||| FROM SAN JUAN COMMUNITY HOME TRUST |||
The Town is blocking our development of affordable housing. For the past two years, we have been diligently trying to satisfy the Town of Friday Harbor’s requirements so that we can sell 8 completed homes to homebuyers in our HolliWalk neighborhood who qualify for our program. During that time, the Town has continued to delay, has escalated its requirements, and has refused to record the Binding Site Plan that would allow the residents to buy their homes.
We are asking you to join us in demanding that the Town record the Binding Site Plan to allow HolliWalk residents to purchase their homes, which were completed 2 years ago and which they have been forced to rent rather than own for the past year and a half.
The Town continues its pattern of adding new demands to our site plan, undeterred by a 2024 Hearing Examiner’s ruling against this. In December 2023, the Town issued a decision requiring the Home Trust to build additional street improvements as a condition of recording the Binding Site Plan. It took seven months to appeal this decision to an independent Hearing Examiner who ruled that the Town could not
add new requirements AFTER they had approved the design of the project, AFTER the project was constructed, and AFTER they inspected and approved the construction.
Ignoring the Hearing Examiner’s ruling and the State laws that he cited in that ruling, the Town issued a new decision in January 2025
requiring the Home Trust to meet more new conditions including providing individual water meters for each home at the cost of more than $70,000 AFTER approving the initial site plan with one meter.
Each step of the way, we have tried to quietly and diligently work with the Town to resolve these issues, make changes, etc. All the while, our homebuyers are losing equity, the Home Trust continues to pay construction loan interest, and our mission to create permanent affordable housing goes unfulfilled.
The Town is blocking our other projects as well. It is not just HolliWalk. We are experiencing a similar pattern of delay and changing requirements on our proposed Argyle Project and our other efforts to create affordable housing. Enough is enough.
If you care about affordable housing for our community, please join us in demanding that the Town record the Binding Site Plan for HolliWalk so that these homes can be sold to their resident buyers. There must be a reset in the Town’s practices so that Friday Harbor can see the permanent affordable housing it so desperately needs and deserves and that our Comprehensive Plan calls for. We are in unanimous support of this effort. Please visit our website to learn more and to see how you can help.
Amanda Lynn, Executive Director; Board of Directors Executive Committee: Paul Fischburg, Jim Goetz, Erica Hamlin, Darcie Nielsen; All other Board Members: Adrian Kilpatrick, Bob Anderson, Chris Pope, Cole Arendt, Elliot Burch, Rachel Brooks, Shauna Barrows
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This seems like a serious issue and sensible request, which, at least, deserves public response from the Town of Friday Harbor.
This is an unfair and unwarranted attack on town employees and our Town Council who are essentially volunteers; they give their time not because they get paid to (they get about $6,000/yr), but because they love this community. The Home Trust originally designed HolliWalk to access onto Price Street, a 40′ wide right of way. Their SITE PLAN showing the layout of the project was approved. More than a year later and after submitting building permits they decided to entirely change the layout and have all 8 units access onto a narrow alley (Holli Place) rather than onto Price St., purportedly to avoid having to move a rock. In order to keep the project moving ahead, the town agreed to grant the building permits while we worked out the details of the SITE PLAN, even though a SITE PLAN is almost always required before building permits are issued. A SECOND SITE PLAN was approved. With staff changes both at the Home Trust and at the town, the town failed to require sidewalks, curbs, and gutters (“frontage improvements”) on Holli Place, even though they are required by our code. The Home Trust appealed the Town’s attempt to enforce our code and challenged the Town’s requirement to install frontage improvements on Holli Place. The Hearing Examiner agreed frontage improvements are required by code, but said it was too late to require them once the SECOND SITE PLAN was approved. Although the town disagreed with the decision we chose not to appeal. THAT’S THE SIDEWALK ISSUE. In October 2023, the Home Trust informed our permitting department they intended to sell some or all of the units they had built, even though they had submitted the project as duplexes. There had been no indication they intended to sell off units and as submitted the project appeared to be a typical multifamily development. If the original intention was to sell units, at the very start the HT needed to submit a BINDING SITE PLAN, which despite its similar sounding name is NOT A SITE PLAN, but is a way to divide property for common interest communities as an alternative to a traditional subdivision. Once permitting staff learned the HT wanted to sell units, we informed the HT they needed to do a BINDING SITE PLAN (which is NOT A SITE PLAN!). They are not the same and they serve different purposes. And in order to share utility infrastructure, the HT is required to submit an application for a PLANNED RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT. This is a land use tool that allows for smaller internal; streets, shared water meters, etc. (The County code calls them Planned Unit Developments, but they are the same thing.) It also is NOT A SITE PLAN. Instructing HT staff on the code requirements has been unfairly labelled as “constantly changing the rules,” but the rules didn’t change: the HT staff’s awareness of them did. WHERE ARE WE NOW… The HT is arguing the Hearing Examiner’s decision to not enforce frontage improvements was an approval of the project as complete. This is utterly false. The only issue the HT appealed, and the only issue decided, was that frontage improvements on Holli Place were not required. The only thing left for the HT to do is to fill out a simple 1-page PRD application (the town waived the fee), and install landscaping. The photo above was taken during construction and the photo on the HT website is cleverly angled to hide the weeds that cover the property. I am attaching a photo provided by the County showing the current state of the property. I am also providing a photo showing for comparison OPAL’s April’s Grove property, developed on Orcas. The town is asking no more of the HT than the County asks of OPAL. It needs to be properly landscaped. Finally, the number of errors in the HT’s timeline are too numerous to list here: no one at the Town met with the HT on January 15. Never happened. The submittal in October was for a Development Agreement on the Argyle lots project and had nothing to do with HolliWalk. The HT Director knows no one has the time to fact-check her, so falsehoods abound. It’s time to get this done, stop throwing a tantrum and act like an adult.
“The notion that Planning can impose new conditions on a building project at the time it makes its final inspection before issuing a Certificate of Occupancy is the antithesis of fairness and contrary to the principle of finality….
During the final inspection, Planning may certainly point out deficiencies and discrepancies regarding compliance with the approved plans and require correction. But adding conditions at that time defies common sense and is not reasonable.”
-Words from the Hearing Examiner that THE TOWN hired to review it’s handling of the Holliwalk homes.
Antithesis of fairness, defying common sense, unreasonable- A neat summation of the Town of Friday Harbor ‘s staff’s behavior. That the Town continues to jerk around the average folks who are living in these houses is unconscionable. Putting up every road block possible to affordable housing.
People on Orcas may for good reason be unaware of the way the Town has conducted itself over the past few years, but it’s long past time that the citizens of Friday Harbor WAKE UP.