Land Use Committee 3/17/2025

Vice Chair Strauss.

Council Member Moore.

Council Member Rink.

Council Member Rivera.

Chair Salman.

Chair, there are five members present.

There's no objection.

Item three, council bill 120948 will be removed from the agenda.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is amended to remove agenda item three, council bill 120948. We will now have a vote on the approval of the agenda as amended.

If there are no objections, the agenda as amended will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda as amended is adopted.

Okay.

Thank you all very much for coming to this Monday early morning meeting to discuss land use.

Another thank you for our city clerks, council center staff, OSE and SDCI for helping us prepare for this meeting.

I mean, Senator, the line use committee is finally convening after a brief hiatus and know our work here can help strengthen our communities.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

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

As a reminder, please do not comment on the Fremont contract rezone or the University of Washington Northwest Hospital MIMP.

These are quasi-judicial actions which council is no longer allowed to discuss or hear comments on within this forum.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up today?

Currently, we have one in-person and four remote signed up.

Great.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers.

First, clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when there are 10 seconds left.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list, Jesse Simpson.

Well, yeah, we did remove that from the agenda, but we will be discussing it at our next council meeting if you want to hold your comments until then.

Sure.

Yeah.

Or you can go ahead.

Okay.

Yeah, why not?

All right.

Copy this for later.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Jesse Simpson, director of government relations and policy for the Housing Development Consortium, here today to speak in support of 120948, the building permit extension bill.

Seattle has a deep housing shortage.

We need more homes of all types, and we need to bring them online quickly.

This legislation will provide a much needed extension of building permits, allowing projects already somewhere in the pipeline to move forward rather than face costly delays or cancellations.

The pandemic and its economic ripple effects created an unprecedented set of challenges for housing development.

Many projects that received permits under the 2015 and 2018 Seattle building codes have struggled to begin construction due to rising construction costs and insurance costs.

concrete strike, supply chain constraints and disruptions, and more recently, interest rate increases.

Without an extension, these projects will be forced to undergo costly redesigns to meet newer building code requirements to put their feasibility and tens of thousands of new homes at risk.

Council Bill 120948 will provide a 24-month extension for building permit applicants with projects vested to those prior codes.

This is a simple common sense measure that will ensure that more than 3,000 housing projects totaling more than 34,000 homes will be able to move forward rather than face additional redesign and costs.

Some of these projects also have pending permit applications but have not yet paid their MHA, mandatory housing affordability fees, and so this legislation will help directly expand funding for affordable housing.

It's a straightforward way to keep housing developments alive and address our city's urgent housing shortage.

Thanks for the opportunity to testify.

I urge your passage.

We will now move to remote comment.

The first speaker will be Alex Enger.

Alex, please press star six.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Great.

Thank you, Council Members.

My name is Alex Agner.

I am an Executive Vice President with Lincoln Property Company located here in downtown Seattle in the Pacific Building on 3rd and Columbia.

We appreciate you considering this bill to encourage flexibility for street level uses, specifically on the Fifth Avenue corridor, which will enable us to continue to recruit and retain biotech, and R&D users.

Lincoln Property Company is a full-service real estate firm that ranks as a top property manager and developer of office industrial retail and mixed-use projects in biotech nationally.

We have 3,000 employees worldwide, 35 corporate offices, and over 550 million square feet managed.

In Seattle alone, Lincoln manages over 800,000 square feet.

And we've invested over $750 million in biotech and R&D development, specifically 222 Fifth, which is on Fifth Avenue, 330 Yale in the Cascading neighborhood, and Fifth and John, which is just up the street from 222 Fifth.

We've just delivered 222 Fifth to the market.

It's a 200,000 square foot life science building It is a state-of-the-art building that total construction and project costs have cost over $200 million to build.

We contributed over $1.7 million in MHA fees.

And so we're a very active investor in the life science community.

We've also created co-labs in 2225th, which is supporting small biotech startups.

we've been able to attract tenants into the building and continue to propel Seattle as a biotech hub in this nation.

Next up, we have Megan Kruse.

Megan, please press star six.

Good morning.

I'm also speaking on CB120948 for your future consideration.

This is a bill to renew permit extensions for 3,000 projects going back to 2015, which have received previous extensions.

This enables them to avoid building with today's environmental codes.

The bill's summary says it will increase carbon emissions and decrease Seattle's ability to fight climate change, but says that economic benefits outweigh these impacts.

It cites $75 million in potential MHA fees from projects downtown, but that was the number 8 to 10 years ago, before inflation rose 36%.

This bill doesn't require investors to make adjusted rate contributions, and that shorts affordable housing by the same amount of inflation.

The environmental concessions are significant.

The city should not concede adjusted MHA fees.

Investors often delay building downtown due to the public health and safety crisis.

Please, Consider balancing private and public profit and good by amending the bill to adjust fees for inflation.

Everyone will benefit if, in return, a percentage of these fees are directed to project neighborhoods for shelter and supportive housing for people on the street.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Steve Zemke.

Steve, please press star six.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Steve Zemke.

I'm speaking for Friends of Seattle's Urban Forest and TREEPAC.

We are glad to finally see applications for the vacant positions in the Seattle Urban Forest Commission being before the council for approval.

Some of these open positions have been vacant for over a year.

With the comprehensive plan and concern over their impact on the urban forest, it's important that these positions be filled.

Andrea Starberg and Tristan Fields are both highly qualified candidates.

We strongly support the addition of them to the Urban Forestry Commission.

We also urge quick action on filling the remaining vacant positions on the Urban Forestry Commission, and it is only half filled at this point.

It is important for the health of our neighborhoods.

We urge that the action be taken to move these positions, be filled as quickly as possible, because of their importance to the city.

Thank you for your time.

Next up, we have David Haynes.

David, please press star six.

Hi, thank you.

David Ains, where is the legislation for the Great American Housing build-out?

Where is the legislation to incentivize developers to begin a robust build-out of multi-use buildings and housing on all those abandoned, derelict slum buildings?

You can't tell us that the fire department has not torn down any buildings simply because the owners have reached out to the fire chief.

This city has more of an opportunity to rejuvenate the American dream and offset the supply and demand squeeze and alleviate the oppression of unnecessary suffering.

Where is the legislation to tear down and redevelop all those evil motels on Aurora and build a positive response with emergency housing motels with service providers on site?

Instead, we have Democrats who sabotage for-profit developers with restrictions that deny qualitative livable amenities.

while ignorantly tainting everything with a race-based button-pushing bias that proves how two-faced progressives are when they focus on politically connected, unqualified nonprofit developers that hire suspect for-profit developers who create modern third-world slum real estate that warehouse echoes low to the street level, overwhelmed by noise and air pollution.

We need legislation to allow for a renegotiation on all of these rundown rentals that small businesses have to pay two, three, and four times the original mortgage for a flawed floor plan ill-suited for its purpose that's obsolete in the business plan on rundown real estate that cannot generate enough floor traffic to make ends meet without ripping off the workers and consumers and the small business forced to debt service a police state economy of artificially inflated property values, all to pay the Chamber of Commerce building owners who abuse tenants and justify a renegotiation on the lease and rental property values that devalue the working class values.

instead of watering down the integrity of building co-designs that caters on the non-profit political side of conflict of interest.

Thank you.

Chair, there are no further speakers.

Thank you very much.

Before we proceed, I just wanted to make a comment about 120948. There's strong support for this bill.

We are working to strengthen the bill and it's our intent to have the bill brought up at our next meeting on April 2nd.

