SPEAKER_05

Okay, good morning, everyone.

The September 4th, 2024 Land Use Committee will come to order.

It's 9.30 a.m.

I'm Tammy Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

SPEAKER_23

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Councilman, Vice Chair Strauss?

Present.

Chair Morales?

SPEAKER_05

Present.

We're present.

Thank you.

I believe Councilmember Moore will be joining us virtually when we note her presence.

We will make sure to put that on the record.

So good morning, everyone.

This is a special session of the City Council Land Use Committee.

We will be here for a briefing on four different council bills.

And then at two o'clock this afternoon, we will have the public hearing on three of the bills.

So just as a reminder, if you're here for...

three of the bills, and you want to speak to them this morning, you're welcome to.

But if you want them to be part of the official public hearing record, you'll need to come back at 2 o'clock for that.

So we have four items on the agenda today.

Council Bill 120822. briefing and discussion and public hearing on congregate residences.

Council Bill 120823 for briefing, discussion and public hearing on omnibus legislation for land use codes.

Council Bill 120824, briefing, discussion and public hearing on design review exemptions.

And Council Bill 120833, Briefing and Discussion on a Living Building Amendment.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Okay, so we will go ahead and open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

As a reminder, if you're here for council bills 120822, 823, or 824, you're welcome to offer comment this morning.

If you want your comments to be part of the official public hearing record, you'll need to return at 2 o'clock.

So we will have the briefings this morning.

We'll take a recess, hopefully around 1130, and then we will reconvene at 2 o'clock for the hearing.

Okay.

Naomi, I will hand it off to you.

How many speakers do we have signed up today?

SPEAKER_23

We have eight speakers signed up in person today.

And...

and we have six speakers signed up virtually.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, so let's go ahead and give everybody two minutes to speak, and I will hand it to you to read the comments.

SPEAKER_23

First speaker, we will start with in-person speakers.

First, we have Kirk Klosowski, followed by Ian Morrison.

SPEAKER_05

Please go ahead.

SPEAKER_19

Okay, can you hear me okay?

SPEAKER_05

Get a little bit closer to the mic.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_19

Better.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Kirk Kozlowski, and I am a partner with Saratoga Capital.

We are two families that have been together since 1971, and we're going to present a project to you that is a legacy build for a long-term hold for our families.

We've been owning and operating and managing in Seattle since 1980. We're developing 181 unit multifamily site at 2616 Western Avenue in Belltown.

Our vision with this project is to create as much affordable and workforce housing as possible inside a deeply sustainable living building.

The approved design includes either 13 MHA units or two and a half million dollar MHA fee, as well as 10 three bedroom family sized units.

we focus on workforce housing.

The site is zoned downtown mixed commercial and residential and under existing zoning allows for multifamily buildings of 145 feet.

The Seattle code also allows for additional height incentives through participation in the living building pilot program and or the downtown three bedroom incentive.

For voluntarily participating in these incentives, the Seattle Code provides us an additional 40 feet in height.

In 2022, SDCI issued a code interpretation that stated the project was eligible to use both incentive programs.

Later, a few condo owners appealed the project as the new building's height translates to a loss of views for some.

A recent hearing examiner ruling on their appeal reversed SDCI's well-reasoned interpretation.

The city's code relative to the height bonus was not clear enough for the project to be eligible and upheld the appeal.

This effectively pauses the project that was previously approved by the Downtown Design Review Board and SDCI.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, sir.

Your time is up, but I will ask you to send your comments to our office so that we have them as part of the record.

And just as a reminder, folks, when you hear a chime, that means you have 10 seconds left to wrap up your comments.

SPEAKER_23

Next, we have Ian Morrison, followed by Cynthia Pearson.

SPEAKER_15

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Ian Morrison with McCulloch Hill here on behalf of Saratoga Capital.

And wanted to just ground this in the policy issue.

I'm here to speak in support of the living building and three bedroom clarifying amendment.

It's long been the city's policy to have the living building incentive for additional height and density for deeply sustainable buildings like the Bullet Center.

And it's also been the city's policy to give incentives for family style units in downtown.

That was adopted in 2017. The Saratoga project you just heard Kurt mention was the first project that followed SDCI's guidance to stack those two incentives, the living building and the three bedroom, to have a deeply sustainable residential building that has not only 10 three bedroom units, but over 42 bedroom units.

And this is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan policies that encourage family style living downtown.

And while that project was unanimously approved by the Downtown Design Review Board and supported by SDCI, unfortunately, a small but dedicated group of condo owners in the immediate area have opposed that project at every step of the way.

And the hearing examiner, much to our surprise and SDCI's surprise, said that the city council should have acted clearer when they adopted those amendments to allow for this incentive to be stacked in Belltown.

As we understand it, it was always the council's intent and it was always SDCI's interpretation.

Without this clarifying amendment, this is not only an impact on this project and the 180 units, including the 50 plus family size units, but it's an impact on all of Belltown, which is one of our most transit rich developments.

And according to OPCD is one of the lowest impact development areas for displacement.

And so this legislation is not simply about one project.

It is about clarifying the intent consistent with the comprehensive plan to support incentives for sustainable development.

family-style living in the downtown.

And so we ask you to support this amendment, which is simply clarifying what we believe was the original intent of the living building and the three-bedroom, allow this project and its $2.4 million in MHA fees and the construction of these new homes go forward, and also allow this for other units in Belltown.

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we have Cynthia Pearson, followed by Robert Gammon.

SPEAKER_08

I yield my time to Pat Montano.

SPEAKER_16

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_10

My name is Bob Gammon.

I also yield my time to Pat.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, sir.

You have two minutes, so please come forward.

That's fine.

SPEAKER_22

Good morning.

My name is Pat Montanino.

I have some written notes that I'm going to be reading.

Would you like copies so you can follow?

Sure.

So basically, I'm going to address some of the issues on CB 120-833, and I'll read them again this afternoon.

First, the summary of this legislation acknowledges that it affects a single piece of property.

What the summary doesn't tell you is that the property is currently the subject of litigation that will be rendered moot by this legislation.

Please ask the SDCI staff why this legislation has been put forth at this time, why it could not wait until the litigation is resolved.

and why while it pretends to be a non-project action, it is not in effect a spot zoning ordinance.

The second item is this legislation is accompanied by a determination of non-significance concerning environmental impact.

Please ask SDCI staff to summarize the environmental studies that led them to this conclusion, including specifically that a building can be 60% taller than its neighbors, impairing sunlight to the neighbors in a program intended to demonstrate how a building can survive with only the sunlight falling upon it, while not offering that opportunity to surrounding buildings.

Third, the ordinance is written as if it was a citywide ordinance, but it only impacts the DMR zone.

If the living building program is of great benefit to the city, warranting specific legislation, why is it not being legislated for the whole city?

Since this legislation is targeted at a specific district, the one council member Kettle represents, has his opinion been considered?

And finally, the living building- Can I continue?

10 seconds, go ahead.

The Living Building Program is administered by the International Living Future Institute, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon.

Thus, they have not satisfied the Charity Navigator financial disclosure requirements.

They are no longer available for contributions on that website.

How recently has SDCI vetted this institute?

Is there a record of the original study done to vet them?

And just to add something that wasn't on my notes, we did some research on.

SPEAKER_05

We'll take your comments and have the written ones.

Thank you very much.

Your time's expired.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we have Robert Gammon.

You wanted to yield your time.

SPEAKER_10

My name is Robert Gammon.

I thought I had deferred my comments to Pat.

SPEAKER_05

If you don't prefer to speak, that's fine, sir.

You do have two minutes if you've signed up and you want to speak.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_23

Next, we have Andre, followed by Pat.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, each speaker gets two minutes.

We don't compile time like that, so if you'd like to speak for two minutes, you're welcome to come on up, but if you don't, then we'll move on to the next speaker.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we have Pat Mountain, followed by Steve Zimpke.

Oh, sorry.

Up next, we have Steve Zimpke, followed by Steve Rubustello.

SPEAKER_03

I sent you comments in the email yesterday that you can read in more detail, and I'll go a little bit more.

I wanted to emphasize one point today in terms of, this is in terms of the omnibus bill, that there's inconsistencies in it that don't make sense, that having a tree protection area and then having a second basic tree protection area that overrules what the tree protection area is defined as and how it's implemented.

And 2511-060 makes no sense.

One says you can protect the tree by reducing it, giving the authority to the director.

The basic tree protection definition also says the same thing, that the director can modify it.

But then when you get to section 070 and all the development zones, it says, they cannot be modified.

So it overrules it, which seems like an inconsistency to say in definitions you can do this.

And then when you get to that section, you cannot do it.

I wanted to point out the problem with the dealing with the one inch radius or one inch diameter equals one foot radius for tree protection area.

And we'll show you looking at this here is a 24 inch tree.

and put that in the center.

We're at 18. This is 20, 24 feet.

So this way, the other way is a 24 inch tree, which is a tier two tree.

This is the tree protection area that circle you're saying during development.

It cannot be modified.

That means that this is a, rather than a tree protection area, it's a tree removal zone for the developer.

So just think of this.

My house, we have a 30-inch Douglas fir tree.

It's eight foot from the house.

Then go look out.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for the show and tell.

Always good to have some visuals.

Please go ahead.

SPEAKER_25

Recently, the only three-time mayor that I know of of the city of Seattle died, Charlie Royer.

And Charlie and I didn't always get along on land use.

And I think much to the surprise of at least one of you present, when Charlie came to the Land Use Committee, he and I seemed to be quite friendly because we were.

Charlie had a problem early in his three-term mayor situation where he ran for the US Senate.

He did not do well.

He did not win in the city of Seattle.

And at that point, he did something which I hope you will consider doing.

Moving away from the money, moving away from the big time thinkers, come back to the citizens.

Now, looking last time, it was a little tough for a lot of people, and it's gonna get tougher, I got a feeling.

Charlie learned that he had to go back to the people that got him elected in the first place.

And that really helped the city of Seattle.

And I hope you'll consider helping the city of Seattle.

Design review needs to come back as design review was.

Everything needs to be on the table.

And you do need to actually make a tree ordinance that saves trees.

If you're not going to do that, I think that Seattle will remember.

And I can't promise everybody not coming back.

I'm not that foolish.

But I think it's going to be a harder slap.

You don't have near as many public organizations that go down to the grassroots as you used to to help you understand the issues.

And I hope you think about them.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we are switching to online public speakers.

SPEAKER_05

Before you do that, Naomi, I just want to acknowledge that Council Member Moore has joined us.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_23

Up first, we have Megan Cruz, followed by Steve Horvath.

SPEAKER_05

Megan, push star six, please.

We see that you're here, but you're muted.

There we go.

SPEAKER_08

and luxury development.

It denies 100,000 residents across several city neighborhoods due process and participation in a citywide land use program.

Only one person on this committee represents the neighborhoods affected.

For the rest of you, please consider how you would vote if the exemption were aimed solely at where you live.

