the city's master plan in June of last year. That road, 324th, on the east side of Federal
Way, when IRG was marketing that property, was unaware to them. So the way that warehouse
is designed or proposed right now, no application has been put in, won't work. And so they're
really trying to figure out what to do now about that cut through road. They have an
obligation that the road, it's part of our master plan. It'd be required to build that
state department of transportation, but obviously be responsible for the, for the overpass.
And this is really all about, you guys remember about, I think it was about seven, eight years
ago, there was a lot of discussion, there was a lot of discussion about getting people
off the freeway and further west into Federal Way. And remember they were right around Steel
Lake, just south of Steel Lake, they were going to widen that road to about five lanes, it
taken all the way to Dash Point. Well that cut stopped, and it really has to do with
access and freeway access, because 320th, as we all know, is a huge clogged up point.
So there had been a lot of discussions, even back then, 320th was one of those areas. Between
270th and 320th, there weren't a lot of, there aren't a lot of good choices to get off the
freeway and get people west. I'm sorry, it's 625, I can't figure it out, here at 8.
So what I'm telling you is actually, what I'm telling you, the very point through is
very interesting and germane, certainly. It is, because what it means is that the warehouse
that is being, that was proposed for a pre-application process won't work. So I just want to give
you that piece of information. We also have information that perhaps the financing isn't
all together on that as well. So that's a very, very important piece of this I need
to give you. All right, go on. Thank you. So my name is Michael Brown. I'm the Vice
President of the Save Warehouser Campus Organization, and I had a couple statements and then I do
have a couple questions. In terms of the process that would have avoided this sort of acrimony
that we've experienced at the City Council meetings, that I think is to some extent the
result of the fact that our notification that a fish processing plant was going to be built
in our neighborhood across the street from our neighborhood was a 8x11 sign. I had to
build a 6x8 foot sign to put a docket on the lake. So no notification, no discussion, no
kind of laying the groundwork for what the concomitant agreement means or what all the
parameters are. So it's no wonder that with only 17 days to get up to speed and give
notice and make public statements that we were agitated. Yet 400 people did make comments
during the concomitant agreement. Right, but we weren't pleased that we had such a short
period of time at any rate. We're all made comments, we're all here. The second thing
is I don't envy your position. I work in the healthcare industry. It's extraordinarily
complex and regulated and the stakes are very high. So similar in some ways to what you
do. And I imagine navigating something like this with so many competing interests is difficult.
I would say what I notice in the hospital is when there's a set of rules, you can use
them to make something happen if you want it to happen or you can make some stop something
from happening, if that's what you want. There's a little wiggle room. And the one, the specific
instance that I'm asking about is the decision to review the preferred freezer project as
a process three review rather than process four review. And going through all the rules
and the regulations, the concomitant agreement, if that, if the facility was identified to
be within 200 feet of a residential neighborhood, it would be a phase four review. Right. Because
of that. Now, I looked through the definition pages of the 1992, I think it was a federal
way code and there's no definition of the word facility. Therefore, there's some leeway
in the definition of the term facility in, in applying the rule to figure out who needed
to be notified by mail directly, it was within 300 feet of the facility. And that was interpreted
as the build, you know, the built the building, not the parking lot. No, the built site, everything
that was built parking lot, garage, whatever building. Similarly, in the letter that went
from the city to IRG's consultants, I think the other day, they define facility for the
purpose of these boundary considerations as the built structures, including the parking
lot. Now, if you had included the parking lot, which is very easy to argue, you could,
if that's what you chose, this would have required a phase four review. And it would
have required a public hearing and the onus of the burden of proof would have been on
IRG, not on those of us who don't want that in our neighborhood. And so that isn't, that
is a specific decision that someone at the city made that was extremely unfortunate and
unnecessary and could easily within the realm of, of protecting your, your self from litigation
could have been made. That's one point. The two questions I have are one, we've had some
difficulty ascertaining the current legal status of the west shore of the lake. At the
time of the 94 concomitant agreement, it was designated as a conservancy with a required
200 foot setback. And there was the stipulation that within a year, the city would reconsider
making it urban and taking away the 200 foot setback. In 1998, when Warehouse are asked
for that to be done, they met with neighbors and they retracted that request. So there
has not been, as far as we can tell, a subsequent request to change it out of conservancy. So
some of the federal way and King County master planning maps show it as conservancy. Some
show it as urban. Some show the north half as conservancy and the south half as urban.
