POULSBO — Poulsbo will soon have one less cul-de-sac, city council members decided this week.

And while traffic is a concern, it wasn’t enough of a concern to change a 14-year-old council policy urging neighborhood connectivity.

In a unanimous decision at its June 2 meeting, the Poulsbo City Council approved the Caldart Heights Planned Unit Development (PUD) Preliminary Plat. The issue was first heard by council May 5 and then again May 19. The proposal plans 102 units, 43 single family and 59 single-family attached, on a 17-acre parcel of land off Caldart Avenue between Forest Rock Hills and an undeveloped piece of land at the corner of Lincoln Road and Caldart.

The plan was disputed by numerous neighbors from the Forest Rock Hills and Poulsbo Gardens neighborhoods. Their concerns mainly surrounded a council requirement made when Forest Rock Hills was first created that mandates future developers connect 12th Avenue with Lincoln Road.

Because there is yet one more property to be developed, the Caldart Heights developer will connect 12th to Caldart at this point. The property owner with the last piece will be required to continue 12th to Lincoln if and when that site develops.

Currently, 12th is a road running north to south in Forest Rock Hills that ends in a cul-de-sac. Residents are concerned that the connection will create a short cut around State Route 305 and become a safety issue for pedestrians and drivers alike.

“We’re talking residential conditions and then adding 1,000 car trips a day,” commented Forest Rock Hills resident Gail Kirsopp. “This will have a significant impact on the existing infrastructure.”

But city staff said the extension was needed to allow better access for emergency vehicles and also to continue council’s policy of neighborhood connectivity. Neighbors argued that the same connectivity could be achieved by leaving the cul-de-sac as it was and adding some sort of gate or partition. In the end, council members agreed with staff recommendations.

“We currently have three 10th Avenues that don’t connect and probably never will and I’d hate to see us continue the problem we’ve already got and we have no solutions for,” Councilwoman Kathryn Quade commented.

Councilman Dale Rudolph added that Forest Rock Lane was originally built for construction access only and that he felt it was “a mistake” that the city ever allowed the route to become a permanent road. Continuing the connection of 12th, especially out to Lincoln, was necessary to lessen the impact on an already flawed pass, he added.

“I don’t think how you install this project is going to help or hurt Forest Rock Lane,” Rudolph said. “The city just needs to be looking at that route.”

While neighbors did not get to keep their cul-de-sac, their arguments did spur a lengthy council discussion. Councilwoman Connie Lord said she felt council owed it to the citizens to look at ways to meet them in the middle with some of their concerns.

“Right now, we’ve got a lot of issues raised by residents and I have a lot of concerns about letting traffic through 12th because I think there’s ways to help that,” Lord said.

The citizen concerns did, however, spur council to include additional conditions of approval in the documents, including:

•Traffic calming measures will be extended the length of 12th Avenue, not just at the site of the former cul-de-sac, and can include on-street parking

•Public Road No. 1 will be built concurrent to 12th

•10 feet of the 20-foot setbacks between Forest Rock Hills and Caldart Heights will be a buffer zone

•Heights will be restricted to one story

Kirsopp was among the handful of neighbors who came to the third and final night of deliberations over the issue. She said traffic increasing in the family neighborhood continued to be a concern after the PUD approval, but there were parts of the agreement she felt were directly related to the council listening to residents’ concerns.

“There has to be a compromise and I think they did do a compromise,” she commented. “I think they did hear the residents.”

“It’s what I expected,” area neighbor Stuart Whitford added. “They had some decent mitigation from the get go and we wanted more. We’ll form a committee and work with the developer to get the best mitigation we can from the cul-de-sac on down.”