Good evening and welcoming to this September 10th City of Bellevue Planning Commission meeting.

This meeting is held via hybrid format with both in-person and virtual option via Zoom.

Tonight's meeting will provide an opportunity for public comments during the oral communication portion of the agenda as well as during the public hearing or written comments that have been submitted prior to 11 a.m.

today, Wednesday, September 10th, will be summarized into the record.

We have two study session items tonight.

The first is study session item is on housing opportunity and mixed use area, also known as HOMA.

The second study session item is on the planning commission's role and responsibility.

This presentation will be helpful for new commissioner as a good refresher for those um those of us who have heard it before.

Now let us move forward with the roll call.

Vice Chair Liu?

Present.

Commissioner Ferris?

Here.

Commissioner Keppel?

Here.

Commissioner Kennedy?

Here.

Neil Chian?

Here.

Commissioner Velaveses.

Present.

And I'm assuming Deputy Mayor Malco Tian is absent, and I'm Chair Hanlu.

Okay, approval for agenda.

Can I get a motion to approve today's agenda?

I'd like to approve.

I've moved that we approve today's agenda.

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

All right.

Any reports from boards and commission?

Kate?

No reports from the boards and commissions.

And staff, um, liaison kates will provide us with updates to the meeting scheduled.

Uh thank you.

Uh Chair Khan Lu.

Um, I wanted to note that the Planning Commission's retreat has moved to November 5th.

Um, council rescheduled their November 11th meeting to November 12th due to Veterans Day, um, which is on the 11th.

Um, so that's what led us to reschedule the meeting for November 5th.

I also wanted to mention that I've had some questions about where to learn about um upcoming community events.

And um I explored a possibility of providing a calendar with your packet, but um I think it would be more comprehensive to consult the city calendar.

Um and in addition, you can subscribe and anybody here can subscribe to updates about specific topics by clicking the subscribe button on like if you're on the neighborhood area planning website web page, you there's a button to click subscribe so you can get updates about um about that topic.

Um so I just wanted to uh if you have further questions about where to find um events, um I'm happy to um to answer those or help it in any way I can.

Thanks, Kate.

Any questions?

Okay.

Can we go to or and written communication?

The total time for oral communication is 30 minutes.

A speaker will be allowed up to three minutes to speak.

A staff liaison, Kate.

Um, we'll call on the speakers in order in which they have registered uh either in the room or um online.

If anyone from the public has missed the 5:30 registration deadline, you may still provide public comment if there is remaining time.

Please use the raise hand function in Zoom if you are attending virtually or motion to staff if you are in person to indicate that you would like to speak.

The rules adopted by city um council limiting the topic about uh which the public may speak during our meeting.

Order order ordinance 6752.

The public may only speak during public comment about subject matters that are related to the City of Bellevue government and are within the power of the duties of the planning commission.

Additional information about the role uh can be found in ordinance.

I cannot pronounce that, 6752.

Katie, would you like to provide a summary of the written communication that we received?

Uh yeah, sure.

The written communication has that has come in since the packet was published last week, um, has been regarding HOMA.

Um and I forwarded those communications to you on Monday and then the balance today.

Um since that time, I've received one additional email in support uh of the standards for NB in the HOMA proposal.

Um of the people who submitted written comments have also signed up for oral comment, but um I just did a check, and there's not a lot of overlap.

So these are many of these will be in addition to the written comments.

That's it.

Mr.

Alex Dumerman, you are bringing the sign up and blocking the camera and disturbing our meeting.

I'm just giving you the first notice.

Please stop doing that.

Okay.

Please do not disturb the meeting.

For oral communication, how many people registered?

We have 16 people pre-registered and uh at least one person uh registered here in the room.

So that would be 17 people.

Can I get the motion to extend it for chair?

Well, I'd like to make the motion that we extend it for 20 minutes.

Thank you.

Any second?

Second discussion.

All in favor?

Aye.

Um we have, I'm just like now, I need to calculate.

We have 50 minutes for oral communication before our scheduled business meeting.

Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak.

As we mentioned earlier, topics are limited to the matter that are related to City of Bellevue government and are within the power and duties of the planning commission.

And uh please be mindful of your time.

Um if you can speak less than three minutes, that'd be great because we can hear from more people.

Kate, do you mind to call people?

Yes, I would love to do that.

Um, so the first person that has pre-registered is uh Leslie Geller, who is virtual, and that will be followed by Deborah Deutsch, who is in person.

And let me just pull up the three-minute timer.

We'll just do this.

Can you hear me?

I can.

Okay, go ahead.

Your time starts now.

Um, I am uh my name is Leslie Yeller.

I live in Eastgate.

Um I have a lot to say about HOMA, but I could not get my act together today to write it all up.

So that will happen after today.

But I I do want to vocalize my concern about Eastgate Plaza area being uh changed to neighborhood mixed use or NMU.

Um Matthew Minard has said these NMUs uh, which are proposed to go up to 10 stories, are on the periphery of higher density district.

And in my estimation, that is untrue for Eastgate Plaza on the north side.

It borders I-90, and the higher density uses are on the north side of I-90.

And across Southeast 38th Street, um, which abuts the south side of Eastgate Plaza, it's completely residential all the way up the hill.

Um, so I don't know how Matthew is defining on the periphery of higher density districts, but to me that does not describe Eastgate Plaza.

Um nothing even around it is higher density anything.

So I'm definitely objecting to that.

And I'm done.

Thanks, Leslie.

Our next uh speaker is Deborah Deutsch, who is in person, and that will be followed by Stuart Campbell.

Mike.

Thank you.

Good evening, members of the planning commission.

My name is Deborah Deutsch, and I'm a longtime resident of Newport Hills.

I am here tonight to express my strong support of a redeveloped Newport Hills shopping center.

There are many of us in the community who want something positive to happen at the shopping center.

I'm part of a group called the Newport Community Coalition.

We have members from Newport Hills, Lake Heights, Greenwich Crest, and Newport Shores.

Our entire person, purpose is to advocate for redeveloped Newport Hills shopping center.

We have tried and failed for a redeveloped shopping center for many years to see positive change at the shopping center with the updated comprehensive plan that now allows for three to five stories at the center.

We now have the opportunity to do something special for the Newport area, providing much needed housing for our neighbors, community, families, and children, and the density to support the retail establishments that would be included.

I know you hear often from those opposing this type of change at the shopping center.

And I'm here to say emphatically that there are also many of us who support a redeveloped center.

We support housing and affordable housing at the site.

We have met the owner's representative for the shopping center, and he has shared their vision for what the center could become.

And we are excited about it all.

We want and deserve a wonderful new development at the shopping center for our neighborhood and for our surrounding neighborhoods.

Now is the time to implement the comprehensive plan by getting HOMA done in such a way that allows that to happen.

I thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak tonight.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Stuart Campbell, followed by Sandra Valstar.

Hello, Planning Commission.

I thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and talk to you.

My name is Stuart Campbell.

I've been a resident of the Newport Hills area since 1961.

I was six months old when my parents bought a house at 5635, 117th Avenue Southeast.

In 1964, my folks moved up the hill when that side of the 119th was uh redeveloped and uh uh kept the other houses a rental, but that was at 5812, 129th.

And I finished my growing up years in Newport Hills and graduated from Newport High School in 1979.

In 1995, my wife Diane and I bought our first home in Newport Hills at 12608 Southeast 61st, and we raised our two boys there.

They also graduated from Newport High.

We have since downsized and moved to a townhouse just south of Newport Hills called Pembroke Meadow, and it's easy walking distance up to the Newport Hill Shopping Center.

As a longtime resident of the area, I'm extremely interested in seeing the redevelopment of the Newport Hill Shopping Center.

It was such a great community asset.

It will be such a great community asset when this happens.

I can see a place for folks to gather with open space for things like farmers markets, small community concerts, restaurants, and of course provide much needed housing.

As I understand it, the new comprehensive plan now allows for three to five stories on the site.

This will make a new center viable financially for either the owners or a developer to come in and build something really special for the community.

I know there's more work to do on updating the zoning and development standards throughout the city.

So the zoning codes and standards align with the new comprehensive plan.

That said, I strongly encourage you to approve the new development standards for the Newport Hill Shopping Center as proposed by the staff and the HOMA draft.

I want to thank the City of Bellevue for responsibly growing from its roots as a bedroom community of Seattle to the thriving city that it is today.

We live in a first-class city that I'm proud to call home for almost my entire life.

That said, this area of South Bellevue requires some focus and attention that the entire city is invested in making Bellevue the first class city it has become.

It is time to move forward so the Newport Hill Shopping Center can finally be upgraded and redeveloped.

I thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is uh Sandra Valstar, followed by Steve Hunkel.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Um, my name is uh Sandra Vallstar.

I'm a resident of Newport Hills.

Um first of all, thank you for um uh taking the challenge of addressing Bellevue's housing needs.

Um, when I walk around Bellevue, it often strikes me how much land is taken up by single story retail with a lot of parking around it, and um it always seems strange to me why why no housing is being built there, so that's why I'm super excited about HOMA, and I want to express my strong support for it.

I believe it will bring people back into our neighborhood shopping centers, and it will give shops to customers that they need.

And I believe it will bring some of the vibrancy that I was used to when uh growing up.

Um, I grew up in a small town in the Netherlands, which was fairly similar in size to Newport Hills, and their housing off shops is standard.

And in fact, I have uh elementary school classmates who live next to their family-owned um bakery and flower shop.

Actually, my hometown had three flower shops and three bakeries, all family-owned.

Newport Hills, to my knowledge at least, has zero.

And so maybe also integrating housing and retail space has benefits for family-owned businesses.

Um also want to talk briefly about public spaces.

My hometown has a market plaza with a weekly farmers market and uh a Newport Hills are equivalent, is a decaying parking lot, basically, right?

With no farmers market, to my knowledge.

Um so yeah, excited about HOMA.

Uh, but I do want to urge uh also the uh commission feudus project primarily as an opportunity to improve our neighborhoods and not just from the viewpoint of adding housing, because I think that would be a big missed opportunity.

I think we can do a lot more than just adding housing.

So, for example, um increasing density, I think should be coupled with increasing transit service.

I I think Newport Hills has terrible bus uh service.

I'm not sure if you're aware.

Um and um, yeah, finally, I want to make a sort of a niche point as well about townhomes.

I have heard that um uh the city plans on allowing for townhomes to be built on some retail lots, uh, which um I would urge the city or the committee to investigate if it's possible to require some number of those townhomes to have storefronts, uh because I think that would bring more value to a local community than just town homes, and it would preserve some of that retail designation uh where those homes are being built.

Uh and I think it would be beneficial for uh family-owned businesses to settle uh in Bellevue.

Um, so yeah, again, I'm excited about Homa.

Uh, but do want to urge uh the committee to um uh keep the focus on revitalizing the neighborhood.

Uh yeah.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks.

Next, we have Steve Kunko, followed by Jody Alberts.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for being here.

And thanks for your interest in this matter.

Would you please speak to the mic?

Thank you.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Thank you.

My name is Steve Kunkel.

I've lived in Newport Hills with my wife Alice for 41 years.

When the strip malls were built in Newcastle in the early 1990s, our shopping center gradually lost two banks, two grocery stores, a drugstore, and a gas station.

In the year 2000, the city presented a plan to renew the shopping center, similar to what now exists in Lake Hills.

Unfortunately, that plan died when the dot-com bubble burst.

Now here we are 25 years later, still exploring ways to revitalize our shopping center.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to keeping it the way it is now, if that is what is ultimately decided.

That said, I stand here, I sit here because I think it's time for a change that will better support current residents and the next generation of residents who will make Newport Hills their home.

66 years ago, the county planners required the developer to provide space for schools, a park, and a shopping center.

Someone did this for us.

Now it's time to pay it forward.

We now have a housing, we know we have a housing crisis in Bellevue, which is why you just adopted the boldest comprehensive plan in Bellevue's history.

Now we finally have a comprehensive plan that allows for a viable redevelopment of the shopping center.

Should you approve the new standards as put forth by staff in the HOMA draft.

It's normal to have some apprehension about how a redevelopment of the shopping center will affect our lives.

It's also normal to be excited about the possibilities that this change will bring.

The latter describes my attitude.

I'm very excited about what the center could be for our community when it is redeveloped.

I encourage you to move forward with HOMA so we can finally have a redeveloped center that we can all be proud of for our Newport Hills community and our neighbors in Lake Heights, Newport Shores, and Greenwich Crest.

Um I also want to add that um we called Comcast the other day to come and repair something in our our house regarding our TVs.

And the guy that showed up there said, we asked him where he lived.

He says, I live in Marysville.

He said to the best of his knowledge, there are no service techs in Comcast that can afford to live in Bellevue.

The point here is that to have a viable and a prosperous and growing and an ongoing community.

Not everyone in the community has the ability or their desire to make a million dollars a year.

And we we depend on people that live ordinary lives, and they don't deserve to live like rats.

So if we can provide some alternative housing for a vast and a growing number of people that can't afford housing to serve us when we go to the store and we go places and we need our yard done and that sort of stuff.

That's what this is about to me.

And somebody prepared our community when we showed up.

Time is over.

We need to pass it on.

Thank you.

Next, we have Jody Alberts, followed by Rachel Mazer.

Evening.

Jody Albert speaking this evening on behalf of the Bellevue Chambers plush committee on the HOMA land use code amendment.

So thank you for the opportunity to speak on this.

We submitted not one but two letters.

So hopefully you all got that in your packet.

And so one is addressing the citywide provisions of HOMA, and the other is just focused on the downtown code.

So on the citywide side, we do support HOMA's intent.

We think that this is a really great opportunity, but is drafted several practical issues, uh, could actually make housing delivery a lot harder.

Uh, these include how affordability requirements are calibrated, how the code interacts with the MFTE program, impervious service limits, parking requirements, and the need for more flexibility and design standards.

So our goal is really to ensure HOMA truly works as a housing tool and not create in any barriers to stall new projects.

And then for the downtown application, we're concerned about the changes that amount to additional requirements without meaningful benefits in return, essentially an all-sticks no carrots approach.

Uh, that risk slow and the very growth the comp plan depends on.

And instead, we recommend incentives like voluntary housing contributions on alongside a fee and loo program, uh, streamlined code updates that reduce costs and delays, and a more work or workable additional development flexibility program that can generate the significant housing fund contributions that we really need while keeping projects viable.

And so the common thread in both of these letters is really simple.

Um, it's that we share the city's goals, um, but as written, HOMA could inadvertently discourage uh the housing production it's meant to promote.

Projects already in the pipeline that have invested under today's code would suddenly face these new requirements.

Um, and those are real units that are there today, um, being you know, financially backed that we could have in the next few years.

So that's why our ask is straightforward.

We're hoping that we can put off scheduling the public hearing for the time being and allow us to take time to work through some of these issues, just given the amount of them with staff, um, so that HOMA can move forward in a way that truly supports housing and affordability across Bellevue.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Next speaker is Rachel Mazer, followed by Sue Baugh.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Um, I'm Rachel Maser, I'm land use attorney at Hillis Clark Martin Peterson here tonight.

