In the March 2024 issue of WIP, Betsy Norton and Sue Danver published an article asking readers to comment on four proposed Thurston County items for the 2024-2025 Comprehensive Plan Docket. In all four cases the landowners were requesting a rezone from Rural Residential/Resource (RRR) to Rural Resource Industrial (RRI) – in other words from farmland to warehouses.
Thanks to all of you who commented on the docket—the good news is that the Board of County Commissioners decided not to include three of those items on the 2024-2025 docket: Beaver Creek Farm, UP Castle, and Port of Tacoma. The landowners can re-apply in two years, but for now these projects are on hold.
However, two other projects that will convert rural land to development were put on the 2024 – 2025 docket—Black Lake Quarry and Bar Holdings. Both are controversial.
The 270 acres near Black Lake Quarry are near the Black River/Black River Wildlife Refuge, which is important habitat for birds, endangered species and Coho. This docket item is at #8 in priority out of the ten docket items.
The Bar Holdings project is the first in the state to take advantage of a 2022 law that allows a “land swap” for parcels within a city’s Urban Growth Area to be exchanged for land outside the UGA. Questions have been raised about whether the Bar Holdings proposal follows the law’s restrictions. This docket item is #4 out of ten docket items.
For a more comprehensive article, see https://blackhills-audubon.org/3-rezone-requests-removed-from-docket/
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