The city wants to take the lead this time as it decides how Ballard and Crown Hill should update its neighborhood plan.

Mayor Greg Nickels released a proposal earlier this month that outlines a city-staffed structure to examine all 38 of Seattle's neighborhood plans by dividing the city into six sectors. It's meant to create more standardization than looking at each plan individually.

Specific issues would be evaluated, such as land use, transportation and housing.

The preliminary approach calls for Seattle's Department of Planning and Development to manage the process with help from the Department of Neighborhoods and other city departments. The public involvement process would include approximately two to three meetings per neighborhood and one to two per sector.

Each sector would be completed in one year.

Chris Leman, chair of the Seattle City Neighborhood Council, said this is almost starkly different from the "grassroots democracy" that happened nearly 10 years ago.

"It was a bottom-up style," Leman said. "Great things happened. Now we just want to make sure those successes are not forgotten and that those achievements are not lost."

Non-profits, residents and business owners were contracted by the city for a from-the-ground-up style of neighborhood planning.

It's an approach that has since been emulated in more than 100 cities across the world, said Jim Diers, who as director of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods in the late 1990s oversaw the development of the neighborhood plans.

The Seattle City Council approved the 38 individual neighborhood plans in 1999 as the city implemented the state's Growth Management Act. The law was aimed to address growth, sustainability, open space and other concerns as urban areas developed plans for handling more density.

Diers, author of "Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way," said city government has lost sight of the value of active communities and has gone back to seeing citizens as a nuisance rather than a resource.

"The work we do in building community is the most important work we do... It's the key to sustainability," he said. "The government needs to start seeing community as equal partners."

Planning department spokesman Alan Justad said the new approach would be more of a "partnership than 'top down' process," with neighborhoods benefiting from the "expertise" of city staff that wasn't typically available when the plans were first adopted.

Irene Wall, chair of the City Neighborhood Council's Neighborhood Planning Committee, said part of the significance of the original process was that it empowered residents and helped create long-term volunteer commitments.

The city's proposed approach may have value as well, she said, "but the devil is in the details."

But Leman hopes the city will reject any kind of "cookie-cutter" planning model.

"It should be based on local conditions and local wishes," he said.

At least one Seattle City Council member agrees.

Sally Clark, chair of the council's economic development and neighborhoods committee, said recently the process should continue to be primarily community driven.

"Whatever happens it has to be a partnership, and there has to be trust... because the alternative is mutually assured failure," said Clark. "I'm hoping we can stay true to that value of it being grassroots based."

Clark, who spent her earlier career overseeing the development of the current neighborhood plans for the city, has asked the city auditor to evaluate the progress of the neighborhood plans. The report is due out in August.

Although the plans have made a "great deal of difference," many still have a long way to go, she said. The city has learned a few lessons along the way, too.

There's no structure in place to keep plans at the forefront of community decisions. A stewardship model was never created at the city level and communities should be provided with a progress report at least once a year, Clark said.

The 20-year plans were designed to address growth, transportation and other issues, but only about 40 percent of the city participated in the planning, said Leman. Single-family neighborhoods and several urbanized pockets north of downtown Ballard were generally not included.

Leman doesn't think the plans are completely out-of-date, though some may need revision more than others, primarily if a community has surpassed its target density rate.

Davidya Kasperzyk, an architect and bioregional planner, acted as a consultant during Ballard's initial planning process. That planning "was a start," he said at a recent Ballard District Council meeting. But he's concerned with the scale of new developments here.

"We are desperate for urban formulas and design guidelines for Ballard," said Kasperzyk. "It really seems like we are getting cheapened in our development process."

While some aspects of the plan have been carried out, other elements have not, such as increased transportation infrastructure that was promised in exchange for accepting urban density.

Kasperzyk used as an example the now dormant South Ballard Transportation Corridor Study, which was mostly funded by the city in 2003 and identified the area's transportation priorities.

"Everything is just dying," Kasperzyk said. "It's getting to feel like there's a crisis around here. Ballard needs refined rules for transportation and refined rules for urban design."

Adding a Sound Transit Sounder rail station here was identified as one of four key plan elements, said Stephen Lundgren, who served on the Crown Hill/Ballard Neighborhood Planning Association Board.

Almost a decade later and transit officials have said it could be several more years before it gets built.

"So we got the growth, where's the transportation concurrency that was supposed to follow?" Lundgren asked.

In the meantime, the city is creating a "sounding board" consisting of local residents and community leaders to help advise the city in planning efforts.

The city plans to work closely this time around with the Seattle Department of Transportation, said Diane Sugimura, director of Seattle's Department of Planning and Development and former Ballard resident. Some plans may just need "tweaking" and others like Ballard may require significant changes due to higher than expected growth.

Sugimura said while growth is substantial throughout the city, Ballard is probably the growing the fastest outside of the downtown center.

As stipulated in the city's Comprehensive Plan, most of the employment and residential growth is supposed to occur in just 18 percent of the city, urban centers and urban villages, which includes Ballard.

"Unless we significantly change (that), we don't have a lot of area to handle the growth," Sugimura said.

Rebekah Schilperoort may be reached at rebekahs@robinsonnews.com