I'm between microphones.

Here tonight to uh for my testimony and feedback on behalf of our client, EGBW 38R owner LLC.

They own a 48-acre site, 45-acre site at 2525 through 2800, 160th Avenue Southeast.

The site, as you may know, is currently an outdated and underutilized office campus.

Um, the OLB zoning designation for the site is not changing, but the standards that apply in OLB are on the table with the HOMA legislative package.

We want to express our strong support for the measures to improve residential density and flexibility, specifically the removal of the limit on the number of structures per acre and the limit on dwelling units per acre, moves away from a suburban approach and unlocks a lot of opportunity on the site.

This is a thoughtful approach to encourage housing development.

Additionally, the removal of the transition area zoning is a logical change that will improve the implementation of the city's growth strategy in this area.

HOMA presents a great opportunity to provide for increased developer flexibility, which in turn will provide the appropriate economic incentives to create more of the missing middle housing that is currently lacking in this area.

To that end, similar to the concerns addressed by the Bellevue Chambers Plush Committee, we would encourage the planning commission to provide for increased flexibility in the implementation of standards, which would include the following eliminating the 60% impervious surface cap, allowing for greater flexibility and design standards to address site-specific conditions, and most importantly, reconsidering the bonus formula for additional FAR and additional height to better incentivize new housing.

While we share the city's goals in creating meaningful new opportunities for affordable housing, as drafted, the proposed affordability provisions will have a material negative impact on future housing development.

Finally, as you think about affordability incentives and mandates, we'd urge you to think about the way the code could allow for a mix of housing types.

This site would make sense for a mix of townhomes and apartments, and this variety will take some of the middle housing pressure off of traditional single family neighborhoods.

We urge you to allow affordable housing units to be concentrated in apartments on sites that include both apartments and townhomes.

Thank you so much.

Next speaker is Sue Baugh, followed by Matt Rowe.

Good evening.

My name is Sue Baugh, and I live, I've lived in Lake Heights for 35 years.

I am here tonight to speak in support of the most recent iteration of HOMA.

I've spoken with the Bellevue with Bellevue City Council members and staff since the 1990s about the need to redevelop the Newport Hills Shopping Center.

But tonight I'm here to speak as a member of the Newport Community Coalition, which includes residents from Newport Hills, Lake Heights, Newport Shores, and Greenwich Crest, including many long and short-term residents.

We support the comprehensive plan is adopted, the need for more middle housing of all types, Newport neighborhood update as adopted by the Planning Commission, the most recent iteration of HOMA, and affordable housing for teachers, nurses, policemen, and firefighters.

We need these people in our community as our neighbors.

In particular, we support redevelopment of the Newport Hills Shopping Center.

As you may know, this is the third time that the Newport Hill Shopping Center has been involved in a redevelopment debate.

And twice the anti-development contingency adversarial efforts resulted in a negative outcome.

The Newport Community Coalition supports HOMA and the neighborhood business zoning of three to four floors with amenities and bonuses to get to five floors.

And contrary to what you may have heard, no one in our group and none of the owners of the Newport Hill Shopping Center support seven to ten floors.

We also understand that a mixed-use center includes retail.

In order to maintain a thriving retail center, additional customers are a must, which more housing in our neighborhood would provide.

What a what a plus for us.

I have met with the owners representative of the project they envision will be a positive step in revitalizing South Bellevue and will be a legacy project for their family.

The Newport Neighborhood Coalition, representing a large group of residents, supports moving forward on redevelopment of the Newport Hill Shopping Center.

It's time for our voices to be heard.

The Newport Community Coalition is here tonight to support moving forward with HOMA, including the redevelopment of the Newport Hill Shopping Center.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Our next speaker is Matt Rowie, followed by Heidi Dean.

Good evening, uh Planning Commission members.

My name is Matt Rowie.

I'm an architect and development planner, and I'm working with the owners of the Newport Hills Shopping Center, which consists of two families which have owned this property for over 40 years.

They greatly desire to redevelop the 70s era shopping center into a vibrant mixed-use town center.

I'm passing around copies of a letter submitted yesterday, yesterday by one of the owners, David Shao.

In his letter, you will find precedent examples of what the property can be developed to look like.

The vision proposed will meet and exceed comprehensive plan goals.

Number one, the range of housing can be extensive.

We can have affordable, we can have a workforce market, seniors, and even different types of ownership models.

Two, we can have third places here for neighborhood gatherings at cafes, restaurants, and on plazas.

It was mentioned flower shops and bakeries.

We welcome that too.

And it embodies the city in a park concept, which our planning has looked at organizing buildings around a common town square with open space and generous landscape throughout.

Now I'm here tonight to say we appreciate all the hard work that's gone into HOMA to date.

And we do support the latest draft of the standards proposed in the NB zone.

But one nuance about height limits, I just want to bring to everyone's attention, especially to the public, is please be aware when we talk about four or five stories, and we have a height limit of 45 to 60 feet with incentives.

It's still tied to a small 2.0 FAR fluoride ratio base.

This does not mean five stories will happen everywhere.

That would require four or four and a half FAR.

So it's not possible mathematically with only two.

But we have six acres, and we can work with two FAR because we're creating a variety of building scales around a town square and trying to evoke a character of an established neighborhood village, which I think everyone desires for the livability aspects.

And then one final recommendation.

On our site, it's big enough that we actually have a site that we could possibly do that within the development and dedicate a site for that purpose.

So please keep that in there, especially because it's more inclusive if you can do it in the development itself.

So in conclusion, we urge you to recommend your endorsement and the approval of the current draft Luca as it pertains to the NB zones.

Thanks for your time and thanks for listening.

Good evening.

Thank you.

Next we have Heidi Dean, followed by Ben Mickle.

Good evening.

My name's Heidi Dean and I live in Newport Hills, and I've been working on this for a long time.

I have not had a chance to meet with you, Commissioner Kennedy or Commissioner Neilshan, because we were under the assumption that we were waiting for the outreach to be done that the this commission asked the staff to do at the May 14th planning commission meeting before this went, yeah, before a date was set for public hearing, and we heard nothing throughout the summer.

Nothing.

Northtown has heard nothing.

Bell East has heard nothing, which is why you have a very large coalition from the Newport Coalition, because they were tipped off and told that this was going to be happening.

I saw that they requested a meeting with you, Commissioner Kennedy.

We didn't receive anything.

So that's why you only see me tonight.

Yeah.

It's it's pretty sad when you have other people showing up and trying to explain to new people what our position is on the shopping center, because I have been the person along with Michelle Hillhorst and others who have done the work throughout the years trying to get something going there.

And when they talk about the sea of unkept parking and that sort of thing, that all tracks back to the ownership group, Rainier Northwest, not the first generation that owned it, this current generation, Meredith Tall, her sister Lisa Tall, and their partner David Shao, and what they have allowed to happen at that shopping center.

It didn't have to happen.

It hasn't happened at the other NB zoned properties, but they allowed it, and they are now asking you to reward them for that.

But again, I want to point out to you that HOMA is not just a referendum on Newport Hills.

There's other properties that are going to be affected by this, and they have no idea that this is happening because a single tabling event at the International Festival in August, literally right before this meeting happens, and going to the Eastgate Block Party was not what this commission asked the staff to do.

It wasn't.

So scheduling a public hearing when nobody knows what's coming at them is absolutely unacceptable.

And I do want to point out that there's members of that Newport coalition that in June of 2023 sat in the audience waving their hands as a letter was read.

Commissioner Liu, you were the author of that letter.

Your wife read it into the record.

I helped tweak it, and it was from the Newport Hills Community Club Board of which she was a member, and we opposed the upzoning of that shopping center.

And it doesn't allow three to five stories.

It's two to four under NB.

Text adopted.

Our next speaker is Ben Mickel, followed by Brady Nordstrom.

Hello, my name is Ben Mickle.

I live in downtown Bellevue, and I'm here to share my thoughts about the proposed HOMA amendment.

I strongly support the goal of increasing housing production, especially in mixed-use developments.

The increased building heights, FAR allowances, and the permission to mix residential and commercial spaces are the best parts of this LUCA.

I also really like the FAR exemption for grocery stores and the creation of basic pedestrian safety standards for parking lots.

As for how the draft could be improved, I think uh we should not allow drive-thru businesses in these high density areas, especially downtown.

I live near a drive-thru pharmacy.

Its line of cars uh used to frequently spill on the Bellevue Way and cause major traffic problems.

They had to shut it down for a long time.

Uh the Wilburton LUCA included a prohibition on drive-throughs, and I think it should be part of this LUCA too.

I also think the draft should have lower parking requirements.

This year, the state passed the parking reform and modernization act starting in early 2027.

The city will not be allowed to require any parking for housing units under 1200 square feet or commercial spaces under 3,000 square feet.

This LUCA needs to begin a very significant transition to this new reality by eliminating parking requirements in these mixed-use districts.

Parking garages are very expensive.

We don't want developers to delay their housing projects until 2027.

We're in a housing crisis and we need this housing as soon as possible.

The financial feasibility analysis in your packet showed that mid-rise developments don't pencil as a at a residential parking ratio of 1.0, but they do pencil at a ratio of zero.

This LUCA offers a valuable opportunity to see how developers will respond to lower parking requirements before we fully implement the new law.

I'll conclude by just saying that I really appreciate the work done by our very skilled and professional city city staff to draft this LUCA and to conduct extensive community engagement.

Way back in February, they visited a small community group where I participate and had a great conversation with us all about this LUCA.

I look forward to seeing it adopted by city council.

Thank you.

Next we have Brady Nordstrom, followed by Kevin Wallace.

Greetings, commissioners.

My name is Brady Nordstrom, and I'm the associate director of government relations and policy at Housing Development Consortium.

Um, I'm also here to represent the East Side Affordable Housing Coalition, um, which is a group of over 30 organizations that build and operate affordable housing in the East Side, including in Bellevue.

Um, we support HOMA as the realization of the Bellevue comp plan vision.

Um we thank the staff and the commissioners for boldly implementing this new housing capacity, density, the flexibility in these other code changes uh that are truly going to prepare Bellevue for the challenges and opportunities over the next 20 plus years.

Um, this includes the deep need for affordable housing.

There were uh some other people that were talking about this need a little bit earlier.

Um I'm here really to emphasize some of the comments we made back in May about our strong support for an option A of the code with an affordable housing requirement.

And I just wanted to like re-ground some of that conversation.

It's been a number of months.

Um, first of all, it's critical to remember that uh this policy can only be implemented during an upzone, which is now it can't be up implemented later.

Um another piece that I think is really important is that based on the economic analysis that the staff did and a pro forma analysis that is done by our partners.

Um, we believe that the staff staff analysis is well calibrated in the mixed use areas with that baseline 10% set aside at 80% AMI.

In fact, we believe it can go a little bit lower on the AMIs with that same set-aside percentage, but um, I think um in general, we're not arguing that uh that most projects will pencil today.

However, um, I think that that would that bears out across the analysis.

What we are uh saying is that it's it's not about this specific moment in time, but what rather what happens over economic cycles in time.

And so when market um conditions improve, this will create affordable housing.

And uh, we think that this is the best way to do this versus an incentive.

So um, and then the last piece I have here is that affordable housing is a common policy across many cities.

Kirkland, Redmond, Seattle, Issaqua, and now Bellevue with the Wilberton code that was passed, which can be a template.

Um Bellevue's version of the program is among the lightest touch programs that exist in the region.

And I think that's another important grounding here.

So thank you for uh all of the consideration here uh and your thoughtfulness and uh and for your support of affordable housing.

So thank you.

Next we have Kevin Wallace, followed by Martin Sealig.

Good evening.

It's nice to see all of you.

I'm here to talk about the 20 pages of amendments to the downtown code that are nestled within this 130-page document.

And I first want to say that I want nothing more than to build affordable housing in downtown Bellevue and to pay the city fees in lieu of building affordable housing.

But what I need in order for that to happen are two things.

One is I need a permit, and two is I need my project to pencil.

And right now I have neither.

In Seattle in my career, I've built over a thousand apartment homes for people and over 200 rent restricted units.

I know how to do this.

And in Bellevue, I've tried in downtown Bellevue for four years to build a thousand apartment units, and I'm going nowhere.

And the reason is in large part because the downtown code is so complex and so expensive that even the staff can't tell me how to get through the rules.

So, what I'm asking, what we need is things structured as incentives and the code more simple.

And what the current proposal in HOMA for downtown is doing is just the opposite.

We have an affordable housing tax that's been inserted where we're being asked to get amenity points by providing on-site housing or paying in fee and loo, mandatory, not voluntary.

And then there's nothing being done to relax the other requirements that were already in the code.

So if we want to shift the focus from public benefits on private property to affordable housing, fine, but relax the outdoor plaza requirements and the other things I need to do so that I look at it and think I'd rather be providing the affordable housing because I'm getting out of having to do all these other things.

Not that it's going to make my project less attractive.

I'm still going to be providing a very competitive, wonderful design, and it's still going to have lots of landscaping.

But if you can get me out of trying to have to comply with all of these vague standards for outdoor plazas, it reduces the cost, reduces the time, and makes me at more desiring to do the affordable housing.

So voluntary please or make it easier and more desirable to do the affordable housing than uh the other alternative.

Number two is this code needs fixing, and this home ordinance opens the door to going through line by line this code, which in many places is a disaster and implementing the very things that you put in the Wilburton code that everybody unanimously agreed was fine.

And it leads to more affordable housing, like unlimited floor plates for mid-rise buildings.

And thirdly, there's this great concept of the additional development flexibility that was applied to the perimeter zones.

The problem is that the proposal increases the requirement for getting the additional development flexibility by five times.

And there's really not much additional development flexibility provided.

So if instead the city would provide some meaningful real development flexibility options and charge for it, that would enable us to generate much more buildable area and pay for it.

And that would generate millions of dollars into the affordable housing fund.

So what I ask in this conversation is that we just look to make these things incentive-based and use this as an opportunity to improve the code, and then we can provide affordable housing.

Are you oh, you are here?

I'm gonna stay out of this one.

That's the hot seat.

Good evening, commissioners.

I'm Martin Seelig, my wife, Annis and I have been uh 55-year residents of the city of Bellevue.

I don't claim to be a creative person, but I can appreciate when people are creative.

My creativity, my wife and I created two daughters.

They can create they created seven grandchildren.

But creativity is not my bag, but I can appreciate it when other people are creative.

My predecessor spoke of free flexibility.

My sense is creativity.

Give people the opportunity to do what your focus is on the planning phase is to give, say, here's what we want.

We want HOMA.

We want low hot rise um apartments.

We want mid-rise apartments.

So according to the economic report, those are the only two that are viable currently.

You're not going to come up with all the ideas, and the staff people aren't going to come up with the ideas.

The people are going to come up with them are the private sector people who are motivated.