Eliminating design review is the opposite recommendation of a city-led racial equity review.

It's the opposite of new state legislation that reform design review and will be mandatory here within months.

A recent auditor report cites ethical concerns expressed by staff around land use decisions.

Approving code variances behind the scenes will increase these pressures.

Against state law, this bill sets a precedent for making the public go away.

Please reject it.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we have Steve Horvath, who is currently not present.

So we will move on to June Bluespruce, followed by David Blogger.

SPEAKER_09

Thank you.

My name is June Bluespruce, and I live in District 2. I urge the council to reject the tree protection portions of the omnibus bill.

When the tree protection ordinance was passed in May of 2023, members of this committee who voted for it promised to fix what you recognize as significant issues.

This bill doesn't do that at all.

It provides tweaks around the edges while removals of mature trees have greatly accelerated since the ordinance took effect.

I'm especially concerned about tree loss in areas zoned residential small lots or RSLs.

These zones have very little protection for trees, as documented in the omnibus bill, pages 17 through 18. They affect areas that already have little tree canopy.

Most of South Park, for example, is zoned RSL and has 12% tree canopy.

Near my home in Columbia City is an RSL area and a census tract with 22% tree cover.

A 10,000 square foot lot in that zone recently sold to a developer.

Four of the five large trees on the lot are Tier 2. Three are over 30 inches DSH.

The other one is Tier 3. The developer has applied to tear down the single-family residence on the property, clear-cut the trees, and build seven cottages with six parking spaces.

Alternatives exist that could allow multiple units on the property and save several of the trees.

But under the current ordinance, there are no legal requirements for the developer to consider alternatives in spite of the language in the SDCI tip sheet.

So if SDCI approves the construction permit, the whole neighborhood will be deprived of the significant environmental benefits of those trees, a social good lost for private gain.

Seattle needs more housing.

We can't keep building housing in ways that make neighborhoods in environmental justice priority areas, unhealthy or even uninhabitable.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we have Steve Horvath, followed by David Glauger.

Please press star six to unmute yourself.

SPEAKER_16

Good morning.

Steve Horvath here.

Thank you very much, Chair Morales.

and use committee for hearing my comments this morning.

My comments concern these bills where you're putting before the council the opportunity to delegate what really should be in essence a non-delegable function of our elected leaders, which is to zone the city of Seattle.

And I'm speaking to you today, I actually live in a property adjacent to this You've heard two attorneys for the developers representing that building.

I live on the opposite side of the block.

I can't see the building.

It doesn't matter how tall it is.

I haven't participated in any of the advocacy to stop the excessive height, but I am concerned that you are considering delegating what I think every citizen believes is your role to zone the city of Seattle and to have open discussions about zoning and to an organization, SDCI, that the city's own audit revealed to be fraught with challenges just last year.

And if you want to do this, go ahead and have the conversations with the public and your constituents about zoning.

I would love to engage in that conversation with you.

The zoning map book for Belltown and the DMR zone that is really the focus of what a lot of this delegation would address is on page 108. And we can talk about that all day long.

But I would ask you not to delegate what we believe is what we elect you to do, which is to zone to a department in the city that has no obligation to the public and no obligation to hear our comments.

And thank you very much for considering these comments today.

SPEAKER_23

Up next, we have David Glauger followed by Lewis Martin.

SPEAKER_10

Good morning.

My name is David Kloger, and this morning I will be speaking about the tree protection ordinance, which I realize is on the afternoon agenda.

During the May 23, 2023 Battle City Council meeting, Councilmember and then Land Use Committee Chair Dan Strauss was explaining to the full Council the benefits of the draft tree protection ordinance.

Amongst these explanations was that the new ordinance would provide protection for trees in environmentally critical areas, also known as ECAs.

This makes sense, as you would not want to remove trees from wetlands, riparian zones, or steep slopes.

However, this does not seem to be true, as in case after case, we have seen SDCI approve an exemption to allow the removal of trees from ECAs.

One of the latest examples of this is at 5960 Martin Luther King Jr.

Way in the Rainier Valley.

This site includes three CA, ECAs, including a wetland and a steep slope.

There are 124 trees on this site and all are slated to be cut down.

Can someone explain to me why SDCI is allowing for ECA exemptions?

Either SDCI needs to protect our environmentally critical areas or the tree ordinance needs to be amended to assure that they are truly protected.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you.

Up next we have Lewis Martin followed by Sandy Shetler.

If you press star six.

SPEAKER_07

Good morning, city council members.

My name is Lois Martin, and I am a legacy resident and small business owner in the Central District of Seattle.

I'm here today to ask that you reject Council Bill 120823. In 2019, when the city's zoning changes happened, many formerly redlined and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods were zoned to include more density, which included having their zones changed to RSL.

Unfortunately, our zoning is completely left out of any tree protections in our city, which means that those neighborhoods and have already borne much of Seattle's development must bear the brunt of losing more canopy, making their neighborhoods hotter and more prone to becoming heat islands.

I work with small children every day, and each one is different.

Because they are unique, we respond to their individual needs.

Every tree species is different, which means that their root system is going to be different.

The bill includes language that lays out a one-size-fits-all root system analysis.

This means that some varieties of trees will be spared and many will be cut down because the root system doesn't fit into a checkbox.

Last year's tree ordinance has already done significant damage as shared by the testimony of others who care about the health and climate protections trees provide our city.

Please don't double down on last year's legislation that has fallen short of its purpose.

I ask each of you to reject this bill in the name of climate protection justice, and ask SDCI to look at the environmental impact and not only formerly redlined and disadvantaged communities, but across the city.

We need our children to grow up in a Seattle that protects trees in all communities, not just wealthier neighborhoods.

Please reject it and advise SDCI to go back to the drawing board.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you.

Up next, we have Sandy Shetler followed by Ruth Diener.

SPEAKER_12

Sandy Shetlar with Tree Action Seattle.

Please revise or reject the tree ordinance section of the omnibus bill.

It cements loopholes into place which are fueling clear cuts for construction in all neighborhoods, even frontline communities least able to afford losing trees.

It adds a new provision stating that tree protection only applies to five land use zones, and quote in all other zones all trees may be removed when development is proposed and quote.

Park and not fellows residential small lot zoning does not get tree protection yet they have 12% tree canopy compared to Seattle average of 28%.

With people done on a sweeping tree removal plan of this magnitude.

The tree ordinance should apply across the city.

Trees grow in every land use zone, even industrial, and every one of them protects public health.

Removing them should not be a foregone conclusion.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_23

Thank you.

The last speaker we have is Ruth Diener.

Ruth, please press star six to unmute yourself.

SPEAKER_06

Hi, my name is Ruth Danner.

I'm president of Save the Market Entrance, an all-volunteer nonprofit dedicated to affordability, sustainability, quality of life, and sense of place for all who live, work, and play in the neighborhoods surrounding Pike Place Market.

I'm here today to speak in opposition to both CB 12833 and 12824. I do not trust the living building pilot plan and I'm interested to know where the funding, where their funding comes from.

It appears to be CB120833 appears to be written by developers for developers simply to countervene the legal process already in place.

CBJ's own hearing examiner found that the public was right and sdci was wrong and now they're asking you to step on that process in any case current code requires that recognizes sorry current code recognizes that small lots can only serve the infrastructure to provide for a limited number of future occupants.

CB 120833 and 120824 disregard public comment and public involvement.

During design review, access to public documents showing a developer's plan to build their project extended three feet onto Pike Place

SPEAKER_23

Does all of the speakers we have remotely or in person?

SPEAKER_05

Okay, thank you very much.

If you would like to submit written comment, please feel free to do that.

And as a reminder, if you would like your comments included in the public hearing record, please come back at two o'clock and those will be included there.

Okay, we're going to move on in the agenda.

Naomi, will you please read Item 1 into the record?

SPEAKER_23

Item 1, Council Bill 120822, Congregate Residences for Briefing, Discussion, and Public Hearing.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, thank you very much.

We're joined by Jeff Wetteland from the Office of Planning and Community Development and Lish Woodson from Council Central Staff to discuss...

CITY IMPLEMENTATION OF HOUSE BILL 1998, WHICH ALLOWS FOR CO-LIVING HOUSING, KNOWN AS CONGREGATE HOUSING, IN ALL ZONES THAT ALLOW MULTIFAMILY HOUSING.

SO I'LL ASK YOU BOTH TO INTRODUCE YOURSELVES FOR THE RECORD AND BEGIN YOUR PRESENTATION.

SPEAKER_21

COUNCIL CENTRAL STAFF.

GOOD MORNING, COUNCIL MEMBERS.

JEFF WENTLAND, LAND USE POLICY MANAGER WITH THE CITY'S OFFICE OF PLANNING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.

So I have a few slides to summarize the legislation that's before you today.

We're talking about co-housing or congregate residence housing, and we'll use those terms interchangeably today.

So, as the Chair stated, this legislation directly implements State Bill 1998 from last year's legislative session.

The state legislature was very active on housing last year, and this is one of several bills you will see to enact their supports for more affordable housing in our state.

Compliance with this state legislation is required.

But the mayor wanted to get started early on this.

The deadline for compliance is not until the end of next year, but we think that there's some really important benefits to this legislation that we wanted to get before you even sooner.

So this legislation will address a need for more housing supply.

It provides potentially a relatively lower cost housing option without public subsidy.

And we want to note for you that this legislation does roll back some restrictions that were placed on the congregate residence housing type by the council about 10 years ago.

So what is co-living housing or a congregate residence?

This is the new slightly amended proposed definition, and I'll just read that.

A congregate residence means a use in which sleeping rooms are independently rented and lockable and provide living and sleeping space.

And residents share kitchen facilities and other common elements with other residents in the building.

So you might think of SRO style housing or perhaps dormitory style housing.

Those would all be permitted under the congregate residence model.

So they're sleeping rooms, they're not full apartment units.

This is an image for you, just an example of what a congregate residence style sleeping room typically looks like in new construction in Seattle.

It's a compact living space.

Often it will have a bathroom in it, but no kitchen.

Often it will have some lofted space.

And the floor plan you see there shows that often it will have shared space in orange on the floor, such as a shared kitchen.

A summary of what's in this legislation for you.

The primary thing is that amends the allowable uses tables to allow congregate residences and allowed use in all zones that allow multifamily housing.

This will have the most impact in the city's low-rise multifamily zones and the neighborhood commercial one and neighborhood commercial two zones.

The bill also removes some minimum standards for common spaces and certain design elements for congregate residences.

That's required by the state legislation.

It also removes vehicle parking requirements within a half mile of a major transit stop.

Minor amendments to bicycle parking.

and an update to the definition of congregate residence to match the state's definition.

Here's an example for you of a building that is a congregate residence.

This one is in Ballard.

It's called the Karstey Apartments.

It has 52 small homes.

They're slightly less than 200 square feet each.

