NIMBYism at it’s best

The Seattle Woodland Park Zoo has a problem that many other businesses would love to have: Too many customers

They have so many customers, in fact, that they cannot find enough parking for them all to visit. Especially on weekends.

Solution: Build a parking garage!

Wonderful idea! 700 new spaces where around 125 were before. And it’s free, so folks can park there all day while enjoying the zoo!

Then, in steps the Phinney Ridge Community Council and a new group called Save Our Zoo.

The zoo is located in the Phinney Ridge area of Seattle and residence there say that this garage will ruin their property values. The Save Our Zoo group says that more customers will actually hurt the zoo, not help it.

And if that last bit of logic made you say “wtf?” then you would not be in the least bit surprised to learn that these two groups are chock-full of the worst group of NIMBYs we’ve seen a quite some time around here. And this being Seattle, that is saying something.

They want the zoo, which has been in the same location for decades, before a very large percentage of the neighborhood’s rather affluent current residents moved in, to stay where it is at and to be “Theirs”. They don’t want the traffic (car, bicycle of foot) and they don’t like anybody from outside coming into their area. Some people have even implied that the SOZ group has connections to animal rights whacko groups like PeTA.

While I fully believe in a citizen’s or a group of citizens’ right to be heard on issues involving their neighborhoods, to put a pinch on an entity whose sole reason for existence is education for selfish reasons is disgusting.

Earlier this week, these two groups were able to find someone to hear their case and rule that a parking garage was not a “customary” structure for a park or zoo.

I have never heard something so ridiculously absurd in all my life, and I talk with City of Seattle officials as part of my job.

Hit the above link and you’ll see that they are worried about the “commercialization” of the Zoo? With “commercialization” comes more money, which brings better conditions for the animals and more animals, which brings more employees, which is good all the way around. It is not that they don’t understand these facts, it is that they do and they don’t want it to happen.

These people are extremists whose only leg to stand on is a partisan one, which will hopefully be challenged and overturned as disgusting.