Walk the loop from Clark's Point back up Viewcrest on a warm August evening and you can hear the neighborhood running on two different clocks. One belongs to the herons on the bluff above the Resource Recovery Plant, whose nesting season ends this month. The other belongs to City Hall, where a 208-page decision, a fresh appeal, and a summer of survey crews are quietly rewriting what happens on the wooded slopes that give Edgemoor its character.
If you already live here, those two clocks are the story of August. The rest of the summer calendar sits on top of them.
The herons are still on the nests, but not for long
The rookery on the forested slope between the Post Point Resource Recovery Plant and Shorewood Drive is Bellingham's only Great Blue Heron nesting colony, and the herons typically occupy the site annually between February and August, using habitats in and around the colony for nesting, roosting, loafing, foraging and staging. That August end date is the one worth marking. If you have been meaning to walk out and look up before the season closes, this is the window.
The breeding cycle is late-stage right now. Watch and listen for young in May and June, and fledging juveniles in July and August. By September the trees go quiet again.
Two things to keep in mind while the birds are still active. The city's visitor guidance asks people to maintain a distance of at least 300 feet from herons feeding along the beach or lagoon, use binoculars from a distance, and keep people and pets on designated trails or in open lawn areas at least 200 feet away from the colony. And the colony's future is not settled. WWU professor John Bower, who holds a doctorate in bird behavior, noted in July that it is not uncommon for great blue herons to shift their colonies in response to human behavior and bald eagle predation, and said it does not surprise him that birds would be shifting to a different colony. Anecdotally the site has been productive in recent years, with 45 active nests as of 2021 and 95 successful fledglings that same season, but the count fluctuates.
The Viewcrest decision landed. The appeal moves next.
The other August clock is the one ticking at City Hall. In a 208-page decision issued the afternoon of Friday, June 5, 2026, Bellingham Hearing Examiner Sharon Rice denied an appeal of the proposed Woods at Viewcrest development and approved a bundle of permits for the 38-lot subdivision on 37.7 acres, which would sit above the estuary commonly referred to as Mud Bay. The project sits on the eastern edge of the neighborhood, in what the city files call Area 7 of Edgemoor.
That decision did not end the fight. Opponents of the subdivision have appealed the hearing examiner's approval, and the matter will now be taken up by the Bellingham City Council. The mechanism matters if you are trying to plan around it. City Council will hold a closed record hearing on the appeal, meaning no new evidence, only argument from the existing record.
For a resident, the interesting detail sits in the shape of the lots. A phased preliminary plat would subdivide approximately 37.7 acres into 38 detached single-family lots and 3 reserve/open space tracts, with lot sizes ranging from 8,439 to 53,118 square feet. That is a wider spread than the "estate lot" shorthand people use for this pocket of Edgemoor implies, and it will change what future frontage on Viewcrest and Sea Pines looks like. If you want to follow the appeal in the source material rather than through second-hand summaries, the project page at cob.org has the full record, including the Hearing Examiner's decision and the underlying critical areas, geotechnical, and stormwater exhibits.
The 208 pages are worth skimming even if you have no intent to weigh in. They are the clearest picture available of how the city reads the slope, the buffer, and the drainage on the land you walk past.
Survey flags in your right-of-way
The third August timeline is the one likely to appear in your driveway. Survey work is beginning for the city's Edgemoor sewer improvements project, and during the weeks of July 6–10 and 13–17 you may see survey crews working throughout the neighborhood; in some cases crews may need to access the city's sewer infrastructure located within easements through private property, so you may receive a knock on your door.
Two practical notes. First, easements in Edgemoor tend to run through back yards and side yards rather than street frontage, a legacy of how the neighborhood platted out on its steep, wooded lots. Second, survey stakes and paint marks are not construction. They are the map that construction gets designed against, which means the flags you see this summer are the earliest signal of where trench work will show up in a future season. If a flag lands in a place you cannot explain, the city's Inside Bellingham update from July 2 is the plain-language source.
The Aug 4 social at Stone's Throw
For a neighborhood defined by long driveways and wooded sightlines, the annual reset happens in a beer garden. The Edgemoor Neighborhood Association is hosting an informal neighborhood meetup at family-friendly Stone's Throw Brewing on Tuesday, August 4, from 5:30 to 7:30 PM, open to anyone from new arrivals to long-time residents. If you have been trying to figure out who your neighbors on the other side of the ravine actually are, this is the shortest path.
Where the walk actually goes this month
Edgemoor is a walker's neighborhood, and the loops most residents actually use are shorter and more specific than the guides suggest. A working map for August:
| Destination | Route from central Edgemoor | Why this month |
|---|---|---|
| Clark's Point overlook | Down Viewcrest, in through the greenway trailhead | Protected from further development with a conservation easement; late-summer sun stays on the sandstone until nearly nine |
| Post Point rookery viewpoint | Down 30th to the dog park, then out to the marked buffer | Last weeks of the Feb–Aug nesting window |
| Marine Park | Under the tracks past the shipyard | A 1.9-acre waterfront park with a gently sloping beach ideal for beach combing, bird watching and kayaking; also the termination point of Bellingham's annual Ski to Sea race |
| Hundred Acre Wood | Through Fairhaven Park to the greenway network | Trails hold shade even on 85-degree afternoons |
| Interurban Trail south | Fairhaven Park trailhead, heading toward Larrabee | Gravel stays cool; longest uninterrupted run in the neighborhood |
The point is not that these are secret. It is that once you have done the Clark's Point loop three times, the interesting version of a walk is picking two of these in sequence and connecting them.
The Fairhaven side of the walk
Edgemoor is exclusively residential, so the errands and the dinner reservations happen a few blocks north in Fairhaven Village. The short list residents actually rotate through:
- Village Books for a browse that runs longer than intended
- Haggen Food & Pharmacy for the weekly grocery, walkable from most of the neighborhood's north end
- The Black Cat for bistro fare with a bay view
- Estelle for a proper French bistro cocktail
- Magdalena's Bistro for crepes when the plan changes
- Keenan's at the Pier for waterfront dining when out-of-town guests want the view postcard
None of these are new. What is new this month is that most of them are a short enough walk from Edgemoor that August is the month to actually make them a habit rather than a drive.
The shape of the month
Put the three clocks side by side and August in Edgemoor has a specific shape. The herons finish their season and the trees go quiet. The Woods at Viewcrest appeal moves from Hearing Examiner to City Council, and the neighborhood's eastern edge starts to settle into whatever it will become over the next several years. Survey flags appear along easements that most homeowners have not thought about since they bought the property. And on August 4 the whole neighborhood shows up at a picnic table.
You do not need a real estate reason to notice any of this. If you have one anyway, the same three clocks tell you something useful about how this neighborhood is valued. Buyers who tour Edgemoor for the first time see the wooded lots and the water views. Owners who have lived here five winters know that the value sits in the specific slopes, the specific easements, and the specific parcels next to yours that are or are not developable. That knowledge is what a good listing conversation actually turns on.
When you are ready to have that conversation about your own property, whether the plan is this year or a few years out, Julian & Company is here in the neighborhood and glad to walk it with you. Get your free home valuation and start the conversation.