The building has nice amenity spaces like a laundry room, a mail room, cooking lounge, a fitness center, even a movie theater.

And the owner reports that the building is serving folks with incomes between the 30% and 80% AMI level.

Some more information for you on the rents that we're seeing in the market and documenting that this housing is providing a relatively affordable option.

So currently we're seeing rents for a sleeping room and congregate style housing in the $850 to $950 per month range in rent.

This is slightly below what you'd get in rent for a small complete apartment, which tends to rent in the $1,150 to $1,250 range per month.

And we're noting for you that that $850 to $950 price point is right around or slightly below even the rent level to serve a household with 40% AMI.

So to summarize, sleeping rooms are roughly renting in the market without public subsidy at around the 40% AMI level.

So the expected effects of this bill are to encourage or support the construction of this type of housing in more areas of the city, particularly in low-rise zones, places that have a lot of that zoning include Capitol Hill, Ballard, Fremont, and Columbia City.

These will likely be built without onsite parking, as is the case today, and we could expect some increased production of this model of housing close to transit.

And just the last slide for you is really a reminder of things to come.

You will see additional bills addressing housing in the next year, particularly the state's middle housing bill, that's HB 1110, updating our neighborhood residential zones.

What I want to mention is that the legislation you have before you today doesn't yet address the neighborhood residential zones.

To the extent that we have to address congregate residences in neighborhood residential zones, that will be done as a part of legislation you see next year.

And that concludes a quick summary of this legislation.

SPEAKER_05

OK, thank you.

I have a couple of questions just to clarify.

On slide five, the second bullet indicates that it deletes additional standards for shared space and minimum quality standards.

clarify what that means, how that affects kitchen space, other common area, bathroom.

I have questions about sort of habitability, and I know that that was part of the conversation 10 years ago that led to some changes, so I just wanna make sure that we are allowing for, or requiring some sort of shared space and kitchen space for the residents of these buildings.

SPEAKER_21

Yeah, that's a great question.

And the bill you have before you is addressing the land use code.

Um, the city has other codes that protect and ensure, um, minimum standards for health habitability as well as, um, Fire and life safety so the building code addresses fire and life safety for example and the housing building and maintenance code addresses basic habitability so those codes require that There is at least one shared kitchen in the building that has to be accessible to all residents of a congregate residence and those codes would also require that in the case that the sleeping room does not have a bathroom, that there's a shared bathroom available for every eight sleeping rooms.

And there are other protections in those codes for making sure the units are healthy and safe.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, thank you.

Did you want to add something, Lish?

SPEAKER_20

I'll just add that state law explicitly states that we cannot have those kinds of standards in our land use code.

SPEAKER_05

And that's the clarifying point for me in the land use code.

SPEAKER_21

But in other codes, we can have requirements that...

And just to be specific, the land use code standard required a greater percentage of the floor area in the building to be common space.

And that's the type of requirement that is no longer allowed by the state and would be deleted, but we'd still have the other building code and protections in place.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, thank you.

I want to talk a question on your last slide.

So we'll probably mention this several times this morning, but we have lots of other legislation coming next year as it relates to land use, housing issues.

I am wondering if we have other issues that we will be dealing with next year to implement some of the state legislation, why we don't just wait and do all of that at once?

SPEAKER_21

A couple of reasons.

First of all, we think there are important benefits to this type of housing, and passing the legislation sooner can allow more of it potentially to come online sooner.

The legislation you'll see next year is very complex.

It has a lot of moving parts and components.

So anything we can do to start to implement pieces of the state requirements sooner will lighten your load for what you have to look at next year.

And the mayor does intend to send some other bills down to try to manage that.

flow of legislation and make sure you all can get through what will be a lot of actions on housing next year to implement the comprehensive plan.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

Council Member Vedder, did you have a question?

SPEAKER_24

I do.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for being here both.

So is this legislation meant just to bring the SMC up to the state?

What I think is recently passed legislation on congregate housing.

So there is nothing in here that is separate from just bringing our code up to the state code.

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_20

That is correct.

Yes.

SPEAKER_24

Yeah.

So there's, so then my second question is what is the date by which I understand that as cities, we need to align with the state.

We can go higher than the state, but not lower.

Um, is there a date by which we need to comply with the state's law?

SPEAKER_20

Yes.

It's December 31st of 2025.

SPEAKER_24

So in the next year.

Okay.

Um, I have many questions chair, but I, I haven't had the opportunity to get a briefing from central staff, so I will make sure to do that.

Um, I do have one last question if you'll indulge me is just on the, um, Jeff, I was confused by the, um, I thought I heard you say this will have an impact on the single family zoning, but then later on here it says there's a forthcoming update to, um, neighborhood residential zone regulations, so that seemed inconsistent, and maybe I misunderstood.

SPEAKER_21

Thank you for the question.

I'll clarify.

The bill today does not touch or address the single family zoning at all.

The legislation you get on middle housing next year will address congregate residents to the extent that we need to deal with that.

So that'll be a part of next year's bill.

So what you have before you today, just to be very clear, doesn't do anything to single family zoning.

SPEAKER_20

And if I can just add a little bit more context, House Bill 1110 requires the city to allow a range of housing types in our currently neighborhood residential zones.

One of the housing types that the city could choose to allow in those zones is six plexes.

If the city does choose to allow six plexes, these congregate housing requirements would come along with it because the congregate housing provisions apply to any zone where we allow six or more units.

SPEAKER_24

Thank you, Lish.

And I thought HB 1110 did require six plexes.

So is that not?

SPEAKER_20

HB 1110 provides some flexibility.

SPEAKER_24

Near transit, correct?

SPEAKER_20

Near transit, you're correct.

SPEAKER_24

Yes.

So near transit, we wouldn't have a choice.

I mean, the six plex piece that comes along with 1110, you're saying this legislation also would apply there.

but that's all still to keep in line with what the state is requiring us to do.

We don't really have a choice there.

Correct.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Council Member Schatz.

SPEAKER_11

Thanks.

Thank you all for coming today.

You might wanna go back to slide seven and then sliding back to slide five question here.

Just taking a big zoom, taking a big step back.

Clearly, if the Korstey Apartments were built on Northwest 69th Street and 15th Avenue Northwest in the last decade, we allow some version of this before passing of this legislation.

Can you explain what the environment is today without passing the legislation?

How 1503 Northwest 59th Street, Seattle, Washington 98107 was built and then probably sliding back to slide four and helping us walk through where we're going from here.

SPEAKER_21

This type of housing is already allowed in many zones, just not all of them.

So I believe that that example is in a zone that already allows a congregate residence type today.

I have to research that to confirm.

SPEAKER_11

Just because I am that level of vice chair, I've got the GIS map up, and it's NC 155. And so is that where the differentiation is, is that we're now allowing it in low-rise?

SPEAKER_21

I'm going to have to research that.

I'm sorry I can't give you a great answer right now.

SPEAKER_11

Usually, I mean, for the viewing, all 150, 30,000 people watching on Seattle Channel.

Usually we have this pre-briefing.

I know because we've got a stacked agenda, stacked month that we just jumped into it.

So I'm happy to chat with you offline.

SPEAKER_20

Yeah.

Congregate housing is an allowed use in all of our commercial zones.

So that would include the neighborhood commercial 155 zone.

SPEAKER_05

Great.

Okay.

Any other questions?

I'll meet.

SPEAKER_11

Okay.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

I'm looking to Council Member Moore or Wu.

I don't see any questions.

Okay.

Yeah.

As I mentioned, we've got several pretty dense pieces of legislation today.

This is our first briefing.

So I would encourage committee members to make some time with central staff and with our departments.

to get other questions that you have answered.

Okay, if we don't have any other questions here, then thank you both for being here.

We will have the public hearing this afternoon, and this bill will be sent to the September 18th Land Use Committee, so we've got two more weeks to get your questions answered.

All right, thank you very much.

Naomi, will you please read item two into the record?

SPEAKER_23

Agenda item two, council bill 120823 omnibus for briefing discussion and public hearing.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, so let's see.

We are joined by Travis Saunders, Mike Podolsky and David VanSkyke from SDCI.

Anybody else coming up?

Here we go.

And Lish, you staying for this one?

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

Who's running this show?

I think we have Travis.

Hi, good morning.

Travis, great.

Okay.

Good morning.

I'll ask everybody to introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

SPEAKER_13

Very good.

For the record, my name is Travis Saunders.

I'm with Seattle Department of Construction Inspections in the land use policy and technical team.

I'll present you today on the 2024 on-the-bus.

SPEAKER_20

Dave Vance- Mike.

SPEAKER_19

Mike Podolsky, SDCI.

SPEAKER_17

Dave Vance- I'm Dave Vance-Geik.

I'm with SDCI.

I'm the policy lead in the policy and technical group with Travis Saunders.

SPEAKER_05

Great.

Okay.

Travis, take it away.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_13

share my screen here.

Bear with me one moment, please.

Okay.

Is that visible to everybody?

Yes.

Great.

Thanks so much.

Again, I'm Travis Saunders, SDCI, and presenting the 2024 omnibus legislation.

Here's just a roadmap for the presentation.

I'll give you a brief introduction, show you some of the highlights in this edition of the omnibus, and then there's some time here reserved at the back end for any questions that you might have.

Seattle has processed omnibus legislation about every two years in the cadence since around the 1990s.

Essentially, it keeps code updated.

It corrects errors, omissions, and just is a good practice to keep updating our code as we move along.

It is recommended by the state, and our last omnibus was adopted in 2022. So again, keeping in that two-year cadence.

The amendments largely are to the land use and environmental codes.

They're minor updates that don't warrant standalone legislation.

They correct errors and omissions.

They provide updates to responses to the state law as those come along, and they help to clarify any confusing provisions after we've learned, having code out for a while, that some things are working well, some things aren't.

working as well.

They need some clarification.

They come to us a variety of different ways through city permit review staff as they're reviewing code seeking clarification.

The law department often will come to us and say these need to be amended for purposes of legal matters.

Permit applicants also will chime in saying these provisions are confusing.

We need clarification on them.

Neighborhood representatives will also approach SDCI and request changes in the code.

So again, coming from a variety of different sources.

I'll go over some of the highlights in this year's omnibus.

It's voluminous at 150 some pages probably.

So just kind of selected a few here to highlight.

So one of the changes is one of those state law changes, and it basically changed nomenclature from marijuana to cannabis.

And this happens across numerous sections of code.

So we've touched all those and made the appropriate change there.

Another one of the changes that I've highlighted here is just the clarification to the amount of back of space, back of house space, accessory to grocery stores.

And this would be in NC zones, in your NC1 and NC2 zones, and essentially allowing for ample room for things like proper employee break rooms, storage areas for the variety of product that these urban grocery stores have to have, adequate office space for operation of grocery stores.

This helps to clarify that, that these areas are exempt from floor areas.

And then another clarification is to allow commercial outdoor activities when there's a lot that is on both residential and commercial.

