Land Use and Sustainability Committee 7/23/2026

Okay, good morning, everyone.

July 23rd, 2026, Land Use and Sustainability Committee will come to order.

It's 9.34 a.m.

I'm Andy Linn, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Strauss.

Here.

Council Member Foster.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council Member Rink.

Present.

Chair Linn.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present.

There's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda's adopted.

Good morning, everyone.

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

As always, thank you to our city clerks, council center staff, mayor's office, SDOT and OPCD for helping us prepare for this meeting.

We'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or items within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

We have one in person and three remote.

Okay, each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll 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 60 minutes.

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

In-person speakers will be called first, after which we will move to remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not in their comments within a lot of time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will start with our first speaker and that is Steve LaCroix.

Either one, but you do have to speak directly into the mic.

Good morning, my name is Steve Lacroix.

I'm a resident of North Seattle, and I'm here representing Thornton Creek Alliance.

We appreciate the overall tenor of the plan to increase tree canopy, improving pedestrian and bicycle movement, use of native plants, and honoring the stewardship of indigenous cultures.

We agree and support work to increase affordable housing while providing access to natural surroundings, tree canopy, wildlife, etc.

But these are not mutually exclusive goals.

We recommend respecting Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's recommended 200-foot riparian management zones between 2016 and 2021. Northgate lost 18.55 acres of tree canopy.

This fact must be integral to all planting.

This trend must be reversed.

Tall trees are imperative to maintaining water quality for salmon and other beloved wildlife.

Walking trails are needed.

Let's use this opportunity to offer the community forest bathing as people walk to do their errands.

Casual gathering places are needed.

8th Northeast, just north of Northeast 105th, has been a favorite place to chat and watch wildlife.

Let's build on that.

Please don't give away any more mid-block corridors as was done for the Modera on 8th Northeast.

Some key initiatives Hubbard Homestead Park refer to the Public Advisory Committee comments and make this more interesting and inviting.

Consider Northeast 8 near Northgate as a pedestrian street.

Use best practices of lighting to balance safety and needless light pollution.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Oh, and for the record, I believe Councilmember Foster has joined us online.

That's our last in-person speaker.

We will now move to our remote speakers, starting with Megan Cruz.

Good morning.

I'm Megan Cruz, a downtown resident, speaking on the regional plan and asking the city to partner with downtown's neighborhood council to refine it.

The planned goals are commendable, but proposed actions don't always reflect the reality on the ground.

For example, instead of integrating density throughout downtown, intense upzones are proposed on crowded 3rd Avenue, the nation's largest transit corridor, where current residents and businesses already struggle with basic access for service vehicles and loading.

Yet, the City's technical report proposes upzoning with market rate towers of 500 to 1,000 homes, with parking for 75% of the units, This is not sustainable.

Downtown residents have embraced density, and we understand what it takes to succeed.

We want affordable housing, transportation logistics, livability metrics, and a plan for the 31 preservation landmarks in this small upzone area.

Upzoning without these requirements to deliver these elements is like writing a blank check without oversight.

Please put citizens back into city planning.

Engage downtown's community groups and reestablish a project review process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Sabrina Bolio.

Councilmember Lynn, this is Sabrina Bulliou on behalf of the Port of Seattle and the Northwest Sea Port Alliance.

I want to thank you for your leadership in ushering the mixed sub-area plans forward for Council consideration and upholding the no net loss principle of industrial land.

We look forward to working with you as Council deliberates on this land issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Jean Bateman.

Thank you.

My name is Jean Bateman.

I'm a 35 year resident and small business person in the downtown commercial core commenting on the downtown plan.

First, I really want to thank you.

The plan appears to have returned us to our five neighborhoods and boundaries.

The previously proposed waterfront neighborhood is gone, and we thank you for this change.

The plan needs to define districts more clearly, their drawn boundaries, their description and intention.

Two specific examples are the Pike Place Market Historical District and the newly proposed and expanded waterfront district.

The flume map and its related district narratives are very unclear.

Please reference the legal boundaries of the market historical district.

Please clearly show and describe the proposed boundaries of the waterfront district.

And importantly, update the related SEPA document, which has already been approved, which calls it the waterfront historical district and then places the market inside of it.

There is no waterfront historical district.

The historical district is the Pike Place Market Historical District.

Also, please give us more information on the cultural strategies for downtown revitalization report.

It's mentioned 10 times in the plan, but not described.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We will now move back to in-person speakers with Hannah Ziff.

Hi, my name's Hannah Ziff.

I live downtown in Pioneer Square.

My idea for Seattle is everybody agrees here that we want it to be beautiful and we like walking.

My great-grandfather actually made one of the first federal laws requiring everybody to buy exit signs.

And I heard that we're thinking about widening the streets for fire trucks.

And I'm going to say, If we have to widen one street for fire trucks, we are going to have to widen all the streets.

And it's not going to be beautiful.

It's not going to be good for walking.

And we need to say no to widening the streets for fire trucks.

We need to build new fire trucks or something else.

If there's one thing we can agree on, we want the city to be beautiful.

So please say no to widening the streets for fire trucks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sure that concludes our speakers.

There are no additional registered speakers.

We'll now proceed to our items of business.

We'll now move on to our only item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item one?

Agenda item one, overview of Northgate downtown in manufacturing and industrial center MEC sub-area plans for briefing and discussion.

Okay, thank you.

Will our presenters please join us?

And once you're ready, introduce yourselves.

And I believe Vice Chair Strauss, you're joining us online.

Okay, we will share.

This one is on now.

Good morning, Chair Lynn.

Thank you so much for having us today.

My name is Allison Miller.

I'm the Community Planning Manager at the Office of Planning and Community Development.

I am joined by my colleagues.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Jesse London, a Regional Standards Planner at OPCD.

And I'm Erica Bush.

I am currently a district planner with OBCD and now working for the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Thank you.

So today, just kind of a quick overview of our agenda for today.

So we were here in June talking about, we kind of gave an orientation briefing around this package one of sub-area plans and how that is related to the 2026 comprehensive plan amendment, meaning this is the comprehensive plan amendment package this year, is this package of four sub-area plans that we have submitted to council for your review and consideration.

There, as we sort of discussed last month, just a quick refresher, there are in total nine sub-area plans that we'll be looking to have adopted over the next three years as comprehensive plan amendments.

And yeah, in June, we kind of just went over, what are those plans?

Why are we doing these planning processes?

