PORT TOWNSEND — Public Works Director Steve King led the Port Townsend City Council in a discussion of a draft street circulation white paper and planning framework.
Policies in the comprehensive plans from 2016 and 1997 have pointed toward the need for a street circulation plan, or a streets master plan, King said Monday night.
The white paper is a high-level document describing decision-steering policies, guiding legal principles and informing technical analysis, according to a description in the council agenda packet.
Port Townsend, once expected to be a boom city, was platted for a population of 25,000 to 30,000 people, King said.
“Port Townsend was built to be a very intense urban environment,” he said. “It was going to be the northwest San Francisco.”
That boom never bore out, and the results have been low density. About 80-plus street miles are currently maintained by the tax dollars of about 10,000 residents, King said.
King presented three potential outcomes for city blocks, showing overhead maps in his slideshow presentation.
First, he showed a design more typical of a city of Port Townsend’s size and density, where the long side of a block is about 600 feet long.
“A block that is 600 feet long has less roads in it than our current blocks,” King said. “We’re not suggesting this, that we should be like other cities. Port Townsend’s unique. Let’s figure out how we’re unique.”
He showed an example illustrating how the majority of Port Townsend is now, square blocks of about 230 feet by about 200 feet.
“The square-gridded pattern was originally intended for very high-density development,” King said. “A lot of times when you see square-gridded developments, it’s in a downtown central business district where there’s really big buildings and you need streets all the way around the buildings to access garages and loading docks and all of the stuff that comes in a very intense urban environment.”
The current design approach is not recommended either, King said.
“We’re looking at linking three or four of these 200 by 200 (foot) blocks together, serving streets on the short side of the lot where you can serve the most lots.”
The plan would involve de-emphasizing some cross streets that serve the long sides of lots and using the rights of way instead as open spaces, tree corridors and stormwater areas, King said.
Some Port Townsend roads already have that outcome. King showed an overhead map between what 21st Street and 20th Street where what would be Sherman Street, Hendricks Street and Grant Street are instead forested open space.
King described his suggested design path as a unique advantage held by Port Townsend.
“I would be surprised if there’s many other cities that have this same advantage,” King said. “It only happened because of the way Port Townsend developed with the crash. The boom, the crash and the slow growth back.”
King said if the city doesn’t plan to avoid it, the current outcome of square blocks will persist.
“That is very unsustainable and it doesn’t preserve open space, and it’s just a lot of streets to maintain,” he said.
King showed a map of an existing city block with 1,000 feet of street serving four home units. He showed another map which corresponded with his favored approach. It had 520 feet of street serving eight home units.
The way most streets look now requires a tax burden four times more expensive than if King’s approach was taken, he said.
“So there’s your financial argument,” he said.
If things stay the same, streets will always be a disastrous mess, King said. If appropriate changes are made, streets may have a fighting chance, he added.
King’s favored design outcome suggests de-emphasizing redundant streets.
“If it’s a redundant or de-emphasized street, we could take a different maintenance approach,” King said. “Maybe it’s OK for it to stay gravel or turn it back to gravel.”
With the majority of large developments behind Port Townsend, King said a street circulation plan would work hand-in-hand with land capacity analysis in helping the city to approach serving infill development.
The public has communicated a desire for maximizing trail corridors and minimizing the size and number of streets, King said.
“We need to do something, and we need to have something we can stand behind,” King said. “The white paper is really about trying to get to the principles of how do we get to this outcome?”
________
Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
