SEQUIM – The City Council on Monday unanimously agreed to allow city staff to work on issues that would allow for a potential annexation of the Battelle property.
Although many steps must be taken before the annexation would even be possible, the city voted to coordinate with county officials working on changing the urban growth area, which is the major step required before it could be considered by the council.
“A great deal of coordinated work is still required to achieve the urban growth area expansion to accommodate Battelle,” Mayor Laura Dubois said in her motion.
The action also directs staff to begin working on recommendations on amendments to the city’s comprehensive plan and municipal code — both of which will have to be changed in order for an annexation to be legal.
Battelle and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory include research on chemicals’ effects on the environment, how mollusks can be used to detect bioterrorism and how algae can generate hydrogen fuel.
The labs have run the Marine Research Operations campus northeast of Sequim since the mid-1970s, raising annual contracts to $15 million last year.
Battelle’s buildings, which occupy 7.5 acres of the 140-acre campus, need Sequim’s sewer and water service.
For the past year, Sequim and Clallam County planners have been working to find a way to extend those utilities to the labs without violating the state Growth Management Act.
The council vote was a placeholder for future potential action and discussion, Mayor Laura Dubois said in the motion.
Clallam County is taking the lead in asking for the change in the urban growth area and has given temporary zoning for Battelle, but at Monday’s meeting was seeking an opinion from the Sequim City Council on whether the city was interested in pursuing the annexation.
“If the city were to say they couldn’t or weren’t interested in servicing the area, then we would have to look at the zoning requirements,” said county Planning Director Steve Gray.
Before the city could annex and then rezone the area, it would have to come up with requirements for a new zoning area designated for research development.
Sequim Planning Director Dennis Lefevre told the council that it should be “relatively easy.”
“There are several places we could look for language such as Redmond’s zoning for Microsoft’s research facilities, or there are various governmental research areas in the state, and we could just remove the governmental requirement,” he said.
“It would take some time, but it shouldn’t be very difficult to come up with something.”
Initiating the request for the change would be a joint effort among the city, county and Battelle, and the process will probably start sometime in the summer and finish in the fall, Gray said.
The new boundary lines would create a few “islands” of property that would constitute a different zone or wouldn’t be included in a possible annexation.
Lefevre said those areas could be considered in a “phase 2” section of the plan, but because existing developments in those areas — even if the land is empty — could complicate the zoning and request from the state to change the urban growth area, they were left off for now.
“We have looked into it, because some of the areas create an illogical boundary, but some of the areas are fairly developed and shouldn’t change our growth potential,” he said.
“But other areas need to be looked into.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
