Hearing examiner rejects remand request, sets site visit and reconvenes Lakefront Park hearing

The hearing examiner overseeing the Lakefront Park Improvements appeal declined on Feb. 25 to remand or deny the city’s permit approvals over claims the record was incomplete, but ordered the parties to clarify the record and agreed to a same-day site visit.

The examiner denied an appellant motion to remand or reject the permits as premature after the appellant’s attorney argued the application lacks clear plan sheets and that critical information is missing from the record. The examiner instead asked the city to provide a plan-sheet explanation chart and said he would reconvene the hearing the following morning at 9 a.m.

The appellant’s attorney said the application is “messy” and “essentially an incomplete application” and argued the city failed to transfer its full administrative record as required under Lake Forest Park municipal code, citing the need for clearer grading and existing-conditions sheets before a quasi-judicial approval. The transcript records the attorney pressing that experts need time and that, under procedural rule 216(a), additional submittals normally require a three-week window.

Mark Hoffman, the city’s CPD director, told the examiner that many of the building-site and ministerial permit sheets cited on a cover list were intended for later, ministerial review and are not required to resolve the Type 1 land-use appeal. “The record is complete,” Hoffman said, and he told the examiner staff can identify the specific sheets in the record that the examiner should rely on or list in a draft condition of approval.

The city representative, Miss Pratt, said the city could supply most of the requested sheets as newly entered exhibits but acknowledged that one sheet (sheet 68) does not yet exist because it would normally be prepared for a later building permit. Pratt offered a chart mapping the hearing examiner’s requested sheet numbers to where those sheets appear in the record and proposed submitting that chart as a new exhibit.

The examiner refused to remand or deny the applications at this time, saying he was not persuaded that a full remand was warranted and that he preferred to give the parties a short opportunity to fill specific gaps. He instructed the city to transmit the plan-sheet explanation chart and the other exhibits the parties had discussed and directed staff to notify participants who attended the previous day’s hearing about the reconvened session.

As part of the procedural accommodations, the city proposed — and the examiner agreed to — a site visit that afternoon to allow the examiner and parties to view the property together. The parties agreed to meet at City Hall’s front door at 11:30 a.m. for the view visit; the examiner said the visit would be factual and limited, consistent with view-trip rules, and cautioned that any substantive discussion should be avoided while on site.

Before adjourning the procedural session, the examiner read a list of about 21 detailed questions he wants addressed in testimony or by exhibits, including which exhibits show wetlands and buffers, how parking calculations meet code, whether certain building elevations and grading plans appear in the record, and whether issued HPA language could allow solid deck sections and how those would affect light-transmission calculations.

The hearing was recessed after those directions. The examiner marked the plan-sheet explanation chart as Exhibit 45 and asked the city to provide exhibits 1 through 44 and the newly identified materials electronically. The hearing will reconvene on Feb. 26, 2026, at 9:00 a.m.; the site visit is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. the same day.

Next steps: parties are to transmit the chart and outstanding exhibits, address the examiner’s enumerated questions during testimony, and proceed with the scheduled site visit and reconvened hearing.