And talked about how we went through the process of developing those plans.

So for today, we're going to talk through the Northgate Regional Center, the Downtown Regional Center plans, and our colleague Jim Holmes will swap with us and talk about the two MIC plans.

So we'll first dive into the Northgate Regional Center plan.

Thanks, Allison, and there will be a brief pause at the end of the Northgate slides for any questions or discussion on that before we transition into downtown, just FYI.

Okay, so Northgate Regional Center Plan, it's an interesting one to start with because it actually, in many ways, doesn't look and operate like our other regional centers in reality currently.

You know, it's much less dense, it's got much larger blocks, relatively poor walkability and that large sea of surface parking.

But, you know, this sort of, what we see when we look at it, is the opportunity in that state of transition that it's currently in.

We have an opportunity as we make this plan to influence its development, and thankfully, as I'm sure many of you are familiar, there are a lot of really great assets that we can use as a starting point and leverage into transitioning this neighborhood into an operating regional center.

It's centered around this gradually redeveloping former mall site, obviously the light rail station and transit-oriented development opportunity, that that presents, that aggregation of medical uses that exist throughout the sub-area, the Kraken Iceplex that generates over a million visitors a year, and obviously some great natural features, the Thornton Creek, the Beaver Pond, Barton Woods, et cetera, and multiple affordable housing projects either recently completed or in the pipeline.

starting place there as our existing condition.

So like in our other plans, as you'll see when we introduce these over the course of the next year, it's grounded in our equity priorities and robust constituent engagement.

that's supported by our technical research that we conducted with our consultant teams.

After using these initial findings to develop a vision statement and some high-level ideas, we took that information, vetted that with constituents again, and the next year we released a full draft plan for public comments, and then, of course, there was our interdepartmental collaboration throughout all of this process with our partner agencies.

So the engagement, we had a few different phases of that.

At the beginning, this was maybe like mid-late 23, we decided we wanted to focus hard on our historically underrepresented groups in the neighborhood.

So a lot of the in-person engagement that our consultants conducted was focus groups with these target audiences.

We held focus groups in language with East African elders, Idris Mosque, a group of primarily Asian restaurant workers, an indigenous youth program, a couple different cohorts of students among others.

But we also had, of course, our more wide-reaching surveys to generate that large sample of feedback from our more involved members of the community historically.

And ultimately, a few themes emerged.

The activity level in the neighborhood was something that people were curious about.

You know, what does the post-mall neighborhood look like?

And that sort of tied in with the neighborhood identity, like what is this neighborhood going to be in the long term?

Who does it serve?

When people think about Northgate, what do they think about?

and then of course the bare minimum stuff like walkability and increasing our access to parks and open spaces as the neighborhood grows.

As part of our technical work and engagement, I wanted to pause and talk about this for a moment.

We looked into how best to use the neighborhood's state of transition and opportunity presented by some simultaneous projects in the neighborhood to implement elements of a neighborhood that could serve an urban indigenous community.

We worked with an indigenous-led consulting firm, Old Growth Solutions, which at the time was Tomah Peak Solutions.

to develop these reports on what these urban elements might be and how that could work in a neighborhood like Northgate.

These included things like certain housing typologies, public services, and particularly a relationship with the area's natural features.

And I'll get into examples of how that manifests in the plan here in a few slides.

So I'm not going to read the full vision statement here, but all this work yielded our sort of North Star here, this vision statement.

And I think, in summary, we think this neighborhood can have it all.

I think that's totally a realistic thing over the course of the 20-year planning period.

We think this place can have all of the building blocks of a complete urban neighborhood, comprehensive amenities, walkability, public spaces, and this planning process is sort of the first step to leveraging the development interest in the neighborhood to make that happen.

Like with all of our regional center's plans, the basic structure of this plan are these five big picture policy themes that help us to achieve the aforementioned vision, and they're based on some of the more prominent themes identified by community throughout our outreach and research process.

So, neighborhood for all seasons, that's kind of a sneaky way of saying two things at once here.

We're talking about the seasons of life, you know, accommodating residents and visitors from a young age to older age with housing and amenities that are commensurate with those.

life phases.

But then, of course, we're also talking about seasons of the year and the neighborhood's ability to be resilient to climate change and the impacts from that.

The living with place theme, that's about the neighborhood's relationship with the natural environment, the Beaver Pond, Thornton Creek, et cetera, and how we accentuate those things and emphasize those things and improve the way that our residents and workers can interact with those spaces.

Create Northgate, that's about encouraging the organic creation of that neighborhood identity that I talked about earlier, trying to figure out what it is that people are going to be going to Northgate for and to do.

Connected communities, that's a pretty focused transportation element of this plan where we have a lot of our SDOT oriented policies, SDOT originated policies and SDOT project list and things like that.

Shared abundance, then that's about our growth and economic development in the neighborhood and how folks along various parts of the household income spectrum can benefit from how the neighborhood grows and changes over the planning horizon.

So I'm going to start to gradually zoom into some policy focuses of this plan and get to a little, some more tangible things.

We'll start with just the, when you read the plan, these might be some of the bigger takeaways, some are more obvious than others, but, you know, we want to, through this plan and the implementation of its policies, we want to add to strategically add density and housing and take advantage of our transit-oriented development opportunity presented by the light rail station.

We want to expand our access to open spaces, mitigate climate vulnerabilities like the impervious surfaces and include some We want to improve the walkability conditions dramatically.

We want to mitigate against some of the negative impacts of having I-5 go through the middle of the neighborhood.

Obviously the walkability and connectivity implications of that, but also the environmental and noise.

impacts.

And then we want to implement the elements of the native neighborhood that were identified by our indigenous consulting work that I mentioned earlier.

So I'll dive into a few even more concrete examples here.

The mid-block corridor is something we're already working on a little bit with our land use implementation team.

This involves leveraging the development demand to expand the transportation network throughout the neighborhood.

Effectively, we think we can use the land use code to ask developers to build additional streets or pedestrian paths through their properties in exchange for the density that they want, and as a result, end up with a better connected neighborhood with smaller blocks.

I mean, don't take the image to the right by heart by any means.

It's just like an example of what and it's comparing what the current block sizes look like to what a typical Seattle urban neighborhood might look like and how mid-block corridors could help us to get to that condition and improved pedestrian experience.

We want to, again, something that the land use implementation team is already taking some steps on.

We want to make strategic zoning changes throughout the neighborhood.

