When Progress Meets Politics
11.05.2007 | Posted By: By Sam McNeil | Back to project updatesThe traditional answer to growth is expansion. But the population explosions of Los Angeles, Seattle and Atlanta have given warning to smaller towns about how irresponsible and poorly planned growth will damage the environment, the future economy and the residents' quality of life.
Bellingham's predicted population explosion has caused many Bellingham residents who oppose growth to worry that they soon will see their green surroundings covered in concrete, their communities becoming too expensive to live in and their neighbors replaced with a sea of strangers.
Growth is inevitable. To not talk about it or have a plan is unrealistic, said Rob Staveland, president of Aiki Homes Inc., a Bellingham construction, consulting and design firm for resource-efficient homes.
"To slam the door on development would be inappropriate - that would be just as bad as letting uncontrolled development happen," Staveland said.
But the answer to how to plan for growth is debatable. Some would prefer to build on the outskirts, while others want to build on underdeveloped land within the city.
"We are not stopping growth," said Seth Fleetwood, Whatcom County Council's at-large member. "We are changing the conception of how we grow."
This concept is growth from within by increasing the amount of people living on the same amount of land by making the city denser. Decreasing housing size and mixing building use between commercial and residential are parts of the denser-city concept, as is growing vertically.
Not everyone agrees this is the answer to Bellingham's expansion. The Building Industry Association of Washington, for example, is ardently opposed to the concept. According to the organization's 2006 newsletter, Building Insight, the density concept is invalid because it ignores affordable housing and private property rights at the expense of homebuyers and landowners.
The Building Industry Association of Washington has organizations and related political action committees called Affordable Housing Councils in counties throughout the state. With 11,490 members, it is the fourth largest homebuilder's association in the United States.
The Building Industry Association of Whatcom County chapter is a collection of realtors, construction-related businesses and developers from Blaine to Wickersham who believe that density creates unaffordable communities and limits growth.
The BIAWC lobbies for expanding the urban growth area - land legally available for construction - by legalizing the allotment of many homes on current, low-density, rural lands. According to the BIAWC, the initial investment of buying the land would be smaller for the developer therefore, the price is lower for the consumer.
"The market decides the cost of housing, not developers," said Nicholas Zaferatos, a professor of planning and environmental policy at Western's Huxley College of the Environment. "That is the big lie."
No matter what a house costs to build - land sale plus construction cost - it is sold to the highest bidder, and a lot of hungry bidders are moving to Bellingham, Zaferatos said.
For example, the median price of a house in Whatcom County increased by more than $100,000 from 2000 to 2005, and last year the price increased by 20.8 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The increase in the cost of raw land and materials did not match this increase.
The Building Industry Association of Washington sponsors Built Green, a nonprofit, environmentally friendly rating and information program. Although Staveland, a Built Green member, said he finds common ground with the program, disagrees with the association's stand on other issues, as well as its hunger for rural land.
"Expanding the urban growth area doesn't help builders," Staveland said.
The money that will be made if the urban growth area is expanded would not go to local builders but to big developers, such as Bellingham heavyweights D.R. Horton and Homestead Northwest Co., which usually get the contracts to build on new land and do not hire local builders, Staveland said.
Both the density concept and the association's enlargement strategy must work within the state Growth Management Act of 1990. To avoid potentially negative growth, the act requires state and local governments to identify and protect natural resource lands, designate urban growth areas and prepare and implement comprehensive plans.
Last year, the elections of city and county council members, who essentially would interpret the act, became a collision point between the BIAWC and those opposing the group. Candidates disagreed which lands should be protected, where the urban growth area extends and how to prepare and practice development plans. In the end, every BIAWC-supported candidate was defeated.
Citing the need for affordable housing, the BIAWC and those candidates who lobbied for extending the urban growth area into rural areas and cutting up the 5-acre parcels into small estates for new home construction.
Aiki Homes has another option.
"Our affordability strategy is to build smaller," said Staveland, who would like to see legislation require a percentage of new development in the urban growth area to be affordable housing this would create an incentive to provide housing needed for low income residents.
Staveland said that those for and against increasing density need to work on a compromise. He does not condone or dismiss either concept for growth, finding virtues and flaws with both, but instead looks for a middle ground.
By all accounts, Bellingham is changing because of large amounts of money and people. The task at hand is to make sure the new development reflects Bellingham's community, said Fleetwood.
"It truly goes back to how we grow," he said, "Not whether we grow."