So for those of you who are interested in that bill, we're gonna move forward with it, so.

All right, as there are no additional registered speakers, we'll now move, proceed to our other items of business.

Will the clerk please read items one and two into the record?

Agenda items one and two.

Appointments 03102 and 03103. Appointments of Tristan Fields and Andrea Starbird as members.

Urban Forestry Commission for terms to March 31st, 2027.

Thank you.

Will our presenters please join us at the table?

And let's introduce the appointees.

Council members, thank you for having us here today.

Can you not hear me?

How's this?

That's better, much better.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Hello, council members.

Thank you for having us here today.

We're very pleased to introduce Tristan Fields for the landscape architecture position with the Urban Forestry Commission.

Also, Andrea Starbird for position 12, which is the public health representative position.

Andrea Starbird could not be with us this morning, so I'll introduce her and talk a little bit about her biography, and then I'll introduce Tristan, and she's available to answer some questions if you have any for her.

So I'll first introduce Andrea Starbird, and she is the nominee for position 12, the public health representative.

Andrea's unique background combines technical arboricultural knowledge with previous experience as a birth doula serving diverse communities and underserved communities, giving her a deep understanding of the intersection between environmental factors, public health, and community well-being.

She has a particular interest in creating accessible cities and walkable public spaces where trees contribute to more equitable and resilient neighborhoods.

Andrea Starbird is the founder and principal consultant of Starbird Environmental, which is a Seattle-based consulting firm specializing in urban forestry and arboriculture.

As an International Society of Arboriculture certified arborist, qualified tree risk assessor, and certified urban forest professional, Andrea brings six years of expertise in managing urban trees as critical infrastructure in the Puget Sound region.

She co-founded the Seattle Arborist Association and serves clients ranging from municipal governments to residential property owners throughout the greater Seattle area.

And Andrea also submitted a short statement of interest.

Andrea says, I am honored to join the Seattle Urban Forestry Commission to support our city's green infrastructure.

My approach to urban forestry centers on the belief that trees are not just environmental assets, but essential components of community health, resilience, and equity.

I'm committed to ensuring urban forestry decisions and policies benefit all communities and believe we can move past the false choice between urban development and environmental preservation through creative, collaborative problem solving.

And I'm eager to work with fellow commissioners to support both our urban forests and the communities that depend on it.

So that's the introduction to Andrea Starbird.

And again, Andrea is the nominee for the position 12, which is the public health representative position.

Tristan Fields is here with us today.

Thank you for being here, Tristan.

And Tristan is the nominee for position six, which is the landscape architect position.

Ms. Fields is the owner of Land Meets Water, LLC, a disadvantaged business enterprise, DBE, and women-owned business enterprise.

specializing in landscape architecture and municipal arboriculture.

She focuses on creating resilient landscapes and advancing urban forestry practices.

A registered International Society of Arboriculture urban forest professional arborist, qualified tree risk assessor, and tree and plant appraiser, Ms. Fields brings a multidisciplinary approach to her work.

She holds a master's degree in landscape architecture and an undergraduate degree in ecology, complemented by certifications in arboriculture, graphic design, and habitat restoration.

With a professional training as a horticulturalist, she bridges the gap between ecological science and design, ensuring sustainable solutions in every project.

And Ms. Fields is here today if council members would like to ask her any questions.

Ms. Fields, do you want to make a statement?

I'm just pleased to be part of this process, and I'm very excited for the direction of this Urban Forestry Commission, as Lauren has laid it out.

So, yeah, I'm grateful to be here.

Great.

Thank you.

Committee members, any questions, comments?

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Grouse.

Excuse me.

Thank you for these presentations, Tristan.

Thank you for being here in your volunteer service.

I'll briefly speak to Andrea Starbird.

I had the pleasure of getting to work with her as she founded the Arborist Association, which was really helpful.

It didn't exist before the last tree code came into play.

And what we noticed when we were crafting the tree code was that the voice of the people who actually do the work was missing.

And Andrea stood up and helped organize other arborists in the city to create this association so that they could speak with one voice.

If I spoke about all the benefits of her and the association, we'd be here all day, and I know that we have more to do on this committee chair, so I'll transition to Tristan.

Thank you for your volunteer service here.

Can you share with me any insights or perspective that you have from working with the International Society of Arbor Culture, especially here in the Pacific Northwest, and what information you'll be able to bring to the Urban Forestry Commission from your work there?

Oh, specifically from working with the International Society of Arboriculture?

Yeah, or any insight that you have from working in that space with professionals.

I mean, there's a professional designation right there, and so it brings a different stature than just going out on the weekend.

So what can you tell me about the professional background that you bring to this work?

Well, as a landscape architect and a consulting arborist, I definitely have a unique perspective.

There's very few of us in the country, actually, that have both of those certifications and licenses.

So I've spent a lot of time studying both degrees and both fields.

how those bridge and how they provide economic benefits to each municipality is what I'm interested in.

So those cross sections of where the built environment intersects with the natural world and what economic benefits each part of those pieces bring to us as people who live in the city.

Does that help?

I also serve on the board for the Pacific Northwest International Society of Arboriculture as the secretary, so I'm on the executive committee for that.

I've been on that board for four years and have been able to really dive deep into the workings of the arboriculture world.

And finally, I serve on a committee for the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisals, which is an international committee that works on how to increase the knowledge around appraising landscapes and appraising trees within the landscape.

So actually putting an economic designation, so that's why I'm talking about the economy a lot, is that it is a focus of mine.

What is this tree bringing to the city?

Thank you.

You answered it.

It was a bit of a...

softball just to allow you to demonstrate the professional science that goes behind the work of caring for trees in our landscape right and that's how you jumped right into the economic value of our landscape and it's not just the economic value of the tree or the stream but it's all it's how it's all interconnected I say that because those of us who love trees and have an understanding of the science behind them can't just look at a yard and see it as green space.

There's a lot coming into it.

So thank you for sharing your insight with us today, and I think you're going to be an asset to the commission.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Brink.

Thank you chair and thank you for presenting today and thank you for your service to the urban forestry commission.

It's clear you bring an abundance of expertise and in so many ways, just really grateful for your participation on the commission and bringing the expertise that you have.

My question is actually for staff because looking across some of the materials provided for today, I noticed we have five additional vacancies on the Urban Forestry Commission.

And so curious about if we have a timeline in mind for filling those additional vacancies and making sure that we can get it through.

I wanna make sure we have a fully seated Urban Forestry Commission, just given the importance of making sure that our city remains the Emerald City.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for that question.

So my name is Lauren Ergensen.

I'm the urban forestry policy and programs manager in the office of sustainability and environment.

And, um, we are working with council member Solomon's team and hope to have the remainder of the positions, um, come to this committee.

Hopefully in April is, is what we're working towards.

Yeah.

We're shooting for next meeting.

Yeah.

Amazing to hear.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And thank you again for being willing to serve on the commission.

Thank you very much.

I just wanted to say thank you for your service and also thank you to Andrea and thank you to OSC for bringing these forward and also thank you very much chair for expediting this process and making sure that we have a fully functioning urban forestry commission.

Thank you.

That's all.

Any other comments or questions?

Hearing none, I move the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03102 and 03103. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded for the confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any other further comments?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointments.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Council member Moore.

Aye.

Council member Rink.

Yes.

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Chair Solomon.

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

Okay, great.

Motion carries on the committee recommendations that the council confirm the appointments will be sent to the March 25th, 2025 city council meeting.

Okay.

So thank you again for being here.

