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GROWTH 09-26-99
Where do we GROW from here? Special Report / South Sound Growth
GROWING dilemma Rural areas sprawl despite law John Dodge, The Olympian Originally published September 26, 1999
Frustration is etched on the weathered face of Lacey-based home builder Emerson Hoel.
The state's 1990 Growth Management Act encourages builders such as Hoel to build in the cities to curb suburban sprawl.
But those new homes often trigger hostility from neighbors who don't want to lose vacant lots and urban open spaces to development.
"I've gotten hate mail on some of my projects," Hoel said. "The public is upset with the building community. We've become the fall guy for growth management."
The dilemma faced by Hoel is just one example of how difficult it is to manage growth.
If "stop sprawl" is the mantra of the state Growth Management Act, the message is not being well received in Thurston County.
The landmark land-use law approved by legislators in 1990 directs rapidly growing counties and cities to channel their growth into urban areas.
Yet here in South Sound, growth continues at a rapid pace outside the cities. For instance:
About 57 percent of the population lives outside the cities, compared with only 42 percent 20 years ago.
And in the years since the Growth Management Act passed, nearly 40 percent of the building permits issued in the county have been in the rural area.
Blame it on a large inventory of rural lots, higher city taxes and a preference by many to live in the country.
The statistics suggest that citizen behavior in South Sound is on a collision course with the goals of the landmark law.
When people aren't willing to live closer together, utility costs, traffic congestion and police and fire response time increase. Open space, farms and forests are lost to subdivisions. Water quality, fish and wildlife habitat decline.
"The Growth Management Act assumes a change in citizen behavior that has yet to occur," notes Graeme Sackrison, a Lacey City Council member. "There's still a lot of folks who want their homes on a large piece of property."
"A lot of people like to live in the country," adds Olympia builder Leo Deatherage.
Local elected officials and planners have never suggested the county's rural areas should be off-limits to all the newcomers, who are expected to total roughly 140,000 people over the next 25 years.
However, the local goal under growth management -- set by elected officials -- is to limit rural growth to about 25 percent of the total. That's still the highest rural growth rate among the six most populated western Washington counties.
Personal preferences aside, several other factors are keeping the welcome mat out in rural Thurston County.
First and foremost is the sheer volume of rural residential land -- nearly half the county land base.
The basic zoning for the 337 square miles of rural residential land was set by the county commissioners at one house per 5 acres in August 1993.
Growth critics say the rural zoning is an invitation to sprawl.
"It should be at least one home per 10 acres or one home per 15 acres," says county growth activist Steve Langer.
Guidelines from the state's Growth Management Program also suggest Thurston County's rural zone isn't rural enough.
"Our preference is one home per 10 acres," says Shane Hope, managing director of the Growth Management Program.
But the law doesn't allow the state to tell the county what to do. The county plan stands, unless it is successfully appealed to the state Growth Management Hearings Board or the courts.
County officials note the county didn't even have rural zoning until 1980. Even then, one or two homes per acre were allowed.
"Just to get to one unit per 5 acres is a huge change," observes Harold Robertson, executive director of the Thurston Regional Planning Council.
The county also allows developers to cluster new homes in a rural-area subdivision, creating pockets of suburban-style development.
In exchange, the developer sets aside the rest of the property as community open space.
It's been a popular option since 1993, with 123 projects totaling nearly 1,400 lots either approved or in the county permit pipeline.
The practice has its detractors, including Rainier Road resident Bill Buck.
The home he purchased 10 years ago sits on 5 acres. He expected any future neighboring development to be on 5 acres, too.
Instead, he is confronted with a 65-acre subdivision that features all 13 homes bunched together near his property line.
"I could live with a 5-acre housing site next door, but not this," he says of the proposal. "It may force me to move."
The county spent several years before 1993 and before growth management became law fine-tuning its rural zone. Landowners and developers created thousands of smaller lots before the new rural zoning took effect.
The result: Nearly 30 percent of the roughly 55,000 existing homes and potential building sites in the rural area are on lots smaller than 5 acres, according to the county's 1995 comprehensive land-use plan.
