.
And that's what this letter is all about.
There is a process for all of this.
So it's not for me to say right now what like, you know, I have a certain job as the mayor.
Number one, my job is to represent you.
I'm doing my absolute level best to do that.
Number two, I'm not the city attorney.
And it's important for me not to stand up here and start getting into defining terms.
We do have two acting city attorneys who are doing a superb job.
And actually they're well versed on land use issues.
And so what we are doing right now is we are not prejudging.
I can tell you also, Dr. Brown and everybody else here, you know, I'm a very positive person.
And I can tell you what I think a lot of people really upset.
And, you know, when I first heard about this, when I heard about the corporate headquarters coming to this property and the advanced technological portion of the prefer of the freezer aspect of this,
I made some supportive statements in regard to it.
It's about, you know, the brain jobs, the federal way.
But I have to tell you that I believe that was a mistake.
As your representative, what I should have said, and I did, I knew right away.
As soon as I saw it in print, I thought, well, that's really not that, you know, I am the regular, I had the regulatory agency.
What I needed to do, what I needed to say, what I'm telling you right now is we will play this straight and we are.
And we are going to, we're doing everything by the book.
And that's what, I haven't even actually, just so you know, Scott Sproul, our interim community development director,
and our new community development director starts on November 1st.
He and I have never really had, in regard to a substantive conversation about the merits about all of this because it's not appropriate.
We are playing it absolutely straight.
I just, we want to build.
So your three minutes is up, do you guys have any members that would like to see your stand, that might only hear them for a minute?
Sure, sure.
Alright, let's go.
Alright, guys.
