Save Our Rural Lands and Stop the Bar Holdings UGA Swap
Thurston County Board of Commissioners and Tumwater City Council Members and Mayor
🏡 Tell Thurston County: Build Affordable Housing in the Urban Core — Not in Our Rural Areas
Traditional measures of affordability look only at housing costs — but they ignore transportation, which is typically a household’s second-largest expense. When new housing is pushed to the outer edges of an urban growth area, people are forced to drive farther and spend more. That increases both the cost of living and carbon emissions.
Thurston County's Board of County Commissioners and Tumwater's Mayor appear to be headed toward approving a 200-unit apartment complex on rural forestland, miles from any urban center. The forestland—classified as “Critical Aquifer Recharge Area-Extreme”—has one of the county’s highest water tables and feeds the Deschutes River, where salmon still struggle to survive. Paving it over risks polluting our water and drying up nearby wells.
Developers call this project a “UGA swap,” a new loophole that they're trying to use to buy cheap rural land, rezone it for urban density, and flip it for millions in profit. If this first “Bar Holdings/Salish Landing UGA swap” is approved, it will set a precedent that puts every rural parcel near a city boundary at risk.
This isn’t affordable housing—it’s sprawl disguised as sustainability. Living far from jobs and services forces families to drive farther, costing an average of $10,000 per year per car and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
For a truly sustainable and affordable future, we must build up, not out. That means focusing new homes near existing jobs, schools, and transit—not carving up rural forestland. The county’s own Sustainable Thurston Plan set a goal that only 5% of new housing be built in rural areas, but today that number is 9%.
Tell Thurston County to honor its own Sustainable Thurston Plan and say no to the Bar Holdings/Salish Landing UGA swap and yes to putting new housing closer to the urban core to protect affordability, water, forests, and climate.
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To:
Thurston County Board of Commissioners and Tumwater City Council Members and Mayor
From:
[Your Name]
I oppose the Bar Holdings UGA swap on the county comprehensive plan docket. For a sustainable future and for housing affordability, we need to build up, not out. We need you to plan for dense, walkable urban neighborhoods near the urban core. This reduces driving and greenhouse gases and increases affordability.
The Bar Holdings UGA swap would do the opposite. It would be a dense, walkable neighborhood in a rural area. All those people living in the development would have to drive far to get to work every day. This will increase greenhouse gases and reduce affordability. (It costs on average $10,000 per year to own and operate a car).
The Bar Holdings development also would pave over a critical aquifer recharge area-extreme. This will negatively impact water quality and salmon runs (the aquifer likely flows into the nearby Deschutes River). And paving over the parcel could cause the wells nearby to run dry.