A map of where the proposed townhome project (marked in yellow) would be placed across nearly 17 acres of open space ex-farmland on 9321 and 9509 Paradise Lake Road.
MALTBY — County Hearing Examiner Peter Camp last week denied an appeal from two area residents seeking to reopen the land-use approval of the 196-unit Snohomish Garden Townhomes development east of state Route 522 and Paradise Lake Road, throwing out the entire appeal as not showing proof the decision should be reopened.
Area residents Debbie Wetzel and Linda Gray are looking at their next options.
Wetzel considers the bigger-picture issue is the recent trend of large-scale residential growth in the Cathcart-Maltby-Clearview area.
It used to be that “there’s urban, there’s rural and there’s suburban —where did the ‘suburban’ go?” Wetzel said.
The townhomes site is in the County’s longstanding Southwest Urban Growth Area (SWUGA), as is the big development at Cathcart Way and Highway 9.
In September 2022, the County Council voted 4-0 to change the rules to allow exemptions on requiring a project to undergo environmental SEPA review if it can be called infill within an Urban Growth Area. Its Ordinance 22-037 was to match an act by the state legislature to modify SEPA to encourage infill development in designated urban growth areas.
A prior 360-unit apartment proposal did not move forward because the county planning department found serious environmental impact issues during the SEPA review process. But the revised 196-unit Snohomish Garden Townhomes fit within the no-SEPA exemption framework.
In his decision, Camp rejected Wetzel and Gray’s argument the townhomes aren’t really infill and should require a SEPA.
Camp also dismissed an argument the road system already can’t handle more traffic. Camp caught them out on terminology, writing that congestion is not a criteria for the code the petitioners cited in their argument.
The petitioners also sought to have the record reopened to require the applicants to submit newer traffic impact data.
Camp wrote that the applicants did give 2023 traffic data. If there were objections at that time, that was the time to give them, he wrote.
Camp thirdly dismissed an argument that Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue (SRFR) didn’t get to properly weigh in about past concerns on traffic delaying the ability for fire responders to travel the area if the site is built.
When the proposal was for 360 apartments, the then-fire marshal for SRFR’s predecessor Fire District 7 submitted serious concerns. This go-around, the county did ask, and SRFR “did not ratify or express the earlier concerns nor identify any new or different concerns,” Camp wrote. The fire agency’s new concerns do not incorporate Fire District 7’s concerns about the project, Camp wrote.
Wetzel thinks the fire agency wasn’t asked the same questions in the last go-around.
Any renewed appeal of the townhomes project would need to be submitted to the County Council by Friday, April 5.
Wetzel is thinking of filing an appeal considering the project had opposition emails from 200 area neighbors.
“I would take it to the Council but why bother because they’ll dismiss it,” she said.
Last year, the council administratively dismissed an appeal on the approval of a larger mosque on State Street without a public hearing. An appeal to council over a large development at Cathcart Way and Highway 9, for comparison, underwent a public hearing at council.
