Kidder Mathews consultants Ryan Haddock and Blair Howe spoke before the Yelm City Council and a packed Yelm City Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 24, to provide an update on the city-owned 640-acre property in southeast Yelm.
Howe said if the city chooses to sell the property, officials would have to dispose of it without engaging with adjoining property owners. He said the advantage to doing this is that the sale wouldn’t require any coordinator and allows the city to capture the value in its property. The disadvantages include accessing property and the right of way and designing roadways without the benefit of working as part of a larger master plan.
The second option would see the City of Yelm acquire the road right of way to the 640 acres and complete the southern loop connector.
“That 640 acres, with good access, will raise the value of the property,” Howe said. “It will make it more attractive and more usable compared to its landlocked position now.”
Howe noted that one disadvantage to the second option is the city would be planning a portion of the roadway outside the complete master plan.
“The end product isn’t as good, and you ask simple questions like where should the roadway go and how does that give us the best master plan,” Howe said.
He explained that, in the third option, the city retains the property and acts as the own master developer and plans, finances and sells the property to developers.
“There’s a control,” Howe said. “You have the opportunity to really influence the outcome when you take on that master developer role. But it’s a big lift in terms of additional city staff, investments to get all the entitlements in place, put the right of way in place and infrastructure.”
He said the fourth option would be for the city to work with neighboring property owners to jointly market the property as a single master plan community in “the way that it’s zoned.”
“That’s an attractive option in that the parties can work together to achieve a common goal and realize the master plan vision. You get the southern loop connector completed, and that all adds value for both the adjoined property owners and the city for their properties,” Howe said. “The difficulty for that is maintaining common goals as you go through the process. The city may have goals that are focused in one area, where the property owners may have goals that are focused in another area. There’s some advantages and disadvantages to that one.”
Howe added that the last option would be to hold the property and keep it in its natural state at a minimal holding cost. The disadvantages of this, he said, are that the city wouldn’t achieve its master zoning plan that is in place and the southern loop project would be placed on the back burner.
Haddock said the master plan community project would take quite some time to complete if the Yelm City Council opts to take that route.
“It’s likely a 25-year plan to build the whole thing out for most developers,” Haddock said. “It all depends on the market, and there’s many factors that play into what they can do and accomplish in that timeline. Could they move faster? Sure. But the market has to be there for them.”
Yelm resident Nicole Martel was one of many to discuss their concerns about the 640-acre project. Her focus was on the importance of conservation.
“Choosing to develop, or not develop, a piece of land like this comes with great responsibilities and with great consequences. Let’s consider the bigger picture, and the effects on everyone and everything,” Martel said. “I learned a shocking statistic: The total area covered by the world’s cities is set to triple in the next 40 years, eating up farmland, natural spaces and threatening the planet’s sustainability.”
She added that a natural area like the city’s 640 acres is critical and irreplaceable.
“I’m not just some environmental tree hugger with my head in the sand about what’s really important for the issues we face as a society,” she added. “I know we need housing, but there’s a huge amount of research and data speaking to the critical need to preserve our natural lands from development. The impacts are really real, and they impact all of us.”
The City of Yelm will conduct an open house at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 9, at the Yelm Community Center. People can ask city officials about the 640 acres or other ongoing or future projects in Yelm.
Yelm City Council approves contract for on-call land surveying services
With currently one surveyor under contract, the City of Yelm signed a contract with Contour Engineering to provide “on-call surveying services” to avoid a potential conflict of interest.
Cody Colt, Yelm’s Public Works director, said the contract with Contour Engineering is not to exceed $50,000. Councilors unanimously passed the agreement during a Yelm City Council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 24.
“We broadcasted an RFP [request for proposal] out about three months ago and got four responses back,” Colt said. “There will be one more professional services agreement coming for another on-call surveyor that’s out of those four. This is the first of those two.”
Colt added that the surveyors from Contour Engineering would be responsible for plat maps and surveying sidewalks for construction or repairs. The public works director said staff will contact the surveyors to complete those objectives rather than hiring another company to come out to complete it.
According to Colt, the state of Washington allows agreements with surveyors to be three years long, with a one-year extension clause at the end of the contract.
“This [contract] will be three years, and if they’re a good company, we’ll extend them for one year at the end of that,” Colt said. “Then we’ll have to do this whole process again at the end of that.”
Colt said the city typically spends anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 on surveying and that the $50,000 mark was the lowest threshold the city could’ve done.
“We set it at the lowest threshold because we don’t think we’ll need more than that,” he said. “We’ll never in one year spend more than $50,000 on surveying with this company. It’s a maximum.”