All right.

We will now move on to our next item of business.

Will Kirk please read item four into the record.

Agenda item four, clerk file 314491, application of Encore Architects PLLC to rezone an approximately 34,654 square foot site located at 8601 Fremont Avenue North from single family SF5000 to low rise two with an M, mandatory housing affordability, Suffolk LR2M, project number 3036119-LU, type four.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Let's see our presenters already joined us to the table.

Please, once you're ready, introduce yourself and please begin.

Thank you.

Lish Whitson, Council Central Staff.

And I am here this morning to talk to you about a proposed rezone in the Greenwood neighborhood.

This is, let me see.

It is a type 4 quasi-judicial decision, which means that your decision should be based on the record that the CL hearing examiner has put together after an open record public hearing that they held.

Quasi-judicial decisions are subject to the appearance of fairness doctrine prohibiting ex parte communication, which means that you should not speak to proponents or opponents of this rezone.

The proposed rezone is a rezone of a single parcel 35,000 square feet from neighborhood residential 3 to low rise 2 with an M1 mandatory housing affordability suffix.

The property abuts the current boundaries of the Greenwood-Finney residential urban village, and it's within the area proposed under the mayor's draft comprehensive plan zoning proposal to be included in the future Greenwood Urban Center.

That proposal would include rezoning the property to low rise three, so a slightly higher density zoning district than what the applicants have requested.

The rezone area is approximately 35,000 square feet.

It's a mid-block site on Fremont Avenue North, just north of 85th Street.

It was previously used by the Greenwood Boys and Girls Club as a play field for children attending events at the Greenwood Boys and Girls Club.

Greenwood Boys and Girls Club have sold the property to Bellwether Housing for affordable housing development, and Bellwether has come forward with the proposed rezone.

The applicants of record are the architects for the project, which is why Bellwether isn't listed as the applicant.

The CL hearing examiner, STCI made a recommendation to the hearing examiner to approve the rezone.

The hearing examiner held a public hearing in January and recommended approval with conditions.

So this is a map showing the site.

It butts a neighborhood commercial three zoning on the south and is otherwise surrounded by neighborhood residential three zones.

And this is a aerial of the site.

Greenwood Park is just to the north of 87th Street.

Greenwood Boys and Girls Club will remain north of the proposed rezone site.

And it is budded on the south by Denise Hunt townhomes.

To the east and west are single family homes.

This is the project that the rezone would facilitate.

It's 53 affordable units at 50 and 60% AMI with 20 two and three bedroom units and 11 parking spaces.

Three stories.

So if you are interested in approving this rezone, there are a couple of actions that you should take.

The first is to add findings, conclusions, and decision to the clerk file that's in front of you.

The findings, conclusions, and decision would normally accept the hearing examiner's findings on why the rezone is appropriate.

make a conclusion that the rezone should be adopted with conditions, and then decide that, yes, the rezone should move forward.

I will have draft findings and conclusion and decision for your action at your next committee meeting.

The second action is to adopt a council bill or ordinance that would actually effectuate the rezone, so change the city zoning map to reflect the new zoning.

That council bill will include with it a property use and development agreement that will be signed by the applicants indicating that they will comply with these three conditions that you see in front of you.

These were recommended by the SCCI and the hearing examiner.

They are fairly routine.

It says that there's a mandatory housing affordability level of M1.

It says that the rezoned property will be subject to mandatory housing affordability requirements.

As a 100 percent affordable housing project, it far exceeds the requirements of the MHA program.

And then it says that plans will be in substantial conformance with the adopted plans, which are reflected in the rendering you see here.

There's one slight difference to this proposed set of conditions, which is highlighted in blue.

The applicants have requested and the hearing examiner has recommended that If the property is rezoned as part of the comprehensive plan update process and the rezones related to that, they would like to be able to use that higher density zoning if they choose to.

So this additional language shown in blue recommended by the hearing examiner would allow for that.

That's all I have.

Do you have any questions?

Any questions from the committee?

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Lish.

I had a couple of questions.

So this was a quasi-judicial, so there is a record.

Was there any public comment provided on this project?

There was public comment sent to SDCI.

No members of the public testified at the public hearing in front of the hearing examiner.

The public comment was mainly focused on the loss of the play field.

Concerned that Greenwood Boys and Girls Club would no longer have access to that outdoor space.

Greenwood Boys and Girls Club has chosen to sell this property, so And they are across the street from a public park, so they still have close access to outdoor space.

OK.

And then I think I had asked you about trees.

Was there any sort of consideration about the impact on trees by the hearing examiner?

So there are six street trees that will remain and be protected through construction.

There is one, because it's a play field, there aren't many trees, but there's one along the alley line that is not, this dates back to earlier tree codes, but it was not determined to be an exceptional tree and would be removed.

They are proposing to add, I think, 58 new trees to the site.

What tier type, what tier was that tree?

Do you know?

Because it's under the older code, it's not one of the tiers.

Okay.

Yeah.

But it's not an exceptional tree.

It's not an exceptional tree.

Okay.

And then just to clarify, this additional piece was that if the zoning changes, they would be able to build up from 35 feet to 50 feet.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that translates to about five stories?

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Other questions or comments?

Or questions, rather.

Chair?

Yes.

Thank you, Lish.

Going back to the map you showed of the existing, there's some single family, but then there's some low rise.

which is the brown areas here, what's the height on the low rise, the existing low rise?

So the low rise that you see along 85th, and then closer to Greenwood, so south of southwest, sorry, southeast of the site and to the west is low rise three.

That is higher density than is proposed for this rezone in front of you.

To the block north of the Greenwood Park, that is low-rise one, so slightly lower density than is requested.

But everything around the Ciri is actually single-family, directly abutting?

Directly abutting to the south is neighborhood commercial three with a 55-foot height limit.

And this property has been sold to Bellwether?

Yes.

So, I mean, they own it now.

It's no longer Boys and Girls Club.

That's my understanding, yes.

And I have some other questions that I'm just seeing this today for the first time, so there's some other questions that I have, Lish, that I'll follow up with you on.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

All right.

Here the comments.

Lish, great to see you.

Thank you for bringing this before us.

I'm going to ask a lot of questions that I know I've already asked you in private, but just out here on the record.

So in this process with the quasi-judicial matter, we've received a report from the hearing examiner demonstrating what their recommendation is.

Is that correct?

Correct.

And through their process of their hearing, their recommendation is that we grant this approval.

Is that correct?

Correct.

And if we were to grant this approval, what would our next steps be with the Pouda or any of the, you had mentioned the, I'm blanking on the, I keep, the Pouda is what's sitting in my mind.

Can you remind me again what our next steps are?

Yeah.

So at your next meeting, if the committee's preference is to approve the rezone, you would add findings, conclusions, and decisions, which is just a two-page document to the clerk file, and then move to recommend a council bill that I will have introduced for your next meeting that would effectuate the rezone.

Thank you.

And in the past with contract rezones, because it's a more formal and different process than other land use bills that we take, in part because we receive a recommendation from the hearing examiner, have you seen the council not take up the recommendation in the past?

Is that a regular occurrence?

Is it irregular?

Rarely the council will amend the conditions recommended by the hearing examiner.

I haven't seen The council reject wholesale the hearing examiner's recommendation.

And because we need to be taking all of the information that we make this decision based upon the report that we've received from the hearing examiner, in the past when you've seen council members make slight alterations or changes, that's been because those council members have made those decisions based upon the report that they've seen from the hearing examiner.

Is that correct?

