After 23 months of deliberation, proposed development standards for the city’s waterfront will come before the city council next week.

The council will have a first reading of a proposed ordinance adopting a Wharf Street Overlay District, which would amend the city’s municipal code to govern future development in Langley’s historic but constricted harbor area.

The council will meet at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 17, at city hall on Second Street. A public council workshop will be at 4 p.m.

“It’s pretty exciting from our standpoint,” said Larry Cort, city planning director, who helped to shepherd most of the process. “This really lays out a flexible direction for that area.”

Some property owners, however, say the proposal doesn’t go far enough in terms of development.

“I still think it’s short-sighted,” said Ruth Den Adel, owner of the Sea Breeze, a vacation rental house at the south end of the harbor. “Some of the changes suggested are definitely beneficial, but there are vast possibilities out there that aren’t being explored.”

The area includes property along city-owned Wharf Street, which runs along the bottom of the bluff below Cascade Avenue. Nearby are recently relocated Phil Simon Park, the Langley marina and the Nichols Brothers pier.

The proposed ordinance is the product of the city’s Planning Advisory Board, which has worked on the issue through a series of public meetings since September 2007.

The board unanimously approved the changes last month and forwarded them to the city council.

If the council approves two readings of the ordinance, the new provisions will be incorporated into the city’s municipal code.

Cort said the overlay doesn’t alter the overall development potential for the area, which is zoned commercial, at least in terms of square footage.

The most significant change, he said, would be that property owners would be allowed to build within the 50 feet next to the bluff, which currently is prohibited. New construction, however, would have to conform to city design guidelines.

Meanwhile, the current 35-foot height restriction on buildings would remain in the new ordinance, Cort said.

Den Adel and other property owners, including her neighbor, Kathleen Waters-Riehl, have been pushing for a 65-foot height limit, equivalent to a six-story building, and for a certain amount of below-surface parking.

Waters-Riehl owns the building she now leases to the Port of South Whidbey for use by the marina harbormaster. The property has been in her family for years.

Den Adel and Waters-Riehl say taller buildings on their properties at the extreme south end of the area wouldn’t interfere with other people’s views.

Cort said property owners made “an eloquent case” on the height issue, but the city council had already directed planners to retain the lower limit.

“They said they were more comfortable with that,” Cort said of the council. “But these things aren’t set in stone.”

In a letter to the Planning Advisory Board, Tony Puma, owner of the Boatyard Inn on Wharf Street, also expressed concern about the competition for parking in the confined area, especially in light of the port’s plans to expand the marina.

“Any parking plan the Port [of South Whidbey] submits cannot be evaluated unless there is some guidance or direction provided in advance,” Puma wrote.

Cort said accommodating the needs of vehicles, boaters, businesses and building spaces in such a confined area “is a real balancing act.”

One option the city is exploring is a system that would transport pedestrians up and down the bluff from Cascade Avenue, relieving sightseers from the need to drive down the hill.

“We’d like to see more people taking advantage of some kind of pedestrian route,” Cort said. “It’s tight quarters down there. The fewer cars, the better.”

Cort also said the historic aspect of the area must continue to be respected.

“It’s been the city’s connection to points beyond longer than most of us have been alive,” he said.

Den Adel said she has no plans to develop or sell her property, which she has owned for five years. And she praised city staff for the amount of work put into planning.

But she urged that, when it comes to new development, the city take the fullest advantage of a unique area.

“It’s Langley’s only waterfront,” she said. “It’s a very special property, and it abounds with opportunity.”