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Community Corner

Group Fighting Meadowdale Beach Park Development Has Public Meeting Tonight

Citizens for Greater Norma Beach Neighborhoods holding a neighborhood meeting tonight.

From 2005 through 2009, the grass-roots Edmonds group Citizens for Greater Norma Beach Neighborhoods successfully fought against dense development in the Meadowdale Beach Park area.

The group is doing it again, and today will hold a neighborhood meeting at 7 p.m. at , 15442 52nd Ave. W., Edmonds.

The group contends that a proposed development by Everett-based West View Properties will negatively impact the delicate nature of Meadowdale Beach Park. The developer, who the citizens group has clashed with in the past, wants to build a planned development called Seabrook Heights. West View has proposed construction of 72 houses on 13.2 acres above Meadowdale Beach Park on land it owns.

The Snohomish County Planning and Development Services department is currently reviewing West View’s application.

David Allias, president of Citizens for Greater Norma Beach Neighborhoods, noted that the developer reports in his application that the planned subdivision will remove 447 trees and create almost 700 new vehicular trips a day. The plan, says the group, will also increase impervious surfaces by 40 percent, which would have negative storm-water impacts.

Seabrook Heights, which would be accessed from Fisher Road off 148th Street, is proposed near the slopes leading to Lund’s Gulch Creek, a salmon stream within Meadowdale County Park.

Meadowdale Beach Park opened in 1988, said Barb Ingram, past president of Citizens for Greater Norma Beach Neighborhoods and a spokeswoman for the group. “Many people in the community came together to support the landscape architect who developed and implemented the design and construction,” she said.

It was during the four-year process beginning in 2005, she said, that Citizens for Greater Norma Beach Neighborhoods successfully fought against development near the northern slopes of the park. A hearing examiner denied the application, Ingram said, and ruled that those who submit a new application must provide an environmental impact study and prove that there are no cumulative negative impacts from the storm water runoff.

Ingram contends that Snohomish County is not holding West View Properties to the hearing examiner’s previous ruling requiring an environmental impact study on any future applications.

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