That's something that's captured in our future land use map that, again, something that appears in all of the plans because it's required.

But, you know, we want to create those more destinations, replace the vast surface parking with something that lends itself to a functional urban neighborhood.

The SDOT project list, again, another example of something that appears in all of the plans.

We work closely with SDOT to further their work from the Seattle Transportation Plan that they completed a couple years ago by identifying some incrementally more specific transportation investments in key locations.

As you might imagine, walkability was the primary focus, but there are bike and transit improvements here as well, crosswalks, sidewalks, bike lanes.

and more pleasant ways to cross I-5 and things like that.

So I encourage you to open that up because it's a long one.

The ecology corridor, that's one of our more abstract concepts in the plan, but it's effectively an implementation of a recommendation from those indigenous consultants and the collaborators and supporters of those products The intent is to improve the neighborhood's relationship with its natural features through this linear path between the Barton Woods area just north of North Seattle College, down the 100th Street right of way and up into Thornton Creek.

And the result we would hope would be an improved ecological function in these areas, a much higher native tree and plant density in these spaces, including the public right of way.

on 100th and along I-5, and then we're exploring the use of Barton Woods or neighboring forested areas as a native food forest, which that's actually something we're also starting to work on with some partners at Department of Neighborhoods, Office of Sustainability and Environment, and then we're just starting to have conversations with North Seattle College about some appropriate spaces for a fruit forest, which is effectively a multi-tiered edible ecosystem that's a historically significant part of the food production for the Coast Salish peoples.

And yeah, those are all of the examples I have.

I'll pause here and if anyone has questions about the plan or anything like that.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you so much.

That was a lot there, colleagues.

And just for this morning, I mean, obviously we went through that presentation, but feel free if you have questions along the way for the next presentation.

But any questions or comments?

and if colleagues don't have any, I have a few.

I'm just holding on one more minute.

Could you talk about, so as part of the Puget Sound Regional Council, I know that there are some conditions and deadlines.

Could you just remind us what those are and also just for the public's sake?

Sure.

I'll speak overall to the condition around adopting sub-area plans.

So the Puget Sound Regional Council has now required municipalities to adopt sub-area plans for all regional centers and manufacturing and industrial centers for existing ones that have previously been designated.

by the end of 2027, so that's kind of the staggered packages of plans that you are receiving.

And yeah, Jesse, I think if there's anything you wanna add specifically around Northgate.

Yeah, well, I mean, both the downtown and Northgate plans, we're eager to, yeah, adopt these as soon as possible to, like, within this annual complaint amendment window of this year, so that we're not trying to do that you know nine plans or seven plans next year which would be start to challenge our ability to meet the deadlines with these and also enable these centers to qualify for those transportation funds sooner rather than later.

Wonderful, and do you recall, and we can chat offline, but do you recall the conditions?

I just don't recall off the top of my head what the conditions were.

I know that the PSRC had a few concerns about the size of the regional center.

Oh, I see, for Northgate in particular, yeah.

Yeah, for Northgate in particular.

Thank you for that reframing there.

Yes, so the PSRC did ask that we...

to revisit the boundary and shape of the Northgate Regional Center, which is something that we talk about in the plan and tee up to do after this plan's adoption.

At this point, for the timeline reasons that we were just talking about, our intention is to adopt it with the existing shape, but there are, I think, good reasons for us to, after we, and make sure we meet that deadline for next year just to think about places where we could both expand and contract the regional center in certain places in a way that makes it serve as a logical single urban neighborhood that has connectivity provided to all of the spaces within the boundary.

Yeah, so that's when we detail in the plan how exactly we would evaluate that.

Okay.

And then could you just speak?

We have a representative from Thornton Creek Alliance.

They've obviously been deeply involved in this sub area for decades.

Could you just speak to kind of some of the engagement, some of the feedback you've heard and responses to any of that feedback?

Sure.

Yeah, so we had a few different phases of engagement.

We had our big, more visioning, high-level priorities engagement that I referenced earlier, where we had a couple, a little less than a couple thousand participants in total, you know, helping us set our initial direction to find the themes of the plan, and that included a lot of our, you know, partner community groups like the Thornton Creek Alliance.

And then, Later on in the process, more towards the end when the public draft plan was being released, yeah, we reached out to these organizations, shared a copy of the plan, encouraged them to provide comment, and I think we got maybe 10 or 12 letters, I don't know off the top of my head, but around there, from these organizations, and we take all those comments seriously and try to figure out, like, which made sense to incorporate into changes that we make in the plan.

We did make a few, but obviously there's a lot of, you know, opinions about what should be in the plan or not.

So not 100% of those, but that's how we incorporated them.

Thank you and just a couple more questions and this sort of relates to kind of the how to mitigate the impacts of I-5 but also just how to address sort of the vast amounts of kind of impervious surfaces devoted to parking and you know I heard you mention de-paving a little where practical could you just talk about sort of how you think about that from a planning perspective and what we would need to do to make that more of a reality after we finish the planning perspective.

Sure.

Yeah, so in Northgate, that's actually I think a little more straightforward than it might be in other centers because of its state of transition and redevelopment.

If we work quickly and strategically, we have an opportunity here to make changes to our land use regulations to, you know, encourage these, on the private side, these redevelopments to accommodate a lot of those goals.

So whether that's, you know, I mean, I don't want to commit necessarily to, like, specific regulations, but, like, just for example, you know, those mid-block corridors and what appears in those, how big they are, what kind of gathering spaces they offer, if any, but also, you know, there's pathways through our a zoning code to ask for open spaces in different ways that we've used throughout the city and other centers and beyond as well.

And that would, I think, that could come in a lot of different shapes that could come on privately owned public spaces or opportunities for acquisitions or something like that.

There's a lot of ways to do that.

So I think Northgate is pretty well positioned to handle that.

Okay, wonderful.

Could you just talk about in terms of timing after sub-area plan, what would the next steps be in terms of trying to develop those regulations or make that more of a reality?

Sure.

With Northgate, we're actually already starting to hit the ground running a little bit here with some of our ideas that might take a little longer or that we want to make sure we get in the door before, you know, a lot of that redevelopment takes place and we miss that window.

So, I mentioned the land use code changes around mid-block corridors.

That's something we're already working on.

And obviously, they're through different avenues of making changes to the zoning code throughout the center through the recommendations that are made in the future land use map, the future in the plan.