My predecessor says he's been trying for years, can't do it.

Too many restrictions here and other parts of the anatomy.

Give people the opportunity.

Related to that, there's been streams that have been placed in culverts.

And they're staying in the culverts because the restrictions on opening them up are too vast.

Opening streams and running water is a recognized quality of life feature.

It really love it.

You can go and different parts of the of the country.

And you see, people want to live near running water if they have that opportunity.

But what I learned is the way you draw a straight line, you take short pieces of implements and you make very short dashes, and then you connect the dashes, and that's how you get a straight line.

And that's what you'll remember out of what I had to say tonight.

Thank you.

Jack McCullough, I see your hand raised.

And um that will be followed by Valentina Veneva, who is also virtual.

Can you hear me?

I think I'm unmuted now.

All right.

Uh go ahead.

Thank you very much.

My name is Jack McCullough.

I'm an landish attorney here in Puget Sound.

I think I started my first Bellview project in 1982, and since then have been working on dozens and dozens of projects throughout the city and downtown in particular.

I'm here tonight to talk about downtown.

You know, I think we quickly forget, but it was only eight years ago in 2017 that the city council adopted the newest zoning for downtown, to which uh Kevin Wallace earlier referred.

It was only eight years ago, and that was the result of a several year process that involved extensive outreach, numerous planning commission meetings, redlining, ordinance language.

And one of the mantras of the city council at the time was they would wanted to make sure that there would be no economic down zone of downtown, that they would not impose costs without increasing density.

So I have a few points to make about HOMA as it applies to downtown.

First of all, uh I'm not aware of any meaningful outreach that has been conducted to the owners in downtown.

I've spoken to dozens of them.

They were grateful for the calls that I made to them, but they were also uh sad that they had not heard from the city on that.

I've got their phone numbers, I've got their emails, and we're happy to set up a meeting if that would help.

But outreach needs to occur.

Second, the $13 in lieu number is a manufactured number.

It doesn't relate to the current reality as people have admitted tonight.

Um, now this may not matter if you're in an NMU zone where you're getting a major upzone, but in downtown, there's no upsell, there's no incentive.

There's no opportunity to recapture some of the cost.

And so what HOMA represents downtown is a pure uh burden on the development of projects.

Some of these projects have been in process for numerous years, and they're tens of millions of square feet.

And so what it represents for them is a changing of the rules in the middle of the game.

Uh, they're looking at their projects and saying we're not sure we can complete these projects if we're gonna have layered on to us uh additional hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in costs.

So my ask to you are a few items.

Number one, all projects downtown that are in the pipeline that have approved projects should be grandfathered if this pursues if this proceeds forward, or even better, just exclude the downtown from HOMA and work with the plan that includes an affordable housing component that was adopted only eight years ago, and that that just had a permit issued for dozens and dozens of affordable um housing units in Northwest Bellevue downtown.

Secondly, I think we're not ready for a public hearing on this.

I mean, what we did in 2017 was we spent months working on the actual language as you've heard tonight.

There's a lot of fine-tuning that needs to occur, and outreach needs to occur to the downtown before anything else moves forward here that respects the downtown.

So, with these thoughts in mind, we really encourage you to tap the brakes on this thing.

Let's do it right like we did eight years ago.

Thank you very much, Commissioner.

I think we are over time for public hearing, right?

We already approached uh I have uh 725.

Sorry, public comment.

Um more then.

Okay.

Uh then the final uh speaker will be Valentina Veneva.

Can you raise your hand, please?

Can you hear me?

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Hello, my name is Valentina, and I'm a resident of Crossroads Bellevue, and I'm speaking in support of the land use code amendment expand to expand housing opportunities in mixed-use areas.

I can't wait for it to happen for many reasons.

One is, of course, that Bellevue has a shortage of reasonably priced housing, let alone affordable housing, and this initiative could really help with that.

The second reason is that I hope that this proposal will finally give an ability to owners to redevelop the ugly one-story street malls and office complexes that alone with their parking lots take so much space and use it so inefficiently.

I don't know if whatever gets built instead will be aesthetically pleasing to everyone, but at least the space will not be wasted.

And third, I love that those developments will be mixed use, combining apartments and condos with places where people of all ages can show up, meet friends, hang out, and do business.

Mixed use will make those locations out of necessity more walkable and people friendly than they're now.

This is something that is the norm almost everywhere in the world, and something that I miss very much after moving here.

But for this plan to be effective and to deliver on its promises of more housing and better amenities, US commissioners need to be bold in asking for them and make sure you incentivize the right things, like limit surface parking as much as possible because it isn't an efficient use of space.

Go easy on parking in general, give developers freedom in what kind of buildings they can build, incentivize smaller areas to leave to businesses because as we've seen in last years, having one huge chain store is not sustainable, and smaller businesses are way easier to rent out, smaller business spaces.

Ask for amenities for the people who will live there, like open spaces and decent sidewalks, but also please focus on the big things like affordability of housing and rental space, and don't make requirements so complex that nothing gets built, and we are stuck with those street malls and offices.

Make one size fits all decisions as much as possible because this will make it easier for everyone.

And remember that many things that you aspire to achieve are likely to be diluted at later stages.

So please don't compromise your values.

We all here want our city to be livable and thriving, and we want the residents, whoever they are to be thriving in it as well.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Where is Alexander?

Chair that comes.

Alex, the moment, I think I gave you one notice, and this is the last one.

I will ask you to leave the meeting if you don't respect the meeting.

Please please stop disturbing.

No, but you give 20 minutes, 20 minutes to seven people.

So when you have talking.

Please.

But I don't understand why you got me.

I am in time.

Where is the problem?

If you let us to listen to the lazy on, we will find out.

Well, just find out.

She told 20 minutes.

20 minutes is seven people by three minutes, which is today.

Please leave that meeting.

No, I'm lost in the role.

You got me.

Wow.

Thanks.

Thanks, Tony.

You got me lost in the role.

Kate, please continue.

Um the motion was made at 6 uh 33.

And we're now at 7.23, which is 50 minutes.

Um, so that is the end of the time for comment.

Uh I don't think I have.

Do we have any motion to extend a public?

Okay, we're good.

Thank you.

We just ran out of the time and we just extended 20 minutes to have 50 minutes public comment, and we did it.

And we cannot go move forward with the rest of the team.

Oh, but you have time.

We do not have time.

Um the planning commission last heard about HOMA on May 14.

When we decided to set public hearing.

As you will recall, the HOMA LUCA will implement updated policies and the comprehensive plan and aligned development regulation with the land use designation.

In the future land use map.

It also implement affordable housing strategy and will assist the city in achieving this goal by creating a new affordable housing program and mix use areas covered by this LUCA scope.

Christina Gallett, if I pronounce her name correctly.

This evening, as Chair Con Lu mentioned, we are here for the first time since May uh to bring you back to the HOMA land use code amendment.

Um so this evening we do have a more uh comprehensive presentation than we normally do to make sure we can bring uh everybody up to speed on this complex project.

Uh to bring it back even further, HOMA has a long backstory.

Uh this uh two-phase process was first launched in December 2022.

Um its origins came in the next right work process where the city council um very deliberately set out um which actions uh it wanted to prioritize first in order to um help address affordable housing in our city.

Uh and so HOMA came out of this effort first under our phase one.

Um HOMA began downtown with our downtown interim official control, which was focused on increasing residential FAR to uh make residential more competitive over commercial development, which was the economic reality at that time, three years ago.

It's amazing how much can change so quickly.

Um and phase two with our permanent LUCA um was to expand from the downtown IOC uh to incorporate provisions, develop permanent code to extend um into mixed-use land use districts as well, um, all in the effort to increase housing production and affordable housing opportunities across Bellevue.

Uh our engagement work in this second phase uh has been ongoing since December 2024 and has been extensive.

Uh to date, we have held six public information sessions, both virtual and in person.

Unfortunately, on Monday, we had um some challenges, circumstances outside of our control that resulted in our virtual open open house, unfortunately starting 45 minutes late.

Um we can the the team did stay to answer all questions we could um quite late.

Um we were really grateful to have 26 individuals stick around to stay with us, uh, but we have scheduled a seventh information session for the 22nd, just acknowledging that we know we'll have we have people who weren't able to stay.

So more information on that event will be coming.

Um, all of these events uh have been advertised by email, text message, and the city's social media platforms.

Um just looking at email and texts.

Um, so again, that's not social media.

Uh, we know that our emails have reached each one around 20,500 individual email addresses and numbers um on multiple occasions.

So um that does include a number of distribution lists, um, including um neighborhood associations across Bellevue.

Uh we've had many individual and group conversations as requested, uh ranging from community organizations, um folks gathered in living rooms, um, onto industry groups, including including uh NAOP, uh the Bellevue Development Committee, and uh the Chambers plush committee.

Um Matthew has uh has yet to turn down a call um and continues to be available on request to meet with anyone to talk HOMA.

Uh, we've tabled at events, including the Eastgate Block Party, Bellevue International Festival, um, and we'll uh continue to be available on HOMA.

At this stage, uh staff feel strongly that the LUCA provides a really great balance to advance multiple community priorities, including implementing the updated comprehensive plan.

So uh, sorry.

Uh the direction we are seeking this evening is to provide feedback on the key components of the LUCA and direct staff to prepare the proposed LUCA for public hearing at a future meeting.

Uh with that, I will pass to Matthew.

Good evening, planning commission.

Thanks for having us here again.

Um, so we will start with a background.

Those long-serving planning commissioners have seen this part of the presentation before, but we want to make sure uh not only our new members are brought up to speed, but it's been since May.

So it's been a little while.

We don't expect you to remember everything we've presented to you.

Uh so HOMA, which stands for housing opportunities in mixed use areas, is a land use code amendment that is aimed at encouraging more housing and affordable housing in our mixed use areas of the city, which is why it's called housing opportunities in mixed use areas.

It looks at zoning standards that are inhibiting that housing development throughout these mixed use areas.

It is uh proposing two options for you to decide between for an affordable housing program, one mandatory, one voluntary.

And then updates standards in the land use code to be consistent with the uh new uh when this started, not as new, almost a year old comprehensive plan at this point.

Uh so it does align with policies in the comprehensive plan, such as creating diverse housing opportunities.

This LUCA will promote both larger scale apartment buildings as well as uh middle housing, such as townhomes throughout Bellevue.

We are looking to expand affordable housing options with those two programs that we are proposing.

We always want to foster vibrant and well-served neighborhoods.

We're hoping that through a mix of retail and housing in these neighborhood centers, these neighborhood centers do become more vibrant, become the centers of the neighborhood if they're not already the centers of the neighborhood, or become better centers of the neighborhood if they are already the centers of the neighborhood.

And we are looking to enable people to live closer to shopping, work, their day to day.

Maybe you don't always necessarily have to get in a car to do your shopping.

You can walk down the street to your local mixed use area.

The geographic scope of this land use code amendment includes all mixed use land use zones that you can see in the orange there.

That does not include Bell Red, which uh has a LUCA ongoing, and I'm sure you will see uh sometime in the next year or so here.

Uh Wilburton, which was just completed as a land use code amendment, and East Maine, which is another recent land use code amendment as well.

We are looking to rezone areas for consistent with consistency with a comprehensive plan.

So those parcels that do not uh currently have the same zoning as designations in the future land use map, which is the guiding policy document for land uses, uh, will be rezoned through HOMA.

So those two documents do match up as is required.

Uh so the process for this, Christina went through this uh in detail and did an excellent job with that, but I will just run through it quickly again with you here.

This was initiated by council in December of 2022 with the next right work.

This is phase two of uh this project for a while.

It was called FAR phase two.

We thought that was not very uh conducive to people understanding what was going on.

So it has been renamed.

Uh, as Christina mentioned, the first phase was an intern ordinance focused on downtown.

Uh, we did want to do some testing and encouraging of affordable housing incentives downtown to see what numbers would work to encourage more affordable housing downtown.

We did get some good information out of that as well as a few projects that are now providing affordable housing.

Uh, we did move forward with the permanent LUCA, which is HOMA with a council scope update in December 2024.

As Christina mentioned, uh conditions change between 2022 and 2024, where office was no longer out competing housing as it was in 2022.

Uh so just giving council scope update on really looking more at encouraging housing and updates with the comprehensive plan, which had been adopted rather than this competition between office and housing.

That blessing was given by council in December of 2024.

Uh, right after that, we started holding community information sessions on HOMA, uh, what HOMA was and what we were trying to do with HOMA.

That included three virtual sessions and three in-person sessions throughout the city.

Those virtual sessions were uh downtown at Puesta del Sol Elementary School and at Tai Middle School.

I will say we got much better attendance at the virtual sessions than we did at the in-person sessions.

Uh we held the first study session with you all on this in February of 2025.

Uh we held a second study session in May, which was the last study session on this.

Uh at that time, planning commission gave us some concerns to look at and asked us to do some additional uh information providing, I'll say, to the community, uh, which we have done over the summer.

And we are back here this evening for another study session uh asking for a public hearing to be scheduled.

The affordable housing options, there are two options.

The option A is a mandatory option that would require 10% of all housing in a development over 10 units to be affordable at 80% area median income.

Have been asked by planning commissioners to explain the acronym.

So I will do that.

Feel free to sort of wave your hands at me if I have missed an acronym and you don't know what I'm talking about.

I will go back and explain it.

Area median income is a median income that is given by HUD, which is housing and urban development, so the federal government, and it's essentially how they define what affordable housing is.

And if you were looking for funding from the federal government, you have to meet these area median income levels.

We also use this for our affordable housing.

80% is generally the sort of standard affordability level that most the federal government and most places use.

We also have used this in Wilburton as sort of our highest level of something considered affordable housing.

So it would require 10% affordable housing at that 80% area meeting median income and less as you go down the area of median income.

So basically the lower the area of median income, the lower the income of the person in that unit is going to be.

So 50% area median income, you would make half of what the median income for the region is.

I will say the area in this case is King County.

So we are also providing a FAR bonus.

FAR is floor area ratio.

So that's the area of building floor you can build to the size of your lot.

So for example, if you had a 10,000 square foot lot and your FAR floor area ratio was one, you'd be able to build 10,000 square feet of floor area.

We are proposing a bonus where for every one square foot of affordable housing you provide, you are able to exempt four square feet of market rate housing from your overall FAR calculation for the site.

There is an fee and loo option for this, two different uh fee and loues, one being proposed at $13 a square foot for the higher density districts, which is similar to Wilburton, and then the lower density districts are proposed at $10 a square foot.

I will say we are coming to the end of a nexus study process we are working on with HOMA to look at what the nexus is between development and affordable housing throughout these mixed-use areas.

We will certainly have that completed for you by the next meeting we hold, whether that's a public meeting or a study session.

And we are required to do that if we do a mandatory program.

There will also be a commercial fee included with this, as we did with Wilburton.

So commercial space will pay a fee for affordable housing.

I do want to stress strongly that this does not apply downtown, nor would option B apply downtown.

