City should admit error and solve dispute

George Le Masurier

of the Gateway

ONCE three levels of judiciary ruled against the City of Gig Harbor in its desperate attempt to stop Gordon Rush from building high-density housing at the corner of Hunt Street and Skansie Avenue, a lawsuit was inevitable.

Now the city faces a $15 million liability of taxpayers’ dollars, plus all of its legal costs, for something that was so unnecessary and wrong-minded in the first place.

The case of Rush Construction Co.’s attempt to provide affordable housing represents in classic form why developers used to find the city difficult to work with and how the city council is being dragged kicking and screaming into the realities of the Growth Management Act.

Rush and architect David Fisher, of North Pacific Design, worked with city planners for two years on the 174-lot development called the Courtyards at Skansie Park. City staff supported the project. During all of that time they never suggested problems with the project or indicated that it wouldn’t receive approval from the city’s Hearing Examiner.

But at the last minute, then-city attorney Carol Morris argued a technical point about conflicts within the Gig Harbor zoning code to the Hearing Examiner, which he rejected.

Relying on Morris’ interpretation, the city council appealed the Hearing Examiner’s ruling.

Then, when a Pierce County Superior Court judge rejected the city’s argument and affirmed the Hearing Examiner’s decision, the city again appealed. This time, the state Court of Appeals rejected the city and again affirmed the Hearing Examiner’s decision.

Undaunted by the opinions of a Hearing Examiner, a Superior Court judge and the state Court of Appeals, the city continued its folly and wasted more tax dollars on an attempt to get the Washington State Supreme Court to hear their case. The high court wisely refused.

In the aftermath, the city fired the Hearing Examiner, Michael Kenyon. It took a few years, but new Mayor Chuck Hunter finally succeeded in hiring a different city attorney.

The high-density development will probably go ahead, and city taxpayers could owe Rush Construction millions of dollars for this colossal boondoggle.

How did it all go so wrong? On the surface, it seems like another case of the city undercutting a developer. City staff led the developer along for two years without a hint of trouble, and then, when the Hearing Examiner agreed, the city council and its attorney did everything possible to try and stop it.

No wonder developers used to regard Gig Harbor as a difficult place to do business. Fortunately, that image has improved recently.

But the real issue is that the city council has not fully embraced the essence of the GMA. In order to protect our rural areas from urban sprawl, the state Legislature decreed that new growth must take place within already designated urban areas. They would have to either fill in or grow up, getting more densely populated.

The Courtyards at Skansie Park proposed to do just that. Of course, the city would have benefited more from higher residential density at its core, say, in the historic downtown area, but the cost of acquiring sufficient land there is prohibitive for an affordable housing project.

The result is sprawl of another sort within Gig Harbor’s urban boundaries, with Uptown becoming the new town center, and potential centerpieces such as the Boys & Girls Club and the YMCA being built on the fringes.

We can only hope the city will now admit its error and settle this dispute without an expensive civil trial.