Quelling the land rush, a tale of three counties

Jim Vesely writes in the Seattle Times about the regional context of Pierce County's vote to create a robust Transfer of Development Rights program.

Look to Pierce County for the next stages of growth that will tie the region even tighter, and bring us problems that can only be solved with regional planning.

Pierce County's boom towns — Bonney Lake is the easy example — plus the arrival of huge planned developments such as Cascadia on nearly 5,000 acres of northern Pierce County, foretell the impacts of the next housing boom and the continuation of the rise of the suburban outer crescent of Snohomish, King and Pierce counties.

So far, the counties have been working things out by themselves but a recent unanimous vote by the Pierce County Council adds that Puget Sound county to attempts to control the land rush.

What Pierce County elected leaders decided to do is simple rather than complicated. To keep some land, mostly in Eastern Pierce, working as farms, forests and natural green space, they created a way for farmer and foresters to benefit from a transfer of their development rights to the urban areas. So, some places get more homes, and some stretches of open land stay open.

It's a thing called transfer of development rights, and has been working with mixed success in King County for years. Planners inside Pierce County know there are always "ifs" in land use but are optimistic they can keep ahead of the curve by keeping development close to the urban areas.

For the average family, either on farmland or in their car looking for a home to buy, this may be as tangible as holding a cloud, but the concept of transferring development rights from one side of the county to another can have an enormous impact on the way we live in the great sprawl of communities around the Sound.

One possibility is that Gig Harbor, the nicest little town I know, will be denser, more compact and maybe taller. The disastrous Bonney Lake, with its combination of cars, commercial strips and community bewilderment with growth, has led to new efforts to try to manage the tide. The controversial use of Lake Tapps water for Eastside and South King County communities only adds to the rough edge of the debate over growth.

Bonney Lake, like Lake Sammamish before it, and Lake Stevens now, is the outcome of disjointed land policies in the three contiguous counties.

At the center of Pierce County's acceptance of a development rights regime was the Cascade Land Conservancy, which held talks for two years in the communities affected. According to the CLC, Pierce County loses "almost 900 acres of farmland through conversion to other uses — about one Point Defiance Park lost every year."

"Lose" is the operative, and perhaps pejorative, word. Where are people supposed to live if not on the remaining land available?

I've come around to believe that keeping some portions of the region's towns, rural highways and crops of forest intact is worth the squeeze of density shifted to urban centers. It's a devil's bargain sometimes because the two-car, two-child, two-job family is caught in higher land prices. But ask in Sammamish if they want more development to go elsewhere, and most people will say yes, send it somewhere else. The living history of this region demands we have to get ready for the next arrival — tens of thousands of people being born here or arriving by moving trucks.

I don't see any other way to deal with it, other than to deal with it.