Option B is an incentive-based program.

It is completely voluntary.

So developments would not have to provide affordable housing.

They would have the option to do so, and choosing to do so would give them bonuses.

What we are proposing for the bonuses is in the lower density districts for every 0.2 floor area ratio of affordable housing you provide.

You are allowed an extra half FAR or 0.5 FAR and 10 feet of additional building height, up to one FAR or 20 feet of building height in the lower density districts.

So those those districts that go up to five stories or up to 1.5 FAR and 30 feet in the districts above five stories.

The maximums for both FAR and building height are equivalent to option A.

Essentially, you'd have to provide affordable housing to buy your way up to those same maximums we would be providing in option A.

For the bit of the presentation here, I'm going to run through these districts.

The map will show where these districts are located in the city and what these districts generally look like on the ground today.

I'll do this for all of the districts except for the two new districts where I'll just uh say what's proposed as they're not on the ground today.

So our lowest density district that we're working with through HOMA is the office district.

As you can see by the picture, they're generally low-slung office buildings with surface parking and are sort of scattered throughout the city, generally with pretty good access to major transportation routes.

What we are proposing is for ish building heights, four to four and a half.

For these districts, we are proposing to allow more residential in these districts as well.

Currently, 50% of your floor area in the office district must be office that is proposed to be struck.

So allowing more residential.

So allowing the building to fill the envelope with residential rather than limiting by dwelling units per acre, and a proposed FAR maximum of one.

NB and CB, these are generally our neighborhood centers.

So a lot of these you will see are sort of isolated parcels or a handful of parcels in the middle of neighborhoods.

Right now they are very primarily strip mall type development with large parking lots out front and one-story commercial buildings, especially NB.

This is basically the only building type you can build in this district right now.

You are allowed two stories if the second story is residential.

Otherwise, you are not allowed that second story.

So almost all of these districts look to be what's in the picture there, unless they have been very recently updated.

We are proposing relatively significant up zones in these areas to encourage more housing, as well as requiring that the street frontage have ground floor retail or other pedestrian-oriented uses.

So that'll be, if not retail, things like uh bars, restaurants, coffee shops, yoga studios, medical offices, uh, those say that again, bakeries, exactly, flower shops.

Um to bring people in and out.

Uh and those ground floor uses must be within or are proposed to be within 10 feet of backup sidewalk.

So really bringing the buildings to the sidewalk consistent with the past uh Newport Hills plan, for example, and the current one, which was just adopted, has language in that.

So that's been a long-standing goal of our planning and through the planning processes as well.

We are proposing two different heights in NB, uh, 45 feet uh max height if you provide 10% affordable housing and a bonus up to 60 feet if you provide 15% affordable housing.

So that's a five-story building if you provide uh that affordable housing.

And then community business, flat 60% for providing 10% uh affordable housing.

Again, we are proposing to replace that dwelling units per acre limit with FAR to allow uh sites to fill out without having to worry about two different standards for building size.

The proposed FARs are two in neighborhood business and 2.5 in community business.

And you will hopefully end up with something that looks a bit like uh in the picture there, though the left side of the street is probably slightly taller than what would be allowed through HOMA.

OLB and OLB2.

OLB stands for Offices Limited Business.

You can see they are sort of along the freeways there.

Often these are more isolated and less connected than the community business and neighborhood business to the actual neighborhoods.

Um also to note in these areas we are seeing relatively significant office vacancies at this time, especially uh along I-90 there.

So um right now they look like what you can see in the picture, which is low-slong office buildings with parking lots out front.

There's also some fast food and similar uses uh in these areas as well.

Proposing uh similar standards to NB and CB without the requirement for that ground floor retail.

As these are more isolated and not as connected to the neighborhoods, we don't necessarily think that retail element is as important with NB and CB.

We heard very significantly, and you've heard it this evening, that retail is very, very important to the neighborhoods.

These are not so integrated into the neighborhood, so allowing that flexibility for the development to choose what's appropriate on the site related to commercial uses.

Uh OLB has the same split as NB, which is 45 feet if you provide uh 10% affordable housing, or 60 feet if you were to provide 15%.

Uh OLB2 is maintaining the existing height limit, which is 75 feet.

Again, dwelling units per a uh dwelling units per acre limit are replaced with FAR.

And as one of the public noted, there is a pretty significant limit on buildings in OLB.

I think it's one building per two acres that is proposed to be removed as well, just to create a lot more flexibility in these areas.

Uh the proposed FAR, these are quite low density districts proposed, uh, one for OLB and two for OLB2.

Uh, we have had some comments requesting that the OLB2 district uh be provided with additional FAR.

Neighborhood mixed use.

So we're starting to step up in scale now through Homa.

As you can see with neighborhood mixed use, these are generally surrounding higher density districts or adjacent to high capacity roadways.

Uh, right now they look uh similar to NB and CB, often strip malls, supermarkets, parking lots out front, one-story buildings, as you can see in the picture there.

That is Eastgate Plaza with the safeway.

Um, but these are also in the comp plan used.

You can see them ringing the higher density areas or our highest density areas through HOMA.

So around Factoria Mall there and around the high density area in the crossroads mall.

So they are being utilized as a step down, I'll say minor wedding cake style development through the comprehensive plan being translated into HOMA.

These are proposed to be 110-foot tall buildings, which is a 10-story building approximately, and a proposed FAR4.

So this is one of our higher density, higher building height districts.

Uh, as with NB and CB, these are integrated into neighborhoods.

So we do want to make sure that they bring that ground floor retail pedestrian oriented uses with them.

This has a higher bar for that than NBNCB, where the first or the 66% of the street frontage must be those uses.

And it will require that same locational requirements, which is within 10 feet of backup sidewalk.

I will also note with those we are proposing to require transparency so people on the sidewalk can see into those businesses and some weather protection over doors, which must also be on the sidewalk.

So you can't backload these with parking lots behind the building.

Everything needs to be facing the sidewalk for these pedestrian oriented uses.

So again, trying to reinforce that goal of vibrant neighborhoods, vibrant public space and walkable areas.

Eastgate TOD is an existing area there.

You can see our current TOD stands for transit oriented development, sorry, so development that is oriented towards public transit improvements.

As you can see, currently it's low-song offices with surface parking lots, not the definition of transit-oriented development, I'll say.

So trying to encourage what sort of Eastgate was set out to be, which is transit oriented.

So again, tall buildings, this is amongst our highest density districts.

The existing height allowance is around that 160 foot mark.

Not all of Eastgate can get to that mark.

So this would allow all of the Eastgate TOD to hit that building height, much lower FAR here than neighborhood mixed use, for example, sticking around those current standards for Eastgate TOD.

So very minor updates to this section, just trying to encourage a little bit more housing through these form standards and making it a little bit easier to build in these TOD areas.

Factoria, I'm sure you're all aware of, is a very large mall right now.

There's also Factoria 2, which is proposed to be eliminated and worked into neighborhood mixed use, which is the parcels surrounding the mall.

And then Factoria 3, which right now is basically large office development is proposed to be maintained.

Again, this under the comp plan had our highest up zone.

It was up zone four, or it was policy set for high rise in this area.

So HOMA is translating that to high rise.

That is a 135 foot height in F3, which is not a change from the existing height, and then 170 feet in F1.

The 80-foot area currently Factoria 1 is split into four subdistricts.

So it has its own section of the code.

80 feet is proposed for the southern sub-district, which is across the street from residential development.

So it's the only bit of Factoria that is adjacent to residential development.

So stepping it down before we get to that residential development.

So essentially you'd have residential development, the street 80 feet and then 170 feet behind.

Otherwise, it is neighborhood mixed use all around.

So consistent with the non-residential uses or mixed uses to the other sides of the mall.

Proposed FAR again are quite high with four in F3 and then three in that 80-foot district and five in the rest of Factoria.

Factoria does have specific standards, as I mentioned.

Those are maintained with very limited changes.

There are two new districts proposed under the comprehensive plan.

One is a high-rise district that is mixed use 16 stories, proposed for unsurprisingly 16 stories.

That would only apply to the center of the crossroads mall, which is essentially where the crossroads mall building is right now, and then south along the parking area to the road south of the mall.

And then two areas with the mixed use seven-story buildings, which is Kelsey Creek and Lake Hills Shopping Center.

So those are two new districts.

I don't have examples of what that may look like, but you've seen it already.

The form standards are similar with seven stories and 16-story buildings.

So envision what would be allowed in Factoria or what would be allowed through something like a smaller neighborhood mixed use or OLB2 for the mixed use seven districts.

So we're looking at seven-story buildings there.

Proposed FARs are three and five for those two.

And it does carry through the higher density pedestrian-oriented uses requirement of 66% of the ground floor street frontage.

There are standards that will apply to all of these districts, which we have placed in what we're calling the community mixed use design district, which replaces the current community retail design districts.

So some tweaks to that, but carrying through a lot of design standards that we already have in the code to make sure that these developments are integrated into the community.

So looking at making sure that there are connections to adjacent open space if there are open space.

This is where we are proposing to move the transition standards into.

So there have been some tweaks to the former transition area standards in the code, which were eliminated through middle housing.

We are suggesting they are brought into here.

Previously, the transition areas were quite restrictive on building heights adjacent to residential districts, removing that restriction, but maintaining the 25-foot setback and maintaining the landscaping requirements.

Based on comments from Planning Commission in May, we have also proposed a 15-foot stepback for building facades over 80 feet that are within 50 feet of a residential property line.

We heard the concerns about shadowing and these sort of large walls adjacent to residential districts.

So trying to set that off a little bit more.

And then some of the pedestrian-oriented uses requirements that I've already mentioned to make the sidewalk a more lively place and a better place to be.

So again, that would be things like transparency.

So that's windows, see-through doors in these businesses, some weather protection, and then doors that open onto the sidewalk.

We've heard from the community that there are specific uses that we really should be encouraging, both through this outreach process and through the comprehensive plan outreach process.

I've already talked about the FAR bonus for affordable housing.

We all know that child care is an issue.

We all know we need more child care.

So trying to encourage that use by not counting it towards the overall FAR of the site.

So essentially, if you had a child care facility that's 2,000 square feet, you don't have to count those 2,000 square feet towards the overall floor area of the site.

So just a little bit of a carrot to try to encourage these uses.

Other uses we've heard are very important are grocery stores.

Many of these areas already have grocery stores in them.

We don't want to push those grocery stores out as we redevelop these areas.

Grocery stores are obviously very important for everyone, but especially integrated into the neighborhoods.

You don't want to have to get in your car and drive 30 minutes to find a grocery store.

We've heard from the community that nonprofit businesses and community spaces are very important.

So trying to encourage those.

And then trying to encourage affordable commercial space.

We've heard a lot both from the community and from our council about concerns with displacing existing businesses, especially those businesses that may be owned by the Bogpok community.

So we've talked with economic development about that.

Most of the way that that will be done will be through some sort of funding source.

The land use code isn't really the proper mechanism to do that.

But hopefully, by giving an incentive for affordable commercial space, we can encourage some retention of these businesses or at least allow them to move back in as spaces do often get more expensive when you have a newer, freshly built space than some of these older strip multi-type spaces.

So trying to encourage the at least re-sort of building of these businesses when these areas get redeveloped.

So a little bit of a care to just provide a little bit extra open space.

There are a couple of updates that did not make it into this draft that I do want to go over with you.

Council did direct us through the Wilburton process to consolidate the non-conforming language throughout the code into a single section.

Right now, there are non-conforming language sections.

There's two in the main code, and then all of the special districts essentially have their own non-conforming language.

Council has asked us to consolidate into the Wilburton language.

There were some concerns raised by the development community through Wilburton, especially around proportional compliance that you need to do when you have a non-conforming building, which I'm not going to go into too much, but basically you had to bring the whole site up to current zoning standards.

And that was not really working, especially downtown.

So we didn't want to repeat that mistake in Wilburton.

With this, we want to update all of the language for nonconformities into that Wilburton section.

There are specifics from some of the special districts.

We will also need to bring into that new section.

For example, East Maine has a car bout for one specific use.

So that will have to be brought forward.

We are almost done with that.

We have the city attorney's office working on this is very technical, very legal.

We will certainly have the full language for you before the next meeting.

Hopefully, it'll be done for the public in the next couple of weeks as well.

I would expect the development community to take interest in this.

We are also planning on reorganizing the affordable housing section.

So no text changes to this beyond what you've seen.

But to make it easier for us to administer and for the public to understand, moving it out of 2020 128 into its own chapter, so something like 2023.

So it just sits alone in the land use code.

That won't require any text changes.

What it will require is all of the references throughout the code to this section to be updated.

So that's a fun job for me to go through the whole code and try to find every single time that 2020 128 is mentioned in the code.

So we will do that, but we don't have code for you on that right now.

There's nothing that you see in the strike draft that will change in relation to us moving that other than the numbers.

So this has been a very long process.

The first step in the process is that economic analysis that you all have seen that was providing your agenda memo.

We did have a stakeholder group with that, which was comprised of professionals from the development and affordable housing development field to make sure that our inputs on that were accurate.

So we have the stakeholder group and we also held interviews to ensure the accuracy of that.

So that's what you see in that economic analysis.

That was step one.

Step two after that analysis was going to the development community and asking them, you know, hey, we're doing this code amendment to try to eliminate some of the impediments to housing through the zoning code.

Please tell us what those impediments are.

You have the experience in this to know what those impediments are.

So what we heard was building form.

So that's going to be building height and those dwelling units per acre limits, as well as large setbacks or really holding back housing development.

The site requirements, things like transition areas, landscaping requirements.

We're also holding back development.

We have quite high parking requirements.

As mentioned by the public comment, parking is very expensive to construct, especially when you're building structured or underground parking.

So our high requirements are adding a high cost to these housing developments.

We are proposing lowering parking with HOMA to one parking space per dwelling unit.

We are not proposing any changes to commercial parking requirements.

As mentioned by public comment, there is a new state law around parking requirements that will require us to lower those parking requirements again.

Unfortunately, dropped right in the middle of the HOMA process.

So we haven't worked those into this project.

We will be standing up another project to complete those that has to be completed in January of by January of 2027.

We think having a standalone project gives the planner more time to do more analysis and more outreach for the community about these parking standards and whether we want to stick with the state law or if there are some places we would like to go beyond or do something different, a little bit different than what's required by state law.

So those are coming down the line, but not have not been included in HOMA.

And then the other thing we heard a lot was about use requirements.

So for example, that office requirement in the office district requiring 50% of the floor area to be office.

Obviously, it was not letting anyone build housing.

And then we heard over and over again, you all are requiring too much retail on these sites.

We can't support as much retail as being required.

A lot of these areas require that the entire ground floor be retail, which was just too much for some of the neighborhood areas without the density to support that.

After that, we took the draft code to the community.

So main changes to the code based on the impediments of housing and took that to the community, asking them what their concerns were or you know what they were in support of.