Yes, all of your decisions should be based on the record compiled by the hearing examiner.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm comfortable moving forward with this as I'm going to affirm the report from the hearing examiner.

Thank you.

Other comments or questions?

Oh, yes.

Lish, why is this coming now instead of during this comp plan conversation?

Any property owner has the right to apply for a rezone of their property based on conditions in the code.

At any time.

At any time.

So this has just gone through the process to come to council now.

and i should have mentioned the code does have a limit and council has a time limit within which you need to act on this so the council needs to act by april 29th thank you all right thank you chair right any other questions or comments okay

All right, thank you very much.

Appreciate getting the information and looking forward to further information to move this forward.

Thank you.

We will now move to our next item of business.

Will the clerk please read item five into the record?

Agenda item five, clerk file 314511, application of the University of Washington to prepare a new major institution master plan for the University of Washington Medical Center Northwest Campus, located at 1550 North 115th Street, project number 3040282-LU, type four.

All right.

Thank you.

So I see our presenters have joined us at the table.

Please introduce yourselves and proceed.

Sure.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central Staff.

Gordon Clowers, SDCI.

Gordon is here for the next item, but he's joined us a little early, but we'll be turning to street-level uses here in a minute.

This will be pretty similar to what you all just heard, a little bit different but similar.

This is another petition to the Council for a quasi-judicial decision.

In this case, a somewhat more complicated quasi-judicial decision, so-called Major Institution Master Plan, or MIMP.

So there'll be a lot of acronyms in this.

Just if there's anything, if my acronyms are making it too opaque, just let me know, and I'll start breaking those out.

So the purpose of today's meeting is mostly to orient you to the proposed MEMP and the content of the record upon which you'll be making a decision Again, this is something that will come back at the next committee meeting for a recommendation to the full council.

But today it's mostly about what's in the record, what's proposed, and what the next steps are.

So moving on here.

Again, this is another quasi-judicial decision by the council, a major institution of master plan approvals or quasi-judicial.

They're somewhat larger in scale than site-specific rezones, but there is only one applicant, and so they're subject to the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine.

Here, that applicant is the University of Washington Medical Center.

As with every quasi-judicial decision, the council has to make a hearing on a record, and that record is established by the hearing examiner at an open record public hearing, which happened last October.

So how are major institution master plans regulated?

MEMPs apply to hospitals and post-secondary educational institutions that are above a certain size.

So pretty much every university has a major institution master plan, as do most hospitals in the city.

Oh, am I not sharing my screen?

Thank you.

The purpose of a major institution master plan is to balance the needs of the major institution to develop facilities pursuant to their mission with the needs of near neighbors to kind of minimize the impact of that major institution on the surrounding neighborhood.

There are three required components to a major institution master plan.

There is a development standards component, a development program, and a transportation management component.

And all major institutions have to be developed in conjunction with a development advisory committee, which is a body that often members of which go on to serve on an implementation committee that advises the major institution about their proposed master plan.

Another bit of jargon here, every major institution master plan has an underlying set of zoning and then there is an overlay zone that applies.

The underlying zoning is typically something would not be conducive to institutional uses.

Here the underlying zone is LR2.

And then there is an overlay that allows an institution to develop to higher intensities consistent with the mission of that institution.

And that overlay zone is essentially what allows the institution to develop as an institutional use.

So a little bit about the chronology for the UW Medical Center Northwest Campus.

The original major institution master plan was approved in 1991. The University of Washington acquired Northwest Hospital in 2009. It's actually under the same license that UW-Montlake is under.

Most of the beds under that license are in Montlake.

They're about 381 at UW-MC Northwest.

In September of 2022, the University of Washington Medical Center submitted a notice of intent for a new MEMP for Northwest Hospital.

The notice of intent is what triggers the major institution review process.

It's also when the appearance of fairness doctrine kicks in for the purposes of council communications.

In March of 2023, the Development Advisory Committee was approved by Resolution 32088 of the Department of Neighborhoods.

Staffs the Development Advisory Committee, along with staff from SDOT and SDCI, DLN is the primary convener.

The resolution that was adopted in 2023 was a resolution from the Department of Neighborhoods.

Between April of 2023 and May of 2024, the Development Advisory Committee convened 16 public meetings.

Here, the University of Washington is acting as the State Environmental Policy Act lead agency.

A lot of those meetings coincided with different phases in development of an environmental impact statement for the Medical Center Northwest.

All of those meetings are subject to the Open Public Meetings Act, and so they are capital P public meetings, meaning anybody can come and testify.

In July of 2024, the DAC published a final report and recommendation.

In September of 2024, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections published their recommendation to conditionally approve the MEMP.

And then in October of 2024, the hearing examiner held an open record public hearing.

No members of the public testified at that public hearing.

And then in December, the hearing examiner recommended conditional approval of the MEMP.

So that's the chronology for this particular major institution master plan.

Some, but not all, of the record is attached to this clerk's file 314511 and available to the committee to look at.

A couple of key exhibits, and all of the following slides are drawn from this first exhibit, exhibit number one, which is the proposed final major institution master plan.

The Development Advisory Committee report is also attached to that clerk file number, and SDCI's recommendation is, too, as is the hearing examiner's recommendation.

You'll find there also an exhibit list.

If there are particular exhibits that you want me to pull while you're considering this particular application, let me know, and I'm happy to pull them out for you.

The audio recording is also available.

It was about a half-day recording, I mean, a half-day public hearing.

So a little bit about the MEMP.

The hospital is located in the northwest corner of the Northgate Urban Center.

The underlying zoning is low rise 2. Here's an aerial photo from exhibit 1 that shows the context to the north West of the campus is a condominium complex.

A member of that condominium complex was a member of the Development Advisory Committee.

There are cemeteries located to the south and southwest of the site, and then there are largely single-family but also multi-family uses located to the east and north of the site.

These are images from the current MEMP, so not the proposed major institution master plan.

There are a couple of key development standards here to focus on for you all.

One is the height limits associated with the MEMP, so the underlying zoning is low-rise, which allows three- or four-story buildings.

The major institution can, of course, go higher.

Under the current MEMP, the maximum height is 105 feet.

Those higher heights are located towards the southwest corner of the MEMP.

50 feet along the western side and 37 feet in the north and the west side.

There are also some setbacks that apply to the current major institution master plan.

Those setbacks are shown in the image to the right, 30 feet along 115th Street northwest, and then greater setbacks along the north side and the west side of the site.

So what is proposed?

What's proposed is somewhat similar to the current MMP.

There would be higher heights allowed under the proposed major institution master plan, 65 feet towards the east and the north and adjacent to the condominium complex to the northwest of the site.

Higher heights, again, towards away from those residential uses towards the southwest corner of the site, with the highest heights being located towards the middle.

The height that you're seeing in the same image, this is 175 feet conditioned down, so the maximum height of buildings in that zone would be 175 feet.

The major institution overlay would establish heights that are higher than that, but that's more of a function of what the code requires when it comes to major institution overlay height limits.

There would continue to be setbacks.

Those setbacks would be somewhat reduced, 40 feet on the north, east and west of the site and 20 feet under 115th Street.

And another sort of just to sort of orient you to sort of the content of Exhibit 1, a source of discussion for the DAC and with development of the MEMP was where access would be in the future.

Currently, access is largely from north 115th Street.

The UW looked at potentially having some access from north 120th Street, ultimately abandoned that.

There would be some limited access, but it would be largely for service vehicles through a gated entrance.

Instead, there would be two access points to the campus along 115th Street.

