Clinton is likely to stay much as it is today for at least the next two years.
That was the message brought by Island County Senior Planner Brad Johnson and Commissioner Helen Price Johnson during a comprehensive plan meeting Thursday night in Clinton. Over a 90-minute gathering, the planner laid out what exists — and why — in Clinton’s main commercial hub near the ferry. Years ago, Clinton bucked the idea of becoming a non-municipal urban growth area like Freeland.
“Right now, there isn’t any plan to make major changes to what’s in Clinton,” Price Johnson said.
Instead, Clinton is a rural area of intense development (RAID) with a defined boundary that the senior planner said is highly difficult to expand. It includes the Columbia Beach Drive, Anderson Road, Bob Galbreath Road and Berg Road neighborhoods. Its boundaries are Gedney View Lane to the south, near Hastings Road to the north, the Hong Kong Gardens driveway to the west and most of the waterfront areas to the east.
The designation is meant to keep what existed there and allow for some modest growth within, while keeping the exterior rural area largely rural and spacious. Brad Johnson described it as allowing for a 12-unit building but not an 80-unit high rise. A RAID is different from an urban growth area in that the latter requires planning for urban services such as sewers and the former does not.
Expanding the rural area of intense development boundary, designed to essentially grandfather in rural areas with urban settings, was likely illegal and at best difficult, Johnson said.
Population growth projections are small for Island County over the next 20 years, and factor heavily into how the comprehensive plan is updated. With an estimated 1,211 more people expected on South Whidbey by 2036, there is not an urgent need to find more room to put them.
“Based on the employment and population forecasts, I can tell you there is a surplus in the RAIDs,” Johnson said.
That means there’s room now for people to live on South Whidbey without radically adjusting its development and zoning areas.
Currently, pockets within the Clinton rural area of intense development allow for what is designated as a rural center. Permitted uses in a rural center include buildings up to 14,000 square feet and multi-family development up to 12 units per acre. Single-family dwellings and junk and salvage yards, however, are prohibited.
In the rural residential area of the RAID, three housing units per acre on a minimum lot of 14,500 square feet are allowed.
Changing or swapping some of the parcels in those two designations was brought up by a few people at the meeting. Some properties along the highway, just up from the ferry terminal, are in the rural center and technically non-compliant with existing code. Single-family homes, for example, can only be re-developed as commercial or multi-family housing.
Two more meetings about the Island County Comprehensive Plan update affecting the larger unincorporated and fully rural area of Clinton and about the Clinton rural area of intense development are planned.
The first is about the rural areas of Island County and is 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27 at the South Whidbey Elementary School Community Room.
The second meeting about the Clinton RAID is 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5 at the Clinton Community Hall.
