By Marianne Lincoln UPDATED

Spanaway, Parkland and Frederickson, being unincorporated urban communities get many promises for infrastructure and services. Since the 1980’s, the Cross Base Highway was promised to help alleviate traffic from all the housing developments the County allowed to squeeze into the area. The highways project meetings went on for decades, involving community activists, county and city leaders and military officials as they came and went. WSDOT event held a ceremony and hung a couple signs in Spanaway designating SR704, the Cross Base Highway on a widened 1 mile stretch of 176th Street. Now, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is being pulled back from transportation promises. Things we have been paying for, promised and taken away. Are we invisible?

Along the way on the Cross Base, there was and EIS, a supplemental EIS and a pressure campaign of environmentalists trying to find a squirrel, a butterfly, or a gopher that could be used to prove a 10 mile stretch of road in 647 square miles of military base, would cause something to become extinct. As it became obvious that wasn’t working, a group of Republican men from the new city of Lakewood, who had I-5 access and didn’t need the highway, tried a new angle. They proposed through spokesperson Dick Muri, that the military base, surrounded by civilian roads, would cause it a base closure. In spite of reassurances from the military that the base mission was too important for one highway to cause a closure, this Lakewood Cabal of 5 or 6 connected Lakewood area Republican men* went to work in the background with folks from the Sierra Club of Seattle, the Audubon Society and other groups in opposition. Lakewood did make sure the I-5 corridor got the new on and off ramps at Tillicum and Thorne Lane, that were part of the plan, however.

The fact is, the corridor on the Spanaway side still exists. 176^th Street bears several signs that say “Cross Base Highway.” The Spanaway Loop Road is overloaded with cars daily, rated F by traffic counters, because it carries the traffic to Steele Street and SR512, that was supposed to go to Thorne Lane and I-5. Canyon Road was widened to SR512, but SR512 is overloaded.

Now there is talk about the Canyon Road North extension again. That was planned originally in the 1960’s when I lived at 101^st and Canyon. The road is about to be widened down the canyon itself. One it gets to Pioneer, another road that does not have the capacity for the traffic, there is the glitch that the road must pass through Tribal land to get across the old Milroy Bridge corridor. Milroy Bridge has been over capacity for more than 50 years also. Pierce County is backed up at all Puyallup River Crossings; they are all inadequate.

Since the Lakewood cabal went to work to stop the Cross Base Highway, Don Anderson went to work for County Executive Dammeier. Dammeier, who told us he was in the family printing business when he was elected, had multiple development companies and was head of the Master Builders at the time also.  Suddenly, many apartments and inexpensive rental homes in American Lake Gardens began disappearing and large warehouses were springing up. Spanaway and Parkland filled with homeless people. A significant swath of low-income housing in the area was gone. American Lake Gardens was in the patch of the proposed Cross Base Highway.

Enter a new twist, a proposal that was worked in the back room away from the input of community members until lots of glossy brochures and presentations of expensive architectural plans were already produced, a plan to place a homeless village of tiny homes for drug addicts and people with mental health needs. The Executive presented it with his signature smile and story of empathy for these needy citizens that we should help. And, the only place they could be put safely was right smack on top of the land that should have been the Cross Base Highway.

The Executive espoused that absolutely no suggestions of other locations would be accepted. One in Summit was significantly better having, sewer, transit, library, shopping and freeway access within half a mile, and no wetlands. The current suggested land in Spanaway was rife with wetland issues, being zoned rural residential and connecting Spanaway Marsh with Spanaway and Coffee Creeks, Clover Creek, Steilacoom Lake and Chambers Creek and Chambers Bay.

It seemed odd that a politician would reject a crowd that 100% rejected the location suggestion and even offered better locations. A crowd that supported housing the homeless, but seriously and adamantly rejected the wetland that the Executive and his sidekick, Steve O’Ban proposed at Spanaway Marsh. Why so stubborn, why was no other place going to do? Very possibly because the construction at that location would permanently seal off the potential Cross Base Highway connection for the Lakewood Cabal. Then they realized they could not have that high density in the RR (Residential Resource) zone and got the Council to raise density specifically in the Parkland, Spanaway, Midland RR zones. (RR Zones are for critical resources like wetlands)

This kind of political maneuvering and influence is why Spanaway, Parkland and Frederickson remaining unincorporated continues to put those communities at risk. Without representation, humans with locally elected political titles that can push back against this kind of underhanded behavior, the back room plotting against their neighborhoods will continue. People in those positions of power will push the crime, riffraff and unappealing facilities onto the urban unincorporated areas. It is what we will continue to endure.

Kudos to those who are standing up to this travesty on our water resources. Futurewise, and Spanaway Citizens for appealing to the Growth Management Hearings Board, and one or two others that are in the wings ready to sue if the Executive’s Office and the Tacoma Rescue Mission continue to push for destroying our critical wetland. There is no support in Spanaway for using this piece of land. There is support for finding another property because we are not heartless, just concerned about our water resources.

August 22, 3pm early in the County Council meeting there is a resolution to override the Executive’s veto. I suggest as many of you as possible go in person. The Executive might be sitting there staring down the Council. It will be a notable moment, but it apparently will not end this project as it will be grandfathered to the previous zoning. Something else in the planning process will have to stop it.

UPDATE: The Council did override the Executive’s veto, so the RR Zone will not be higher density for tiny homes.

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*Dick Muri, Doug Richardson (Ret. General), Steve O’Ban, Bill Harrison (Ret. General), Don Anderson, and Paul Wagemann are the Lakewood officials I can remember seeing banded together at various events over the past several years. Muri, as a State Rep. penned letters opposing the Cross Base Highway.

[Marianne Lincoln, as President of the Spanaway Community Action Network, was a member of the Committee that met to discuss the Cross Base Highway with officials from WSDOT, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Military. Her mother was involved as President of Frederickson Clover Creek Community Council before her.]