The hearing examiner recommended conditions.

There are many of them.

They have different, they're sort of derived from different modes of authority.

There are some specific to the MEP itself.

There are a few conditions related to the rezone, particularly conditioning down those heights.

And then there are some specific SEPA conditions.

The major institution master plan conditions establish a single occupancy vehicle reduction goal, which is a required component of major institution master plans, and also requires some additions of landscaping notes and others related to tree protection and tree retention, including having a landscape setback at the campus edges.

The rezone conditions would limit the height to 175 feet or 145 feet, depending on the location within the MIMP.

And then there are some specific SEPA conditions related to permit submittal requirements and also street improvements in different phases of development.

And there are some SEPA conditions that are intended to mitigate construction impacts when construction occurs at some point in the future.

There's not a permit application associated with this.

This is largely setting the regulatory conditions for future campus development.

So these conditions are prospective.

Next steps, as with the contract rezone that LISH just discussed, in order to approve this, the council has to act on findings, conclusions, and decisions.

So there's an application to the council.

That findings, conclusion, and decision document is what represents the council's approval or conditional approval of the major institution master plan.

And then to effectuate that, but that findings, conclusion, decision document is not enough to actually approve the MEMP.

To effectuate that approval, you would need to also amend the zoning map to show new major institution overlay boundaries and height limits.

So staff will develop those approval documents for committee consideration at the next committee meeting in April.

Let me take a look.

I think that is all I have for you all.

Do you all have any specific questions about Proposed memp, what's on the record, next steps.

Any questions or comments from the committee?

Okay.

Council member Strauss or vice chair Strauss.

Sorry, I was saying that council member Moore has her hand raised on Zoom.

Oh, you did?

I'm sorry.

Okay, no worries.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kittle, for your presentation.

Same question regarding public comment on this.

Was there much public comment given?

What did it focus on?

There was, so, yeah, public comment, there was no public testimony at the hearing examiner's open record public hearing.

The DAC report contains all of the comment that was presented to the Development Advisory Committee, and they also have minutes from each meeting.

Um, uh, so you can, so that, that is a source to look at, um, for sort of what comment is in the record and it also, and also how that comment was, uh, considered and incorporated into the DAC recommendation.

Um, there were comments that were made to the Development Advisory Committee, um, during the course of their work.

Do you know if they were, uh, taken into consideration and, um, dealt with in the hearing examiner's recommendations?

Ultimately, yes, but I think even before that, they were incorporated into the UW's proposed major institution master plan.

There were some concepts that were explored.

Let me just go back here a little bit.

There were some concepts that were explored that had higher heights towards the north side of the site and also towards the condominium complex to the northwest.

Ultimately, the Development Advisory Committee made a recommendation on on height, bulk, and scale.

And that recommendation, while not necessarily accepted completely by the University of Washington, informed the proposal for the final major institution master plan.

And that was specifically moving the higher heights towards the center of the site and towards the southwest corner of the site.

There are other public comment as well.

That was sort of a major component of the DAC's work.

The DAC, in many ways, operates kind of as a, serves in part as a development dispute resolution function when it comes to major institution master plan development.

So that, I think, has worked here as well.

You had another question, if I may.

Just looking at the setbacks, I hadn't really noticed this the first time, but it seems like there's a significant difference in the setback from, I guess that's the north end, from 120 to 40, and then from 180 to 40. Again, how is that going to affect?

There are a lot of trees up there.

One of the nice things about going up there.

How are those going to be affected by the

So most of the mature trees on the site are on the edges of the site currently.

Where trees are located in the 180-foot setback area, which is actually near to the newest building on the campus, which is the Behavioral Health.

teaching facility that was built in 2023. There are some greater setbacks, but the trees that are protected by those setbacks would also be protected in the future setbacks that are proposed for the major institution master plan.

There are certainly trees throughout the site, but most of the trees are currently at the edges of the site, and those would be protected by the 40-foot setback, which would be required to be landscaped.

I don't know if that answers your question, Council Member Moore.

I'm happy to look further in the record if you have other questions about it.

Yeah, I would just like to know the actual impact on trees.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other questions or comments from the committee?

Okay, great.

All right, thank you very much.

Appreciate it, Kittle.

So if you want to stick around for this next portion, you can, but we'll turn it over to our next presenter.

And we'll now move to our next item of business.

Will the clerk please read item six into the record?

Agenda item six, Council Bill 120771, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, adopting interim provisions to facilitate occupancy of street-level spaces in the downtown Southlake Union and uptown urban centers, adding a new section 23.42.041 to the Seattle Municipal Code and amending sections 23.42.

23.49.009 23.49.011 23.76.004 and 23.76 in downtown overlay maps 1G and 1J in chapter 23.49 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Wow, okay.

We have Gordon Klaus with the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections.

Thank you for being here and please begin.

And introduce yourself for the record.

Yes, I'll introduce myself again.

Gordon Clowers with the Land Use Code Development section of SDCI.

And I'm sharing a presentation that we originally...

Oh.

There we go.

Thank you.

Sharing a presentation that we originally shared back in June of last year.

And it addresses interim street activation legislation for the downtown, uptown, and South Lake Union urban centers.

And the purpose of the briefing is just to reacquaint you all with the concept that we're talking about for change here.

Okay, here we go.

So the purpose and goal for this is to help fill vacant spaces that are present in a number of places through these urban centers.

and to provide a wider range of potential new tenants that would be able to fill vacant spaces.

And this would help to attract more daily activity and eyes on the street and vitality for the streetscapes in key parts of downtown and the other urban centers.

And we're looking to also promote sort of variety in entrepreneurship by allowing different kinds of uses to be present at street level than would be possible today under current codes.

Okay.

This is some information from about a year ago that was illustrating, and I should say that this is a legislation similar to what we passed in 2020 for COVID purposes, trying to stimulate COVID.

filling of vacant spaces as well.

So for this current code effort, we took a little bit deeper look and tried to identify additional ways and cover more bases in our code changes.

As of last year, this data shows that although things were getting better in terms of foot traffic coming back to downtown in particular, there was still a trend of more business closures and business openings.

And so another year has passed.

It would appear that we're having more activity in downtown and these other urban centers, but there's still vacant spaces and there's still a purpose for promoting this interim legislation.

And so the interim proposal would be in place for three years, and it would apply to the class one and two pedestrian streets in the urban centers.

I'll provide some maps later in the presentation to describe where those are.

it provides for greater variety of ground floor and second floor uses encourages a greater variety of creative floor plans that diverge from the minimum requirements that would otherwise be required and it also allows for maintaining some exemptions from density limits which are typically present for the ground floor spaces and then We have made sure that if a new use comes along in street level and it's successful, it can keep on being present after the three-year period, or it may revert to the prior use that it had before the business came in.

And so the variety of uses we're talking about here on the left column, the pedestrian street designation areas usually allow a fairly limited range of uses, whether it's art and entertainment use, recreational theaters, and libraries and parks, but also a big emphasis on general sales, stores, such as furniture stores, restaurants, and also allowing some museums and religious facilities and low-income housing.

In practice, that is a fairly narrow range of uses that are potential tenants.

On the right-hand column, we would just add one greater degree of flexibility for things like non-household sales and service, like a restaurant supply store, a greater variety of art and craft uses, and studios, pottery.

other smaller range of retail sales items, medical service doctors, dentists, chiropractic, and so on, commissary kitchens, catering, and additional level of community center type uses, community clubs, institutes.

And then at the bottom there, offices and R&D laboratories would be allowed at the ground level spaces.