So being able to have outdoor activities, which we found during the pandemic, are valued.

And so this helps to get to that detail.

There are several changes here in Seattle mix zones, and one of them is helping to provide additional height for preserving open space, and another one is to help facilitate additional FAR, floor area ratio, for lots impacted by the monorail.

And then there's some changes to downtown zones to clarify high limit standards in 2349008. Then there's one regarding the height of podiums along 3rd Avenue and as well as some tower spacing provisions as to what constitutes an existing tower for the code.

And then there are several administrative changes proposed to the tree protection ordinance that are primarily to provide clarity and use of implementation.

Now that we've had that legislation on the books for just a little over a year now, there's no changes in policy to that ordinance.

These are clarifications.

some changing of exceptional tree nomenclature to the tier 1, 2, 3, 4 that the code currently has now.

So it cleans up some of those as well.

So those are just a quick overview of some of the highlights in this year's code.

I'm happy to answer any questions on these and further expand or any additional questions that you might have seen in some of the changes in the ordinance itself.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, thank you very much.

So we also have Lish here from Council Central staff who drafted a very useful memo with table to help us understand some of the different changes that are being contemplated here.

Several of the changes are required under state law.

And some are consistent with previous policy decisions that the council has made.

Lish, in a moment, I'm going to ask you to go through your memo and really focus on the issues that are not consistent with previous policies.

There was the first table for colleagues on the committee and anybody who happened to have printed off our agenda documents.

But before we get there, I do want to give the SDCI team a chance to respond to the concerns that we have heard about changes to the tree code.

And wonder if, I'm not sure which of you would like to address it, but we do know, and I appreciate SDCI sending a memo late last night, or yesterday evening, addressing some of the concerns.

But if you could just, for the viewing public, talk about what is being contemplated to change and what is not being contemplated to change.

Who's taking that one?

SPEAKER_13

Sorry, I had my audio button there unmuted now.

I'm happy to take regarding a question about RSL zones.

I think that was one of the concerns that was brought.

And I think the concern here is That in the table, and if you have your ordinance handy it's on page 140 of the ordinance there's a table that's that's there and essentially it's calls out.

neighborhood residential zone Seattle next commercial.

maybe a couple others, and then it has a footnote that says basically that trees can be removed in all other zones.

I think there was a concern that because the RSL zone was not included explicitly in the table, that there was a concern that the footnote would then say you can remove all trees under development proposal in RSL zones.

which is not true because the term neighborhood residential zone, if you look up the definition in 2384A of municipal code, RSL falls under the umbrella of neighborhood residential zones.

So neighborhood residential zones includes RSL.

RSL has the same protections as the neighborhood residential counterparts and are one, two, three.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

So they are automatically covered because they are by definition part of the neighborhood residential zone.

SPEAKER_13

while not explicitly listed, they are part of the neighborhood residential suite of specifics.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, Lish, if I could ask you to walk through your memo and help us understand some of those proposed changes.

SPEAKER_20

Sure, and I apologize in advance, this is gonna get very wonky.

Duly noted.

Section 17 of the bill relates to exemption of space for basements in multifamily zones.

Currently, for some multifamily housing types, BASEMENT FLOOR AREA IS EXEMPT FROM THE OVERALL LIMIT ON MAXIMUM FLOOR AREA IN A BUILDING IF IT'S BELOW FOUR FEET ABOVE THE GRADE LEVEL.

SO YOUR BASEMENT CAN BE FOUR FEET ABOVE GRADE, WHICH ALLOWS FOR WINDOWS AND ENTRANCE-EXIT FROM BEDROOMS, FOR EXAMPLE, IN THE BASEMENT.

This section of the bill is related in part to the last bill we just discussed.

It will apply the same provisions that apply to multifamily dwelling units to congregate housing.

But it goes further and also applies it to other housing types like single family and cottage housing.

The current code has two different requirements, one for apartment buildings where parking can be accessed directly from the street in order to use that floor area exemption.

For townhouses and row houses, parking needs to be behind or beneath the building in order to access the exemption of the basement space.

So I raised the question about whether or not that should also apply to single family or cottage housing development, which are closer in form to townhouses and row houses than to larger apartment buildings.

SPEAKER_05

And so would that mean then that it is required to have the parking if it's required to have it behind?

SPEAKER_20

Correct.

Travis mentioned the grocery store floor area exemption.

It's drafted to apply to certain parts of or certain functions of a grocery store.

You might want to consider just providing more flexibility by allowing grocery stores to be larger and not saying that the extra space has to be in back of house functions.

That would provide more flexibility for grocery stores, for example, to remodel in the future without getting tripped up by is this a back of house function or a front of house function.

The bill provides some height limit exemptions and changes those in South Lake Union.

This is section 27 of the bill.

Those exemptions, those special height limits We're drafted to support development that protects a particular privately owned, publicly accessible open space on Fairview Avenue just north of Denny Way.

It used to be called the Seattle Times Park.

It was across the street from the old Seattle Times building.

The omnibus bill proposes to shift height limit allowances for projects that acquire transfers of development rights from that privately owned publicly accessible open space.

The zone that this applies in is a very large zone.

It applies to most of South Lake Union.

And SDCI wasn't able to identify whether or not there are projects that are vested to the existing code provisions.

In order to make sure that there are no unintended impacts of this code change, you could keep the existing language and add the new language rather than replacing the existing language.

with the new language.

The effect would be sort of protecting any existing projects that have been vested, but also make the code much more complicated.

The Seattle mixed uptown 160 zone was crafted with the uptown community as part of a rezone of that neighborhood.

Part of the intent of that zone was to allow towers, mixed-use towers that include both residential and non-residential space or just residential towers in the triangle bounded by...

well, basically north of Denny and just west, north of Denny, south of Seattle Center, and west of Seventh Avenue North, where the former Aurora Avenue North.

The bill proposes to allow projects that are on sites that have the monorail running through it, TO BUILD TOWERS, BUILD NON-RESIDENTIAL TOWERS, PARTICULARLY HOTEL PROJECTS.

THIS IS SOMEWHAT INCONSISTENT WITH THE COMMUNITY'S INTENT IN WORKING WITH THE CITY ON THIS ZONING, SO I'M RAISING THAT AS SORT OF AN INCONSISTENCY WITH PAST COUNCIL INTENT.

And I think finally, hopefully finally, yes, tower vesting rules.

In downtown we have requirements that towers need to be, have space in between them.

The intent is to provide light and air to residents of multiple towers on a block.

The effect of that is that there are limits on the number of towers that can be built on a block downtown.

And we have a series of rules that indicate whether or not there is a tower on a block that the spacing requirement needs to apply to.

As you might imagine, there's a lot at stake on whether or not you can build a tower in downtown Seattle.

What SDACI has seen is that these provisions which allow for sort of vesting of a tower project at the point when an applicant files an application for an early design guidance meeting, so the very first step of the design review program, has resulted in some projects sort of filing that early design guidance application and then never moving through the future steps to actually build their tower project.

That allows the property owner certainty that they, at some point in the future, will be able to build a tower on their site, but it also means that their neighbors, who may also be ready to build a development, are precluded from building a tower on their site.

SDCI is proposing changes to those provisions in order to require a certain movement So get past that early design guidance phase of a project.

If adopted, a project will need to apply for a master use permit with a year of the effective date of the ordinance.

The effect will be that some projects that aren't quite ready to move into master use permit review might lose their vesting as tower.

project, but their neighbors would be able to actually move forward with their tower projects, which may be more ready to get started.

SPEAKER_05

And I know that was confusing, but...

It's a question of who gets their project moving and who doesn't and who's, I mean...

potentially there could just be sort of waiting to see when the right opportunity is um but that could preclude your neighbor from being able to get their project done that is ready to go so i don't know that there is i don't know what the fix is for that um but making sure that the folks who are ready to go get the opportunity to build their project might be

SPEAKER_24

worth considering so and that's what's being contemplated with this particular amendment so um okay uh colleagues any questions yeah please go ahead council member thank you chair lish so why um and i this is an area of the law i'm not as familiar with so why um from a policy perspective or maybe it's just a actual construction perspective why are we limiting just one tower to that block or area?

I mean, because it seems to me that part of this is we're limiting it to one.

So, you know, you go first, but if you're not ready to go, which is sometimes legitimate, but then it precludes the other person.

So what's the rationale behind?

SPEAKER_20

It's about making sure that residents downtown have access to light and air, especially on lower levels of a tower.

If you've got a tower...

IT REQUIRES A 60-FOOT DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO RESIDENTIAL TOWERS.

SO THAT SPACE IS INTENDED TO PROVIDE LIGHT AND AIR TO RESIDENCES.

SPEAKER_24

GOT IT.

OKAY.

THANK YOU.

SPEAKER_05

OKAY.

I WANT TO BACK UP TO JUST GOING TO GO THROUGH.

Oh, oh, yes.

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_11

I did not see why didn't I was waiting for you?

SPEAKER_05

But if you can well, let me let me ask one question and then I'll go to you councilmember Strauss I wonder relish if you could talk about so I think in all of in most of these pieces of legislation that we're contemplating today There are some changes that are really meant to facilitate particular projects.

So in this I particular bill, can you talk a little bit about what those are?

And you mentioned the Seattle Times Park.

And so I do think it's worth having a conversation about which particular projects could be impacted by these changes.

SPEAKER_20

Yeah, the two that jump out at me are the Seattle Times Park My understanding is that the development on the former Seattle Times site, which does include city landmark protections for the facade of the former Seattle Times building, would use those provisions.

That's located on Fairview, just a block north of Denny on the west side of the street.

For the monorail change, in particular, there is a site at Denny and Fifth Avenue North on the east side of the street that has the monorail running through it, and there is an active permit application that would use these code provisions if the council adopts them.

There are changes along Third Avenue that are, CONSISTENT WITH CO-CHANGES MADE LAST YEAR TO REZONE THE DOWNTOWN PORTIONS OF THE DOWNTOWN RETAIL CORE.

THOSE PROVISIONS APPLY TO THE BLOCK THAT INCLUDES WILD GINGER, JUST A BLOCK NORTH OF BENAROY HALL.

I think those are the site-specific changes, or those are the changes where I know that there's a project that could actually benefit from these changes.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

Council Member Schatz.

SPEAKER_11

Thank you, Chair.

I'm just going to kind of, very helpful memo-ish.

I'm going to kind of tick through it.

I'm going to ask you more questions when we meet later about the basements because I think that gets into the weeds pretty quick, or into the roots, whatever basements do.

Talking about grocery store floor area exemptions, just focusing in here, we're essentially exempting the back of house uses The other choice is just to make them larger or allow them to be larger in general.

Is there a reason or is that for us to find out as to why we would not want them larger?

Is there a reason that we've constrained them to this footprint in the past?

SPEAKER_20

Yeah.

The neighborhood commercial one zone is intended to be sort of small scale neighborhood serving retail businesses.

That's the intent of having that zone.

