Carpenter v. City of Snohomish, 2007 WL 1742161 (Wash. W.D. 2007)*

* This post is published here under the Creative Commons License. The post was authored by Keith Ganey and originally published to his blog at http://www.walaw.org. Ganey is a 2008 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law.

Discussion

Last week, Judge Coughenour closed the federal case brought against the City of Snohomish by the owners of the BBQ Shack.  Located in Snohomish’s downtown historic district, the BBQ Shack is a new restaurant featuring simple food.

Under the historic district rules, the art and architecture of the area are meant to evoke a feeling of the 1880-1930. Nevertheless, the owners had a friend paint murals on the BBQ Shack without receiving design approval from the city. The BBQ Shack’s murals feature “several dancing pigs, one pig on a grill, a hot air balloon, and, on the other side of the building, a classic car.” Some unpleasantness followed. The BBQ Shack was forced to cover its murals for months before the city acquiesced and agreed to drop its objections.

The case is fairly straightforward, but I found the following of note:

(1) The BBQ Shack was suing for lost profits due to the delay in unveiling their murals and opening their business. While such a claim can be powerful and is appropriately lodge in federal court, it rests on the delay being illegal. Since the BBQ Shack eventually received design approval, then it had to show either the design ordinance itself was illegal or that the approval took longer than allowed. Both are fairly uphill claims.

(2) The City of Snohomish supplemented its design ordinance with photographs in addition to textual descriptions. Many design regulations have been struck down for vagueness since they often amount to little more than a formal pronouncement that a committee will know a bad design when presented with one. By including photographs of both acceptable and unacceptable designs, the City was able to capture more of that gut feeling for judicial review. Smart move.

Sources

City of Snohomish Guidelines for the Downtown Historic District (PDF obtained June 23, 2007)

Google Maps

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Lakeland Estates v. King County, Ct. of Appeals Div. I Case No. 57432-9-I (June 4, 2007)*

* This post is published here under the Creative Commons License. The post was authored by Keith Ganey and originally published to his blog at http://www.walaw.org/. Ganey is a 2008 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law.

Go to slip opinion

Summary

An owner may not sell the lots of a trailer park to the residents when the sale is contrary to the land’s zoning and the trailer park was approved as a planned unit development (PUD).

Discussion

Lakeland Estates, which owns a great deal of land in southern King County, applied for and received permission to create a 13 unit mobile home park in 1979. From the facts in the case, it appears that Lakeland operated the mobile home park without incident for nearly twenty-four years. In 2003, Lakeland decided it was willing to sell individual residents of the park the land under their homes. The ordinance approving the park, though, specified that the park not be subdivided.

Unlike a rezone, which changes the range of land uses available at a site, a PUD retains the zoning limitations and carves out a single exception. In this case, the PUD permitted the use of the parcel as a mobile home park with thirteen homes. Any other use would have required new approval under the standard zoning rules. While the law is clear on this point, the language used at the time is rather confusing. In this case, the PUD used the word “lot” to mean two very different things without any attempt to clarify. The PUD refers the mobile home sites as “lots” and without differentiating the legal meaning of “lot” as an individual tax parcel.

Perhaps relying on this ambiguity, Lakeland sought approval to divide the property through a binding site plan (BSP). The BSP process is an alternative to the usual land division process. BSPs, though, only bypass the usual process if the property will later be used by a condominium entity. Since Lakeland was seeking to fragment all ownership of the mobile home sites, the BSP process did not provide a loophole.

Lakeland had another method available to sell the mobile home sites. As the court notes, Lakeland could have created a formal residential community, a condominium association for example, and transferred ownership to the residents through that structure.

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Bilcher v. Cowlitz County, Ct. of Appeals Case No. 35171-4-II (May 2007) (unpublished)*

* This post is published here under the Creative Commons License. The post was authored by Keith Ganey and originally published to his blog at http://www.walaw.org. Ganey is a 2008 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law.

Go to slip opinion

Summary

A landowner’s appeal from a hearing examiner’s decision was invalid because he failed to serve a copy of the appeal to a person possibly misidentified by the hearing examiner as an owner of the property. The landowner was required to challenge the hearing examiner’s determination of ownership or to serve the person.

Discussion

The court applied the law in a clear, straight-forward manner to an interesting set of facts. John Bilcher purchased a lot in a senior community from Gabriel Goro through private contract. Once in control of the property, Mr. Bilcher began, with his friends and family, to use the property as an RV campground and shooting range. Such activities were not allowed by the land’s zoning and the county acted to enforce the zoning rules.

Ultimately, the Hearing Examiner denied Mr. Bilcher’s tardy request for a special use permit. In the written decision, the examiner named Mr. Goro as an owner of the property. This was a natural, and perhaps correct, action since Mr. Goro remained on the tax rolls as the owner of the property. Mr. Bilcher and a co-purchaser had assumed the full responsibilities of ownership, including property tax payments, but had not changed the ownership records at the county assessor’s office.

The key to the case is the hearing examiner opinion listed Mr. Goro as an owner. Since Mr. Bilcher did not challenge the examiner’s finding on that point, Mr. Bilcher became bound to treat Mr. Goro as an owner for the purposes of the decision – including his appeal.

RCW 36.70C.040 of the Land Use Petition Act (LUPA) provides:

(2) A land use petition is barred, and the court may not grant review, unless the petition is timely filed with the court and timely served on the following persons who shall be parties to review of the land use petition:

....

(b) Each of the following persons if the person is not the petitioner:

....

(ii) Each person identified by name and address in the local jurisdiction’s written decision as an owner of the property at issue.

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