I'll move that up a little.

So for the downtown urban center, we can see that the areas that are not in the black bars are areas where this legislation would apply.

predominantly in Belltown, in the office core, and in select streets in the retail core and up toward West Lake Avenue.

The full black bar designated areas here would be retained in the retail pedestrian-oriented district, more limited range of uses.

around Pike Place Market and Pike and Pine streets and 2nd Avenue, 1st Avenue, 4th Avenue.

Notably, 3rd Avenue and 5th Avenue here are included in the more flexible use area.

These are areas that have had and still continue to have vacancies and surprisingly between Pike and Pine on 5th Avenue had I WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT THE STREET REMAINED multiple years and only recently has had a couple more tenants come in.

But Third Avenue also being a focus area here to attract new uses and new tenants at the street level to aid in the revitalization of that corridor and overcome some of the difficulties that have accumulated over the last five years or more than five years.

And then in the South Lake Union area, the current proposal would only change the area north of Mercer Street on West Lake Avenue and Valley Street in the circle-filled designated portion here.

And then the other areas potentially where the designation would be relevant would be between Mercer and Dennyway.

But in this proposal submitted to the Council, it is not currently proposed for that change.

Um, and then in the uptown urban village or urban center, uh, fifth Avenue North on the right hand side there of Seattle center, North of Denny up to Mercer and then Mercer over to, uh, I'm gonna say about 2nd Avenue North there.

We excluded from change the Uptown Business District core on the theory that they have a good core of street level businesses there.

We should not touch that, but that the Mercer Street corridor and the 5th Avenue North corridor could benefit from this additional flexibility.

And one of the key factors here we're looking at was there's a minimum depth for many of the ground floor spaces in all these areas.

But there's also a very popular trend of food windows and small spaces that could be very good activators, additions to the street environment.

And as it stands along these streets, many of them are prevented from essentially occupying those spaces, but this change for the interim legislation would allow that in greater flexibility.

You can see that photo examples that people are really attracted to these spaces and create a lot of positive energy.

and then another factor in the regs that is a little bit restricting is that the second floor spaces are usually not included in a street level space and they are subject to other density limits and so on by reducing a few limits we can Allow for the possibility of a new investment such as a multi-story store or restaurant that would Be able to bring about, you know, maybe a bigger make a bigger impact along a certain street in Seattle One example here near the Pike Place Market that has been around for quite a while two-story restaurant so the point to recap the point you know in the parts of downtown like Belltown and the retail core in particular there have been some sort of chronic vacancies and that have accumulated some areas are much less occupied than others with ground floor spaces and that with a little bit of relaxation of the rules we can attract you know good tenants for those areas build continuity of the street activities and, you know, promote positive evolution and reinforcement of the business climate.

There are definitely vacancies that remain and, you know, this would make a difference.

Thank you very much.

Committee members, any questions or comments for our presenter?

Chair Mayock.

Thank you.

Thank you, Gordon.

Thank you, Ketel, for all your work, what we did in 2020. Colleagues, to bring us back to where we were before, we have very strictly regulated street level uses.

I'm gonna ask a redundant question, but if you could explain a little bit more why.

Because I know in 2020 when businesses were boarded up, I wanted to make some very large changes.

And it became quickly apparent that if we made wholesale changes, we could be creating unintended consequences.

And so we made some very small changes in 2020 that created some very good consequences.

outcomes, in my opinion.

And so this is the next step.

But I want to go back to why do we strictly regulate street-level use?

Because that was really important for me to understand as a baseline moving forward.

Why do we do this?

Sure thing.

So a very good planning principle that is followed extensively in Seattle is that pedestrian-oriented districts are very positive for neighborhoods and they attract, you know, clusters of positive activities and create life at the street and pedestrian, you know, just...

Users of the neighborhood and and all of those Go together, especially when they're concentrated in particular areas to you know, bring life to a district and The downtown for example has a very extended network of pedestrian street require a pedestrian street designated areas with extensive requirements.

I think over the last 30 years, we've seen that some of these areas and several of these areas have benefited by having a local restaurant um clusters and retail core clusters and um the question for today is um are all of these streets you know effectively operating at the same um degree of success um uh or are our regulations um somewhat spreading this uh beneficial uh designation maybe a little too far in that not every part of downtown or other neighborhoods can sort of support the fully active restaurant or retail environment.

So can we bring a little more targeting to those beneficial districts and then allow a little more flexibility in other areas for the sake of, you know, overcoming vacancies and bringing about sort of employment-oriented activity levels that will work together and just not be spread as thin, that will achieve better activity overall without spreading ourselves too thin with the heavy retail and restaurant-oriented designation.

Let me, if I could interpret just a little.

Just add quickly to what Gordon was saying.

There are some, it's an urban design principle, among other things, and it's an urban design principle that is informed by some studies that the city has done over time.

In your link to this agenda item, there's a memo from me that has some links to those studies.

Most of the downtown, class one and class two pedestrian streets, sort of their designations were either established or reaffirmed through a study that was done in 2009, the Downtown Seattle Public Spaces and Public Life Study.

It was done by Jan Gehl, who I think is a Dutch urban designer.

For South Lake Union and Uptown, there were a couple of urban design frameworks.

I think both of those were actually adopted by resolution that identified places where there should be increased pedestrian activity.

The South Lake Union Urban Design Framework was adopted in 2010, and the Uptown Urban Design Framework was adopted in 2016. So those are studies that have informed these regulations.

Thank you, Chairman.

Just to interpret, Gordon, you said it very well.

Ketel, you backed it up even better.

To put it in plain language for me, these rules are important because if the street level of a building is inaccessible to pedestrians and human scale size and interaction, then we're creating dead space in our community.

That's the importance of these regulations.

With the return, well, I guess with the office space and commercial space not being rented at the level that we want it to be rented at, those empty storefronts create an even more dead space than a use that is not entirely pedestrianized or human scale.

What I really appreciate about this bill is that number one is that it's interim, so three years.

and then we come back to this.

Because if in three years our city has returned to a place where we can support the human scale uses that we had in the past, then this should expire.

If in three years from now we find that we have not returned to that normalcy, that's when we should reconsider this proposal.

That's what we did in 2020. We're doing this again now with a little bit more expansion.

Chair, I just want to let you know that I support this bill.

I will have to leave in about six minutes for a meeting.

I couldn't reschedule even though you got this in front of me a while ago.

So just want to let you know I support it.

And if we vote on it in the next six minutes, I'll be voting yes.

Okay, great.

Well, we actually won't be voting on it today, but I'm hoping that we can vote on it on our next meeting on April 2nd.

So, you know, there is no vote on this today.

So just wanted to give you that reassurance.

Thank you.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you for the presentation.

So I guess the first question is, I understand what the bill does, but why do we regulate street use to begin with?

That's a good question.

So in support of the urban village strategy that we've had for more than two decades, the supporting activity at the street levels is quite important for building and maintaining an active neighborhood business district.

And that some of the things that we all love about individual neighborhoods like Fremont is the range and variety of businesses that are present at street level.

If instead we had not had a street level use requirement, there could be much less requirement.

neighborhood business district to work with and there could be just single or multifamily residential units at ground level and that just hasn't provided the same level of vibrancy for neighborhoods over time and over time also we have sort of reined in the range of the pedestrian designation across the city, just to focus the benefits of those in the best places.

Right, I understand the benefit to allowing street use.

My question is, why have we limited street use?

Why have the categories been narrow, and now we're having to come and expand them?