What we heard with this is very similar to what we hear with a lot of land use code amendments, especially ones that are proposing up zones, which is concerns over traffic, especially in the Newport Hills area with limited uh ability to get up and down the hill there.

Uh parking concerns, obviously, when you lower parking, that that parking will spill over into the neighborhoods, uh, and then over-densifying and design lots of concerns over sort of blank building walls, especially front and back of property, which is part of the intent of the transition area to break that up and then adding that step back in.

We'll hopefully also break that up a little bit as well.

We have heard general support from the community for FAR exemptions.

I think you've heard that tonight as well.

I think the vast majority of the community recognizes that affordable housing is needed in this, well, in the city in general, um, and would like to see supermarkets and child care and local retail in their neighborhood.

So there was general support for those FAR exemptions.

A lot of those came directly from the community.

Um, and then there is always support, and I think you heard this very clearly through the recent neighborhood area planning processes for these third places.

So places people can be with a low bar or no bar to entry.

Um trying again to encourage that neighborhood level retail with those pedestrian-oriented uses, which can become those third places like coffee shops and bars.

Uh we have done, as Christina mentioned, a lot of outreach with this project starting in December of 2024.

Uh, three virtual information sessions, so two in the winter of last year or 2024, and then one this week.

We also held three in-person events, which I mentioned were uh one was at City Hall, one was at Cuesta del Sol, and one was at Tai Middle School.

So trying to spread those events throughout the impacted areas of Homa.

We have also taken any basically any meeting request that people have requested.

I've met with many individuals and development groups through this process.

We have also met with the groups listed on your screen there, which include both resident groups, so things like the Newport Hills Community Club, the Newport Community Coalition, some of the Bellevue groups, which is you know, Bellevue Network on Aging.

And then some outside development groups or internal development groups.

So we've met with the Bellevue Development Committee and the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce's plush committee several times throughout this process, including Bellevue Development Committee about a month ago.

And we do have a meeting scheduled with the Chamber of Commerce plush committee in a couple of weeks as well.

And we have over the summer, we went to two in-person events, one being the Eastgate Community Block Party, and the other being the Bellevue International Festival, which gave us two uh good opportunity to talk some people on the ground.

Um we held a PC meeting with you all in May.

I think what we heard from you was some concern over the form standards, that being related to upper level setback uh building height, especially related to uh buildings that were close to adjacent uh residential district and related to that transition areas.

Uh, there was requests to provide more information to the public.

Uh, we have distributed an informational booklet about HOMA, which uh gave a lot of the same information you saw there with the all the different zoning districts laid out with the map and sort of what it is now and what we could be looking at.

Uh, we have also hosted tables at the two events I mentioned and held an additional virtual session on Monday.

And as Christina mentioned, we will be holding another informational session on September 22nd as well.

Uh so schedule on this.

Uh I've gone through this in a lot of detail now, so I won't spend too much time on this slide.

Um, but we are at phase two right now, which is the planning commission study sessions.

We are asking uh that you schedule a public hearing after this, which will move us on to phase three.

Uh that public hearing, if uh directed to do so would be later in the fall.

Uh, and then we would move on to the council process after a planning commission recommendation.

Uh, with Wilberton Planning Commission is also open to holding additional study sessions after the public hearing if they uh choose to do so.

I have been asked by several planning commission members to take a pause here to talk about uh the districts outside of downtown.

So what I've just presented before we go into downtown.

Uh so uh chair, I'll hand it back to you for any questions, comments, and then we can move on to downtown.

I think we can go around um about entire area except downtown, and then we can go to the downtown.

Okay, great.

I'm gonna go ask Commissioner Ferris if you have sorry, they give me the name, just so you know, it's not me.

It's kind of so easy, actually.

Thanks for doing that.

I do have several comments, probably not surprising, but maybe I'll just limit it to three, and then you can come back.

That's perfect.

Um comment, of course, between option um A and B.

Um I'm strongly in support of the mandatory requirement for affordable housing.

We've seen over and over where we've had the incentivized and we don't get much production.

Um I do want to make sure that it's it's fair so that we don't limit the amount of of um production of the overall housing.

So I think you've done a great job at calibrating it, but certainly be really open to hearing from developers in terms of if there's some specific things that will that will uh make sure that pencils so that project pencils out.

Um I was also interested with um there's a couple of comments that I would support this as well, where uh to be able to align HOMA with MFTE.

I think that's another great way to just kind of jumpstart.

We know that MFTE uh it burns off after 12 years, the tax credit, but at least it might get some projects going that otherwise wouldn't happen.

Um, lastly, I think there was another comment from the some of the written input about allowing projects to have uh the combination of apartments and townhomes to consolidate those in terms of the affordability requirements.

And from my perspective, I think that might make some sense.

So I've got a couple of other things, but you can come back around.

Thank you.

Thanks, thank you.

Um Shane Kennedy.

All right.

Um if it's possible.

Um you mind if I go last?

I'm not gonna.

Oh, no ways.

Okay.

I'm gonna go with um okay.

Who should I pick?

Like I want to be on the top.

Commissioner Belleth.

Sorry, I'm laughing.

Thank you for the very detailed explanation.

Uh I'd like to plus one Commissioner Ferries uh comment about alignment of uh Home and MFT.

I've heard of that as well.

Um I would like to know a little bit more about how we're uh arriving to the affordability requirements.

Where are these numbers coming from?

Uh if you can elaborate, yeah.

Um, part of it is consistency consistency throughout the city.

So it's what we have done with Wilburton was that 10% affordability requirement.

Uh we also think this is a fair amount to require, it's not uh overly impactful.

As mentioned by one of the public commenters, it is less aggressive than many of the neighboring communities in the area, uh, which are substantially more aggressive, including Redmond and Kirkland are substantially more aggressive with affordable housing than we are.

Um so we're trying to balance that um production of affordable housing or getting affordable housing through the development and making sure it doesn't negatively impact the production of housing to a degree where we're not getting any production.

Uh it is a tricky time right now, as you are all aware, um, and you've seen our economic analysis.

So we are looking at the long term in this.

We also think that that 10% requirement is nicely balanced out by the uh exemption for FAR that we're giving and the bonus FAR we're giving.

So trying to balance it out so it's not impactful to development while we're also meeting our affordable housing goals.

The city does have uh affordable housing goal of 5,700 new affordable units in the next 10 years.

Um, so making sure that as these parcels redevelop, we get those units that we are planning for as well.

Um, so we do think that the number has been calibrated in a fair way and isn't proportional to not necessarily the up zone, as we've heard from public comment, but what's actually being built on the site.

So we think that proportion of 10% affordable units is a fair proportion for the development to provide on the site.

Yeah, I'm I'm just concerned about, I mean, Wilburton has the affordability requirement as uh mandatory, but I'm just is that uh uh dilemma of do we want to build more housing and make it easier to build housing and then provide more units on the market as soon as possible where we address affordable housing as an incentive rather than mandatory, or do we want to obtain as much uh from each project and make it mandatory?

And I don't know where to stand.

So I I'd love I'd love to see some backup of that information, how we arrived to those numbers, if that's possible.

Like I'd like to understand how those numbers are, whether it's performance or how how is that happening?

Because from my experience, I know that as soon as any developer, like you might be looking at a small project, 10 units or 12 units or 25 units, as soon as they hear affordable, they just don't want to touch it.

And my concern is that you might end up with a strip ball there because you're requesting affordable housing to be mandatory, and it may just not be developed over 20 years.

Um it sounds great in paper.

We can develop here 50 units, and then we can obtain five units that are that are affordable, and this is gonna count towards everything, but if it doesn't get developed because it's too because it's prohibitively expensive, then we're not really doing anything.

And and that's uh Wilbert is different because there's just such a huge amount of density that's gonna happen there that it's a different beast.

So I just want to be mindful of that.

Uh I do agree and support the move from dwelling units per acre to FAR.

So that makes great sense.

And I am a little bit concerned about the amount of ground floor transparency that is being required.

I completely agree with the intents.

We don't want to have black walls.

We want to have uses that are uh bringing people to the street.

You want to have eyes on the sidewalk.

Uh all those are solid principles.

I'm just concerned that the way it's written, it might imply that you might have to include uses that are retail or commercial that may not be supported in certain certain spaces.

Like usually uh if you have one single lane or one, sorry, one single street where all these users are concentrated, uh the streets on the back, they they don't support that amount of traffic.

So I just want to make sure that the the language that is uh used does not cause that unintended consequence.

You can still get transparency if you use residential, and you can still get transparency if you use certain uh separation between the street and the uh dwelling unit, whether it is with uh balconies or planters or some sort of separation that doesn't not do it does not necessarily need to be commercial or some other use.

You can still have eyes on the street, you can still have transparency, but not necessarily different uh use.

I think that's that's what we can move on.

Thank you.

Commissioner Commissioner get Paul.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for a great uh presentation, uh Matthew and Christina.

Um I had two primary areas that I wanted to probe a little bit more deeply on.

Um the first is similar to what Commissioner Bulavesis was saying.

My inclination is more towards option A and the mandatory requirement.

However, I'm not really convinced that we've calibrated the uh requirements related to affordable housing in the right way.

When I look at the the fee and lie that's proposed here, it's very similar to what we finally adopted in relation to Wilburton, where there was a much greater upzone and opportunities for um for developers.

So can you help me understand if we're trying to be proportionate, you know, in terms of the upzone and um opportunities, how we can justify what is being proposed here?

Yeah, absolutely.

Um so the fee that is the same as Wilburton is going to be those higher density districts.

So a lot of those districts are being upzoned, uh sort of proportional to what we upzone the lower density Wilburton districts to be.

Um, we're looking at seven to sixteen stories for those districts.

So that is quite an extensive up zone for these areas.

So we think they are very similar to Wilburton in that way.

Uh these districts also aren't straddled with some of the costs that the Wilverton district will be straddled with.

So uh no requirements for Wilburton for things like uh local streets to be constructed on the developer's dime.

So, or you know, those active use pathways.

So there's less of costs associated with HOMA and with a similar if a little bit less upzone for some of the for the HOMA districts.

So we think that is proportionate.

Uh the lower density districts have a lower fee and lie, which is going to be 10 is proposed to be $10 a square foot.

Um certainly there's wiggle room and in that number where it could go down.

Um, but you know, a lot of these districts right now are allowing one to two stories and the upzone to five stories is relatively substantial, especially with the FAR changes where they're getting quite a substantial upzone.

So we do think that uh the 10 and 13 dollars proposed is proportionate to not just the upzone, because uh we also need to look at sort of the proportionate to the development on the site.

So I mean, we have smaller development, so those fee and loss and those number of units that are gonna have to be provided through that mandatory program are going to be smaller, right?

It's that proportion, that percentage.

So we think it's calibrated in a way that's meets both the goals of the development community, which is to build more housing and to make money doing so, and of the city, which is to provide more housing, but also provide more affordable housing and meet our planning goals.

Um, the other thing that we've seen through our economic analysis is that there are other things in uh the pro forma that are much more impactful to the bottom line than this affordable housing was, uh specifically interest rates, which are obviously way out of our control, and parking, which is in our control.

Um, but parking was uh often a larger expense, especially underground and structured parking than uh this 10% of affordable housing.

So we think it's an appropriate number to balance everything out, um, but we're certainly willing to hear uh suggestions from planning commission.

Um, you know, we have that sort of two polls from the public comment that you've heard tonight uh with some of the affordable housing groups uh saying that's appropriate or asking for more, and then development groups um basically requesting less or uh for a voluntary program.

So balancing those two polls, I think we're sort of in the middle of that, and and hopefully it found that that correct number.

It's something we can also go back and look at down the line if if it doesn't work out, but um based on experiences with other communities which are substantially more aggressive, I think we are we're in a pretty good spot for development here.

Yeah, thank you.

That's that's a good answer.

I I would like some more analysis to help support that because I I think some of the economic analysis that was that was done and was included in the packet that we received was done before we sort of recalibrated the um the uh um the fee and loo numbers for purposes of Wilverton.

So I mean, I I just want to be consistent and proportionate as we're looking at areas so that you know the um the uh support that's provided for affordable housing is fairly distributed across different areas.

And we um we are working on that nexus study, so we will certainly provide that to you uh at the next meeting as well, and that will give uh more up-to-date number, at least related to the fee and lie on sort of what's proportionate for these areas.

Good.

Um, the second area that I wanted to probe was the transition area.

Um, and am I correct in understanding that the only change since the last version that we saw in May of this year is that um for buildings 80 feet or higher, there's a 15-foot setback above 80 feet.

That's the only change.

That's correct.

Um, I I'm concerned that that doesn't really address um what we talked about at the last meeting, which is um if you have these mixed-use areas with substantial upzoning um that is occurring and much higher heights that are next to residential properties, that um a 25-foot transition area with you know, um, small trees that are planted that won't grow for quite a long time is not sufficient for purposes of trying to um, you know, create buffers for some of these residential areas.

I guess I I compare the strategy that Bellevue's had for downtown, where we have a little bit more of a wedding cake structure where things step down.

And I wonder why is it okay to have little or no transition area zones in these mixed use areas, but we're very coveted, you know, very interested in accommodating the downtown area to have that kind of wedding cake structure.

It seems unfair and inconsistent to me.

And I think um, I mean, we're talking we're talking about two different things potentially uh with transition areas and then that wedding cake structure.

Um so I mean, the wedding cake, the way we've laid it out, right, is going to be driven by the comp plan often if we do want those uses pushed up to the sidewalk, right?

Because that's how the wedding cake works downtown is you have this sort of lower uses, which are generally seven stories-ish in the downtown, if not a little bit higher, depending where you are in the perimeter overlay, pushed up to the street across the street from some residential sometimes, and then stepping up from there.

Yep.

Um, the way the complain is laid out does that as well in many cases.

Um, in many cases, um, crossroads mall is an example of that where you have that sort of 10-story to 16-story.

Uh, in many cases, like for example, NB and CB with five stories, you're not significantly higher, that much higher than the neighboring residential.

Um, Newport Hill Shopping Center, for example, the neighboring residential district, which used to be called R30, and we have a new name for it now, uh, is 40 feet building height.

So that jump from 40 to 60 is sort of that wedding cake.

Um, we could certainly, I mean, we're happy to take recommendations on what that distance for the transition area should be.

We're trying to find this balance right between these larger sites, which is sites like Newport Hill Shopping Center, which has more room for that transition area, but a 25 plus foot setback could be devastating for a small site redeveloping.

Um so it's just trying to find that balance.

And I'm certainly willing to hear recommendations on what that balance is.

It's not necessarily that we've gotten correct.

So yeah, that that's a helpful answer.

I I mean, I'm not as concerned about the 40 to 50 foot buildings.

I'm concerned about the 80 or 110 foot buildings right near or next to residential areas, which um I think could have a significant impact.

Those are my two areas of um concern.

Thank you.

Kevin Shentian.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um thank you guys so much for the presentation for putting together uh this entire plan.

And thank you for everyone who gave public comments and provided written comments.

Um all the information has been very, very useful for me in evaluating this proposal.

