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A clear sky. Low 32F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

A clear sky. Low 32F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

As Washington residents offered nearly two hours of testimony Monday evening, it became clear that city leaders and residents were divided over a proposed housing development by Kurt Unnerstall that would add more than 100 residents to the city’s Second Ward.

“This change will not continue that quality of life that we have come to appreciate and enjoy,” said Ron Chrisco, who was representing the Lake Washington Condo Association. “We don’t want apartments with traffic at all times of the day and night. We don’t want the backs of our homes to be lit up all night by the lights of parking lots. We don’t want tire noise all night. We don’t want the crime and drugs that often come from densely populated complexes.” 

He said many of the members of the association he represented were opposed to the development and would continue to be opposed unless it was amended to only include single-family homes.  

Unnerstall, who purchased the former hog farm in 1999, is seeking to build on 12 acres of the former 115-acre farm. The proposed development would be located between Rabbit Trail and North Crest drives. The property is directly to the south of Phoenix Park. 

Unnerstall is proposing to build 120 units, including a mix of two-family and single-family attached homes, which means that the homes would share a common wall. These homes would resemble the buildings at The Willows at the Lake, a senior living community off of East Fifth Street.

The homes would be built in a “clustered town home-style development.”

“Each unit would range between 1,200 to 1,600-square-feet,” Unnerstall told The Missourian after the meeting. He said construction on the buildings could begin as early as next May. “I know the word apartment can mean a lot of different things, but let’s set one thing straight,” Unnerstall said. “There is nothing wrong with apartments or townhomes. Everybody wants to make it sound that apartments are bad, but the reality is that we need apartments in Washington.”

Unnerstall said the zoning allows for apartments, townhomes, as well as the types of homes he wants to build, is to promote transitional zoning, which aims to use the multi-family housing buildings as a “buffer” between the single-family homes to the south and the Phoenix Center Shopping Center to the north. He tried to assure the zoning commissioners that this “will not be a Southwinds situation,” referencing a neighborhood of apartments that historically has been viewed as being high crime.

Unnerstall said he also has no intent to remove the 50-foot-wide strip of trees to the west of the property, that would act as a buffer between the development and the homes on the eastside of Rabbit Trail Drive. 

“Some developers rape the land to make it conform to what they want or to maximize profit,” Unnerstall said. “That’s not me, though. I have always made it a point to work with Mother Nature and to use as much as the existing land topography or natural features as I can.” 

Unnerstall faced many questions from neighbors, who shared concerns about the number of interior and exterior exit doors, the intended audience for these new single-family attached homes, the number of floors in each structure, and what kind of exterior lighting he would use. 

“Ultimately, our hope is to provide living space for everyone,” Unnerstall said. “I understand the fear that people have about change, but I am asking everyone to look at who is going to build this. My 20-plus years of developing property in Washington have shown, I hope, that when Kurt Unnerstall says he is going to build something that it is going to be high quality and an asset to the community.”  

After hearing Unnerstall’s proposal, zoning commissioner Carolyn Witt said she “was not comfortable with an apartment situation joining this single-family established neighborhood.”

“To me, there is an existing buffer between the commercial zones and the single-family neighborhoods,” Witt said. “It is Phoenix Park. And I’m very uncomfortable in calling a park a commercially zoned property, because that park is never going to be anything but a park.”

Per city staff, Phoenix Park is owned by the city of Washington. However, the park remains zoned as a C-2 commercial district along with the other stores in the Phoenix Center Shopping Centers. 

Witt, along with zoning commissioners Mike Wood and Mark Hidritch, voted in opposition to recommending the city council approve the rezoning request and the preliminary plat for the subdivision. Hidritch is also a member of the Washington City Council and represents the city’s Second Ward. 

Among those voting in favor of advancing the project was Washington Mayor Doug Hagedorn, who praised Unnerstall’s use of transitional housing. 

“I don’t know if many people know this, but right now our school teachers can’t afford a place to live here in Washington,” Hagedorn said. “We don’t have enough housing for them. People are worried about riffraff, for lack of a better term, about moving into these apartments. The reality is, I suspect, that you are going to see a lot of teachers because they can’t find any other place to live. And if they aren’t teachers, then you are going to see a lot of professional folks who work in our industrial parks and can’t find a place to live. Washington needs more housing.”  

In addition to Chrisco, nine other residents spoke in opposition to Unnerstall’s proposal. Among them was Carolyn Sellers, who blasted Unnerstall’s proposal as being “completely vague.” 

“With all due respect to the developer, if it was intent to build apartment complexes when he started then he should have done it that way originally, but he didn’t,” Sellers said. “The homeowners, and the voters in the Stonecrest subdivision, all purchased thinking that we would be living in a single-family development. ... Now, you are going to take a vote that will change the face of our neighborhood without seeing a detailed plan, without having any idea about what you are putting there. If he had a plan, then you would see it.”

Unnerstall told The Missourian that he does have plans for the property, but he is not prepared to release them at this stage in the process. Monday’s meeting was simply for the rezoning and a preliminary plat of an extension of Earth Crest Drive into Rabbit Trail Drive near the Victorian Place of Washington senior living facility. A more detailed plat would be submitted for the city to review at a later date. 

Zoning Commissioner Samantha Cerutti Wacker also pushed back against critics of Unnerstall’s regarding the “lack of planning documents.”

“Any developer who comes in and lies to this board about a project, does so at their own peril,” Wacker said. “I don’t think that’s the case here.”

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