Save Our Rural Lands and Stop the Bar Holdings UGA Swap

Thurston County Board of Commissioners and Tumwater City Council Members and Mayor

When housing is far form the urban core, the expense of community hurts low-income people hardest.
Image capture: May 2023 © Google 2024

Tell Thurston County that affordable housing needs to be built in the urban core, not in rural areas. It costs on average $10,000 per year to own and operate a car. The county is looking to approve a 200-unit apartment complex far from any urban centers. Sign the petition to get them to put affordable housing closer to people's jobs.

The forestland on which the developers want to build a mini-city has one of the highest water tables in the county and the aquifer most likely flows into the Deschutes River nearby. The parcel is zoned "Critical Aquifer Resource Area-Extreme". Thus, the development would negatively impact water quality and salmon runs. And paving over the parcel could cause the wells nearby to run dry.

No rural land near an Urban Growth Area is safe from development, or from being surrounded by development, if the "Bar Holdings UGA swap" development gets approved. It is a test case under a new law that will set a precedent.

For a sustainable future and for housing affordability, we need our Thurston County jurisdictions to agree to build up, not out. We need them to plan for dense, walkable urban neighborhoods near the urban core. This reduces driving and greenhouse gases and increases affordability.

But Thurston County and the City of Tumwater are instead planning for dense developments in rural areas. The developers claim they will be walkable. But putting housing far away from urban centers is by definition NOT walkable.

The first of these proposed developments is the "Bar Holdings UGA Swap." It would include over 200 new housing units, grocery store, YMCA, office buildings, and storage facilities on 33 acres of rural land on Sheldon Road (south of the Olympia Airport). Development like this far from the urban core would increase driving and greenhouse gases and reduce affordability.

The problem is that developers are pushing this idea because developers believe they can now use legislation called the "UGA swap law" to buy rural land on the cheap and then change the zoning by moving the land into the Urban Growth Area so they can develop it.

Doing the Bar Holdings UGA swap would set a bad precedent. And it would violate the ideals in the Sustainable Thurston Plan.  That plan calls for building no more than 5% of new housing units in rural areas. Thurston County currently builds 14% of new housing in rural areas, and this percentage is only getting worse. See the Sustainable Thurston Report Card at https://www.trpc.org/680/Conserving-Rural-Lands. The Bar Holdings development would increase this even more.


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.