Um I guess I'll start off by uh, you know, voicing my support with option A for the affordable housing proposal.

Um it seems like that's basically where we're landing with maybe some calibrations on the percentage, but the 10% seems about right to me from what I've seen.

Um I had some questions, however, on the FAR exemptions that you listed in one of the slides.

Um I believe currently it's FAR exceptions for affordable housing, child care, grocery stores, nonprofit businesses, affordable commercial and open space.

Um is there any reason to not expand that list or like can we expand that to include other things like bike storage or healthcare facilities or things like that?

I mean, certainly you can make that recommendation.

Um there are reasons and not reasons for doing that.

Um I guess what were the reasons and coming up with the the current list?

Yeah, so I mean, really the current list is those uses that we really want to encourage.

So the more things you give uh you know benefit to, the more diluted that incentive gets.

Um, so that's one concern.

Um the other concern is well, there's a few other concerns.

One, you give an exemption for everything, and all of a sudden the there's no FAR limit, right?

So you can build these huge um developments on these sites where it wasn't really intended for that much development.

So we do need to be cautious about how many things we exempt from FAR to make sure that we are meeting the intent of some of these and restricting the size of development in these areas.

Um, and then the third one from you know, purely uh sort of maybe selfish perspective, but the more things, especially niche things that you start exempting, and the more complicated the code gets, the more hard it, the harder it is for someone to submit an application and the harder it is to review.

So making sure that they're not having to go into plans and like try to line out something like bicycle parking.

Um I'm a bike commuter, I'm a big supporter of biking, but like some of these things get very difficult and may not be worth our while to exempt um just because of the added cost and difficulty of running that application.

So uh they were chosen based on what we heard from the community, but there's certainly opportunity for planning commission to uh recommend that list be expanded.

I think the one uh I've heard more recently that could be an addition would be senior housing.

Um that could be quite a large exemption if we had a full senior housing development, obviously.

Uh so there may need to be some limits on that.

Um, but otherwise I haven't heard too many uh additions, recommended additions to that FAR exemption list.

Okay, thank you.

That's uh that's really helpful.

I I think I'd like to see some sort of transit-oriented implementation there, like bicycle parking, just because you know, as we're increasing density, I want to be mindful um providing avenues for people to make use of non-traditional um transportation means uh like biking.

So I I think I'd like to see that on there.

I'm curious to hear what others think.

Um, and then uh I wouldn't, I would also not be opposed to adding senior facilities of of some maybe smaller variety um as well.

Uh my other question was around parking.

Uh you uh explained this during the presentation, but I want a little bit more of a of a chance for you to answer this.

But is there a reason why we can't update the HOMO proposal to be in line with the current state law and then potentially reevaluate later as the additional parking um evaluation goes through?

I just want to if we can do it in one fell swoop, I'd I'd like to do that.

Uh it's possible.

It'd be a major scope expansion for HOMA.

Um, it's not quite as simple as just sort of deleting some parking and replacing it.

Um, parking is sort of woven throughout the code.

Um, and a lot of the districts have their own parking.

So it's certainly possible for something something for us to do through HOMA.

It may mean that HOMA takes longer.

So the rest of the things end up getting delayed because we now have to go back through and uh adjust all of these parking standards.

Parking, uh, as you all know, is often a very hot button issue as well.

Um, so we would have to do another round of outreach specific to parking uh if we were to implement that into HOMA as well.

So possible, but uh a large project to do so.

Um it is, you know, it's getting off the ground now, and we certainly will meet that state law a year from now.

So it's a pretty quick turnaround for any road code amendments.

So we do think that two separate code uh amendments are probably the way to go with this.

Just the timing just really unfortunately didn't work out very well.

And I'll chime in too, just to share that um that uh that process in updating our parking uh regulations is already underway in our pre-launch.

We've got another planner who is fully enmeshed in looking at comprehensively how might we update our parking regulations.

So, you know, also taking the opportunity to think about like how can we make this much easier to navigate, cut out some clutter, um, as well as allowing that opportunity to work with the community um to help kind of ease those concerns that we anticipate to come up.

So um, we expect that'll be launching um hopefully in January, early 2026 council scheduling permitting.

So great.

Uh those are my three issues.

Commission K.

I'm ready.

Thank you.

Chair Conlin, thank you.

Um, thanks for this presentation.

This has been really helpful.

And I think the comments here today have been very, very helpful from the other commissioners.

I had a couple questions, just smaller things and then and then one key point, which sticks to three.

Um the first two one one was a question was raised earlier this evening around um open space requirements.

Um that was specific to downtown, and we're not talking about downtown here, but I did want to ask the question have we reduced the open space requirements when we comparably increased affordable housing requirements?

So isn't there like a 25% on affordable housing and then there's a 50% on the open space?

Yes.

Can you explain that balance?

Just give us some.

We'll have another round of questions after downtown.

So I will keep that in mind and I will explain that as I present.

But that's specific to downtown.

Specific to downtown only.

Uh, that would not apply to the rest of the HOMA districts.

Okay, super helpful and appreciate you covering that when we get there.

Um, you also mentioned in your presentation a 50% reduction in prior requirements around retail in this update.

You were saying there used to be a requirement for 100%.

Can you explain that a little bit more?

Yeah.

So in some of our districts, um, for example, neighborhood business, the entire ground floor of the building is required to be retail and it's required to be commercial uses.

So we've been told uh several times that that was one of the major impediments to redevelopment of these parcels is that's too much uh retail for them to support, uh, especially if these parcels are going to redevelop.

So rather than having a full floor have to be uh retail or commercial uses, we're proposing that the street frontage be commercial uses.

So it's not even necessarily 50% of the ground floor is commercial uses over the whole project.

It's just those basically the street frontage has to be uh what we're calling pedestrian oriented uses.

So for example, if you had 200 feet of straight frontage on a parcel, a hundred feet of that is gonna have to be those pedestrian oriented uses within 10 feet of the back of the sidewalk.

Got it.

So essentially you see a building pushed up to the sidewalk for half of that.

Uh, that does allow for incursions onto the parcel like driveways and things like that to allow access not only for services, but potentially buildings in the in the back of the parcel.

Um, and hopefully could allow for some open space uh fronting the sidewalk as well if there's if there's room for that.

So um just a little bit more flexibility there in the development to maintain that commercial element that we've heard is so important to the community while also giving that development flexibility to make sure that that those requirements are not hampering development.

Um I will say with that, we have had a few comments on smaller parcels that they think that um requirement is restrictive, especially from developers that would like to do townhomes only, um have asked us to exempt them from those requirements uh on certain parcel.

Okay, really helpful and and appreciate you kind of walking through the bounds there.

I know two of the other commissioners have raised questions around getting some additional information on how we got to the percentages that we have or how we selected the exemptions that we had.

And so it's helpful to just have that background on how we were balancing what was previously there and the interests of the communities, both in having that pedestrian-oriented community area that is so important to those communities, as well as ensuring that we're actually able to get things built.

Um, and so I I would echo, I think um, Commissioner Geppel and Commissioner Villavese's interest in and just maybe seeing a bit more in the um review of how we landed on the numbers here.

I think that's really helpful.

I know that in the economic report, um, and this is my third item, so um done after this, but I know that in the report it showed a um opportunity to toggle some of the information in that economic report.

Maybe it would be helpful to kind of see some of that longer term lens or how we're how we're getting to and balancing the numbers.

So um would support that.

In order to leave the time to review that information, can you explain just a bit about the process here?

If we were to get that information plus the kind of nexus um analysis that you mentioned to Commissioner Geppel, are we able to review that before we have a public hearing and maybe provide additional input into the draft?

How does that timing work?

Sure.

So there's two options with that.

Um, so like you were provided for this meeting, all of the packets come out essentially the week before for you all.

Um, so there's two paths that can be taken to give yourself more time to analyze that information.

Uh you could direct us to schedule the public hearing at the next meeting, and we would hold the public hearing, which has to be noticed and allows for that full public comment period, and then hold study sessions afterwards if you decided that was necessary based on the information you have been provided.

Um, or uh you could do what planning commission did in the May meeting uh and tell us that you are not ready to hold the public hearing and ask us to schedule another study session, which would uh guarantee at least two more meetings with the planning commission.

So uh it's really at your discretion what you all feel ready to do uh after the meeting tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um this is kind of nice going last because everybody said a lot of good things.

Also appreciate that you guys on your screenshot of the comp plan had a picture of farms on that, which was really uh a choice.

Um a couple of questions from me.

Um I'm gonna plus one to a couple of the things that the commissioners have already talked about.

The um specifically in the field, I think my personal preference, and I stated this during the Wilburton uh sessions as well.

You know, uh having a field new kick in for commercial space feels like a bit of the wrong incentive.

I think a lot of what the community is concerned about and what I personally am concerned about um is not uh making it difficult to build commercial space and to have that be a you know shared service for everybody within the uh the community.

So, you know, as you're exploring what the right calibration of uh the field looks like, my personal preference is to, you know, hopefully push the commercial space requirement down a little bit, um, because I think that's just a disincentive to building out, you know, what I think the entire community could use.

Uh the second one I'm gonna plus one to what uh Commissioner Art Neil Chan said already with the uh the exemptions.

I think uh I'd like to, I know we don't want to dilute it too much, but I do think third places are a really important one for the community, especially as we're talking about um, you know, specifically the low rise mixed use areas.

I think uh exempting you know corner shops, cafes, like places where people meet um would be a really great way for us to again not disincentivize commercial space um and still provide a benefit for the community.

Um the last one that I had was on the uh the stepback requirements.

Um is there a structural reason for requiring kind of that step back at the 80 foot that you mentioned, um, or is it kind of mostly aesthetic?

Uh would love to hear the reasoning on that.

There is a structural reason.

Um so right now, what we're hearing is the most viable development type is what we'll call five over two.

So that's five stories of wood frame over two frame, two stories of concrete.

Uh, that's driven by the building code.

Uh, there may be some flexibility in the building code to get up to uh six over two at this point, but really we're looking at five or two.

So that's why that seven story, you'll see it repeated a lot in Homa.

That's why you see that seven story limit repeated a lot, because that's sort of where the uh economic drivers are right now.

Um what we've heard from the development community is there's sort of three building heights that work for development.

So five stories, which is just all wood frame.

I'm excluding townhomes from this, which seem to be the sort of uh building type du jour, but uh five stories, which is all wood frame, seven stories, which is that five over two, and then uh this might have gone up in recent times, but to get to full concrete.

So as soon as you hit um basically over that five or two, you got to build a full concrete building.

Uh, nothing is viable below 160 feet.

Um, that may be even higher these days with material costs and potential tariffs.

So um, we're trying to, you can see through HOMA, we're trying to hit those numbers basically to uh encourage housing.

And and the the step back requirement that you're proposing, is that like the minimum you need from a structural perspective for it to work, or is that so what we've heard.

So there's the two step backs.

So there's the 80 feet, and then there's the 110 above 110 for the front step back.

Yeah.

Um really, I think importantly for housing is maintaining at least that 80 foot level.

What we've heard from development community, especially the affordable housing community, is that step back and really eat into the unit count on the site.

Um, and especially for affordable housing unit count is very important uh when they're looking at funding and financing.

So trying to maintain a level above that five over two economic viability for a step back so that we are not hurting potential affordable housing developments.

Um, we have proposed 110 feet, which puts it over 10 stories.

I think we're open to planning commission recommendation.

Sort of anything over that seven-story mark is going to be less impactful than anything below it.

Got it.

Thank you.

I think that was my three.

Perfect.

Um, I have a couple questions and comments.

Um, thank you so much for your presentation.

Thanks for everybody.

Um, the first thing, the setback and the, I think the best example that we can say is on 100th avenue in downtown and um 10th Street, the locks apartments and 10, I think 10 apartments.

They're like pretty, there's like a roundabout and 100.

Um, that's like I think it's six or seven floor.

I think that'd be good that we look at it because then uh what is that neighborhood on the west side of the downtown on the hundred?

Can you say that like that?

Nick, can you say it?

Thank you.

Because there's a like residential area there, and that's like uh that's the sorry if I forgetting that neighborhood.

That's like a boundary for me.

But I want to say it's a fifth, it's fifth floor.

I don't think it's seven or eighty, but can you guys find out about that?

Because I think that's an interesting transition.

I still think is tall, honestly, for those housing.

I always feel bad about that.

It's good.

And it's a pretty high, like a um, it's a good distance then.

And then the other question I have it, it's about um, sorry, like I'll check my notes.

Um of the slides, um I'm thinking about if we can have, I think it's in OLB or OLB2, slide 15.

Um of the thing I want we really see it's about the affordable commercial um space.

Like kind of like the idea of giving some um easement to the commercial um codes and everything.

But I feel like I if I work in Eastgate and I live in one of those commercial, I really want to see a local coffee shop there.

I really want to walk to the local coffee shop.

And it's not affordable to have a low call coffee shop.

Uh I really think we have some incentive, something that, hey, developer, if you have like an affordable commercial space here, this is gonna go be the incentive program for you guys.

Or if you have a I want to be so strong that our developer really go for it.

And and again, I I don't want to do mandatory, and then everybody's gonna go pay the fian lu.

And I don't know what we're gonna go with that money of the fian loo.

I think I raise my worst about the Vilberton tea too.

Like, I don't even think we can buy single loss, that we can build housing that is half million dollars per unit to make it affordable housing with that money that we are getting for free and low, to be honest.

Then if we want to add to the supply and go with the formula of the market of the supply and demand, that's good.

That's still good.

But if we really want to focus on affordable, maybe we do an affordable commercial space that brings something to our neighborhood, like a coffee shop, like a flower, like a bakery.

Um, then I prefer to go to an incentive with something come up come out of the affordable commercial space or senior center compared to just pay us like 300k and God knows when we're gonna go build affordable housing for that.

Um and then I have another comment if I can read my handwriting.

Sorry, sorry, can I pause you here?

Conlu, could I clarify?

Were you saying that you would be interested in seeing like affordable commercial in instead of providing affordable on-site, like instead of doing a fee in lieu, say, but if you go on-site performance for affordable commercial, yeah, okay.

I'm wondering if we have have option C that it's like exemption of like we have affordable, we have option A, we have option B, but option C if if you have the affordable unit for seniors, this is gonna go be the different program.

If you're gonna go have affordable um commercial space, that's gonna go be another incentive program because I want to see something is happening in the neighborhood.

I don't want the $13 per square feet comes to the was that correct calculation I forgot to that bucket.

Well, how was that?

Six things.

Okay, thank you.

Um I don't want to see that honestly.

I I I want to see something tangible happen in our neighborhood.

And then the other thing was like again, compared to this one.

If we can say about if you can keep the current business that who is in that, like, for example, neighborhood center, that's gonna go be a big line of the incentive too.

Like if you can figure out how to have two phases that you were building, and then keep the grocery store, like you've seen downtown in the system, and then when you build, develop the north side, which I'm I heard that's a plan, move the grocery store there and then have the second phase, like something like that that we don't see displacing um businesses.