Obviously, we have a multi-phase comprehensive plan, zoning implementation work that's happening concurrently, and that works in tandem with the recommendations in this plan.

So that's an ongoing thing.

And then I mentioned that we're, yeah, we're working on the, trying to find a location for the food forest.

And yeah, I think it kind of depends.

The plan produces a lot of recommended action steps.

Some will that might take a long time to identify the best opportunity, but I think there are some that are a little bit more low-hanging fruit that we can accomplish in the shorter term, just like the three that I mentioned.

And if you go into the plan, there's a couple different lists of projects that might help a reader to orient themselves to what some of those projects might be.

There's a list of actions that are most tangible pieces of policy from the plans that are included in all of the plans.

And then there's also a transportation project list that's required by PSRC that SDOT produced, as I mentioned, with a lot of inspiration from the Seattle Transportation Plan, but also inspired by some extra engagement that they did specifically in Northgate during this planning process.

and those I think are labeled by short, medium, long-term types of investments and cost and things like that.

So I think that's a good way for a reader to figure that out.

Okay, thank you.

And I guess just sort of for my own sort of a big picture here is it sounds like we have some important updates to, yes, allow more housing, but also to make it sort of a greener, more pedestrian friendly, more bike friendly, indigenous sort of elements, planning elements to this.

And until we sort of move forward with both the sub-area plan and then the related development regulations, that there could be, you know, development that occurs under our current zoning and rules that would sort of, you know, that doesn't have those elements to it.

And so look forward to continuing.

It's sort of exciting to reimagine.

I mean, there's just such incredible opportunity up in this area.

I think about the history of this area with Northgate Mall, one of the first, if not like the first sort of suburban type mall with just vast fields of parking and sort of the harm that occurred from that and the potential that we have to reimagine this area for again, sort of a more dense, walkable, green, affordable neighborhood.

And so look forward to that work, look forward to continuing to engage with the neighborhood, including, of course, the Thornton Creek Alliance, which again has been an incredible partner for decades up in that neighborhood.

So thank you and look forward to the next presentation.

transition.

Sorry, Chair.

I didn't get my hand up there fast enough.

Sorry about Chair.

Yes.

No problem.

Just want to thank the team for putting this together.

You know, when I was growing up, most of Northgate were parking lots.

It's nice to see that there's more tree canopy along and daylighting of the creek since, you know, 20 years ago, but we've got a lot more work to do.

So I just really wanted to appreciate our public commenter for coming in and making sure to hold our feet to the fire about increasing the canopy at what has you know this was one of the few springs in Seattle there it's been a long time connection point that's why we just landmarked the park on the other side of the freeway which is not technically in this regional center but you know just to say that Northgate has been an important place historically since time immemorial and it's important that we continue to work to repair the concrete you know, damage that we've done and so that we're able to both increase our jobs and our housing and our transit and also increase the restoration to the area that we have disturbed so much in just such a short period of time.

So just wanted to say thank you and looking forward to the rest of the conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Strauss.

Couldn't agree more.

All right, so transitioning to the Downtown Regional Center plan, I think transitioning to that from the Northgate Center plan is a helpful kind of illustration of why we do sub-area planning.

These two areas are designated both as regional centers and our comprehensive plan and have policies related to them in that plan.

However, they are very different contexts with very different histories and very different kind of needs and constituencies.

I'll dig into the downtown regional center plan.

And as we've introduced, Erica Bush is joining me.

She stewarded this plan through most of its history at OPCD, so I'm very thankful for her to join us and answer any questions, any more in-depth questions.

So I don't need to really introduce the Downtown Regional Center to all of you.

We are in downtown right now.

We all know and love downtown, but just in terms of how we define it kind of geographically in the Comprehensive Plan and our Regional Center Plan, you can see the boundaries are the waterfront, north to Denny, south to the International District in Pioneer Square, and mainly bounded on the east by I-5.

We all know it's the regional heart of the Puget Sound area in terms of housing, employment, transportation, and culture.

and it is not one distinct center.

It's a collection of five distinct neighborhoods as well as several specific districts and identities.

So we're very careful in the plan to engage geographically throughout the center as well as speak specifically to the needs and gaps and assets in each specific neighborhood and area within the plan.

So again, very kind of similar approaches to equitable engagement for the Downtown Regional Center with the idea of being very intentional of reaching out to historically underrepresented groups through different opportunities like pop-up events, public workshops, surveys, artist-led interviews, using our racial equity toolkit.

We also similarly released a draft plan for public comment and incorporated comments into the final plan that you have now for consideration.

Again, I won't read the full vision, but this is kind of the statement that grounds the five themes that you'll see in the plan and kind of the overall vision statement for the Downtown Center.

Those five themes, similar to Northgate, we sort of shying away from the more topic descriptive chapters like transportation and housing and more bringing those things together based on what we heard from the community and the vision that they articulated for for downtown.

So first is downtown is home, really focusing on housing growth, affordability, and supporting families.

Make downtown safe and welcoming, both thinking about safety as well as belonging and open space and culture.

Make use of every square foot, thinking about jobs, retail, adaptive reuse, and economic vitality.

Steward our home for the next seven generations.

That's talking about climate, indigenous stewardship and resilience.

And then find our way, transportation, streets, way finding and accessibility.

Before I dig into the specifics within each of those themes, there is a very kind of helpful graphic in the plan that brings together the kind of public realm and spatial improvements that are discussed in each theme of the plan.

We call them big ideas for downtown.

There's 16 specific projects that are discussed, and they kind of, again, bring together the five themes in a way that you can kind of view and see with ideas to prioritize people and designing our public spaces and rights of a way to make sure everyone feels safe and welcome.

Supporting and designing key commercial corridors to support culture, community, and economic opportunity.

Focusing on navigation, particularly for populations like children, older adults, and people with disabilities.

The plan really points towards embracing the waterfront and the waterfront edge throughout the plan, but also focusing on kind of green connections and clear sight lines.

And then advancing station area planning that supports additional housing, so you can kind of see those those two hubs that were really kind of thinking about the Westlake hub and the South Downtown hub as we move towards some really, some nearer term opportunities for additional planning and housing.

So the first theme and really kind of a core component of the downtown plan as a whole and the direction that I think from the community and we really heard resounding support for is the idea of downtown is home.

So really working to transition and support additional housing downtown.

