SOUTH WHIDBEY: New details, concerns emerge about fairgrounds housing (SWR)
Kate Poss reports from a special joint meeting of the Langley City Council and the Port of South Whidbey held onsite at the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds on Fri., Feb. 23, 2024 for the South Whidbey Record.
The Port of South Whidbey recently unveiled an updated conceptual plan for “workforce” housing, which foresees units built on top of new concession stands on the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds.
The plan proposes demolishing, moving and rebuilding of the fairgrounds’ aging food booths and main stage.
Port commissioners met with four members of the Langley City Council and city staff at a special meeting last week to walk around the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds and Event Center last week.
They Said It
Port Commissioner Curt Gordon explained that the existing structures needed to be moved and improved and that the proposal for 11 to 14 housing units would help the gap in affordable housing for local working people.
“In the not so long run, they have to go,” Gordon said regarding the food booths, whose Dalton Lane-facing exteriors show signs of rot.
Langley Mayor Pro Tem Rhonda Salerno said [a twenty-foot] encroachment into the midway impacts her decision.
“This is the first time in all the meetings, even at the Chamber of Commerce meeting, that I attended, that I have heard about the midway being affected to that extent,” Salerno wrote in an email following the presentation.
Salerno noted the opinion represented her own thoughts, not that she was speaking for the council as a whole.
“The community is very concerned about losing the fair as the primary use of the fairgrounds, and decreasing the midway has been one of those impositions,” she wrote.
[Port Executive Director Angi] Mozer said the Feb. 23 walk-through was a step in assessing the feasibility of the project.
“Part of this feasibility study is figuring out how much the project could cost, and how that would be funded,” Mozer replied in an email.
Regarding the setback variance, Mozer wrote that so far officials “have been working under the assumption that we will bring structures onto the fairgrounds property should they be rebuilt.”
“The concept developed to date is assuming that we will request a 5-foot setback from the port’s property for potential new buildings,” she added.