"I see torn-up landscapes and the open space around me closing up," says Nadine Romero, a Tumwater resident who moved here the year the growth management law passed. "With a lot more planning, we could have done a better job."
"We have 21 homes going in right next door to us on 13 acres," says Cindy Moyer, a rural Rochester-area resident for 17 years. "It's harder to get across the road to get the mail than it used to be."
Lee Jacobson, owner of Happy Hen Farm near Rochester, said the rural growth is a two-edged sword.
"We have more customers for our farm produce, but we're losing farmland to development," he says. "Our neighborhood is becoming a bedroom community for Lacey and Olympia."
"We can't unring that bell," Robertson says of all the land that was chopped up before the rural zoning was completed. "Because we have so many lots, it will take us a long time to get 75 percent of the population growth into the urban areas."
Corralling expansion
In the 1990s, about 60 percent of new homes have been built in the county's urban area.
The so-called urban growth boundaries wrap around nearly 100 square miles in Thurston County, an area slightly larger than Seattle and more than twice the size of Paris, France.
There's enough land inside the boundaries, which extend far beyond the current city limits, to accommodate all of the county growth for the next 20 years, and then some, planners and city officials say.
The large urban area is a direct result of leapfrog development that occurred in Thurston County 20 to 30 years ago, much of it northeast of Lacey.
"There was a lot of demand out there -- a lot of housing demand from Fort Lewis," recalls Deatherage, who started building houses in the Lacey area in the 1960s. "Land was cheap and building permits were quick and easy. We just built where the demand was."
Flash forward to the 1990s and Lacey's urban area is still a hotbed of residential construction.
About 47 percent of all the housing permits issued in the county's urban area this decade have been in Lacey and its urban growth area. That's nearly 6,000 building permits through September 1998 in the Lacey urban area.
Lacey's proximity to job centers in Pierce and King counties is one major draw, notes Lacey City Manager Greg Cuoio.
Tom Burdick, a self-described "King County refugee," moved into Lacey's urban growth area near Pattison Lake with his three daughters eight years ago.
"The growth pressure in King County was driving me crazy," the mechanical engineer says.
"Right now, we have a very attractive lifestyle in the Lacey-Olympia area," he says. "Eventually, Thurston County will experience the same traffic congestion and other growth problems as King County."
Some Lacey residents consider the growth in housing out of control.
Linda Mewhirter has lived in Tanglewilde in Lacey's urban growth area since 1994. She doesn't like what she sees.
"As far as I'm concerned, Lacey is becoming a concrete prison, built solely for the purpose of housing consumers," she says. "Traffic from Martin Way and Marvin Road makes walking beyond our housing development difficult and unpleasant, as well as very unsafe."
Another growth hot spot is Yelm. The population doubled in the 1990s to 2,750.
Retired saleswoman Ernestine Gray moved to Yelm 40 years ago, settling there after her husband served an Army tour of duty at Fort Lewis.
"There were 125 people, no cars on the road and you never locked your door," she recalls.
Gray, 68 and a Virginia native, still loves her adopted home town, but is troubled by some of the changes.
"There's a lot more traffic and I've experienced theft from my mail box," she says. "I'm not against the growth, but I hope a new mall proposed next door doesn't go in for a few more years. Maybe by then I will be dead."
Land-use debate looms
No one can say exactly when the county's urban areas will fill up with homes, apartments and people. It could take 30 years or more.
The state Legislature in 1997 gave Thurston County and the five other largest counties in western Washington until 2002 to do a thorough inventory of land available for building. The study is in its early stages in Thurston County.
But assume for a moment the urban area reaches full capacity. Then what?
The state Growth Management Act doesn't allow a county or city to simply set a population ceiling to halt growth.
The more likely scenario will be an attempt to push the urban boundaries out farther into the rural areas.
Such a move is likely to touch off a spirited community debate over the pros and cons of continued growth, Robertson says.