The plan calls for 13,500 new housing units by 2044. and to do that, we wanna make sure that we're preserving and expanding housing across income levels, as well as evolving downtown as a neighborhood, as a set of neighborhoods that actually, that really meet diverse resident needs of people who live there now and future residents.

so that includes several policies and actions around using things like incentive zoning and redevelopment tools to advance housing and conversion of existing stock or buildings to meet those needs.

Again, also exploring key opportunities for station area redevelopment, especially when we think about the need for family-scale housing.

So make downtown safe and welcoming.

This involves both thinking about safety for everyone at all hours in our public spaces as well as creating that welcoming and inclusive public realm that includes expanding parks and green space and celebrating downtown's history and culture.

So things like investing in new public space as well as stewarding the spaces that we have.

specific safety strategies that pair that physical or environmental design with social service coordination, and then weaving culture and heritage preservation into our public realm investments.

Making use of every square foot, again, so the downtown plan calls for planning for 60,000 net new jobs over the next 20 years, and to do that, we really need to look at how are we using the space that we have now between existing parking lots, vacant land, vacant structures, So this theme includes strategies to activate some of those properties, supporting new legacy and small businesses, really supporting our creative industry through visibility and space initiatives, and thinking again about adaptive reuse and mixed use repositioning of existing buildings.

I'm gonna move this really quick.

Okay, theme four, stewarding our home for the next seven generations.

This is about connecting people to nature, caring for our natural resources, reducing fossil fuel reliance, and building resilience to natural disasters and climate change.

And so in downtown, that includes using a foundation of indigenous-led design principles, and multi-generational environmental responsibility, thinking about our seismic resilience and URM resources, as well as green infrastructure and recovering and expanding our tree canopy downtown, as well as waterfront ecological restoration.

And last but not least, Find Our Way is really, again, our transportation-focused theme, thinking about people-oriented public spaces, rethinking street space, making travel safe and comfortable, celebrating indigenous cultural history through the transportation system, and building sustainable and legible mobility.

So things like rebalancing existing street right of way, enhancing our wayfinding and accessibility investments, things like hill climb assists, seating and shade, advancing the Seattle transportation plan projects for multimodal corridor and safety projects.

Jesse spoke a lot about that in the Northgate plan.

There is also a as Seattle Transportation Plan project list for downtown, and then street design to additionally support economic activity, things like activated frontages, event-ready corridors, things like that.

So again, each regional center plan includes a future land use map.

We really found in looking at downtown, there is a lot of existing capacity, and so this is maybe less of a traditional future land use map, map and instead it identifies downtown specific place types and districts and provides guidance for how we want to approach each area.

It does introduce the waterfront as a distinct district.

Again, it's not renaming any existing neighborhoods, but more so focusing on what is the type of development we want to see in the waterfront area and how do we want to see that area grow and change now that that we've seen the investment that we have.

So it does, the plan discusses height and density increases near the Civic Campus and transit hubs.

Again, those opportunities for station area planning, protecting view corridors and maintaining a lower scale near Pike Place Market.

thinking about adaptive reuse and emphasizing that in places like the Pioneer Square, as well as studying an anti-displacement approach in places like the CID.

And so this is similar to both plans, our implementation approach and kind of how these plans will move forward over the next 20 years.

Each plan has this implementation matrix that identifies for each action a city steward as well as partners and an anticipated kind of timeline.

Overall, OPCD will remain the plan's champion, but similar to how we've developed the plans, we'll be working in very close collaboration with all of our interdepartmental partners and working with them to implement the activities that are distributed across all of those departments and agencies.

We're planning now for 20 years in the future.

We don't necessarily know all of the things that will happen in 20 years, just like we didn't predict COVID-19 or the impact that that would have on downtown.

So the idea is that these are living implementation roadmaps as priorities and resources change with the city where the plans are developed to be resequenced and different actions brought to the surface as funding and partnerships and opportunities evolve.

And I think that's the end of our presentation on downtown and the regional centers.

So before we transition to the manufacturing and industrial centers, let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you.

OK, colleagues.

questions.

Again, I have a few questions and just reflections, but just giving one more second for colleagues.

Just thinking about the downtown, obviously it's a quite diverse area with the five areas.

We've got CID, Pioneer Square.

We've got three different city council districts.

We've got our citywide folks who represent this area.

So unique issues with each kind of distinct part of downtown.

But one thing that just sort of caught my attention is the planning for 60,000 additional jobs and, you know, just thinking about the history of our city and what has really sort of driven the transformation of our city was those jobs, the tech sector, right?

But we are seeing this major sort of change in that industry.

We see office vacancies quite high.

And I don't know, from my perspective, it's a little bit hard to predict what's gonna happen with AI, with the job sector, with the office sector.

Could you just talk a little bit about and how that's playing out in your thinking, what sort of flexibility do we have depending on what's happening in the economy?

Yeah, I'm happy to start that.

So I think you're absolutely right.

There's only so much that we can control in the work that we do.

What we can help is to create an environment that's conducive to economic growth and to livability.

And what this plan really tried to center on was creating a much more diverse and engaging downtown that was inspiring for folks to develop and to come here.

I think what we just saw with FIFA, what we've seen over time, is that we sometimes forget how incredible our city is and how much of an incredibly beautiful, walkable, accessible environment we have here.

and the fact of the matter is we've leaned in really hard on that tech sector and we do need to diversify.

It doesn't create a resilient economy.

And what you will see in the section, the economic section of this plan is talking about how if we don't sort of pause and take note of the need to diversify, we put ourselves in a really risky place.

and we've heard a lot from folks throughout the planning that they want a diverse city.

Artists want to work downtown.

Educators want to work downtown.

The maritime industry wants to continue to function and thrive downtown.

We have an incredible design and architectural culture here.

We have industries basically that cover every spectrum and we need to encourage growth in all of those sectors versus kind of leaning into just one.

And I think that will continue to help Seattle thrive and actually become what the plan defines as our largest residential hub as well as just job growth.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, if there's no other questions or comments from colleagues, we can move along.

Thank you so much.

We'll pass it over to Jim Holmes.

I am ready.

I am having trouble.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, okay.

Awesome, thank you.

Okay, yeah, could you go ahead and introduce yourself for the record and please go ahead and get started when you're ready.

Yeah, Jim Holmes, Senior Planner with Office of Planning and Community Development.

I'm here to give you a presentation on both of the Manufacturing Industrial Center plans.

Before I do that, I really want to talk a little bit about the Industrial Maritime Strategy, and these plans are an implementation action of that strategy.

