Sample message to Port Commissioners
Use or adapt this message to send to Port Commissioners. Send to: calkins.r@portseattle.org, cho.s@portseattle.org, felleman.f@portseattle.org, hasegawa.t@portseattle.org, mohamed.h@portseattle.org
Port officials have recently reassured the public that the agency has no commercial development plans in North SeaTac Park.
But the park is zoned for commercial development and the Port’s current Real Estate Strategic Plan recommends 340,000 square feet of “aviation supportive use” inside the park.
Please write to Commissioners to let them know you want the Port to move beyond temporary reassurances and, instead, provide meaningful, permanent protection for the park.
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Dear Commissioners Calkins, Cho, Felleman, Hasegawa, and Mohamed,
The Port’s Local Government Relations Manager recently wrote that the Port has “stated many times” that it is “not considering any development in North SeaTac Park”.
Though the Port is not considering development inside the park today, it can still consider it tomorrow.
In fact, your agency recommends, in its 2020 Real Estate Strategic Plan (RESP), “340,000 square feet of aviation supportive use” as well as a new Food Innovation Center inside a 55-acre parcel of the park. This parcel, adjacent to Tub Lake Bog, is now covered in trees, wetlands, and bicycle trails.
The recommendation in the RESP, along with the fact that the entire park is zoned aviation commercial and that the Port can take the 55-acre parcel in question out of park use “at any time”, clearly indicates that North SeaTac Park is vulnerable to development.
Please commit in writing that the Port:
Formally withdraws the recommendation for developing North SeaTac Park that now appears in the RESP;
Will support the City of SeaTac in changing North SeaTac Park zoning from Aviation Commercial to Park;
Will commit to working with all necessary partners to secure legally binding protection of North SeaTac Park as a park in perpetuity or, alternately, will transfer ownership of the park to the City of SeaTac under terms ensuring the same outcome;
Will propose no commercial development within the 220 acres of North SeaTac Park in current or future versions of the SAMP, RESP, or other plans.
This park was created, as the FAA writes, “to compensate the area residents for cumulative airport impacts..”
In the 1970s, when people’s houses, businesses, and schools were removed from this land for airport expansion, the SeaTac Communities Plan held that the area would develop in primarily recreation uses and that the area around Tub Lake, where the RESP now recommends commercial development, should be, instead, a wetland preserve.
Preservation of this park should not be a controversial matter but one simply of keeping promises and treating the people in this community, who experience high levels of negative airport impacts and environmental health disparities, with justice and fairness.
Sincerely,