Like I know like small business is so important, and we need that.

Honestly, like I still love all this small coffee shop that we have in our neighborhood in downtown Belleville, but it's expensive, they're struggling.

Um, and then uh I think neighborhoods are Eastgate neighborhood, Factoria, all of them is gonna go love to having those.

Those are the comments that I have.

Should we go second round?

And if you don't have a comment, please don't have a comment.

Um I think we go second round and then some break.

Is that good?

Or okay.

Uh also I just extend the time.

Okay.

Yes.

Can we have a motion to do it until 10?

I think I would like to make the motion that we extend our meeting until 10.

10:30, actually.

We'll end or early.

Second.

All in favor.

All right.

Aye.

Okay.

Second round.

Um, yes, Commissioner Ferris.

I'll be past.

Thank you.

Uh two quick plus ones on exempting those small parcels for that retail.

I think that's a really good thing to look at.

Other plus one is um for the bar exemption for the third spaces.

I think that's a great idea.

Uh a couple quick uh more comments.

And this is mostly based on some of the letters that we've received.

Um there's some input about the 60 or 65% impervious service limitation.

And again, I'd like to see a lot of flexibility there, if at all possible.

Secondly, uh greater flexibility in the design standards for site specific challenges that came up.

I think you've already got some things in there, but I just want to again plus one that we've we know we're gonna have some unique sites that need to have special attention there.

And then lastly, it was the um, I think the owner of the site or the shopping center in Newport Hills that asked for the essentially the deed in lieu option, which I think is also a great idea, where again they can provide a parcel that somebody else might be able to develop for affordable housing.

So I'm done.

Thank you.

Um Commissioner Vilevis says, I'm still struggling with last name.

I don't know what's happened to me today.

Thank you.

So uh a couple of things.

First, uh structural step stepback.

It doesn't, it's not a structural requirement.

In fact, I wanted to point this out is it's actually an issue.

It increases costs because especially in these buildings, you want to make sure everything lines up.

And that's not only structure, it's also plumbing stacks, unit layouts, and the stepback really adds costs and logistics to development.

So if we're doing a step back at 80 feet, that's not really gonna protect anything from shadows, right?

You're you're gonna be casting shadows anyway across the property next door.

That's that's just a fact.

Uh I would encourage you to eliminate that.

It's it's just it's just gonna add costs and complexity.

Um in terms of uh building types.

We were talking about townhomes and other building types.

I would like to see an incentive for uh stack flats.

It's a building type that is not common in this country, but is the most efficient one.

Townhouses, the developers love them because you can build them cheaply and you can sell them easily, right?

But they're hugely inefficient.

You the maximum you can do is three stories, you can do four or five, but I mean, who wants to live in a five-story house?

So you're limiting the building type limits the development potential just because of the way it works, but also you're getting uh uh stairs in every unit, right?

So that's area that you're wasting.

The layouts are not ideal.

You only have two facades on every unit.

If you encourage stock flats, that might trigger some uh development of that building type where you can have units, apartment units, or flat units like you do everywhere else in the world, and these units, you have one stair per building, or maybe two stairs, depending on the size, and you have four facades, and you have much better and more much more flexible layout.

So if you look at something that uh you might do townhomes at four stories, but if you do flat stacks at six stories, that's a huge incentive to create housing that is better and that is cheaper, it's also cheaper.

Um that's one thing.

Also, I would like to remind the commission that the fee in lieu and affordable housing uh provisions that were passed in Wilburton were a ride after huge discussions between city staff and development development groups and uh affordable housing developers, and there was alignment between affordable housing developers and for-profit developers, and that's how we really went to that calibration, but it was not really something that uh it was not something that we could prove.

It was like if if these two parties that are have opposing interests are in alignment here, that that's saying something, but right now we don't have that alignment.

And I'm just concerned that this is just gonna increase costs on housing production.

And as uh Chair Conley was mentioning about um an incentive for commercial space.

This is a great incentive example.

If you do uh commercial space that is affordable, that you can provide an affordable price, you can have an incentive to be mold more area in your property.

That's a that's a really good incentive.

Uh or if you provide an affordable unit, you could do more area.

So I think if we don't have that alignment, you can this is an option.

You can leave it up to the developer to find the way that the product pencils out better for him, whether it's with an incentive uh product like uh housing, additional housing or not.

And and I'd like to add to that really quickly.

One of the incentives that you could provide is uh expedited permitting types.

That alone might just drive a lot of people to do affordable housing.

If if you could provide faster review times and expedited uh or priority review if you're providing affordable housing.

So I I would like to just state that I I think I'm um not necessarily leaning towards option B, but I think uh we should consider having incentive um rather than mandated affordable housing in this in this in this pass with the quote.

That that would be all.

Thank you.

Thanks, Commissioner Keppel.

Yeah, um, just a couple of things.

One is um just picking up on Commissioner Bilbasis' um point about the um 15-foot setback above 80 feet.

If we eliminate that, I would really like to see us look carefully at trying to cushion some of the impacts on residential areas through um a little bit lower heights um for those buildings that are right directly next to residential areas.

So I I ask you to look at whether that's a feasible thing to do.

And again, I'm I'm not concerned about the four or five stories.

I'm concerned about like the seven stories or bigger.

That's those are the buildings that seem disproportionate, you know, right next to residential areas.

Um, so that's that's one thing.

Um a second thing is um, you know, when it comes to the far exemptions, um, I'm supportive of the idea from Commissioner Nilchin about sort of active transportation, you know, bike facilities or something like that, you know, as being exempt.

I I'm I know senior housing is important, but I think there is quite a bit of it in Bellevue already.

And uh when I look at sort of demographics and wealth in this country, I'm much more concerned about young people than I am about um older people at this point in terms of just ensuring that they have a good start in life because they are um they struggle.

I mean, when they um leave leave their parents to try and um find a place.

So and I I feel like um while that's important, I don't feel like it's something that um should uh should be part of a far exception just because of the um the opportunities and the housing that's already out there for um senior housing.

Um those are the main things I wanted to cover.

Thank you.

Are you good?

Uh Commissioner Nidichan.

Uh I'm just gonna keep it short since the second round and just plus one everything Commissioner Farr said.

And um, yeah, that's all I have for second.

Good job.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Uh yeah, so to to continue the plus ones.

I I also really liked the idea about the affordable commercial and seeing how we can we can lean into that um suggestion from from Chair Conloo.

So to to pile into that one, I don't know what that would look like, but I think um having some sort of incentive program that recognizes the importance of the local coffee shop and flower shop.

And I was picturing the neighborhood in the Netherlands that was discussed earlier.

And I know my boys would love that every time we go on a bike ride, they want to go to the bakery, and there is just not one that we can get to.

That's that's bikeable, and I think every every community would really enjoy it.

And I do think it would be a noticeable change.

So I I I don't know if in my mind that is not an alternative to what we're proposing, but uh in addition to incentives that create a significant um push toward toward that type of establishment and commercial establishments.

Um really uh echo the concerns around transition areas.

It sounds like it's been well thought through if in the next meeting you could kind of give us that feel, maybe even a picture of the intersection that was discussed earlier, something where we can better understand.

Here's how a transition looks.

Um it's really hard for me sitting right here to picture a hundred and ten-foot building next to a single family house.

So I think that'd be really helpful if that's if that's possible.

Um I just wanted to ask one question as my third item.

The affordable housing is not based on age or any other thing.

It is just it is affordable based on the uh average medium and median income AMI in our area, right?

So you could be anyone.

It is affordable.

Okay.

Is that I see you nodding?

Yes.

Yeah, that's correct.

It's totally based on income.

Great.

Okay, thank you.

Oh, I'll keep it pretty quick too.

I I think the first one is actually you really want to plus one of the stacked flats idea and incentive there.

I think it's really hard type of housing to build.

And I think stairs being kind of an impediment for a lot of people.

Um I'd love to incentivize more kind of like flat uh billing types.

Uh the second one was on parking, uh, which I know we kind of briefly touched on, but uh and I I'm aware that we have both the state law coming in and I think there's also a pending study from City of Bellevue on paid parking.

And so there's a lot of different moving parts, but I think in between, we know that you know the requirements are probably gonna start going down.

We could provide that as an incentive for amenity bonuses as well, knowing that the direction that it's going.

So we don't have to you know do a full-blown like revise of the entire you know parking requirement, but you could you know implement current incentives uh that would get us in in the general vicinity.

Um then I think I think that's it actually.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Um thanks everybody.

I think I have I just wanted to insist again on that um displacing the current um business.

If we can come up with uh when we are coming with the incentive for uh business owners, if we can have something for them too, that'd be like really helpful.

Because I don't want we know like a phase like those like if we come with some permitting creative process that they don't go through the permitting 10 million times and spend million dollars on it and then end up to just going another round of permitting or revising.

We can come up with phase that they can do it, and then if they prevent of um uh displacing some current people who have a business there, that'd be helpful.

Because again, like I'm assuming to in some like um Newport Hill shop center and all of those, like if those uh business owner, if it's still visible in the uh future um retail space that comes there, they can stay.

That'd be good to belt in the phases.

Um, and thank you, everybody.

Should we get 10, eight minutes?

Oh, really?

Really, really fast.

Uh on the FAR exemptions, like, is there an enforcement mechanism to maintain those exemptions, or is it uh just in the initial uh side of it?

Yeah, they'll basically have to sign an agreement with the city saying that those uses will be maintained.

Um I will say related to that.

Uh there have been some requests for developers for those not to necessarily be maintained for the life of the building in case something goes uh bankrupt, essentially, specifically around supermarkets.

Uh, we were told through Route Reach that they generally sign a 25 to 30 year lease.

So there was a request that we let that expire after uh 25 to 30 years.

Um I think from our perspective, we think it would be better if they filled it uh with another supermarket.

Um, but yeah, for the life of the building would be required by the code, and they'll have to you know sign an agreement with the city that they will do so.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Should we come back in seven minutes starting at nine?

Okay.

So it's okay.

Um, can I get I I heard that we're gonna go move the um training to the next session, which is September 24th.

I need someone take a motion to amend our agenda and move the training to September 24th.

So make the motion that we adjust our agenda to show that the uh training for our commission uh is postponed until next question.

Okay.

Uh any discussion?

All in favor?

I okay.

We wait for a match.

No worries.

I know you're better now, right?

So far so good.

We'll see.

For those of you who are not here last time, I couldn't talk right now.

Yeah, it was hard.

Yeah.

Okay, we are ready for you in the downtown if you are ready.

Right, Kate, can you well?

I probably can do it, can't I?

Okay.

So we will move on to downtown.

We've heard a lot of public comment about downtown.

So I'll cover this in some detail.

Uh, and we'll definitely focus on the changes to affordable housing in downtown.

Uh, other changes are pretty minor, uh, very minor form changes based on the intern ordinance that we did adopt uh about a year ago, year and a half ago now.

Uh that ordinance has expired.

Um, that ordinance provided flexibility in the perimeter overlay areas uh around lot coverage, stepbacks, building heights, uh, and floor plates.

If you provided uh in the case of the IOC, it was 0.5 FAR of uh the floor area for affordable housing.

So there's a bonus for that.

It's a four to one ratio under the IOC.

So it was 0.1 FAR of affordable housing and then 0.4 FAR of uh market rate housing.

We are proposing, as you've heard through public comment, to raise that to just 0.5 FAR of affordable housing.

Uh we do recognize that this is an increase of the required affordable housing to get this flexibility, and certainly something we can discuss as well.

Um we for the last meeting we had proposed that to get that four to one bonus that we are uh proposing through the affordable housing um basically for providing affordable housing, you are can exempt four square feet of market rate housing for every square foot of affordable housing you can you have provided, which was what was provided under the IOC.

Uh current code is one to two point five.

Uh we did find that the IOC ratio did work to encourage affordable housing.

We had some of our first uh incentive usage of that affordable housing program uh in downtown through that program.

Uh the original proposal with HOMA was to provide that bonus.

Um, basically, you had to use all your amenity incentive points first.

Uh we heard through the development community that they'd like some more flexibility on that on when to use that uh incentive.

So we have updated the code to provide that bonus as long as you're not counting it towards both programs.

So uh you can get that uh bonus floor area as long as you're not counting that same square foot to the bonus that we're providing through the amenity incentive program.

Uh and we've heard uh a lot from the community that the wedding cake is very important.

I've heard it from you all as well, and we hear it from council.

So this does maintain the wedding cake very minor form uh changes, as you can see on the screen here uh for providing affordable housing.

Uh so there is an addition uh of affordable housing to the amenity incentive system.

So this is what we have heard most of the comments about.

Um, the way the amenity incentive system works in downtown, it is a voluntary program uh where the city will give you additional building height and additional FAR in exchange for trying to move all of us.

It's stuck there.

See if I can even if the right, sorry to disturb you, but one window.

Yeah, and then for the video, if you just can minimize it, that'd be awesome.

Perfect.

Sweet.

Um yeah.

So basically, um, for providing these amenities, which right now are uh mainly geared towards open space, you are allowed to build a larger building in the downtown.

That diagram uh is straight from the current downtown code.

Uh so you can see that you are allowed the base FAR without providing any amenities, uh, and as an incentive, you can build that sort of anything above the blue line there uh if you provide the amenities as listed.

Uh right now, the first 75% of those amenity incentive points are required to be open space.

The change we are proposing with this code is that uh instead of the first 75% of those points being required to be open space, the first 25% would be required to be affordable housing, or that fee and loo, which we're proposing to be $13 per point or per square foot.

Um that's uh square footage of affordable housing would give you a bonus as well of four points.

So it's basically a one to four ratio uh like the incentive is.

Um and then the next 50% would have to be uh that open space amenity.

So uh reducing the amount of open space amenity points you would need by 25% and replacing those with affordable housing.

Um and then the final 25% is developers' choice.

There are some other amenity incentives in downtown, such as public art that you can get points for.

Um so sort of maintaining that same system, but inserting affordable housing into that system as the top priority in that system.

Oh no, I've lost my ability to change the slide.

There we go.

I just wanted to give you a couple of examples of how this would work with some recently completed projects.

So this is the eight.

It is a recently completed building in the downtown O2 district.

It is one block from City Hall.

So you walk a block northwest from here, and you'll see this building on the ground.

Their base FAR is 5.4.

So that's what you can do without entering the amenity incentive system.

The max FAR is six.

So anything from 5.4 to 6 is going to require those amenity incentive points, which is going to be just under 50,000 amenity incentive points to hit that max FAR.

25% of that that would be required for the affordable housing is 11,830 in a quarter amenity incentive points, which is going to basically equate to about 3,000 square feet of affordable housing with that four to one point ratio or 153,000 in the fee and lieu.

Similar process with this one.

This is a residential project.

It's in the downtown mixed use district, which is a lower density district in our downtown.

Very similar that the base FAR is four and the max FAR is five.

So there's a difference of 0.5 FAR there.