Uh-huh.

Yes, the...

The principal has been focused so much on the fairly narrow range of the most popular activity generators, retail stores, restaurants, and other sorts of centers and public facilities that attract people.

In my opinion, it has wanted that opportunity narrow range of use everywhere, and just following that principle very narrowly has tended to exclude another category of uses that might still be beneficial, but hasn't really been considered widely until recently for more flexibility.

Yeah, just to add a little bit to what Gord was saying, the types of uses that are required where there are required street-level uses are those that are big sort of pedestrian generators.

So, you know, a restaurant or a cafe or a bookstore or something like that, things that bring people out.

So those types of uses generate more pedestrian traffic than, say, a medical service office use, right?

So a restaurant brings more life to the street than a dentist's office.

And so that's why certain uses are favored, and there's a over others that could be located at those street at those on those where street lower uses are required and in places like downtown certain parts of downtown where there is where there are vacant storefronts the theory is that by expanding that the number of allowed uses there would at least be some pedestrian activity in those places right so I'm sorry

I understand all of that.

I guess my question is, what is the...

So in looking at what some of the additional uses are, they're not necessarily going to increase pedestrian traffic.

If you're having food and beverage production, commissary kitchens, restaurant supply, business support services, institutional uses, my question is...

really what's the downside I'm trying to get at what's the downside to allowing those that expanded amount of use even though it isn't necessarily going to result in more pedestrian traffic what's the downside why would we not do this yeah I would say that the downside is that you know in places where there may be like let's take Belltown for example there's been there has been a lot of residential development in Belltown

Even during the pandemic, there was a fair amount of residential development in Belltown.

The residential population of Belltown is larger now than it was before the pandemic.

There are street level uses required on some streets in Belltown, and those street level uses are supposed to be neighborhood serving in some ways.

So restaurants people can go to, bookstores people can go to.

The downside is that if the street-level use requirement is relaxed, some of those spaces may be occupied by uses that are not necessarily available to the general public, and those uses could stay there indefinitely because a use could be established under these interim regulations, and then that use doesn't have to.

It's not amortized.

That use could be there for a long period of time.

So there is an opportunity cost in neighborhoods like that, for certain uses to be established and to stay for long periods of time.

Okay.

And so even though, thank you for that, that clarifies.

And so even though this is going to, the legislation itself expires, the use will be effectively grandfathered in.

Yeah.

Okay, and then the other question I have is what is, do you say there are exemptions, maintain exemptions from density limits?

Can you explain what that means in layman terms?

Yeah, this is a fairly subtle point, but if a tenant space was in the ground floor, but also extended up to a second floor in a place like South Lake Union, there's a density limit for the floor area that's present there, And, you know, in many cases the building developer has to earn that by paying fees and so on too.

And that also consumes part of the space that they can, the total amount of building floor area they can have in their building.

So when we move to allow some flexibility to maybe have a multi, you know, first and second floor space, be present then it brings up a question about whether that density goes away or is there an implication for a fee or a density limit that they have potentially to add to their building so it was something that we needed to address it may or may not happen during the course in the next few years but we covered that base with some flexibility there

So just to clarify, they would have paid their in lieu fee the first time around, but now they're going to get more space.

They won't have to pay a new fee.

Yeah, kind of.

So if most, where floor area, where street level uses are required, those uses are typically exempt downtown.

Those areas are typically exempt from floor area ratio maximum.

So it's not what's called chargeable FAR.

and the jargon of the land use code.

So it's not used in determining how much of a fee you may have to pay for MHA or childcare or something else.

So let's take the example of the biotech building, as somebody testified about earlier.

I don't actually know if this is true for that building, but if they had maxed out their chargeable FAR for research and development space, but had had established a space at the ground level for retail uses as is required by the code, but wanted now to convert that space to research and development space, they could do that under this proposal without exceeding the chargeable FAR.

So there'd be that dispensation that would be allowed under the code.

Okay.

And then does that run with that So if that space remains there and somebody takes it over, does that, they continue to get the benefit of that?

Yeah, it could continue to be, I mean, are you asking sort of a grandfathering question?

Yeah.

Yeah, so it doesn't have to stay as, it can stay as research and development space indefinitely.

I actually don't know about conversion to some other non-street level use space.

I'm not sure.

It could stay in the converted new business use form or it could return to the prior use without penalty either way.

Okay.

Thank you.

Chair, I just have one more question.

The other thing that I note that this does is it allows the director of SDCI to make all of these decisions as an administrative decision to expand the category of allowed uses without appeal.

Is that fairly common?

And why would we do that?

Particularly, one reason that that kind of gives me pause is that one of the additional uses allowed would be institutional uses like support services and also R&D laboratories.

I'm a little bit concerned about that.

Well, I would say that that's just part of the mechanics of the bill is to, if people come forward with a certain use, then we ultimately have to say yes, and we're trying to say yes after reviewing the specifics in the sort of most straightforward and easiest way possible.

Okay.

But it would be possible to keep some of those decisions as appealable.

We don't have to give all of that authority as an administrative decision.

To make those decisions appealable, there would have to be some kind of a discretionary component to it.

So just to respond to your first question, is it usual for something to be a type one decision?

I think that there's not really a lot of there's not necessarily a lot of rigor in the code about sort of when things are a discretionary decision and when things are an administrative decision made by the STCI director.

It kind of depends on who proposes it and when.

Generally, for something to be a discretionary decision, there has to be some kind of criteria where the STCI director would be exercising some discretion about whether or not a use would be allowed.

So, a typical sort of scenario where that happens is when the SDCI director has to make what's called an administrative conditional use decision.

And usually there are some conditions that are attached to some kind of a use, often in an institution, to mitigate the impacts of that institutional use on kind of neighboring sort of circumstances.

So in order for that, in order to change it to a type two decision for which there would be an opportunity for appeal, the council would need to develop some conditions.

So sort of what what kind of, well, how the SDCI director would be direct, would be exercising discretion in that context.

Here there's a delegation essentially to the SDCI director to make some decisions about uses that are not in that list.

And that is that the use has to be an activating use, which would bring people, I forget what it is, down sort of bring, you know, customers or users downtown between the hours of 8 and 10, something like that.

Something like that.

Yeah.

So that is not a discretionary criteria.

That's sort of, you know, either you meet it or you don't.

But that's, you know, if the council were interested in considering some broader sort of some limits on that, on the director's authority there, that delegation, we'd have to develop some criteria for it.

And I would add that, I mean, if there are certain uses you're uncomfortable with giving this easier path, that we could exclude certain use types, if you'd like.

Thank you very much.

That was helpful.

Thank you, Chair.

All right.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Gordon and Kittle, for being here.

And I'm going to piggyback on a couple of things that Council Member Moore said, or at least I'm perceiving it as a piggyback.

Well, a couple things.

One is I understand that the current use is, you know, activating a street use spaces to keep neighborhoods vibrant, including downtown during working hours were probably the reason why we selected some businesses over others.

I mean, I can think in neighborhoods, especially if you have office level uses, you know, those are nine to five businesses and it's in our interest to make sure that there's activations at night because it keeps neighborhoods safer.

true downtown as well um so i imagine that was part of it um so i will say in terms of um uh i'm not sure why we would i understand and i support getting creative at a time when we're not having particularly downtown the work in person There hasn't been support for the uses.

Our restaurants are closing because we don't have people downtown.

And I happen to think, and colleagues, you've heard me say this, so I'm going to say it again.

Our people are not in person five days a week.

County people are not in person five days a week.