And so we do have fairly strict size of use limits for all types of commercial uses.

In the past, the council has allowed grocery stores to be larger in those areas, given the importance of serving communities with food.

So the question is how large you're basically allowing grocery stores to be larger, which is not necessarily consistent with the character of these areas, but also providing food to neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_11

Okay, so, I mean, just as we were using the neighborhood commercial example for the apartments in the last, when I'm still on the GIS map of our zoning in the city, I would say some of those parcels are probably too small.

However, you have QFC on 24th and 58th, which is just a few blocks away, and it fits within the footprint.

That's a very large grocery store already.

If this was being built today, we're saying that they could have more back of use space that's just exempted rather than in the current configuration where they had to jam everything in.

Okay, thank you.

That's very helpful.

Looking at the Seattle Times Park example, just because I was here on staff when we were going through all of those changes to help preserve and save Seattle Times Park, are there any negative impacts I was having trouble tracking there.

Are there any potential negative impacts to Seattle Times Park, or is this just looking at that whole mapped area regionally?

SPEAKER_20

It's just looking at the whole mapped area.

SPEAKER_11

Okay, great.

Looking at...

This table is very helpful.

It just helps me tick through it.

Looking at the monorail building and attachment to...

This map is very helpful.

It really shows that the monorail cuts off a portion.

And maybe the question I'm about to ask, maybe you're not the right person to ask, but what I'm getting down to, you say it's inconsistent because of the height level.

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_20

It's inconsistent because it's...

Encouraging maybe a non-residential tower in an area where the community was planning or hoping for residential towers.

SPEAKER_11

Much like the Ani building next to Seattle Times Park was intended to be residential and somehow they put office space right before the pandemic.

We won't go into that.

So that's the inconsistency, not necessarily the amount of floor area that is used.

I just see this from a floor area perspective.

We're essentially chopping the corner off here on this map where the monorail goes, chopping it off the corner of the building and putting it on top.

Is that what we're looking at?

The question I was going to ask, our sister city, Chongqing, China, has a light rail station within a residential tower.

And it's up on the side of a hill.

It's famous.

People flock from all over just to take photos of it.

It would be kind of neat to have a building where the monorail, much like at Experience Music Project, goes through the building.

SPEAKER_20

But you don't know if that's possible, do you?

No.

I certainly don't know if it's possible on this particular site, and it does raise a whole bunch of issues for the developers in terms of coordinating with the monorail.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11

Fair enough.

And, you know, when I ride the monorail today, as our Orca passes allow us to ride the monorail, it's direct from City Hall to Seattle Center.

It is always kind of cool to go right over that building, and then go through Experience Music Project.

That would be an interesting project.

Sorry, I'm going down.

The third and Union Podium Heights, we're now switching to your next table.

Just wanted to, this was a bill that we passed last year.

I sponsored this bill as part of the Downtown Activation Plan.

I would say that this is consistent, as you noted here.

This is consistent with what we were talking about last year.

Podium Heights will help.

I think this will be helpful.

That's what I've got for you right now, Chair.

I'm going through this detailed memo, and I'll probably ask for some time with you, Lish.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, thank you very much.

Okay, we do have two more bills to cover.

Any final questions or comments?

Okay, thank you very much.

Let's move on.

So we will bring this bill back to the September 18th Land Use Committee meeting, and again, encourage colleagues to reach out to central staff and the departments if you've got questions.

Okay, Naomi, will you please read item three into the record?

SPEAKER_23

Agenda item three, council bill 120824, design review exemptions for briefing discussion and public hearing.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, so as we're getting seated here, just briefly, this legislation amends the land use code for an interim three-year period to exempt new development proposals from the design review process if they consist of housing, hotels, or research and development lab uses, and it affects areas in the urban centers of downtown, South Lake Union, Uptown, and First Hill, and some limited portions in the MIC, Georgetown MIC.

Okay, we're joined by Ketel Freeman from Council Central Staff and Gordon Clowers with SDCI.

Please introduce yourselves and get started.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, Gordon Clowers, senior planner with SDCI working on land use code development.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central Staff.

All right, we do have a presentation.

Not sure exactly how to get that going here.

Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Are you running that anyway?

Oh.

SPEAKER_99

Great.

SPEAKER_02

Can you hear me?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, thank you.

So we're here today.

Thank you for inviting me to talk about the design review interim exemption program proposal and trying to summarize the basis of this at the beginning and its source originates in the DAP downtown activation plan and You can visit, learn more about that at downtownisyou.com.

And it's the mayor's initiative to help promote improved environment in the Seattle's core most notably downtown by supporting and encouraging more living more residential development more jobs and improvement of the Entertainment and shopping opportunities in city We're looking to stimulate investments in new development in the next three-year period and Part of that and part of this proposal is to look at how we can promote a more efficient permitting and at the same time retain the flexibility that's offered by the design review program currently addressing proposals in downtown and surrounding urban centers.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

As you move to the next slide, I do want to acknowledge Council President Nelson has joined us.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02

So that is, in particular, responding to our current economic conditions and some of the difficulties in financing that are holding back new proposals from going forward right now.

And we're looking at trying to encourage some of those development actions to happen by giving them a little more incentive that they can get through the permitting process quicker.

So we already know that there is a trend toward design review reform.

Last year, the state law mandated reforms to shorten the process.

This bill is not that design review reform proposal yet.

That is still under development and will be presented to you at a later date.

So again, this is about more short-term stimulation of growth and activation of downtown and surrounding urban centers.

So this proposal has given us a chance to explore how we can reform our codes and how we can best support a straightforward permit process.

Again, allowing for flexibility but also preserving design quality in development permitting.

AS I'VE SAID, THE FINANCING ARENA AND ECONOMY IS A LITTLE BIT CHALLENGING RIGHT NOW, DISCOURAGING NEW DEVELOPMENT FROM HAPPENING.

AND THE CODE COMPLEXITY THAT WE HAVE IN SEATTLE AND THE PERMITTING PROCESS REALLY DOES ADD ADDITIONAL CHALLENGES THAT MAY HOLD BACK NEW DEVELOPMENT.

SO THE PROPOSAL.

IT WOULD, ON AN INTERIM BASIS, EXEMPT NEW DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS FROM THE DESIGN REVIEW PROCESS FOR THREE YEARS.

AND THIS IS PROPOSED FOR THE DOWNTOWN URBAN CENTER, UPTOWN, SOUTHLAKE UNION, THE FIRST HILL NEIGHBORHOOD, JUST EAST OF I-5, AND A PORTION OF THE DUWAMISH MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIAL CENTER.

I'LL SHOW A MAP ON THE NEXT SLIDE.

So that is those areas shown on the map here.

The Manufacturing Industrial Center portion down north of Rowe, Brougham Way, east of 4th Avenue, west of I-5.

labeled on the map as MIC.

And it's notable that this proposal does not affect Pioneer Square, Chinatown ID, or the Pike Place Market District, historical district areas.

Those areas are not subject to Chapter 2341 design review.

THEIR OWN SPECIAL REVIEW DISTRICT PROCESSES ARE MORE THAN ADEQUATE TO CONSIDER THE FLEXIBILITY AND DO NOT NEED OR WOULD NOT BE, THIS PROPOSAL WOULD NOT BE RELEVANT TO THEM.

OKAY, SO THE RANGE OF PROJECTS THAT WOULD BE ELIGIBLE UNDER THIS PROPOSAL, IT'S ORIENTED TO RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS, BUILDINGS AND USES, MIXED USE PROJECTS THAT INCLUDE AT LEAST 50% OF THEIR FLOOR AREA IN RESIDENTIAL OR HOTEL USES, OR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT LABORATORY USES.

THAT'S A SPECIFIC LAND USE CATEGORY GENERALLY INVOLVING HIGH TECH BUSINESSES AND MAY OR MAY NOT INCLUDE LABORATORY SPACE.

SO THERE ARE A NUMBER OF THESE IN SOUTHLAKE UNION TODAY.

So the proposal is that rather than go through a design review program, the proposed code accommodates the city to allow for deviations and reductions of minimum requirements conducted by through SDCI permit review processes.

ALLOWS US TO CONSIDER THE NATURE OF PROPOSED ADJUSTMENTS TO SITE PLANS AND DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHITECTURAL PLANS AND DECIDE WHETHER TO ALLOW THOSE OR NOT ALLOW THOSE AS PART OF THE REVIEW PROCESS.

SO IT'S COMPARABLE TO THE DEPARTURES THAT ARE GRANTED THROUGH THE DESIGN REVIEW PROCESS.

AND YES.

The range of subjects that are addressed by this proposal are spelled out in the code, and it's this lengthy list here.

These reflect the record of the past five, six years.

I reviewed about 75 development projects that have undergone design review, and these are the range of departures that have been considered and granted.

IN THOSE PROCESSES.

AND IT REALLY SPEAKS TO THE NATURE OF NEEDED DESIGN FLEXIBILITY IN MANY CASES.

THE UPPER LEVEL SETBACK REQUIREMENTS, MODULATION OF FACADE OPENINGS, STREET FACADE SETBACKS.

floor-to-floor height, street use, street level use type and depth, various open space, dimensional requirements, vehicle access to parking and loading can be something that gains a little bit of design flexibility on location or dimensions, parking space size requirements.

These would be, and the typical project that has been under review proposes anywhere from about three to six departures.

Many of these are related to just gaining a little bit more consistent building form in the architectural design.

But sometimes, and fairly often also, they relate to things like steep streets that make it difficult to comply with the minimum standards.

or other challenges like proximity of other things to the site that make it difficult to comfortably meet all the minimum requirements.

And one example is, angled street.

There was a specific project where a little bit of flexibility and squaring off the corner was allowed in architectural design in order for a more conventional looking building to be accommodated with a minimum of flexibility granted through the process.

Hmm.

Oh.

Okay, I think I'm on the right slide there.

So this proposal also includes a provision that is comparable to what occurs during design review process.

The vesting to the land use codes is defined at the date at which an application for early design guidance is proposed, and that's early in a process.

And this proposal likely should have an analogous provision, and we needed to define an action or a version of that called the letter of eligibility that can be filed by the applicant to say, I'm eligible for this design review exemption.

And as long as they file the permit application package, WITHIN 90 DAYS AFTER THAT, THEN THEY ARE VESTED TO THE CODES AT THE TIME OF THAT LETTER OF ELIGIBILITY.

AND THERE IS ANOTHER PRACTICAL REASON FOR THIS PROPOSAL AS WELL, WHICH IS THAT SOME OF THE PROJECTS THAT WILL BE PROPOSED WILL BE TYPE 1 ONLY AND SOME WILL BE TYPE 2 ONLY.

AND THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT A TYPE 1 PROJECT CAN GO STRAIGHT TO A BUILDING PERMIT REVIEW WITHOUT NEEDING A MASTER USE PERMIT.