That strategy was something that was initiated in 2019, It was informed by a very strong interdepartmental team and a 60 plus community stakeholder group, including representatives from industry, property owners, agencies such as the Board of Seattle and Sound Transit, other groups like the Georgetown Community Council, Transportation Choices Coalition, Duwamish Valley River Cleanup Coalition.

And there were four neighborhood subgroups focusing on Ballard, Inner Bay, the Soto area in Georgetown South Park.

They also included a component of engagement with BIPOC youth about how to assess these job opportunities in these sectors.

And finally, we had very detailed outreach to the South Park and Georgetown communities.

And in June 2021, this advisory council adopted a set of consensus recommendations.

I'll share this with you in a moment, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the implementation actions to date.

In 2022, some initial budget actions to begin implementing key features of the strategy, including funding around workforce development programs, environmental remediation, standing up a stewardship entity, which we know today as the Sound Industrial Alliance, funding for transportation studies in the mix.

And in 2023, the council adopted a package of landmark legislation that really represented the largest reform of our industrial land use regulations in about 30 years.

It included also a set of comprehensive plan policies for industrial land use that were adopted in 2023 and reaffirmed with the One Seattle plan adoption last fall.

Another implementation has been the master planning around the Waska site, and I'll talk about that on the next slide.

And finally, the manufacturing industrial center plans.

So the Advisory Council recommendations outlined 11 broad strategies.

Under investment strategies was investments in workforce development and training, public safety partnerships, transportation investments, environmental initiatives.

In terms of land use strategies, stronger protections for industrial land, encouraging dense industrial development around future transit stations, healthier transition areas between industrial and non-industrial areas, No new residential uses.

There are some obvious exceptions in there, but generally speaking, no new residential uses.

There were some community goals in the Georgetown and South Park neighborhood.

We were able to advance through this process.

In terms of action strategies, there were two large parcels in the mix, and one's in BINMIC, Gallardo Bay North End Manufacturing Industrial Center, The other one is in the Duwamish Mic.

Those are the WASCA site and the National Guard Armory site in Interbay.

They are owned by the state of Washington.

WASCA is currently undeveloped.

The Armory site will be once the National Guard relocates.

So we have incorporated in the plan that in the future we will be doing some master planning in partnership with the state to determine what happens on those large parcels.

And finally, standing up the stewardship energy, which is an important part to help us work with the industrial community.

So let's talk about the sub-area plans.

As the earlier presenters said, it's required for recertification of the manufacturing industrial centers.

and it's important for continued federal financing of transportation projects.

The chapters in both the plans are the same.

There's a vision statement, land use chapter, transportation chapter, economic development chapter, environment chapter, and public services chapter.

When you read the plan, this is a little bit how it's organized.

Each chapter has an overview and background information.

It's very descriptive.

Then we have a section discussing key challenges and opportunities related to that topic area.

And finally, we have goals and policies.

The goals in both plans are the same, and many of them are already being advanced through citywide comprehensive plan policies, other citywide functional plans like the Seattle Transportation Plan or the Climate Action Plan, or other regulations.

And so when you see a goal in the plan, you will see a description of the other activities the city is doing to advance that goal, and then we will have MIC-specific policies to advance that goal below that.

So I'm gonna quickly run through the chapters and do some policy highlights.

So for land use, key opportunities and challenges, you'll see that the darker print ones are shared by both MICs, so that is sound transit, light rail station integration within the MIC, and residential encroachment.

In the BINMIC, future redevelopment of the Inner Bay Armory is a major opportunity, and we really want to maintain irreplaceable water-dependent uses in Salmon Bay.

That is a very important maritime ecosystem that, once lost, probably will be lost forever.

Within the Greater Duwamish MIC, the WASCA site, ensuring Seattle's container port maintains a vital economic engine going into the future.

We really need to pay attention to Georgetown and South Park adjacencies to ensure that there aren't a disproportionate share of impacts being suffered in those communities.

Look at the opportunities with ReConnect South Park.

There's a potential to create new industrial land, actually, with some of those scenarios.

And ensuring stadium district compatibility with the MIG.

So the land use goals for both MICs in 20 years, the MICs will be defined by a strong presence of industrial activity, predictable land uses, transit that supports and is compatible with industrial activity, and that there's healthy transitions between industrial and non-industrial areas.

land use policy highlights, guidance on armory master planning.

So there's policy criteria about what a master plan should look like on the National Guard armory site.

The same is true for the Waska site.

There's some parts of Seattle that have industrial zoning that play an important maritime use that are outside the BINMIC or outside the Duwamish MIC.

We would like to study the potential of including them in the BINMIC.

I'm talking about the area on Southeast Lake Union.

We want to avoid citing major new land uses that would disrupt the functionality of critical rail and truck infrastructure links to water-dependent uses.

This is a big one.

Both plans allow for a one-time city-led boundary adjustment for future sound transit stations.

The intent there is that whatever is done is done in a comprehensive, non-piecemeal way, and we offer criteria for that one-time adjustment.

For example, in the BINMIC, there has to be no net loss of industrial land.

Another policy, in the Duwamish-MIC plan, that there be no housing in the station area overlay district, and that a working group be established to guide future planning within the station overlay district and adjacent areas.

transportation chapter, common to both MICs, maintaining the freight network, integrating sound transit stations, making and improving a safe, active transportation network, and ensuring travel time reliability of the freight network.

Unique to the BINMIC is also maintaining the viability of 15th Avenue corridor, including the Ballard Bridge and east-west connectivity in Inner Bay.

Within the Duwamish MIC, Reconnect South Park, That is a potential challenge that we need to monitor to understand its potential impacts on freight movement.

Transportation goals for both MICs.

In 20 years, there will be a high efficiency use of limited rights of way and a robust freight network that will have strong intermodal connections and that there'll be an active transportation network safely coexisting with the freight network.

Policy highlights include new street typologies within the urban industrial and industry and innovation zones.

These are zones where we expect much more pedestrian activity in the future, and so we want to ensure freight can move safely and pedestrians can move safely.

We want to improve last mile connections between the transit stations and employment locations within both MICs.

Resurface and improve roadways and approaches to Smith Cove and Salmon Bay that are in substandard conditions.

This is really an issue in the BINMIC.

Improved visibility of pedestrian and bike riders to truck and car drivers.

Seek to separate active transportation facilities from freight facilities.

