State Supreme Court decision may not be the end of the fight | Letter
Published 11:33 am Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Of course we are pleased to have the decision of the Court of Appeals [on Potala Village] upheld by the Supreme Court’s denying to review the case. It has been hard for us to even understand how someone would use a permit that only evaluates a minor portion of a project to somehow vest to a project that has numerous other applicable codes. We have always believed that vesting occurs, first with the filing of a Complete Building Permit, and second when the building permit that is filed is code compliant.
Our next steps will be to participate as this goes through the design review process and make sure [the developer] correctly finishes the environmental cleanup. Also, the driveway issue is still a big point.
FEIS indicated that the project was still incompatible with size, scale, character with the neighborhood. Since then, the projects that he’s proposed have been even bigger (bigger footprint) and/or taller (mis-construing new zoning codes). Etc. Even with fewer units he made the building bigger.
Also, while [the developer] cleaned up the contamination on-site, he needs to clean up the contamination from the gas station that migrated off-site. Apparently this is necessary before the DOE issues an NFA letter. Traditional lenders and/or insurers are supposedly not likely to participate with this property until there is an NFA (“No Further Action Required) letter… It is unclear what he could do with non-traditional EB-5 funding (or other). The Path America website seemed to indicate that [developer] Lobsang Dargey has been given NFA for the site, but checking with Department of Ecology, this does not appear to have been granted.
There is always a chance that the neighbors will need to use the court to make sure Dargey and the city don’t compromise the controls that should be on that property.
The Supreme Court decision is great news, but may not be the end of the story.
Karen Levenson, Kirkland
