Will you chip in to support our nonprofit newsroom with a donation today? Yes, I want to support My Edmonds News!
A public hearing about potentially rezoning Esperance to allow for more housing is scheduled Tuesday, May 27 in Everett.
The Snohomish County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing starting at 5:30 p.m. at the county administration building, 3000 Rockefeller Ave., Public Meeting Room No. 2.
Those who can’t go in person can attend virtually here. The webinar ID is 857 5876 1809.
According to the planning commission’s agenda, the goal is “to more fully implement and provide consistency with the Urban Medium Density Residential and Urban High Density Residential designations on the future land use map in the recently adopted 2024 Snohomish County Growth Management Act Comprehensive Plan.”
The planning commission’s full agenda can be found here.
The proposal calls for rezoning about 3,499 acres in Snohomish County’s Southwest Urban Growth Area to Low Density Multiple Residential (LDMR) and Multiple Residential (MR). For Esperance, the proposal is to rezone to LDMR.
Esperance is an approximately 448-acre unincorporated pocket of land surrounded by the City of Edmonds. It is currently zoned as R-8,400, which allows for single-family residential lots with a minimum size of 8,400 square feet. Rezoning to LDMR generally allows for multi-family housing, such as townhouses or apartments.
About 4,000 residents live in Esperance, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
On May 22, the My Neighborhood News Network received a flyer from an Esperance resident titled, “Save our neighborhoods!” It included information about the proposed rezone and information about the public hearing.
According to the flyer, there is “insufficient infrastructure” and that the rezone “completely changes the character of the neighborhood irrevocably.”
Those who want to submit public testimony can email it to Taylor.Twiford@snoco.org.
Angelica Relente is a Murrow News Fellow covering housing and related issues in South Snohomish County for the My Neighborhood News Network. Contact her at angelica@myedmondsnews.com.
I have lived her in Esperance for over 15 years and have never seen a police car come down my street or in my neighborhood. Edmonds right next to us has police. Adding more multi-family housing is going to make crime go up. I feel like I pay taxes and so does the other residents of Esperance and yet we have no police presence in Esperance, maybe we could work on that before we put more houses and apartments here.
Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about this, but I think Esperance is just as subject to conforming to the new state mandates on density promoted by Strom Peterson and others that require all non-protected HOA communities to comply or the state will take over their zoning. I would think that would apply to the couunty local governments, just like the city local governments. In the end I doubt Esperence citizens will really have much say about what happens in their own back yards. Welcome to long term one political party rule and making sure everyone has access to an “affordable home.”
My name is Steve Hewitt. My wife, April and I live in Esperance. How can I help to save our beautiful little town
that affords us a lifestyle where the houses are a comfortable distance from each other, and kids have enough
room in the back yard to playfully run around .
The people we bought the house from had a pet pony for they’re three little girls.
Try doing that in a high density zoned city.
I have lived here in Edmonds Esperance for 30 years and I would hate the idea of having multiple housing units next door to me. It would change the neighborhood completely. Does anybody know what the outcome was from the meeting on may 27?
If the rezoning was strategically implemented to incentivize cottage communities (smaller homes) with open space requirements and reasonable lot coverage requirements opposed to townhome developments that encorach onto minimal setbacks then increasing density is not an issue for me. If anything this type of zoning apporoach adds vibrancy and aesthethically pleasing developments opposed to imposing rinse and repeat townhome developments with minimal architectural variability from one townhome to the next.
Cottage style developments could allow for 3 or 4 units (with minimally invasive foundations, think post and piers) per 8400 sf lot and would allow for developers to develop within the confines of existing trees. Completely clearing lots for large townhomes detracts from the feeling of nature that we have in Esperance, where as cottage housing would provide more of cabin-in-the-woods feel, and not drastically change the fabric of the neighborhood. What I’m proposing is a more sustainble and feasible way of approaching density in this kind of community, which is a win-win for the citizens of Esperance, the County and developmers.