Good Idea - Or Obsolete Idea

Northshore School District’s plans for building two schools on the Wellington Hills property is disturbing on many levels.

Primarily, the Wellington Hills site should remain a community park. That’s plain and simple.

Of considerable importance is what Snohomish County has done – and not done – concerning Wellington Hills Park … and that’s another story, and one of lawsuits.

But the main point of this posting is this: I was surprised by the archaic feel of Northshore's proposed plans for new schools, that is, the design+location of their in-construction and proposed new schools.

Key points:

 • The Wellington Hills area has a stable or slightly shrinking population.
 • Millennials have already created new housing-living-employment trends. 
 • Northshore’s latest school, North Creek High School, in final construction, is, in my opinion, architecturally dated - especially when considering environmental issues, land and space value and modern living-employment trends.
 • Limited taxpayer dollars

Please read or listen to the following KUOW news story:  

"The Suburban Office Park is Finally Becoming Obsolete"  

"Every day, 10,000 baby boomers reach the traditional retirement age of 65. But many choose to stay in the workforce part time, or opt to do contract or freelance work, something that's driven millennials into leadership positions—the group is now the largest share of the American workforce. 

These shifting demographics are re-shaping suburbia. Office parks—sprawling corporate campuses—are now nearly obsolete: Nearly 1 billion square feet of inventory sitting idle, a figure that adds up to about 7.5 percent of the country's office inventory. Shopping malls are also being driven to extinction by changing consumer habits—about 15 percent will fail or be converted within the next 15 years, something that's telling a bigger story about where Americans like to work, live and shop. 

And as malls and office parks shutter, communities are looking for ways to revitalize these spaces to fit modern work and retail habits. Ellen Dunham-Jones, co-author of "Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs" and a professor of architecture and urban design at the Georgia Institute of Technology, explains."

... take a look around ... this may, in part, explain why we see empty commercial-industrial buildings ... and suggest better alternatives to the old-fashion approach of ripping up acres of property and altering neighborhoods for new schools.  

Perhaps some of those shuttered office parks are perfectly suited for new schools.

 

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Here’s a current photo of a suburban high school built in 1960 ... 56 years ago!

Here's Northshore's proposal for Wellington Hills

 Pics of the under-construction North Creek High School

There are consequences when the Urban Growth Boundary is moved

Take a close look at the photos ... see those trees on the ridge?  That's the western edge of Wellington Hills Park.

OK, big deal, what's the point?

During the first public disclosure (Oct. 13, 2015) concerning the secret sale by Snohomish County of Wellington Hills Park to the Northshore School District... one of the bureaucrats more or less blew off concerns that the Park was outside the Urban Growth Boundary (located close to the photo's tree line) as unimportant ... the bureaucrat said it was no big deal to move the Urban Growth Boundary to suit their needs.

What happens if he gets his way ... and the boundary separating urban and rural IS moved up the plateau and wraps around the two schools they want ... what else follows?

Look at the kind of stuff in the foreground of the photos ... both commercial sites are very near Route 9, just below the plateau where Wellington Hills Park is located.

And, even closer to the western boundary of the park, in fact so close it's nearly touching the property line of the park.

For the moment, that precious Urban Growth Boundary is all that separates rural places from urban expansion.  And, Wellington Hills Park sits on the rural side of the Boundary, between the commerce in thse photos and people's homes and lives.

And that bureaucrat wants to callously move the Urban Growth Boundary??