Last week, Eric Fisk, Wallingford Community Council President, brought us up to date on the Transfer Station renovation plans (Rebuilding our Dump) and noted that there was a community meeting to discuss it. Allison Hogue sends this report from the meeting:
The North Recycling and Disposal Station stakeholders group met to discuss the process for moving forward with the expansion and rebuild of the transfer station and recycling center located at 1350 and 1550 N 34th Street and incorporating Carr Place.
SPU has hired a consultant to help work through site development options – where the buildings will be located, how much of the site they will cover, will Carr Place be closed, will they seek to rezone the buffer and Oroweat parcels in order to build on those properties, etc. The expansion options potentially cover 4 blocks in south Wallingford between the Essential Bakery and Subway.
4 stakeholder meetings are scheduled for the fall to assess and zero in on a plan for the entire facility. The first meeting is scheduled to happen on September 14, the last is scheduled for February. SPU said that the new facility is a high priority project for the city.
At the first meeting, SPU plans to present 7 site development options (for which they provided block diagrams at last night’s meeting). Some of the options include building over the whole site, shifting the entire facility west, shifting the entire facility east, 6 options locate the recycling center on the 1550/Oroweat property which border single family zones to the north and east, 1 option reserves the Oroweat property for administrative offices.
SPU intends to narrow the site options down to 3 or 4 at the September meeting. These options will become the basis for further development. SPU hopes to hone in on their final preferred scheme by February.
If you are interested in the project please come to the September 14th meeting – and spread the word! It may be one of the neighborhood’s best opportunities to provide input into the process.
How about they spend some of that money figuring out how to not make our neighborhood smell like a rotting corpse for 5 blocks in every direction nearly every day of the year.
I think that actually is part of the plan. The new transfer station is supposed to be fully enclosed, rather than vented, which is supposed to help with the smell.
Some would argue that the reason it hasn’t happened yet is the opposition of the neighbors to any change.