Seattle City Council should revisit Seattle Children's expansion plans

THE Seattle City Council will soon be taking up Seattle Children's application for a master plan that would allow it to expand hospital facilities at its Laurelhurst campus to meet future patient needs.

The city's hearing examiner has recommended that the City Council deny Children's master plan because Children's is not located within what is designated as an "urban village." In doing so, we believe the examiner has based her decision on an interpretation of the Seattle Land Use Code that is simply wrong.

To find the city's urban-village policies you need to look to the city's Comprehensive Plan, which is a "mile high" view of land uses that have been determined to be appropriate for various areas of the city. The Comprehensive Plan identifies certain neighborhoods in the city as urban villages, deeming them appropriate areas for higher-intensity residential and commercial development.

The city's Major Institution Code has served as an independent basis for governing the development of "major institutions," basically the city's hospitals, colleges and universities, since its adoption in 1983. When the council adopted the urban-village policies in the early 1990s, it left the Major Institution Code fully intact as the governing criteria for future expansion and development of all major institutions. In other words, the City Council did not modify the Major Institution Code to require major institutions to locate or comply with the new urban-village policies.

The urban-village and major-institution policies have only one thing in common: Each contemplates higher-intensity development in certain areas of the city. The urban-village policies allow higher-intensity development within urban villages, and the Major Institution Code allows our unique major institutions to grow through the council's approval of institutional master plans that include development regulations and mitigation measures customized to fit the particular institution.

The code does not suggest in any way that these two distinct sets of policies were intended to limit one another. In fact, the later-adopted urban-village policies specifically anticipate major institutions "outside" of urban villages and, like Children's, several other major institutions are outside of any designated urban village.

Opponents of Children's expansion argued to the examiner that because Children's is not in a designated urban village, its proposed master plan should be denied. The examiner, unfortunately, seized upon this creative, but indefensible, argument to recommend denial of Children's expansion. The decision is plainly at odds with the city's Comprehensive Plan policies and the long-standing interpretation of the Land Use Code.

We hope the City Council does not perpetuate this error by using a set of unrelated policies to pull the rug out from under Seattle's major institutions. If allowed to stand, this incongruent interpretation of the Land Use Code would undermine years of institutional planning for all of the city's hospitals and colleges located outside of urban villages.

Fortunately, the examiner realized the tenuous basis for her decision and also included a comprehensive set of approval conditions in her recommendation that she said should be used if the council disagrees with her recommendation of denial and decides to approve Children's master plan.

We urge the City Council to accept the examiner's invitation and approve Children's expansion with a set of reasonable conditions that allow Children's to meet the future needs of the children in our region.