THERE IS A ZONING REVIEW CONDUCTED DURING THE BUILDING PERMIT PROCESS, BUT THIS PROPOSAL ALLOWS FOR A DEVELOPMENT PACKAGE OR A PRELIMINARY PROPOSAL TO BE FILED THAT IS COMPARABLE TO A MASTER USE PERMIT DESIGN PACKAGE WITHOUT HAVING TO 100% DESIGN THE BUILDING.

TO MEET BUILDING CODE BEFORE YOU COME IN THE DOOR.

SO THAT IS ANOTHER BENEFIT OF THIS PROPOSAL.

SO IN RESPONSE TO PUBLIC INPUT WE HEARD EARLIER We are including the public notice for all kinds of projects, whether or not they are type 1 or type 2 projects, to have a notice, provide the white sign at their site, provide for comment period and mail notice to the immediate surroundings of the development.

MAINTAINS THE SAME LEVEL OF PUBLIC NOTIFICATION IF A PROPOSAL IS HAPPENING IN ONE OF THESE AREAS AND ALERTS THE PUBLIC THAT THEY CAN AND SHOULD PARTICIPATE IF THEY WOULD LIKE TO OFFER COMMENT AND FOLLOW ALONG.

I believe that's all of the slides that I have.

So happy to go over any of those details that you may have.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you very much, Gordon.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate the slides and the discussion.

I want to thank you.

I want to thank central staff, Ketel Freeman for the memo that uh, very thoughtfully raised several issues for us to consider.

Um, and I just want to say, I know design review in particular has been under a microscope, uh, for some time.

Um, we have a lot of work to do to improve the program and to make sure that we are, um, fully addressing our goals of good design, neighborhoods that serve everyone, and getting the kind of neighborhood commercial and housing and all the things that can make a thriving community for us.

THAT SAID, I DO THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THIS IS A REMINDER TO THE COUNCIL THAT THE WORK OF REMEDIING OUR DESIGN REVIEW CHALLENGES IS UNDERWAY.

THERE'S STILL A LOT OF WORK TO DO.

AND THIS PARTICULAR BILL IS AN EXEMPTION BILL.

IT IS NOT A DESIGN REVIEW PROCESS.

SO I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT.

I have a few questions for Gordon and then I'm gonna ask Ketel to go through, at least at a high level, some of the issues that you raised in your memo.

So Gordon, can you talk a little bit about, so the purpose of this bill, it's part of the Downtown Activation Plan to revitalize downtown.

So why are research and development labs included in the exemption but not commercial uses?

It feels a little bit like this is kind of a spot rezone.

that's being proposed?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think that this recognizes that the R&D uses do provide for, you know, large employment opportunities, and I heard secondhand that that kind of Company in development tends to have the employees stay in their buildings and working longer periods, so they're more likely to be present in the neighborhood and helping to activate the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

So going to the MIC, design review isn't required in the industrial innovation zones.

So why is the MIC included in this if they wouldn't really benefit from the legislation?

SPEAKER_02

Well, my understanding is that...

A PROPONENT THAT HAS AN APPLICATION IN THE DOOR OR A PERMIT, MASTER USE PERMIT IN THE DOOR ALREADY WOULD LIKE TO CONDUCT SOME REVISIONS TO THAT POSSIBLY.

AND IT'S IN THE SPIRIT OF ALLOWING FOR EXPEDITING PROJECTS THAT CAN HAPPEN IF THEY GET A LITTLE BIT OF, YOU KNOW, ASSISTANCE IN THE PERMITTING PROCESS THAT THEY COULD THEY COULD OBTAIN SOME REVISION OR RECONSIDERATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS THEY'VE HAD TO DATE IN ORDER TO, YOU KNOW, BRING ABOUT NEW DEVELOPMENT SOONER.

SPEAKER_05

OKAY.

CAN YOU, SOMEBODY MENTIONED IN THE PREVIOUS BILL DISCUSSION, COUNCIL MEMBER KETTLE, CAN YOU TELL ME IF COUNCIL MEMBER KETTLE HAS BEEN BRIEFED ON THIS PARTICULAR BILL?

Um, I believe he has.

Yes.

Okay.

Just want to make sure given portion of this affects his district.

Um, uh, I have a question about, uh, well, I'll save that for later.

I do have a broader question about design review, particularly given the SLI RESPONSE THAT WE RECEIVED EARLIER THIS YEAR, BUT I'LL SAVE THAT FOR A LITTLE BIT LATER.

I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW, I'M INTERESTED IN BRINGING A TECHNICAL AMENDMENT THAT WOULD CLARIFY WHETHER A PROJECT IS VESTED, WHEN A PROJECT IS VESTED, BECAUSE IT'S A LITTLE BIT UNCLEAR WITH THIS, SO I'LL JUST FLAG THAT FOR NOW AND CAN TALK TO YOU A LITTLE BIT LATER ABOUT THAT.

OKAY, KETO, I WILL HAND IT OFF TO YOU AND ASK IF YOU COULD Review your memo, and then I see that Councilmember Strauss has a stand up.

SPEAKER_14

Sure, so attached to the agenda is a memo from me, dated I believe last week.

And it provides a little bit of background and context on changes to the design review program, which in part inform the proposal.

But as Gordon has indicated, this is not a design review.

Exemption, there's a design review exemption involved here that's informed by some of the work that has been done by STCI, but this is essentially a new entitlement process that would exist for three years that is not a design review process.

So there's a little bit of context on design review to provide comparing and contrasting kind of what is currently required downtown for most projects that are subject to design review and they're subject to full design review due to the size of those projects.

and a table that compares sort of what that process is like as compared to what's proposed here by the mayor.

Just to recap here a little bit what Gordon said, and then I'll identify a few issues.

The bill would authorize the STCAI director to administratively grant waivers or modifications from development standards that would otherwise only be available through design review.

That grant would be on a project by project basis an administrative decision, sort of the similar, if otherwise, sort of those types of grant, those types of departures, modification to development standards would otherwise only be available through some sort of legislative action by the council or some sort of showing of hardship by an applicant through some other existing process like a variance or special exception process.

So it raises some issues here for the council to consider some policy considerations.

One has to do with the ripeness, whether this is the right time to consider such a bill, given some changes that are forthcoming.

I'll mention those.

Delegation, this is a pretty broad delegation proposed by SDCI.

Vesting, which is something we talked a little bit about.

And then the manufacturing industrial center inclusion as well.

So I'll just walk through each of those issues in detail.

answer any questions that you may have there's a hearing, of course, this afternoon, so other issues may be identified by the public or the Council in the course of review of this bill, so this is not an exhaustive list, but a point of departure here for committee consideration.

So with respect to ripeness as the committee knows, there are many ongoing planning processes related to downtown.

including comprehensive plan amendments that the council will consider in the summer of next year.

Those comprehensive plan amendments will form the policy basis for possible future regulatory changes downtown.

It's likely that the council won't see legislation implementing those policy, the policy direction and not until 2026. An additional environmental review would need to be done for downtown.

So probably the earliest that would happen would be 2026, perhaps even later.

But next year, at the very least, there is an opportunity for the council in the course of the seven-year comprehensive plan update to provide policy direction for what happens downtown.

There's, of course, planning ongoing by Sound Transit for location, station location decisions.

Those decisions have not been made, but they will make a difference in terms of where land uses are downtown and how things may flow.

Um, uh, those are likely to be, uh, made, uh, next year.

Councilmember Strauss may have a better idea about the schedule for when those will be made, but those will be made more or less concurrently with the record of decision, uh, by the Federal Transit Administration for the Ballard Link, and that will inform, in part, um, where stations are located downtown.

And then, as Councilmember, uh, Morales mentioned, there is a requirement under state law that we modify our design review program.

There are certain things that are currently part of our design review process that could no longer be part of our design review process.

We have to make those modifications conservatively by the summer of next year.

So about the same time that the council will be considering changes to the comprehensive plan.

So those are all sort of future changes that will inform what development standards are like downtown and where there are preferred uses downtown.

And so I'll give you kind of an example just to make it a little bit more real.

As we all know, there is less employment activity downtown than there was pre-pandemic.

That may change.

But perhaps the future of downtown is a more residential place.

So what are sort of current development standards that we use to sort of encourage a residential environment?

One is green streets.

We have some designated green streets.

Think of Bell, for example, and Belltown.

So we try to use public right-of-way to achieve kind of a park-like environment.

for downtown residents given the lack of park space downtown.

So it may be the case that in the future with decisions about where residential uses could be downtown, there may be other designated green streets or similar changes.

If the council were to approve Council Bill CB120, the bill now, In some of those locations, new development might be entitled or vested that does not meet those future development standards.

So there is an opportunity cost potentially that goes along with action on this now.

So that's an issue for the council to think about.

So that's the ripeness issue.

The delegation is probably maybe the heart of the issue here.

There's a pretty broad delegation proposed by the mayor to the STCI director.

There are kind of two elements to a delegation when the council makes a delegation to the executive side to do something that is otherwise sort of a power reserve to the council.

One is, is there sufficient direction to whoever the delegation is made?

And the other is, is there a safeguard against abuse of discretion when the person to whom the delegation is made is exercising that delegation?

With respect to the direction here, the direction proposed by the SDCI is simply that there be more hotel research and development laboratory space or residential use that is occasioned by waivers or modifications that the SDCI director would be able to grant.

So that is the direction.

Sort of by contrast, under full design review now, the delegation is not strictly to the SDCI director.

is to the director and a board that's appointed by the mayor and the council, and when the board makes a unanimous recommendation, that's binding on the SDCI director.

So that's what the delegation currently looks like under design review.

The direction provided by the council under design review is a little bit more expansive.

There are adopted design guidelines, some of them neighborhood-specific design guidelines, And that direction, those guidelines are approved by ordinance, so there's sort of an action by the council to approve the guidance that the board uses in reviewing a project and making a decision about departures under design review, which would be called waivers and modifications under the mayor's proposed bill.

So that's sort of the first part of that element about delegation.

Who is the delegation to and what is the direction?

The second part has to do with safeguards against abuse of discretion.

As is currently the case under the proposal from STCI is that the decision by the director to grant a waiver or modification would be a type one decision.

So a type one land use decision is a non-appealable administrative decision.

So it can't be appealed to the city examiner.

There can be an appeal for a project.

That appeal would be to superior court, which is true for every project that gets a subject to city approval, but the opportunity for an internal administrative appeal to the city's administrative law judge would not be available under the proposal.

By contrast, under full design review, a design review decision is a type two decision, meaning that it is an appealable decision to the city hearing examiner, and there are some other safeguards that are sort of built into that process As with any type two decision, there is a certain amount of public notice that's required, and of course there are two public meetings at least for every design review project, more than that downtown.

So there's a little bit more public scrutiny that is available through the design review process.

The proposal from SDCI would allow a notice and opportunity for comment, but not to the same level that is allowed through the design review process.

That's the delegation here proposed by SDCI is pretty broad.

