Neighbors challenge plans for Maple Valley pot growing plant

A newly energized group of residents is fighting plans for a 40,000 square foot manufacturing plant right in their Maple Valley neighborhood. Even worse, they say, it’s a marijuana production facility.

The pot facility would be as large as King County allows.

“Roughly the size of a Home Depot store in a residential neighborhood,” said Mel Codd, who lives near the undeveloped acreage where the landowner wants to construct two 20,000 square foot buildings.

Neighbors claim the property owner’s application for a commercial site development permit is filled with omissions, inconsistencies and outright misstatements regarding traffic, access, safety and environmental issues. More sinister, they say, is the evidence that somebody in the county’s permitting agency helped the property owner submit his application before a new, more restrictive county law took effect this summer.

“Our community has been denied our right to due process,” claimed Codd.

Several councilmembers expressed outrage over the allegations of impropriety. Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer promises an investigation.

“Some bureaucrat within the agency determined on their own that they were going to make a recommendation to circumvent the representative body of King County,” he said. “I find that very disturbing.”

The director of the Department of Permitting and Environmental Review, John Starbard, sees nothing improper.

“We provide information to them (the applicant) so that they submit the proper material and that they submit it in the timeline we need to meet their target review time so I would say this has followed pretty normal process.”

The Maple Valley property owner listed on the application, Mark Cramer, did not respond to a request for an interview.

The Washington State Liquor Control Board has issued 12 processor licenses in King County.

Starbard conceded this is an unusual place for a pot facility.

“This is an industrial site and has been zoned that way for decades. It is also surrounded by a residential neighborhood.” A neighborhood of 54 homes, said Codd. County councilmembers don’t want another neighborhood to go through the same process.

“I think we ought to actually take a look around the county (and see if) we have any other areas like this,” said one councilmember. He was referring to “islands” of industrial zoning within largely residential areas.

In a rare move, the council approved a one-year moratorium Monday on similar projects and directed the county executive to search out similarly isolated industrial zones. A contingent of Maple Valley neighbors cheered the action, although it doesn’t impact the project they oppose.

“Press the pause button, six months we’ll have a report back, the moratorium lasts for a year, gives us a chance to digest,” said council member Reagan Dunn, the author of the emergency ordinance.

As for the Maple Valley neighbors, the pot manufacturing facility is far from a done deal. The county development permit is vested but not approved, the landowner still needs a county building permit and his license application to produce marijuana is still pending before the Liquor Control Board.