Preliminary vote shows Thurston County Commissioners oppose Rocky Prairie rezone
The Thurston County Board of Commissioners voted 3-0 on Wednesday to remove a controversial rezoning proposal from its comprehensive plan amendment docket for the years 2020 and 2021.
Wednesday’s vote was a preliminary step, Thurston County Manager Ramiro Chavez said on Thursday. The commissioners went over a number of comprehensive plan amendment items and are set to do the same with related development code items on April 23, he said.
Once they have gone over both, a date will be set for an official vote. However, Chavez acknowledged that the commission’s vote Wednesday was a “pretty good indication” of how they might vote at a later date.
The controversial rezoning request, which was first filed last year and held over to this year, is being sought by a Kansas City-based developer called NorthPoint Development.
It wants the county to rezone about 750 acres of Rocky Prairie property in the 13000 block of Tilley Road South at Maytown Road to rural resource industrial from one home per 20 acres, a zoning designation that has been in place since 2010.
The rezoning would allow NorthPoint to complete its purchase of the property from the Port of Tacoma and move forward with a plan to build “plus or minus eight buildings” on 472 acres with a total square footage of between 4 million square feet and 6.5 million square feet, according to information shared with the county.
NorthPoint’s rezoning request has been met head on by thousands of south Thurston County residents who oppose the development. One petition with 6,000 signatures came from the Friends of Rocky Prairie, a group long opposed to development of the land.
Commissioner Tye Menser cited public comment in his vote to remove the rezoning request from the official comprehensive plan amendment docket.
“The public has spoken about this,” he said, adding that in his limited time on the commission, they have spoken about this “more than anything.”
But Commissioner Gary Edwards took a circuitous route in making his decision.
First, he said he is concerned about the amount of public comment the county received outside the official 20-day comment period, which he referred to as “fraudulent.” He wondered if that opened up the county to any potential legal challenges.
Edwards also referred to the public comments as “the face of mob rule.”
Menser took issue with that, pointing out that the Tumwater City Council, Olympia City Council, Sierra Club and a cycling group, representing about one-tenth of the comments received, were opposed to the rezone.
“I don’t consider all of those community groups to be a mob,” he said. “These are people who really care about the community and where we are headed.”
Staff at the meeting told Edwards it was up to him whether to assign any special weight to comments received outside the comment period.
Edwards also wondered about legal challenges in general, citing the property’s history.
The Port of Tacoma bought the property after it struck an interlocal agreement with the Port of Olympia in 2006. The plans then were to pursue a South Sound Logistics Center at the site. That effort was stymied by local opposition, so the Port of Tacoma sold the land to a company called Maytown Sand & Gravel, which later alleged that a “politically motivated” county commission delayed its efforts to mine the site, The Olympian reported in 2018.
The Port of Tacoma and Maytown later sued the county and won a $12 million judgment, which was later upheld by the Washington state Supreme Court. The property was ultimately returned to the Port of Tacoma, The News Tribune reported in July.
Edwards finally acknowledged he was concerned about water quality in the area, so he joined Menser and Hutchings in voting against placing the issue on the docket.
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