The economic development chapter, key challenges and opportunities common to both MICs, encroaching land uses, the light rail stations which comes across in many of these, almost all of these chapters, emerging maritime innovations that will keep that industry cutting edge, and climate change and how that impacts particularly the water dependent areas.

Within the BINMIC we also want to support the brewery district and looking forward once again to the Inner Bay Armory redevelopment as a modern industrial project.

In the Greater Duwamish MIC, As far as economic development, Seattle's Container Report is the big story there and we really want to maintain its presence.

Goals for both MICs, in 20 years there will be a strong presence of industrial maritime sectors and the living wage jobs they provide, which is really the motivator for all of this work, that there be equitable access to those living wage jobs, that these areas are home to emerging sub-sectors of the industrial and maritime economy, and that around light rail stations we have high density employment anchored by industrial activity.

Policy highlights include support for the Ballard Railway District, raising awareness of maritime sector careers in vocational training programs, high schools and middle schools, ensure major public works are designed to preserve the functionality and operation of maritime and industrial operations.

encourage new residential projects in your residential areas to offer job training and internship opportunities to the local workforce, and to continue to work with stakeholders to support maritime sector innovations to ensure a thriving and modern container port operation.

And finally, in the environment and open space chapter Common opportunities challenges include both areas feature substantial amount of contamination, historic contamination and fill.

Sea level rise also affects both areas and improving bike trail connectivity for that active transportation network.

Within the BINMIC, the Inner Bay Armory is also an environmental challenge, given its location and its history.

And the combined sewer overflow, that's a great opportunity.

That's investment in the BINMIC that's been completed.

In the Duwamish MIC, environmental justice issues, particularly related to South Park and Georgetown communities that are adversely impacted by industrial activity in that area, and water quality on the Duwamish River.

In 20 years, our goal will be that we have rehabilitated environmentally critical areas, that new projects will be characterized by innovative stormwater management practices, that there's a high-quality network of open spaces and trails, that we will avoid environmental impacts on vulnerable populations, that we will reduce greenhouse gases, and once again, we will have innovative green building practices in new development.

Policy highlights include encouraging shoreline restoration, assisting operators of vessels in the fishing fleet and other maritime companies based in Salmon Bay and Yellow Bay to transition over time to alternative fuels, incentivize, encourage mass timber construction, use publicly owned remnant spaces for open space to serve nearby residents and workers, Work with property owners along shorelines that are impacted by sea level rise to coordinate public private investments to protect inland areas and expand electric transportation and marine infrastructure, including expansion of electrical shore power and charging infrastructure for heavy duty equipment and freight.

And that is a presentation on the MIC plans and happy to take any questions.

Okay.

Colleagues, Vice Chair Strauss.

Hey, thanks so much, Jim.

Great work.

Colleagues, you may or may not know, Jim and Jeff Wetland are the two folks from OPCD, amongst many others, and now Naomi Lewis also works at OPCD, but the three of them and Chase Kitchen really got the maritime and industrial plans passed in 2023. after so many years of stakeholder.

And so this is good to see this back today.

And Jim, thank you for the in-depth meeting, as well as the comparison policy chart.

I just wanted to share a couple, well, I'll share some background just about the space that we're talking about and BINMIC, specifically Duwamish as well.

which is the Salmon Bay in the Ballard-Ben-Mick is the closest freshwater port to the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

The importance of it is why we have the North Pacific fishing fleet there.

We have the largest domestic producer of seafood in the United States, headquartered in Salmon Bay, Trident Seafoods.

I can't stress the importance of our maritime and port lands enough.

and I say that because one third of our sales and use tax comes from the maritime and industrial zones.

And so in good economic times, some folks overlook them and in bad economic times, they are the only ones buoying us through the storm.

And so just wanted to jump in here.

Actually, if you could go back to slide seven, I think it is a very descriptive slide of Dravis area of Inner Bay.

Something that folks may or may not know is that this was a tideland.

There has been indigenous population in Salmon Bay since time immemorial and the tideland that is now a rail yard and industrial zone is this picture right here.

So what you see in the foreground are the net sheds on Salmon Bay and in the far ground you see the cruise ship terminal.

This area used to all be tideland that was the food access for the indigenous community living in Salmon Bay.

Here you see it today.

And what is striking to me about this photo is when you look at it from the sky, it looks all very well connected.

Magnolia is very close to Queen Anne.

Salmon Bay is very close to Elliott Bay.

But our built environment has created a lot of barriers here and I really appreciate you, Jim, bringing this up.

In this map, you see one bridge crossing the train tracks right there.

That's the Dravis Bridge.

It is already too small.

What you see, there used to be an Armory Street Bridge crossing the train tracks here.

and then in the foreground, you see the causeway of the Ballard Bridge, which could, if improved, create a much better connection between Queen Anne, the port facilities there, Fisherman's Terminal and the Ballard area.

And so, you know, when I look at this area, you also actually here, you see a golf course there.

It's on top of a former dump, landfill.

And if you squint real quick, Real hard, you can see the Storm's practice facility.

If you squint even harder, you can see the Interbay Stadium where national champion Salmon Bay FC won the national championship right there.

We've got Ballard FC hot in the playoffs.

They play tomorrow at 3 p.m.

and you also see in the far left corner the pickle in the palms the new pickleball court and what folks may or may not know is the owner of that property was the host of the most recent RV safe lot that it's been closed so long that they built a building we were supposed to open a new RV safe lot before that one closed and yet Glass Yards Commons still is not open.

Sorry, on the Ballard Bridge Causeway, you also see that big loop-de-loo over there on the left-hand side.

That creates a lot of, all of this creates a lot of disconnection for the human experience through Inner Bay.

It is incredibly important that we, as Jim mentioned, create more connectivity across and through.

And then looking at all of the sports activity that's going on right here, I do think that we need to start looking at how do we support that vibrancy that national champions, Salmon Bay FC, national champions, Ballard FC, the most winningest team in Seattle's history, the Seattle Storm, how we promote these and really place make to support all of these excellent attributes of our industrial zone.

So I just want to thank you for letting me wax poetic a little bit there about the importance of The Fisherman's Terminal, you see those net sheds right there.

That is the home of the North Pacific Fishing Fleet.

And then across the train tracks, the importance of the vibrancy of our sports community here in Inner Bay.

Something that just kind of strikes me, and I guess that's the end of me needing that picture to show there.

I do appreciate some of the amendments that have been put in about the light rail station area planning.

