by Andy Reay-Ellers May 2005 

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The Roosevelt Neighborhood, north of Seattle’s center, began to be settled as a community in the latter part of the 19th century. In the early 20th century area development really began, with about two thirds of the houses standing today dating from the years between the world wars. A commercial core developed along the principle arterials, especially where they converge in the center of the community. Since the early 1920s another dominant feature of the neighborhood’s center is Roosevelt High School, one of Seattle’s largest. The school is currently undergoing a complete refurbishment.

 

The majority of residences in the Roosevelt Neighborhood are owner-occupied homes, although the last two decades have seen the construction a number of multi-family dwellings, including several larger apartment buildings. Renters occupying local homes represent a mix of working households and students, many of whom attend the nearby University of Washington. Expressed in sheer numbers, there are approximately 1700 residences and 170 businesses within the borders of the Roosevelt Neighborhood.

 

The Roosevelt Neighborhood comprises approximately 60 city blocks, and is bordered by communities similar to Roosevelt’s character of older residential areas with a commercial core. Comparable, yet none of these neighborhoods share the pressures and challenges of Roosevelt’s situation as a principle crossroads of traffic and transit. Roosevelt’s “gateway” role is the result of direct interstate highway access, a more extensive commercial core, and major arterials running both north-south and east-west through the center of the community. The current status of Roosevelt as a busy urban hub will be further heightened by the construction of a regional light rail transit station in the neighborhood’s center. This station is targeted to be completed in 10-12 years.

 

 

Seattle’s neighborhood planning program stems from the Washington State Growth Management Act , passed in 1990. In response to this mandate, the City created Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan: Toward a Sustainable Seattle in 1994, and immediately set about encouraging and guiding Seattle neighborhoods through the process of crafting individual Neighborhood Plans. The Comprehensive Plan specifically established guidelines to help communities develop plans that would accommodate growth in ways that protect a neighborhood’s existing character, provide for its needs, and enhance its livability. In short, Seattle began promoting the tenets of “smart growth” to the city’s neighborhoods.

 

The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association began planning efforts in 1991-1992, and completed the process within the framework established by the passage of the city’s Comprehensive Plan. The creation and approval of the current Neighborhood Plan, “Tomorrow’s Roosevelt” was the result of over 30 months of effort by local residents.   The process included:  monthly committee meetings; more than fourteen public events (presentations and workshops); the creation and distribution of outreach materials on a half-dozen occasions; monthly inclusion of progress reports in the neighborhood newsletter; and two community-wide surveys to further assess public opinion beyond the numerous occasions for public input. Roosevelt’s Neighborhood Plan was adopted by a unanimous vote of the city council in 1999  --  and as such stands as one of the first plans to be completed and adopted in Seattle.

 

 

The Neighborhood Plan as adopted in 1999 proceeded well ahead of concurrent planning of a regional transit system. At the time of the Neighborhood Plan’s creation, there was a rough plan to locate a light rail station somewhere in Roosevelt, but the choice of its site was still years away. Thus, Tomorrow’s Roosevelt recommended where the station would be most suitably sited, but it had to defer a number planning issues that would be determined once that station location was decided.

 

In the winter of 2004-2005 Sound Transit, the regional transit authority building the light rail system, was set to make a final determination of the location of Roosevelt’s transit station. The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association spearheaded a grassroots effort which created a new entity, “North Link Neighborhoods for 12th” to lobby for the station to be located as advised in the neighborhood plan  --  underground in the center of the community. The community supported the selection of this site since it met the smart-growth goals of preserving and enhancing the neighborhood while providing an opportunity to meet the challenge of an expanding population through the location’s ability to accommodate the increased density possible with Transit-Oriented-Development.

 

With the support and endorsement of over thirty civic, governmental, and neighborhood groups Roosevelt succeeded in January 2005 in convincing the Sound Transit Board to choose the “smart-growth site” for the transit station  --  even in the face of an expected $40 million addition cost to select this location and alignment.

 

 

With the station site selected, the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association began working to ensure that the area would benefit from a fully-integrated process of Station-Area-Planning. Unfortunately, none of the governmental bodies involved are yet ready to begin working on this planning. Still, the neighborhood association board, at the encouragement of city council members, is pressing forward with planning. The efforts are taking several forms, one of which is to encourage and instigate early planning efforts by each of the city and county departments impacted by the construction of the transit station  --  and to facilitate communication between these entities in hopes of efficient planning integration. The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association itself is a principle stakeholder in these discussions, since it serves as representative for the neighborhood residents and acts as conduit for community outreach.

 

In meeting with the various stakeholders, the community’s preeminent tool and resource is its Neighborhood Plan, since it represents the established guidelines for area development and reflects the consensus of the inhabitants, both commercial and residential. Thus, it is in the best interests of the community to insure that the neighborhood plan is as complete and up-to-date as possible.

 

An assessment of the current plan shows that even though it is slightly less than ten years old, various changes in the community ( the planned transit station, high school renovations, current and planned developments, etc. ) indicate that the plan should undergo a thorough revision.  This is needed to best address the inevitable issues and conflicts arising from these changes, development, and growth. The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association has formed a new committee to revise the current neighborhood plan, and that effort is now in its early stages of organization.