Yelm City Council approves rezoning of 20 parcels to residential status

Six of seven Yelm City Councilors voted to approve the rezoning of 20 parcels near Yelm City Limits to residential status in order to avoid traffic from semi-trucks and large vehicles during a meeting on Tuesday, July 14.

Councilor Brian Hess was the lone “nay” vote to Ordinance No. 1151, which rezoned 20 parcels within Yelm City Limits to residential. According to Gary Cooper, Yelm planning and building manager, 18 of the 20 parcels in consideration were previously labeled as industrial.
He noted those 18 would be rezoned to either R4, focused on low density housing, or R6, moderate density housing.

“That’s consistent with our practice that as we get farther out towards the city limit boundary, our zoning decreases so it matches better with the rural county,” Cooper said. “That is the extent of our city limits. We have no UGA beyond that. Beyond that is the county.”

Additionally, the two other parcels of the 20 are currently zoned as commercial, but would be rezoned to R16, or high density housing,

“One thing I’ll say about one of the parcels… it’s Salmon Run Apartments. It’s already developed as apartments,” Cooper said. “The one next to it doesn’t have a single family residence but I’ve just been informed that the house has been vacated and that lot’s up for sale. If it remained commercial, it would be completely surrounded by residential zoning. We think it’s appropriate for that particular piece to become residential.”

Cody Colt, Yelm Public Works director, spoke on the rationale behind the residential lots and said right now, there are industrial parcels with access to Canal Road.

“If a semi-truck wanted to get a delivery, they’d have to pull out onto a residential road and drive all the way down to take a left on Wilkensen, which if you’ve tried to take a left on to Wilkensen from Canal, I’m happy you’re alive,” Colt said. “Once you take a left, you can then get to the bypass.”

Colt added that it doesn’t make sense to have industrial traffic driving to those parcels through a residential area. He believes the rezoning would reduce semi-truck traffic through residential roads that are small and not designed for industrial traffic.

“We still have plenty of industrial parcels that will connect to the (Yelm) Loop and are prime candidates for industrial development, whereas these ones are not,” Colt said.

Mayor Joe DePinto asked Colt if those changes are requests from citizens, or something that’s forced upon residents.

“These were all requested by the residents,” Colt said. “If you remember, a fella up in this area came and asked the council ‘when are you rezoning my parcel? I was part of the annexation.’”

Councilor David Johnstone asked why these areas weren’t zoned properly at the time of annexation earlier in the year. According to Cooper, if these areas were rezoned prior to annexation — Yelm would’ve had to go through a “lengthy process” with Thurston County as it was zoned industrial through a joint plan between the city and the county.

“After annexation, that takes the county out of the picture,” Cooper said. “It just makes it a quicker process. We were contacted by every single property owner, one time or another, on this annexation. A lot of them talked to us at the open house about the annexation.”

Additionally, Cooper claimed that he sent a letter to every property owner within the annexation area and didn’t receive any opposition to the rezoning inquiries.

According to Colt, there are still 16 industrial parcels remaining in Yelm and over 100-acres of industrial-zoned land.

“We’ve had industrial parcels that have sat dormant for the last 30 years,” Colt said. “We have seen some interest in a couple of these. With the loop coming in and the connection, I think you will see these couple industrial parcels that will probably get developed industrial, which would be awesome. Time will tell.”

Hess told the Nisqually Valley News on Friday, July 17, that his “nay” vote was because he believes that all three locations that were rezoned should’ve been zoned to medium density, R6, because it’s so close in proximity to a future transit corridor.