Sumner council postpones Stepping Stones hearing
Posted by Roxanne Cooke on September 19th, 2007
Council chambers were packed Monday night. The topic: a quasi-judicial hearing regarding a resident’s appeal of a proposed housing development.
Stepping Stones would cover 2.12 acres near Gault Street and have 12 lots for single-family residences, many under the 6,000 square feet minimum. The project might get away with the smaller lot sizes by using a nearby side street as an alley to provide secondary access to the houses.
The resident who made the appeal, Julie Nordyke-Moltke, argued that the road in question should not be turned into an alley because it affords primary access to a preschool and day care. Plus, all the extra traffic would harm those businesses.
Her argument against the alley may stand, as one council member pointed out that there is a definition of an alley in the Sumner Municipal Code that states it can only provide secondary access.
That definition is different from the one that both parties had used until that point, so the attorney of applicant Ray Armstrong requested time to respond to it. He has until Sept. 27 and Nordyke-Moltke has until Oct. 8 to rebut his statement.
Armstrong, who didn’t attend the hearing, was reached by phone Tuesday. He said he and his brother own the land and jointly decided to get housing put up. City officials talked them through the process and Armstrong said he was under the impression they were doing everything correctly.
“We thought it would go in the community,” Armstrong said. “We just did what everyone told us to do.”