Growth. It was (and is) on the minds of residents and the city council this year as Ferndale, situated very close to Bellingham, and conveniently (due to the I-5) saw one of the biggest years of development with 175 building permits for new homes issued.

Key issues/moments this past year:

• The overburdened sewage system and the need for a new one.
• New sewage connection moratorium (originally a new permit moratorium - see previous post)
• Pioneer Plaza

Pioneer Plaza was perhaps the biggest issue as it was somewhat symbolic of growth trends and issues throughout the county. The big question is: do we prevent development in order to preserve our communities as they are right now, or do we deal with the fact that people will move here (whether we like it or not) and be prepared for it? Many proponents of the latter argument feel that it is better to plan ahead and be prepared in order to ensure that when the “inevitable” growth does come, it will happen in a way consistent with the communities present values. A major part of this is the new buzz word “urban village” which are high density communities with all of the necessities within walking distance. The main benefit of this grow up rather than out strategy is that it will preserve more natural land and areas.

Back to Pioneer Plaza - the proposed project is 100 acres of retail space (687,626 square feet), office space (234,361 square feet), 160 condos and parks. The most common concerns with this project are the increased traffic and that it will negatively affect downtown Ferndale businesses.

On the flip side, developers say that Ferndale has the lowest sales tax revenue in the county and this project would generate a lot of money in the city coffers. Furthermore, they feel that the project would draw more people to Ferndale for shopping who would in turn also shop in downtown Ferndale. Going back to the “growth is inevitable” argument, some supporters of Pioneer Plaza feel that it would be better to have one big development in the area that could adequately plan (and pay for) infrastructure such as streets, than to have multiple smaller projects on small plots over more time.

So there are the two sides. If I missed any arguments, on either side, please let me know.