Ballard light rail is not dead.

We're going to get it done.

And when we do, we need to have our land use because the light rail station at Dravis is dead smack in the middle of the industrial zone and up on 15th and Market is it's on the very edge of the industrial zone.

and so we do need to be flexible and at the same time we need to have no net loss of industrial zones during those stationary placements because in the 2023 zoning updates for maritime and industrial areas we provided a new level of flexibility for industrial zones surrounding light rail stations in addition to relaxing the housing bans inside of the industrial zones completely, just a little bit for the ones that are right along the water, for a little bit more for the ones that aren't, and then the Industrial buffer zones allowed a lot more housing.

And so I just say that as we do the station area planning, we've made those important land use changes to our industrial zone.

And if we need to exchange properties so there's no net loss, I see that as being important.

one thing that you'll hear me talk about both in the comp plan you know throughout the comp plan throughout our disposition policies for the city-owned land is our need to do better with recognizing tribal sovereignty and so jim i'd like to talk to you a little bit more about how the bin mic and the duwamish mic plans in particular can better support our federally recognized tribes who may have trust land within the city.

For those viewing right now, trust land is a specific legal designation of land owned by federally recognized tribes, and that designation is through the federal government.

And so I do think that we need to be a little bit more, we might need to make one add there.

So Jim, I'd love to follow up with you about that.

And Just really appreciate all, sorry, I was checking my notes.

I've been looking through all your policies here.

I just wanna really appreciate also the understanding that the BINMIC does extend maybe non-contiguously into Lake Union.

It's really incredibly important that we preserve our maritime industry here, especially in Salmon Bay.

As I said, it's the closest freshwater port to the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, which means that it is the safest and least destructive place to somebody's vessel to get work done, and to, over the winter, stay here in calm, fresh water.

So all that to say, Jim, thank you to you and Jeff for all your work.

I look forward to following up with you about some of these additions that I may bring.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Strauss.

Really appreciated the in-depth look at the Inner Bay Area.

When I... Oh, could I give one more thing?

Sorry, Chair.

Of course.

I might even be wild enough to ask if I can share screen, just because we discussed the Armory site.

Yeah, let's see if you're able to.

We'll see if it works.

Let's see if it works here.

Give me just one second.

I just wanted to bring up the Armory site because Jim did mention that it will be up for redevelopment.

I discussed it a little bit about the tidelands that used to exist there.

And when we were filling in Inner Bay in the 1930s, the armory site was one of the last places to be filled in, which is why the state government got it.

And so here is the 1936 aerial photograph of the city of Seattle.

We're gonna zoom right in here into, and you can see here Salmon Bay at that time, the timber capital of the world.

But here is the inner bay area.

You can see the dump here, which is now the golf course.

Here you see the port terminals.

is the exact outline of our armory site today.

And you can see it is underwater.

And so I just share that with you because across all of, most of the inner bay area, you can see here where the tidelands are.

This was also under tideland.

Here we have Smith Cove Park now.

Actually, Smithfield Park is right here underneath the bridge where there was shorefront housing at that time.

So I just share that with you because I do believe that it is important that as most of our industrial land is built on fill, that we have to be careful about what we place there, not only for sea level rise, but also for the liquefaction because we know that when you build in places like this, the pilings have to be very deep This is one of the reasons why the National Guard is moving, is because they base their emergency operations out of there, and if they're underwater during an emergency, they're not going to be able to help very many people.

And I just think that we need to keep that in consideration as we are looking at the BINMIC there in Inner Bay.

Thank you for letting me take you on my aerial view tour.

Thank you.

How old was that image from?

1936. 1936. Thank you.

I love geeking out on the history, Vice Chair Strauss.

Only 19 years after Ballard was forcibly annexed by the city of Seattle.

So I'll just share a little bit.

When I first moved here in 1998, our first apartment was right off Dravis.

It was 14th and Dravis right there.

Used to love to explore Fisherman's Terminal that whole area and just this weekend got to I don't make it up to the locks very often but I got to enjoy the locks this Sunday with my mom wanted to show her and just an incredible history there and it was fun to look at they were looking at exploring different places to do the locks.

And they had all these different options.

And one of them, I think, was through Inner Bay.

One was through South Lake Union, right through downtown.

All these different potential.

But it's incredible to think about how much we have changed the landscape.

And for me, it's just as we reflect on this comprehensive plan, you know, this area has been, there are very few areas that are undisturbed or untouched.

We have just completely changed so many parts of the landscape.

And so how can we, in a sense, sort of unearth, how can we kind of reimagine and do better as part of this next phase.

So I think, you know, that to your point, Councilman, Vice Chair Strauss, you know, looking at that armory and sort of the history there and what was there before and can we do anything that sort of honors and respects some of that history and certainly would be interested in the idea of trust land.

So we'd love to work on that with you.

Also think, you know, just to the incredible importance of these maritime industrial to our economy, to making sure that as we were talking about downtown, the importance of a diverse economy, as you mentioned, and I do think too often maritime industrial kind of gets overlooked in terms of the importance to our local economy just because it's not as flashy or in the news as our tech sector.

But as we think about long-term, having a diverse economy.

And just kind of one question, you know, mentioned climate change.

Earlier we were talking about sort of the changes, potential, the difficulties of predicting where our economy is gonna go in sort of like tech and office.

Could you just speak to sort of long range, any sort of thoughts about, how the maritime industrial, any bellwethers there, anything that we might need to be just concerned about or thinking about in that interest, just broadly.

I mean, we know there's already some industrial areas near South Park, the flood during high tides and storms that the city through many departments is actively working to mediate, but there's some long-term investments that need to be made to protect from sea level rise in those areas so we don't get contamination when they flood industrial sites.

And other things we talk about in the climate element or the environment and open space element is really the importance of better stormwater management practices to protect water quality, green building design to reduce and conserve resources used in production and transportation, investments in shore power and other electrification of maritime activities.

in terms of bringing down greenhouse gas emissions.

I mean, it's a full package of things that need to be done.

Specific bellwether I can't really point to.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Colleagues, any other questions or comments?

Let's see.

I believe that might be, is that the end of our presentations for today?

I believe so, okay.

Well thank you so much everyone.

Thank you for the presentations and let's see, okay.

If we don't, just double checking.

Okay, we've reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

There's no further business to come before the committee.

We are adjourned at 10, 15, 9 a.m., thank you all.