July, 14, 2010

Yarrow Bay Development is the General Partner of both BD Lawson and BD Village, the Applicants for the Lawson Hills and the Villages MPDs. YarrowBay Group was founded in 2001, and is one of the Northwest’s leading independently operated property development and management companies with a history of focusing on preserving the livable qualities of a place that its managers and employees call home. That means hiring local labor and supporting local jobs, acquiring local materials, and hiring local professional services, which not only supports the local economy, but reduces impacts on the environment.

The Master Planned Developments presented before the Black Diamond City Council had their start more than two decades ago, when the townspeople realized that the City would have to diversify its economy or suffer the fate of other rural Washington cities built solely around a single industry.

Instead of becoming a relic of a bygone era, the community came together to develop a comprehensive plan that would allow them to dictate their desire to grow organically, aesthetically and uniformly across the landscape, preserving the City’s small-town character and prudently conserving much of its forested wilderness.

Black Diamond was founded around its coal mines. In its early years, the town was bustling with activity as coal mining brought workers and their families, their steady salaries and the need for services. The town had a hotel and a drugstore. Over the years, it opened a grocery and business ebbed and flowed with each successive mine until the price and availability of crude oil decreased the demand for coal.

Throughout its history, though, Black Diamond’s population never really spiked more than its current peak of around 4,000 residents. In the meantime, the City’s neighbors in Maple Valley and Covington have seen explosive growth without the fortune of the kind of comprehensive, thoughtful planning that goes into a master-planned community.

A City moratorium has prevented large-scale, planned growth for a decade. When YarrowBay acquired several large tracts of property in 2006, it embarked on a collaborative process to implement a design capturing the City’s heritage and its vision for the future.

When YarrowBay acquired its land, the City gained a dependable partner to make the most of an unprecedented opportunity to do things the right way. Doing things “right” means implementing a community plan that focuses on Black Diamond’s Vision — with a capital “V.”

The City’s Vision recognizes the essential small town character of the area, matched with the needs and expectations of residents, old and new. It means diverse housing types for different lifestyles, needs and means. It calls for commercial spaces that not only drive business and jobs, but capture the “Main Street” sense of community. And it means respect for the environment, wildlife habitat and recreational needs— open space, trails and natural features that define the City’s and the region’s quality of life.

YarrowBay’s mission is to “help communities meet their growth needs through careful and thoughtful land use planning that focuses on the principles of smart growth, sustainability and transportation efficiency.”

These are not just feel-good marketing words; it is a core belief that drives company founders, executives and employees — all of whose affinity for the quality of life in the Northwest motivates them to excel every day. It has also directed YarrowBay’s success.

These Master Planned Developments were a long time in design and planning. Change is never easy, and is best absorbed gradually. YarrowBay has strived to engage the community through public outreach, such as hosted meetings and advertisements, throughout the initial planning stages. Nothing about this process has been hurried or impulsive.

Consequently, Gene Duvernoy, president of the Cascade Land Conservancy, in his testimony to the Hearing Examiner, called the MPDs preservation of open space “innovative,” and “very credible.” He stressed that Black Diamond’s open space program “has been carefully crafted to create an attractive and environmentally responsive system.”

Former Mayor Gomer Evans has spent his lifetime in Black Diamond, and was on the original City Council that incorporated the municipality in 1959. He has seen the changes in and around Black Diamond, and told the Council on June 30, 2010 that the “Master Plan Development provides a great opportunity for this city to manage its future and to do that in a well-planned and reasonable way…

“This plan was developed with our voices. It is well-thought out; and it addresses the needs that our voices have raised, including environmental issues.”

YarrowBay believes in operating with honesty, trust, and respect, both as individuals and as a group. We are guided by five leading principles—Community, Sustainability, Partnership, Diversity and Creativity. We firmly believe in creating “value for our owners, investors and employees by creating better places to live, work and play in the Northwest.” And we believe that a vast majority of residents of Washington share these values. More than building homes and paving roads, land planning is about embracing the human element and being deliberate in establishing the socio-physical structure that encourages community gathering in parks, open spaces and recreational centers. It means providing alternative transportation and a means for safe walking and bicycling. It means creating a healthy balance of jobs, services and housing.

This initial approval stage is not the final word on development of the Villages and Lawson Hills. The City and the community will have many more opportunities to voice their concerns as the project builds out.

The codes and regulations in these MPD applications were cast to “guide unified development over a period of many years.”  The MPD Code is designed to assure that each MPD builds out in an incremental and phased fashion.

I firmly believe that what you have before you is a comprehensive, sensible and thoughtful design plan, crafted in a manner consistent and reflective of Black Diamond’s Vision and community spirit. The Villages and Lawson Hills are the community’s vision, and YarrowBay is honored to be the company to carry out that vision. These MPDs exemplify the best in creative community and land use planning, and are representative of some of the best work YarrowBay has composed to date. And I proudly stake my reputation on it.

Brian Ross, Founder and CEO, YarrowBay Holdings