An administrative decision made purely by the director based on a criteria of moreness without an opportunity for appeal.

So that's an issue for the council to think about.

There are ways, policy levers that the council could pull to make, to provide a little bit more either scrutiny or opportunity for administrative appeal, but those are choices that we can talk through at a future committee meeting or in office.

Vesting.

As Gordon mentioned, the proposal would allow a pretty similar type of vesting to what's available through design review.

So design review takes a long time.

It can take two years or more, especially for large projects downtown.

So one of the ways that the city mitigates against the risk to a developer of regulations changing is by allowing a project subject to design review to vest at a very early stage.

It's actually a pre-permit application stage.

So a project vests under design review at early design guidance application provided that an application is made for a mass use permit within a certain period of time.

So a similar vesting proposal here by SDCI, but it's not the same risk environment here.

The type of permit that would be required here would simply be a type one permit, a land use permit, and that could be incorporated into a building permit application.

So it's unclear what purpose the favorable vesting serves here because there's not as much time risk associated with the process.

Finally, the last issue has to do with the applicability to industrial innovation zones.

Council Member Morales asked the question about it.

Designer view is not required in industrial innovation zones.

It has not been.

That's a result of a decision that the council made through the industrial lands work in 2023. It used to be required.

Maybe, Gordon, if I could get you to pull up the map of that area just so that we all are looking at the same area.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, I'm not.

Not sure if I'm still sharing or not here, but let's.

SPEAKER_14

No.

It is.

It's essentially the area that is between, I think you got to share.

Fourth Avenue.

Yeah, you got to share your screen.

It's essentially the area between Royal Brom.

So on one side.

SPEAKER_02

Is it that?

SPEAKER_14

Yeah.

Here we go.

So it's the area identified as MIC.

Keitel, speak into the mic, please.

Keitel, speak into the mic, please.

Prior to 2023, the zone designation there was industrial commercial.

Design review was required in industrial commercial zones, but as a policy matter, it's no longer required since passage of the industrial lands legislation.

So it's a little bit unclear sort of what purpose is served by adding this area.

And as Gordon mentioned, there is at least one proponent.

I believe that's Urban Vision's THAT HAS A CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT THERE AND COULD POTENTIALLY BENEFIT FROM SOME OF THESE CHANGES, BUT WE'D HAVE TO EXPLORE A LITTLE BIT MORE WITH STCI HOW THAT WOULD WORK FUNCTIONALLY IF THIS IS A PLACE WHERE DESIGNER VIEW IS NOT CURRENTLY REQUIRED.

SPEAKER_23

OKAY.

SPEAKER_14

SO THOSE ARE SORT OF FOUR PRELIMINARY ISSUES FOR COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION.

It's not an exhaustive list.

There may be others identified through public testimony or by committee members themselves in the course of committee discussion.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you very much for going through that.

I have a couple more questions, but I will go to Council Member Strauss first.

No, that's all right.

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_11

The Seattle nice of, no, you can go first.

No, you can go first.

No, you can go first.

Thank you both for your presentation here.

I want to ask just a couple of questions regarding engrossed substitute house bill 1293 from the 2023 session, which requires design review to be changed.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

You mentioned that this is something that we'll have to take up six months after the comprehensive plan is passed.

This is, I believe, one of the many different things that we're going to have to take up next year that you were mentioning before as to why some things need to go sooner than later.

Can you give me a rough rundown on what we're going to need to do in the future regarding design review under ESHB 1293?

SPEAKER_14

Yeah, there's sort of two key components there to changes to process and sort of remains to be seen what that will be.

We have now the benefit of the SLI response that the council, that you authored and the council requested in 2022. So that SLI response, sort of the work involved in that SLI response predates passage of 1293 at the state level and so in some ways BUT IT'S SORT OF USEFUL WORK AND IT'S STUFF THAT THE CITY HAS DONE NOW THAT COULD INFORM SOME PROCESS CHANGES.

BUT TO YOUR QUESTION ABOUT WHAT 1293 REQUIRES, THERE ARE SORT OF TWO MAJOR CHANGES THAT WOULD NEED TO BE MADE.

ONE IS THERE'S A LIMITATION ON THE NUMBER OF MEETINGS.

SO UNDER THE CURRENT PROCESS THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO MEETINGS.

THERE'S AT LEAST AN EARLY DESIGN GUIDANCE MEETING AND A RECOMMENDATION MEETING.

SO EARLY DESIGN GUIDANCE MEETINGS HAPPENS BEFORE A MASSACHUSETTS PERMIT APPLICATION.

At that meeting, the board identifies the guidelines that are sort of key for development of a site, and then there's a recommendation meeting, a second meeting that occurs after Massachusetts permit application where an applicant demonstrates how they've met those design guidelines.

For larger projects, as a practical matter, there are usually more than just those two.

There are some limitations in the code about how many meetings there can be, but there's also authority for the board to ask for a waiver from that limitation so under 1293 there could be only one meeting so at the very least the early design guidance process or something like that would need to change the meeting would have to occur at some different point in the process maybe that would still be pre-application maybe it would be after a mass use permit application, but there'd be a limitation on the number of meetings.

That's one big change.

Another is that the design guidelines themselves would have to have objective criteria.

As it is now, we have a whole book of design guidelines.

There are citywide design guidelines for multifamily and commercial development, and then there are supplemental neighborhood specific design guidelines, and there are specific design guidelines for downtown.

The most recent example of the city adopting neighborhood specific design guidelines was for the guidelines for Crown Hill, which I think happened in 2022. So those guidelines themselves would have to be rewritten to be more objective so that an applicant and potentially a board who knows what the composition of design review might be like in the future could easily ascertain whether or not they have met those design guidelines.

So those are sort of two big changes that will need to go along with any change the city makes to comply with 1293.

SPEAKER_11

Okay, thank you, Ketel.

And so right now what I'm inferring from your briefing here, the committee is that the design standards right now are a bit subjective rather than objective.

SPEAKER_14

I think that is probably true in certain cases, yeah.

SPEAKER_11

And so as we prepare, I can tell you I've taken many different opportunities to try to understand both the problems and the solutions that we need to find for design review.

It It remains a broken process where people's voices are not heard to the extent that they want to and that at certain times it can be weaponized against projects.

Both things can be true at the same time.

And there's not an easy, simple solution here.

It is clear from the state's legislation that we're going to have to make some changes to design review, which is why I do believe it is prudent that we pilot some ideas out.

I know, Ketil, you were saying that these projects might not come to fruition within the timeframe that we need to have a new law passed.

And still, I think that there will be interesting and important information that we will glean along that way.

Moving back to this bill, if I could confirm what I believe is that if a project wants a ...

Even within the limited scope and geography, let's say this bill passes and a project for an exemption, if they wanted a departure or a variance from our code, they would still have to return to design review.

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_14

No.

Okay.

They would just get it as a matter of right.

As long as they're providing more floor area, they would get it as a matter of right.

So there are lots of land use exception processes in the code.

To sort of give you a couple of examples and sort of compare that to distinguish sort of design review from those and then what's proposed here.

Typically, if you can't meet development standards for some reason, there may be a process that you can avail yourself of if you're an applicant.

Usually, those processes are related to a site-specific hardship in the case of a variance.

These are two examples.

One is a variance and the other is a special exception or some use-specific analysis that needs to go into something.

This sort of contrasted to design review where a waiver or a departure from development standards, because that's the vernacular in design review, can be granted because something better meets design guidelines.

So it's not sort of a hardship analysis.

This is a better project because it has been through design review analysis.

But sort of returning to those other types of processes, those other exception processes, usually they are specific to a use.

So, for example, there is a process for allowing higher allowing light poles that exceed height limits in multifamily and commercial silos.

And the reason for having that exception process is because typically light poles, when they're associated with plate fields, they can have spillover effects to neighborhoods and near neighbors to plate fields don't particularly like light spilling into their windows.

So a way to remedy that is to allow higher poles because then more of the light is directed to the field surface and there's less spillover.

So there's an exception process there, and that's specific to the use, right, to the accessory use.

So that's an example of an exception process.

Another example of an exception process is a variance, which is sort of a classic exception process.

There, an applicant has to demonstrate that there is some kind of a property-related hardship.

So there is something about the property It makes it hard for them to use their property in the same way that a similarly situated person could, a property owner could.

So the analysis there is not that something is better, it's that there is a demonstrated hardship and it's not the applicant to demonstrate that hardship.

So what's proposed here is not the project is better because of design review, nor is it because there's a hardship or there's some special aspect of a use.

It is simply that there is more of something.

So that would be the sole criterion for

SPEAKER_02

I'LL JUST ADD THAT THESE, ANY DEVIATION REQUESTS WOULD BE SUBJECT TO REVIEW AND DECISION MAKING BY SDCI DURING AS PART OF THE PERMIT PROCESS.

SO THERE'S SORT OF A CONSIDERATION OF WHETHER IT MAKES SENSE.

SPEAKER_11

I think that's where I was going with this, which is we're not just giving free rein out to anyone to build anything in any sort of fashion, that there's still a standard that we have to meet.

SPEAKER_14

I think it's worth interrogating a grunt response, and he and I can talk and make sure that you all, we are clear in our response to you all.

But there would certainly be a review by SDCI, an opportunity for comment.

But as long as more floor area is being provided, I think SDCI would be compelled to grant the waiver or modification.

So a Type 1 decision is not a discretionary decision by the director.

It is an administrative decision.

So as long as that criterion is met, I don't think SDCI has any discretion in granting a waiver or modification from a development standard.

SPEAKER_11

I'm seeing a difference of opinion at the committee table here.

We'll look into it, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

We'll need to look into it.

I think there's some research to be done there.

Any other questions, council members?

SPEAKER_11

I'll just summarize my take on the bill as of right now, withstanding a little deeper investigation into the difference of opinion at the committee table here.

which is that this bill is limited.

I think this is a prudent bill.

It's limited in duration by three years, by scope of mixed with residential or hotel, residential or research and lab, and it's limited in geography.

This gives us a nice pilot to prepare us for the future changes that need to be made.

And the scope of where we are is a heavily developed area, which means that there's not a lot of potential as compared to if this bill was being applied to neighborhood residential today, I would have a lot more concerns.

What I will say here is, much like Chair Morales had some concerns regarding the industrial zones, I know that there are still some loose ends that we have to clean up from the industrial maritime changes that we made last year, so I'll just be investigating that a little more deeply.

Thank you, Chair.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

We are at 11.30 and we have one more bill.

So, Council President, since you joined us for this, do you have questions?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, thank you very much for allowing me to come and participate.

So, I have always said that We need to better align our regulatory environment to meet our policy goals.

So when it comes to housing, that means if we want more housing, we have to make it cheaper and easier to build.

So that holds true as I think about this legislation.

And we have actually wielded our ability to better align our regulations because we have when it comes to housing, we have permanently exempted Design Review citywide for affordable housing and also for projects that provide affordable units on site instead of paying the MHA per square foot fee.