It has had an impact on downtown.

And so now we have to look for other uses to activate spaces downtown.

So I support the creativity.

I don't think that it's necessary to have this be a permanent.

Why can't we do this as a temporary and then we would have to come back as a council to relook at how well it's going before we would say we're going to allow this permanently.

Because as with anything else, when we take action, they're always consequent to some intended, some not.

And we won't know, excuse me, what the unintended consequences are until we actually do it.

So I do have pause about giving discretion to either the SDCI or OPCD director for allowing uses that we don't even know about.

So in that sense, council member, more on piggybacking on something you're saying.

In general though, I think that the legislation as a whole, I don't know why we would allow you know, it to, without doing anything, it sounds like it would be permanent.

And so in that sense, I feel, I don't feel, I guess I do not support that aspect of it.

It is interim, actually.

It would be for three years after the passage.

No.

Well, my understanding is this is meant to be an interim use for three years, but the way it's written, at least in your slide, so please clarify for us.

It sounded to me like after the three years, those uses would continue without us actively having to do something.

So please do clarify if I misunderstood your slide and your presentation.

So the legislation itself is interim, right?

It would expire.

I'll say a little bit about upcoming stuff that sort of may be a takeout at some point in the future.

But the uses could be there indefinitely under the proposed legislation.

I think that the notion there is that in order to get any uptake at all, people would have to be certain that they would be able to have a business in a place for some period of time that's longer than three years.

In terms of like a takeout, though, So, we've talked in the Comprehensive Plan Committee, Select Committee, about Phase III legislation.

Mary Kittle, before you continue, can we just pause on that piece?

Because I'm hearing a contradiction.

It's interim, but yet the use can stay longer.

Isn't that what this does, is change the use?

So, to me, this is saying we're temporarily going to allow this other use.

No, so there's temporarily the ability for a property owner to lease a space at the ground level that is not one of the required street level uses.

So that ability to do that is temporary.

But the use, so if somebody were to take advantage of that regulatory dispensation, the use that is established could remain past the three-year period.

So The authority to do it goes away after three years, but the use could stay longer than three years.

So you're saying that this is expanding current buildings that don't have street-level uses to have street-level uses?

Sorry, there's two aspects.

Is that true, what I'm saying?

Yes.

So existing buildings that are required to have a street-level use and can't find a tenant that is one of those users, would, while the legislation is in effect, be able to shop that space to somebody who has a use that's not that type of a use, like an institutional use.

Now, the authority to do that would go away after three years, unless the council renewed it.

But the use, if a tenant, if a landlord found a tenant that was an institutional user, for example, that wouldn't otherwise be allowed to be there, that institutional user could stay there indefinitely, even after the authority goes away.

Are you understanding what he said?

Okay.

Well, let's talk offline because I think there's nuance there that I'm not understanding the difference.

Okay.

Let me talk a little bit about the takeout here.

In the comp plan committee, one thing that has been talked about is so-called phase three legislation.

So last year during the budget, the council approved an appropriation to the Office of Planning and Community Development for a supplemental EIS, and that supplemental EIS will focus on what are now our urban centers and in the future may be called regional centers.

That includes downtown.

So there is a body of planning work that will happen this year and next that will result probably in some changes to regulations downtown, including potentially changes to where the street-level uses are required.

That's probably something that the council will be considering in 2027 at the earliest is my guess.

So that would be when the council could revisit an interim decision if the council decides to approve this now about where the required street level usage should be.

A business taking advantage of this dispensation would be able to remain in the location indefinitely.

But just so that it is on your radar about when when you may be facing a decision about permanent regulations for street-level uses.

That's coming up in 2027.

So, Kittle, let me try again.

In some streets, street-level uses are not allowed, and this expands that allowance?

No, on some streets, street-level uses are required.

On others, they're not required.

They're not required.

And so the urban design principle is largely about sort of where do we want activating spaces, and with downtown, it's sort of drawing people to and through activity centers.

So this is requiring it where it's not now required?

No, it's allowing uses at the street level that otherwise wouldn't be allowed at the street level.

That I understand.

So how could that continue if this is temporary, if this is interim?

That's the piece where I'm.

Yeah, the authority to cite that use would go away after three years.

But if somebody had taken advantage of it, the user could be there.

Yeah.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

I understand that.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

Any other comments?

All right.

Thank you very much for this.

You know, just reflecting on some of the buildings I have in D2, you know, they're residential above, storefront on the ground floor.

and those ground floor units are vacant and have been vacant since the buildings have been built.

So, you know, I'm thinking about the activation of those spaces with somebody to, you know, again, increase that street traffic, increase the eyes on the street.

So I can definitely see in my neighborhood or neighborhoods where, you know, allowing a variety of uses other than what's currently there could definitely be a benefit to the neighborhood.

I also know that a lot of the new projects don't have tenants on the ground floor because the TI is just out of reach for most of those folks coming in.

They just can't afford the tenant improvements to get into those spaces.

But that's another issue.

Any other final questions, comments?

One more, yes.

One more, sorry.

It would be helpful to get some clarification.

Yeah, because to that point, I mean, we already allow a lot of uses and they're not being taken up, right, because of the fact that tenant improvement is so expensive, because of the fact that we have limited nightlife hours.

You know, you can't go to a restaurant effectively after 8 o'clock.

So I just wanna be clear, and my understanding is that there's also some tax advantage to the owner of the building if the ground floor remains vacant.

So I'd like to get some clarification on what the tax incentives are for that.

So while I'm supportive of activating space, I just wanna be sure that we're not, again, like creating sort of a false, promise and opening the door to things that aren't necessarily going to generate greater pedestrian activity and eyes on the street without looking at what are some of the other systemic pieces that are actually keeping people from activating where they are currently allowed to activate.

So thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Anything else from my colleagues?

All right.

I want to thank you both for the presentation and providing some clarity on this issue.

As I mentioned before, we're not going to be voting on this today, but I hope we can bring it up at our next meeting for a vote and move this forward.

So for the record, I want to thank you for your presentation on Council Bill 120771. We will be taking it up at a future meeting.

Excuse me, Chair, may I ask one procedural question, which is if we wanted to bring amendments, when would the due date be for that?

Do we have a due date for that?

Before April 2nd?

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'll just maybe quickly add here, if there is a requirement under the Growth Management Act that There's opportunity for continuous public participation.

And so what that means is that if you have an amendment that is something that people couldn't have reasonably testified about at the time the public hearing was held last June, we don't have to hold another public hearing necessarily, but we need to provide folks with an opportunity to comment on it.

If it's something that was in the scope of what people could have testified about, that's not the case.

But what that means sort of as a practical matter is that after committee action, there may be an additional delay before full council action to accommodate that opportunity for a comment.

Just letting you know that.

All right.

Thank you for that.

Okay.

Chair, just to clarify then, we would need to know what the public comment was in order to know whether we would need to have.

Yeah.

So just as an example, you know, there are certain identified places where, um, there would be this dispensation that are part of the bill, right?

And so folks could have testified in June about, are those the right places?

If the council wanted to add a place that was not originally contemplated, that may be something completely new that folks wouldn't have necessarily known to be able to provide testimony about.

But if we wanted to make changes on how long this legislation should last and in what form that way that should be, I don't think that would not require it.

Okay, thank you.

Good.

Thank you.

Okay, good.

All right, we have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Again, I want to thank you both for being here.

Our next meeting is April 2nd.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

I hear no further business to come before this committee.

We are adjourned.

The time is 11.15 a.m.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.