"You can't go on indefinitely expanding the urban growth boundaries," Olympia City Councilman Mark Foutch says.
Maybe a taxpayer revolt, or protection of endangered species, or a water supply crisis will put the brakes on growth before the urban area fills up, growth critics and environmentalists suggest.
Statewide, local governments have estimated a need for $8 billion by 2003 to pay for existing deficiencies and the demands of growth on roads, bridges and utilities, according to a report prepared this year for the state Public Works Board.
A 1997 study by the Thurston Regional Planning Council pegged the countywide need for schools, roads, parks and utilities at $656 million.
"When people finally make the connection between tax increases and growth, there will be a revolt," suggests Jerry Parker, an Olympia resident and member of the Carnegie Group, a citizens group in favor of slow growth.
Or growth could be restricted by continued listings of salmon under the federal Endangered Species Act, adds Peter Moulton, a South Sound environmentalist.
"Salmon will have a huge impact," Moulton predicts. "Just wait until coho salmon and cutthroat trout are listed."
Olympia is already considering reducing the amount of development it will allow near salmon-bearing streams in some of its prime, undeveloped neighborhoods.
Growing pains
While the law was passed in 1990, counties and cities had until 1995 to complete their land-use plans and regulations.
"The Growth Management Act is still in its awkward adolescence stage," Robertson observes.
Despite its shortcomings, many think the state Growth Management Act is making a difference statewide and in Thurston County.
Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater are all seeing higher urban density in their newer developments, which is consistent with the law.
"Our newer subdivisions have five homes per acre," says Subir Mukerjee, director of Olympia's Community Planning and Development Department. "Five years ago, they were 2.5 homes per acre."
There are some recent signs that the population growth is slowly headed to the cities. The annual growth rate last year was 3 percent in the cities and only 2 percent in the unincorporated county.
The cities and county are working more closely on land-use planning and ideas to pay for new parks, roads and utilities.
"Growth management permeates everything we do," Tumwater City Councilman Pete Kmet says.
"It's brought some honesty into growth issues," the Carnegie Group's Langer says. "Before that, growth just happened."
Because the Growth Management Act requires counties to protect farm and forest land, Thurston County has 250 square miles set aside to grow trees and crops.
"The Nisqually Valley is still green," notes Robertson.
So how well are Thurston County and its cities complying with the growth management law compared to other areas of the state?
Well, Thurston County had urban growth boundaries in 1988, five years before the state law required them.
"Thurston County and King County are the leaders in growth management," says Hope, the state's growth management director.
The act has withstood political attacks from 1995 through 1998 in the state Legislature.
"Growth management -- the words weren't even uttered in the 1999 session," observes Rep. Sandra Romero, D-Olympia.
Much of the venom directed at the Growth Management Act these days comes from builders and developers.
They blame it for driving up the cost of building lots and homes, and trying to force people to live in the city.
"Housing has been the victim of growth management," says Doug DeForest, executive director of the Olympia Master Builders.
He points to lot prices that have more than doubled since 1993, when the county rural zoning was revised and the urban growth boundaries were set.
"The downzone was the single largest impact on lot prices ever in this county," says Thurston County Commissioner Judy Wilson, referring to the 1993 requirement for 5-acre minimum lot sizes in the rural area.
Wilson, a former home loan officer, was a harsh critic of the law before her election to the county commission in 1992.
"As a citizen, I didn't like it," she recalls. "But as an elected official, I think it's working."
Adds Sandra Romero: "I wouldn't like to see what this state would look like without growth management."
By the NUMBERS
Thurston County's biggest growth spurt in the past 100 years occurred in the 1970s, when the population grew by nearly 48,000.
The 1990s marked the slowest growth rate in Thurston County -- 2.7 percent per year -- since the 1950s.
Lacey and its urban area population totals about 57,000, compared with about 47,700 in greater Olympia.
By 2025, forecasters predict a Thurston County population of 343,300, with more than 94,000 living in greater Lacey. The Olympian Copyright 2000 back to main GROWTH 09-26-99 index
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