All the marketing materials shows it simply as CP1 industrial use with the threat of there
being industrial use within 25 to 50 feet of the lake. So, and I've asked sent emails
to someone in the city and I know they're overwhelmed by these requests, but we won't
run with me today. We'd really like to know what is the current legal status on what documents
is that understanding based. Okay, thank you, doctor. I want to take that apart and just
put a couple of these things. The first is in regard to the surprise. Now, you know,
we first started hearing about this, you know, a couple months before they actually dropped
their application. And it was a matter of that they were, you know, we're talking about
preferred freezer in Orca Bay. It was a matter of their general interest and about that they
were looking at this. I can tell you that on the particular day or the week that they
actually dropped the application, I was surprised that they dropped it that time. And one of
the things I have told them, I told the CEO of Orca Bay, I told the folks at the preferred
freezer, I told the CEO of IRG that, you know, you never get a couple things, you know, you
never get a second chance to make a first impression. And obviously, by leading with
this and the manner that this application was dropped, it was a couple relations disaster.
And they owed you the opportunity to, there had been all kinds of discussions going on.
I've talked to people with with conservancy groups about that, that the forest area on
the west side of the lake, this has obviously been a huge initiative on my administration
part over the past two years to get somebody to buy this property and to get a great use
out of this property. So the manner in which that was, you know, all of a sudden they just
walked in and walked the application in. And then, boom, I think that's one of the things
I always told young prosecutors that I was training was people respond poorly when they
are surprised. And this is exhibited. Absolutely. And I agree with that. I just went, just,
my goodness. I mean, from a PR point, absolutely ridiculous. The size of the signs in regard
to notification, I mean, that's done in a level that has nothing to do with what I do.
I just, you know, I start here, the first I heard about that concern was when people
started coming up and giving comments. And that's something that in the future we will
look at in regard to that. But they're, you know, I would not assign any sort of, you
know, motive or anything. I think that that, again, you're right, that that kind of thing
for as important as it was, you know, sends the wrong message. What are you trying to
get something by? Clearly not. It's just that it's what they decide to use. It's certainly
not happening at a much, much, much lower level. So let me, there was another thing,
process three versus process four. The city attorneys, you know, I have to rely on them
in regard to their, in regard to their judgment as far as, you know, that process three versus
process four. Process three is what was the, obviously the concomitant agreement and our
process has changed over the course of the past 22 years. And taking a look at the concomitant
agreement, the most similar aspect of that was process three. But the only difference
substantively between process three and process four is you start with a CD director. If there's
an appeal, then it goes to the hearing examiner. And so I just want to make sure that everybody
knows that you've got the CD, the community development director that will make the initial
determination, the threshold determination. And then there's a right to an appeal to the
full hearing examiner. But I'm, you know, I get the advice from, what was that?
There's a huge difference. That's the cost of doing so. And a burden of truth lies out
at a different party in two ways can be done. Right? That, that termination.
Dr. Hill, let me hand this to you so you can finish that thought.
There's a huge difference between process three and process four. One significant one is the
cost of appealing the development director's decision and therefore sending it to the hearing
examiner. The second one is, as we've been told, the burden of proof in a phase three review,
process three review, if we were to appeal it, the burden of proof lies on us to prove that
the decision was wrong. Whereas in a process four review, the burden of proof is on the
developer to prove that they're meeting all the requirements. So it's a significant difference.
And it seems to me like the difference between three and four, as I described with 200 feet,
whether facility means parking lot or not, that sounds to me like a part of a political,
we want to make things as fast and easy as possible for these guys or, hey, this doesn't
smell good. Let's slow it down if we can, like in that kind of territory. Thank you. We've got no
interest in trying to speed this up. We've got absolutely no interest to speed this up. We don't
own the property. This is IRG's property. We have no vested interest in getting this done. We took
a look at it. I understand that. I think that's really what's fueling a lot of this concern.
Obviously, the small signs, that's...