And that's because, so we've eliminated Design Review for that because Design Review adds time, which adds cost.

And what we want to do is incentivize more of those kinds of projects that I've already mentioned.

So we need to be consistent in our thinking about design review when it comes to helping out downtown.

Appendix D, so I'm now referring to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection's response to the SLI report, and that's this really big report that is referenced in the central staff memo.

Anyway, Appendix D, page two, shows that full design review averages 739 days, which is a really long time, and that adds...

Again, that adds cost.

Why?

Because that's billable hours for attorneys that are going to those meetings.

It's additional architectural renderings.

I understand that SDCI land use planners, the permitting timeline is extended and those costs are included as well.

So that is one note that I want to make sure everybody recognizes, is that those costs are passed down to the people that will eventually dwell in those units.

Page 6 of the Central Staff Memo acknowledges that design review is a barrier to housing and jobs, but the suggested fix of, quote, simply making design review optional for those projects not seeking departures from development standards, unquote, will only benefit about 30% of the projects that apply because, again, this report in Appendix E notes that 69% of projects apply for departures.

And so we don't need to get into the standards there.

But my point is that there's a reason why a more comprehensive design review exemption per the SDCI director's decision makes sense there.

So while the memo notes that according to SDCI's development capacity dashboard, there's an additional 41,000 unit capacity downtown, I looked at the STCI's housing growth report dashboard for apartments downtown, and that shows that there is a 9% decrease in units permitted year-to-date compared to last year, and units under construction has fallen from 2023 this time last year, and is way down compared to 2019. So clearly there is, I think, an issue going on down here, and many of that we can't control.

There are a lot of factors, probably financing.

But to the extent that we can control some of the things that slow down or disincentivize the revitalization of downtown and the building more housing, I believe that we should.

And just ticking through some of the...

One of the notes that you just mentioned was about other ways of supporting the revitalization downtown main streets.

Yes, there are examples of that, but the one in Belltown does have a lot of complaints surrounding it around public safety.

And it's clear that eyes on the street, more people circulating downtown is...

really is a better way of ensuring more public safety, I would argue.

And then as for delegating authority to the director to make exemption decisions, I understand that that is, you know, that could be a point of concern.

More salient to me is the concern of our constituents that do say that we are taking away the ability for them to weigh in on the design and the appearance of a building, and I take that seriously.

But we have permanently, citywide, eliminated design review for market rate development with on-site performance.

And so that, I don't know if the same argument was leveled at that time, but Again, it's about consistency in how we try to incentivize what I think everybody agrees is a positive.

So thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Sure, thank you very much.

So I really appreciate both of you being here, walking through the presentation and the memo.

I will say, since Council President brought up the report that was done in response to the SLI request, that report indicated, this raises sort of a bigger question about design review for me, because that report indicated that 100% of departures are granted, which Really makes me wonder if maybe our development standards are too rigid.

And what we really should be talking about here is just increasing flexibility so that projects can get done in a way that best serves the site and serves our goals in the community.

But it also did indicate that there's no evidence.

I know there's a lot of talk about design review increasing costs of production.

There's really no evidence to support that.

because pro formas of projects were not available for analysis.

So I'm sure there is some connection there.

It's a hard point for us to prove because we don't have pro formas from projects that can help us see how these delays might add to costs.

I would love if there are developers out there who are interested in sharing that information so that we can really back up what we're saying with data, that would be helpful.

That said, I think we all agree that design review needs to be overhauled, which is what the state bill will require us to do.

And I will say for me, I think the delegation question and the ripeness question are really salient.

We've got the statewide implementation that we should be working on.

There's environmental work that needs to happen with up zones.

We have the Sound Transit Board decision coming and the station area questions to resolve, not to mention that the SLI report had several recommendations about how to improve the design review process.

And I will say I am concerned that staff is spending a lot of time on this limited project when what we really should be asking the department to do is to work on overhauling the design review process.

I know that you are doing what you've been directed to do, but I will say that there is a lot of work for us to do to implement the statewide legislation and to really engage with community about how to walk that line between allowing for neighborhood input, allowing for us to do things like the Crown Hill Special Design, the central area.

The Liberty Bank building only has cultural representation because the neighborhood insisted that there is cultural representation on those buildings.

So it's important.

to Council Member Strauss's point, we can't let that get in the way of, and be sort of weaponized for blocking what we all know is a dire need for more housing in this city.

So thank you.

This is obviously a conversation, rich for conversation, both on council and within the departments.

And I know we're going to have a lot more to talk about.

So thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_24

We will, oh, Yes, please, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to say we do need to look at long-term and short-term solutions.

And I think this bill is attempting to address some short-term solutions, very specific to downtown, which we know has been an area that we are struggling with post-pandemic to revitalize.

And then at the same time, we all recognize that we have had long-term issues with design review and permitting issues.

and permitting processes, that is no secret.

So we do need to do the long-term process, but we can't wait to do long-term process when we're trying to address these more immediate solutions.

So I think we need to be working on both.

It's not or, it's and.

And so I really wanted to note that.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you very much.

So this bill will be back before the September 18th Land Use Committee, and we'll see you then.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we have one more bill, colleagues.

So Naomi, will you please read item four into the record?

SPEAKER_23

Agenda item four, Council Bill 120833, Living Building Pilot for Briefing and Discussion.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you very much.

Okay.

We are joined by Asha Venkatraman from Council Central Staff and David VanSkyke from SDCI.

I will ask you both to introduce yourselves and start your presentation.

SPEAKER_04

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

SPEAKER_18

David VanSkyke, policy lead from SDCI in the policy and technical group.

I think I'm taking the lead on the presentation.

So today's presentation is about a specific bill, a narrow bit of legislation.

It goes to how the Living Building Pilot Program is applied, and there is a known project that we're describing here as a case study that shows why this is an important piece of legislation to correct some wording in our code on how the Living Building Pilot is administered.

I'm going to go over the proposed amendment objectives, and then I know that there will undoubtedly be questions.

The Living Building Pilot Program, just as a refresher, is an incentive initiative to advance sustainable building practices.

Its goal is to encourage sort of innovative, sustainable design options.

And the way that we do that is through an incentive program administered through design review, which you were just discussing, but it allows additional height and FAR, which are typically not allowed through design review.

So those increased heights are sort of baked into the living building pilot.

The goal is to test and pilot these sort of measures to sort of make commonplace those things that probably previously the market would not see as viable options, but to inspire others to sort of show what's possible to test things.

And that program, I think, has been ongoing for a number of years.

There's only four projects known to be left in the program, but we feel that it has provided sort of invaluable feedback back to the development community and once the program is wrapped up to the department as we report back to you on what has occurred.

So the particular legislation here affects a case study project that we can describe, which is, I think you probably heard in some of the public comment, a proposal at 2616 Western.

It was a project that was reviewed by the Design Review Board.

It was approved by SDCI.

Departures were granted from Design Review, and additional height was granted under the Living Building Pilot Program.

SDCI interpreted this program and the code language that we had that allowed us to add additional height regardless of the size of the lot in the zone.

In this case, we're really talking about an additional height bonus going from 145 to 175 feet.

I think it's 175 feet, 170 feet.

and to stack that bonus with a bonus that's also built into the living building program and other portions of the code where we give an additional 10 feet to incentivize three bedroom units.

This project sort of went forward with those two bonuses stacked, a longstanding interpretation of how the code works.

It was appealed and the hearing examiner found, contrary to sort of our own analysis of the code, that additional heights in the limiting building program and for three-bedroom family size units were not allowed because of the specific language of the code which limited the height of buildings in this zone to 145 feet only on lots that are less than 19,000.

So small lots get less height just across the board in this zone.

And Lots that are just slightly smaller, sorry, lots that are 19,000 feet or above, larger lots could actually provide a bigger building.

So the goal of this legislation is to clarify what we understood the original council intent was to allow height bonuses in the DMR zone under the living building pilot, regardless of lot size.

By way of example, we're talking about a difference of a lot that would be...

let's say 160 by 120, the bonus would be allowable.

That's in dimensions.

And a lot of 120 feet by 120 feet would not be allowed to get the bonus.

So we're really not talking about in a downtown zone, substantially different types of lots to which this program would apply.

This particular case study project provides $2.4 million in housing affordability payments, brings online 182 dwelling units, which great proponents of those are one bedrooms.

There's some studios, but then 42 two bedrooms and 10 three bedroom units.

We actually packaged this originally with the omnibus because it really did reflect a cleanup of what our existing practice has been in understanding how the living building pilot program works and how those bonuses work but shows because it is applicable to a specific project that's known that we would carve that out and bring it to you uh in this fashion so uh undoubtedly there are questions thank you very much david um asha is there anything you want to add

SPEAKER_04

I'll just add two additional points.

David described the legislation thoroughly.

As mentioned in public comment, there has been an appeal of the determination of non-significance under SEPA with the hearing examiner, and that is currently pending.

And the only other point I'll make is a technical one in the sense of there's a public hearing that is on September 18th.

It is not this afternoon.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, any questions, colleagues?

Council Member Schell?

SPEAKER_11

Thanks, Chair.

I'll meet with you privately, because I've got a number of questions.

I think, I mean, just my assumption previously was that these were stackable, so this was a bit of a surprise to me.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

Council Member Rivera, your hand is up.

Did you have a question?

SPEAKER_24

Oh, sorry.

I think that was for the last thing, but I will say that I too, Asha, have some questions, so I'll follow up with you and SDCI.

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Okay.

OK, well, I think I will just say that this the pilot itself, as we've said, is intended to promote the public interest in encouraging environmental and sustainable buildings.

The Bullitt Center is a great example of this.

And I think I'm encouraged that this is something that we continue to do.

I think originally the pilot project was targeted for 15 projects and so far 20?

Okay.

But there are several left, which is why we are extending or have extended it in the past so that we can take advantage of that.

and learn as much as we can about how to incentivize this kind of construction.

Okay, if that is the case, there are no further questions.

So Asha, let me just clarify 120833, that hearing is not this afternoon.

SPEAKER_04

That's correct.

It's on the September 18th Land Use Committee meeting.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, so this afternoon is just the other two bills, 823 and 822. Okay, very good.

Any other questions, colleagues?

I think we may have run out of steam here.

I do wanna thank everybody for coming this morning to here.

We've got a lot of things to think about.

I will again encourage my colleagues to reach out to departments and central staff, because we've got a lot to think about in the next two weeks.

So, if there is no objection, the Land Use Committee will be in recess until 2 p.m.

Hearing no objection, the Land Use Committee is in recess until 2 p.m.

when we will begin the public hearing on two bills, three

SPEAKER_04

It's the first three bills that were on the agenda today have their public hearings this afternoon.

This fourth one, the living building amendment, is on the 18th.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, that's, okay, I get it now.

We are in recess until 2 p.m.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we had that right then, right?

Yeah, okay.