The certification of the project’s CEQA document is the most important phase of the approval process -yet, the majority of the City Council members are poised to approve this CEQA document that fails to address the project’s impacts on our community. How can the City Council approve this impact analysis, when they know it does not meet the legal obligations of CEQA Laws? They simply do not have sufficient information to allow it to move forward.
Approval of this shopping center will be one of the most important planning decisions that our city will make – do not let our elected officials side step their legal obligation to our community!
As the City gears up to approve more sprawl and blight in our community, please consider the issues below:
1) The project will have an enormous impact on traffic conditions, adding up to 10,000 more automobiles daily on McDowell and the surrounding streets. The CEQA required analysis grossly neglects the traffic impacts and provides no real means of mitigating these problems. Instead the City consultants have tethered all traffic mitigation to the City’s General Plan. This is a major problem because, the GP traffic mitigation for the cumulative impacts of both projects (including the Target project) relies solely upon infrastructure (e.g. Rainier Crosstown connector) which, since the elimination of RDA funding, the City does not have the means, or funding resources to build. Our city’s main thoroughfares and intersections already have major problems, it is irresponsible to allow these roadways to degrade any further by adding more cars by way of more auto-centric development approvals.
2) The project EIR does not contain a complete water usage assessment. Again they tier water usage and mitigation off the GP’s EIR which cites conservation measures through the use of “recycle water” to off-set future development needs. The problem with this theory is, there is no plan and no funding to build infrastructure to accomplish this goal. At present, it is not been stated how much water the project will use. Based upon the known water use, of 13 million gallons per year for the Target project, we can estimate Deer Creek Village, with its proposed Fitness Center, to use even more than the Kenilworth project.