Council wrestles with decision regarding Osborn School

The City and Cascade School District have agreed to extend the decision regarding the city’s option to buy the Osborn School from September 30 until December 31, 2020.

Questions remain about how the community expects the property to be developed to best benefit local residents. Discussions have suggested green space, a community center, affordable housing even parking.

The decision regarding what do about the school has consumed much of the council’s time over the past few months including their annual retreat.

A motion was approved in June to evaluate the environmental hazards that may be present in the building such as lead paint or asbestos. Department of Ecology had previously tested the soils and declared they were free of arsenic or lead.

At the July 28 Council Meeting City Administrator Ana Cortez-Steiner proposed the city engage the services of the Center for Creative Land Recycling. CCLR is a national nonprofit that facilitates finding the best use of available land.

Council member Waters expressed concern that the decision should be driven by the community and that she believed the taxpayers of the Cascade School District wanted a park. She said she would prefer to work with “Parks for People,” a local group.

While Mayor Florea and Council members Hessburg and Wilson supported the proposal on the basis that CCLR was simply providing a visioning process to help the community decide. Ultimately council tabled the decision.

Council has planned to discuss how to proceed on the visioning process at its August 11 meeting. As of Friday, Aug. 7, the agenda for that meeting is to give the council two options regarding facilitation of the visioning process for the Osborn School acquisition. Contract with CCLR for $19,000 to facilitate the process of seeking community input or seek bids from other national firms. The Leavenworth Residential Advisory Committee (RAC) agreed to oversee the work of CCLR at their meeting on Aug. 4.

Affordable Housing

A lively discussion on the topic of how best to address the need for affordable housing was spurred during the Council Retreat. While what constitutes affordable is still unclear, a number of council members expressed interest in trying to revive the Meadowlark project initiated by Upper Valley MEND in 2008.

The Meadowlark project ultimately failed. Some of the newer members of the council expressed concern that the city did not do enough to support that effort, while members who were involved at the time laid the blame at the foot of MEND for not meeting their commitments.

In any case, there was interest in seeing if there was any possibility of reviving that effort. Development Services Manager, Lilith Vespier, informed council that MEND was in the process of selling the property. She wasn’t aware of how far the negotiations had gone, but she was aware of a developer from Portland who was looking at the property for a planned unit development of approximately 90 homes.

It wasn’t clear if this development was imminent and how many of the 90 units would be considered as affordable.

Leavenworth Haus, the new housing development on the North side of Safeway, has announced apartments will begin to be available as early as March of next year. Current pricing ranges from $965 per month for a studio to $1,770 for a 2 bedroom-two bath unit.

UGA

Another item that came up during the Council Retreat was concern about defining the city’s Urban Growth Area or UGA. Little was said except that the city may need to take a look at this area as defined in its Comprehensive Plan. There is some concern from Council members that the area outside the city limits of Leavenworth are growing and it may be time to examine if there is need to expand the city limits.

Development in the UGA is currently controlled by the County, yet it does have an impact on city services.