SEQUIM — Concerns over traffic flow led the City Council on Monday night to delay final decision on whether to grant preliminary approval for a regional shopping center southeast of downtown.
The Bell Farm Center was pitched to the Planning Commission, the community and the council last fall as a village-themed complex anchored by a Fred Meyer department store.
While they voted to uphold Planning Director Dennis Lefevre’s initial project approval, council members asked Lefevre and Public Works Director Jim Bay to negotiate with developer Fred McConkey on how to ensure vehicle traffic moving along the surrounding streets Maple, Hammond and Prairie streets would not become overly congested.
But the proposal reached was less than satisfactory to council members, who voted unanimously to table the motion to adopt their earlier findings and conclusions until the Aug. 9 council meeting.
Landowner frustrated
The delay frustrated landowner Mark Burrowes, who has for three years attempted to gain a zoning modification and a permit to build a shopping center on his family-owned, 76-acre site.
“I got everybody here to solve the problem at a certain amount of expense,” Burrowes told Peninsula Daily News following the council’s decision.
Burrowes and McConkey were accompanied Monday by their lawyer, Alison Moss of Seattle-based Dearborn & Moss LLC.
Council members seemed united in their worry over traffic flow in underdeveloped city streets surrounding the project.
