We're on our way!  See updates below

We’re raising funds to save our community from a current and future warehouse developers.

We are facing severe encroachment of corporate, for-profit interests who have no interest in the character of the community, and threaten to turn our area into an industrial wasteland. The current developer has already set the expectation that our historic community and the surrounding area will all become warehouses if we don’t fight back now!

Against the voices of our community, the Mayor of Puyallup, the Puyallup Planning Commission, the City of Fife, and the Puyallup Tribe, who all want to preserve the community, the Puyallup City Council ignored everyone and approved a developer’s comp plan amendment to designate a major portion of our community as industrial.   

The money being raised will support our appeal of the Puyallup City Council’s ruling through both the Growth Management Hearings Board and Superior Court.  See the updates below to track our progress and fundraising milestones on our journey.

Watch this video for an overview of our story and the see text below to hear the backstory that brings our effort to life.
Our Story:   
A major portion of our neighborhood is in the process of being annexed from unincorporated Pierce County into the City of Puyallup. Previously, when Fife annexed the portion of the neighborhood across the street (left side of road pictured below), they respected the deep history of our agricultural neighborhood (with five homes over 100 years old), and zoned their portion of the community residential.
[our community]

Puyallup’s 24-year-old plan to annex the portion of the community on our side of the road also recognized the value of the community and zoned it residential as well.

This was important, because it enabled our community to continue living as we always have, despite Puyallup's track record of turning some of the best farmland in the country into warehouses for years. But now, in the eleventh hour, that's all changed.  

And there is a lot more to lose. My 87-year old mother lives in the home her father built for her.  She personally maintains her father’s 1904 home next door that she was born in.  And she maintains the grounds of her grandfather’s home with beautiful gardens well over 110 years old.  All together, our family has lived on the same property in this community for over 120 years. 

My mom still enjoys telling people that join the community about its history and that they live in “Dad” Vanderschelden’s home who passed 60 years ago or about the house behind that belonged to “Aunt Fanny”, Dad Van’s sister.  Pick a house, and she can tell you who’s lived there over the years, if they aren’t still living there!  Even young couples that move into the neighborhood love to hear her stories about the house they bought, as they walk their kids to see a local alpaca farm or the backyards with cows, ponies, and chickens.

[mom standing where her father would one day build her house. 
   see her today at 38 sec into video below]

Over the past few months, Puyallup has been considering a developer’s application to rezone from residential to industrial.

My worst nightmare was the thought of having to tell my mother that her properties had been zoned industrial and she would be surrounded by warehouses, if not forced to sell to accommodate the expansion of the 20’ wide rural road that might reach up to her front porch.

The City of Fife, the Puyallup Tribe, and even the Puyallup Planning Commission all opposed the rezone to industrial. The City of Fife said they wanted the area to be zoned “residential” to keep the community on both sides of the road intact.  The area is within the Puyallup Tribal Reservation, and the Tribe owns residential land adjacent to this area as well. They wrote a letter to the City of Puyallup explaining the area is culturally sensitive to the Tribe and strongly discouraged warehouse development since it would degrade the residential nature of the area for everyone including Tribe members.  Even the City of Puyallup’s own Planning Commission voted against the amendment, and recommended that the planned residential area stay residential.

The Puyallup City Council ignored all of this input, and supported the developer’s application to change most of the planned residential zoning to industrial.  Including two beautiful 120 year-old homes that will be torn down if the decision is not challenged. And they went even further.

They decided that for consistency, they would rezone my mother’s home and a Vietnam Veteran’s home to industrial as well, even though the developer had not included them in his request. 

That’s the power and influence of big developer dollars.

Normally, most people don’t have the resources to push back on situations like this and the developer wins.  We almost resigned to becoming another chapter in that story.  But I’ve seen the great things that happen when compassionate people rally to support good causes, so we are leaping into our first fundraiser.  

Please consider supporting this effort to reverse the decision, and help save our community.

Thank you!