This project would have needed 57,000 amenity incentive points, which equates to about 14,000 required for affordable housing or 3,500 square feet of affordable housing and just under 190,000 of fee and lieu.

We provided some additional examples in your amenity incentive system.

Some of those are in progress.

I didn't want to put them on blast and upset their current permitting.

But we pulled the ones in progress rate from their applications on what they are being required for amenity incentives.

So the range of those was essentially from 150,000 to 300,000 in fee and lieu.

So we don't think this is overly impactful to the bottom line of these projects.

We do understand the frustration of projects that are currently through the permitting process, uh, sort of having a different track all of a sudden.

Um but uh in sort of in the long run, this is a very small amount compared to uh the overall cost of these projects.

And uh that was a very short bit on downtown.

We are again asking planning commission to direct us to hold the public hearing, but it is at your discretion.

And with that, Chair, I'll hand it back to you.

Thank you.

Um, I have you first again, if you willing.

I was expecting it.

Okay.

Uh a couple very quick things.

Um, if you know, um, can you tell us how much actual affordable housing has been produced or is in the pipeline under the IOC?

I knew at one point.

I don't have that number off the top of my head.

I can tell you a much easier number to keep in my head.

Uh about 5% of the units created through the IOC were affordable, which is much higher than normal for downtown.

Um council did express to us through the IOC process that they'd like to see that number go up, which is why we have uh added this to the amenity incentive program to try to push more affordable housing.

You can see it's not a ton of affordable housing, but hopefully between this and the uh four to one ratio incentive for exempting square footage, uh, we can get more affordable housing in our downtown or at least get some fee in lieu so that our office of housing can start sort of building a war chest, so to speak, around uh affordable housing.

That's great.

Um we heard several folks uh testify about essentially there's not enough benefits offered in this land use code to be able to do the affordable housing.

Um, how much credence do you put on that?

Um I mean, so we're essentially exchanging one amenity for another.

So it's not like they would have to do more amenity, though the ratios of that bonus are different.

So uh they might receive a much larger bonus to points depending on what type of amenity they are.

I think open space has something like a 16 to one bonus.

So we may be requiring more square footage, for example, of affordable housing because of that ratio, but the actual requirements for points are exactly the same.

Um, and this works in the exact same way that our current requirement to provide open space as that first amenity in the amenity incentive system is operating.

So this isn't a new structure, it's just putting a new thing into that existing structure.

Right.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

And lastly, there was a comment made about that there's been no outreach to the building property owners.

What do you say about that?

Sure.

Uh we have held several meetings with the Bill View Development Committee, which is sort of our standing meeting for the development community.

Um we've so we've presented home to them several times.

Downtown was included in that presentation.

Uh, strike draft was obviously released in March of this year.

Uh we've also presented to Plush a few times, which is the city's Chamber of Commerce Development Group and Land Use Group.

Uh, we presented in NAOP, which is uh full of development attorneys.

Uh, and we did agree to hold a meeting with Plush uh on the 24th, I believe it is.

So uh we are doing outreach.

We think we've done outreach to downtown developers throughout this process um through our channels that we use to engage the development community.

So you feel comfortable with the outreach to the line for me.

Thank you.

Commissioner Commissioner Gephol.

If you're ready.

Yeah.

Um questions.

One is um yeah, um, I had a couple of questions.

The first has to do with uh um a point that you just were making about the number of points.

You know, I can appreciate the number of points being the same, but is the is the impact and the economics really the same?

Because you were suggesting that maybe it's easier to get the the open space points than it is to get the um affordable housing uh points.

I'm just trying to figure out impacts and whether it's whether we're really just uh um substituting one priority for another or whether it's having a tangible impact upon you know the um financial viability of development.

Yeah, I mean, you can see in the examples that the overall costs are are quite low.

Um 200,000 on a downtown project is quite low.

Um I can't speak to the viability of you know downtown projects, but uh 200,000 is a very small number in the total cost of that project.

Um we do have, as we did an economic analysis for Homo, we also do one with downtown that included the amenity incentives.

We do think it's relatively balanced there.

Um in discussions with downtown developers that are not currently in the permitting process.

You know, we've heard interest in using the uh $13 fee and loo for more than just the 25%, to be quite honest.

So um it's certainly $13 a square foot is likely a lower cost than it would cost to build a square foot of plaza space in downtown Bellevue.

Okay.

Um second question is just on um the um the potential issue of vesting for those um projects which are already in the queue.

Um uh would it be feasible to um allow um folks that are already in the queue to be able to qualify under the existing system as opposed to having to redo everything um related to their projects?

Um, you know, in in order to meet this new standard.

We'd have to talk to the city attorney's office.

Um as you all are probably aware of vesting is very complicated.

It's been a hot button issue with the development community for a while now.

It was updated recently, um, but it's something we can follow up on.

Uh, we have made the commitment to those projects that vested to the intern ordinance that they would remain vested to that ordinance um and would not have to follow the phase two requirements that would have to be built into the actual ordinance adopting HOMA.

Um, but for the any changes to vesting, we're gonna have to talk to City Attorney's Office and see how we would have to work that into the existing vesting language in the land use code.

Okay.

Um then one other point that was raised in the written communications was the additional development flexibility or ADF program.

Um, and how it interfaces with this.

Is that what what are your thoughts on that?

Um, is it does it make sense to try to adjust that, or does this adversely affect affect the availability of that program?

I mean, I think it depends on the feeling of the viability.

The development community has made that argument that point five is it's not worth it anymore.

Um so it's something we could look at and re-examine, we can talk to them about and come back uh next time with any adjustments they think is are appropriate to make it it more functional.

Um but it's something we can certainly address with them when we meet with uh plush on the 25th.

I don't I don't have a preconception on it, but I just wanted to make sure it's something that's considered.

Yep.

Um great.

That's it.

Thank you.

Commissioner Millowsis.

Thank you.

Um I'd like to also touch base on the vesting issue.

There's I know there's a bunch of projects in master development uh preventing.

And this was discussed during the Wilburton uh code as well, where you could get vested up on land use applications so that you would not risk all this money on the work that you've done.

And it seems to make sense, right?

Like if I I would really encourage you to talk to the uh attorney's office, the city attorney's office to sort of this out because part of the trust in the in the city and the government is really important, which is something that we don't have when we grow up in third world countries, right?

Uh so I I would like you to really like follow up on that.

Uh also can you go back to the examples that you showed?

Uh especially the this is a construction by the the eighth, which is already built.

The data that is here is what would happen if the code was applied to this building.

Is the data that of the code that was actually applied available?

Like how different it is.

And yeah, I mean, yes, all the permits are public information, so we could certainly provide that to you at the next meeting.

Uh what I what I'm going to is if this was done under a code that was working, why are we seeing the need to change it?

I mean, there's clearly a lot of pushback from the development community.

Uh somebody mentioned today they have a good point, is like there's no there's no upsone provided here, like there was a role burstone or any other of or all of these other uh areas.

So why are we making it harder and more expensive to build here now?

So my my question is if if this was done and it's working, why fix it?

Sure.

Um it's working in some ways, right?

It's working for plazas and open space.

What it's not working for is affordable housing.

So very few projects in downtown through since the updating of the code for downtown eight years ago have provided affordable housing.

So we know that the current incentive, which is that 2.5 to one ratio, uh, is not working.

Um so what we are looking at is trying to get a code that works both for development and also provides affordable housing through that development and quite frankly, our most development rich area of the city.

So that's the reason for trying to adjust these programs is to get more affordable housing.

Um the priority definitely in when the code was updated was uh open space uh and we've seen that throughout downtown.

There's plazas everywhere, but it was not affordable housing.

So we've not seen development of affordable housing.

Okay.

I I would like to ask you to get answers to the questions that the letters and the uh testimony raised today.

I think those are very relevant questions about uh especially about the downtown code.

Thank you.

Commissioner Nilchan.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um I guess to start off, I share the same concerns about vesting as Commissioner Villa Basis and uh Commissioner Keppel.

So any information that you can get from the city attorney and provide to us would be uh very useful to me.

Um I also share the concerns of you know, changing the rules after you know someone has already uh gone through a process of planning out their project.

Um I'm wondering if is there any data that you've compiled or looked at from similar cities with similar amenity points programs that we could maybe look to to see how those programs affected development in that city.

I don't know that's a specific thing to ask, but it does that data exist.

Have you seen anything like that?

I can try to find it.

Um I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to just you know, this is quite unique to downtown Bellevue, the way that we're prioritizing open space.

So I can I can do my best to find it, but I can't promise you I'm gonna find any sort of comps.

But if you can find any benchmarks, that would be I think very useful to me just to see how this was you know actually affected development in different places.

Um wondering if you know what was the process in coming to the current ratios that we have for uh affordable housing versus the open um open areas here.

How did you come to the numbers that we have now?

Um so as I mentioned, we did that intern ordinance, and that was really to test the effectiveness of uh that four to one bonus ratio in downtown instead of the 2.5.

Uh we did find that that was effective in promoting affordable housing.

So we got, as I mentioned, 5% of those units created were affordable in in that range.

Um what we heard from council the last time we uh renewed that intern ordinance is that they would really like to see more than 5% of the affordable housing um be affordable.

Um usually we're trying to push towards that 10% number.

Um, make sure that every development is really paying towards affordable housing and providing some, well again, balancing that cost and making sure that we're not burdening these developments with you know millions of dollars in fees and also bumping up that incentive from one point to one to two point five to one to four as well in the permanent code.

So again, everything we do is kind of a balance and trying to be considerate of you know, costs and needs and also uh as was mentioned by public comment, and as we also acknowledge, you know, open space was a big priority for a reason for you know our council in 2017 and continues to be.

So making sure that we are still getting that open space.

So we don't want to take too much out of that uh points for open space and dedicate those to affordable housing because open space is very important to um everyone downtown and uh the whole community and our council.

So it's trying to calculate all of those things in balance and something that that will work to meet all of those goals at the same time.

Uh certainly will acknowledge that we don't necessarily get that right, uh, which is why this body is here to discuss and make recommendations.

Great.

And then uh my final question is um if let's say we wanted to provide some kind of additional benefit for um incentivizing developers for this 25% um affordable housing.

What might that benefit look like?

And I know I'm kind of putting you on the spot to come up with something here, but what do you think?

Um there's a couple things that I mean, so there's been the suggestion uh you also in the plush letter, which was to make the affordable housing not the first 25% required, but sort of as just an option in the main incentive table.

That's a greater incentive for them.

Um, but that obviously doesn't require that they provide any affordable housing.

Um and it's certain that certainly would work better for those projects that are in permitting, they wouldn't have to change anything.

Uh increasing that ratio, so the more points you get for providing affordable housing is a larger incentive.

That larger incentive doesn't apply if you are going to pay the fee in lieu because you don't get that ratio.

Uh so the incentive with the fee and loo would be to lower the fee in lieu um to lower those costs down.

Um the other large incentive we could give with this program is allow them to essentially double dip those points.

So apply the same square foot of affordable housing both to the amenity incentive program and to that four to one FAR uh exemption, uh, so they could use it twice, basically.

Okay.

Uh those were all my questions.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Uh thank you.

Uh so a couple of questions and kind of most of these are following up on what others have raised.

I I wanted to ask more about permitting.

It's been raised both by Commissioner Villevasis and in one of the comments tonight, and then in some of the comments we received in writing as a potential incentive.

Um I am curious if the city of Bellevue has ever done anything like that, where expedited permitting is provided as an incentive.

Yes.

Uh, Christina, correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe we currently expedite permits for projects that are 100% affordable.

So there are certain projects in the city that will get expedited permitting.

Um I will also note that there's been recent state law changes that have uh set very strict requirements on how long we can take to permit.

Uh so our permitting timelines do need to shorten under uh new state law as well.

So permits will hopefully get shorter in the near future.

Um, and under that state law expediting that is also going to be tough because they are quick turnaround times.

But it is something we could certainly look at um, sort of setting a threshold for how much affordable housing you would have to provide before you could get uh expedited permitting.

Um and that would likely be more of an internal policy um than a land use code policy.

Okay, got it.

How how much of an expedite are we talking about currently?

Do you know?

You don't have to know.

I believe they essentially go to the front of the line and they get assigned a planner.

Um so they are sort of on their number one priority to get completed through our permitting process.

But it is one note to consider there is Oh, thank you so much.

Um consideration there is that that is priority for 100% affordable housing.

So the complexity we'd be thinking about here is okay, how do these mixed market rate affordable housing projects relate if they were layered in two?

And like, do we even have the staff capacity to that?

So it's it's complicated, but yes, we do have um that kind of work underway.

Okay, got it.

Complicated, these are generally our most complicated projects as well.

So they are going to be the most difficult projects to expedite through the process.

Okay.

Okay.

I and and just I think in in that same bucket of questioning around can we can we look at permitting?

There were also kind of comments made around things not penciling out downtown to be able to do these things.

Um so I I share the questions from a few different commissioners just to better understand how this does pencil out and and how we make it pencil out um to better incentivize if it's if it's not if it's not working and the comments are coming in that it that it's not.

Um it was really helpful to hear about the council's uh city council's objective to address affordable housing in downtown and the need to incentivize that in particular.

So just kind of trying to follow on to that thought process.

How can we just make this more effective?

Um, and then the last is just a plus one on the vesting.

Um I think there isn't anything we can do uh that's more important than creating public trust in our processes and regulatory certainty is right up there in in the top of that list.

So um just would if that is something we can handle um from a code perspective, not just in this circumstance, but more broadly to enable um a legacy clause.

That's helpful.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Uh two questions.

One is uh does this uh does the current um IOC is it set to expire at any point or is it um Yeah, IOC expired about a year ago at this point.

Um Yeah, we had I think five projects take advantage of the IOC uh while it was in effect.

Uh those do have to be temporary regulations, so we can't push them for too long.

Um it was in effect for about a year and a half.

So uh we we did uh extend it twice under the terms of the IOC, basically state law allows you to do those in six month chunks.

So IOC has been expensive has been expired for a while now.

Uh no plans to bring that back anytime soon.

Okay.

Um second thing is in terms of kind of this give and take a little bit on uh changing the requirements, but you know, providing incentives for to do so.

I'm gonna tap on the point I made earlier.

Also, if we know that parking requirements are going to start moving downwards, maybe that's also an incentive structure that we could provide um in lieu of uh, or like if they choose to go down this pathway of uh the uh either field new or affordable housing.

So if we already know that things are progressing in that direction, then we might as well just provide incentives in that same direction.

Um and then the last thing I'll say is uh, you know, I think we're here to give direction.

I do have a preference to split out the public hearing uh between the downtown parts and the rest of it.

I feel like the issues that we're addressing here feel very different uh versus the earlier one.

I don't know if that's something that staff is able to help us do, but um, I want to pose that as a possibility.

Okay.

Um time 9.30.

Um I think I have a couple questions.

I'm a downtown resident.

I never got out and I subscribe to everything in City of Bellevue, basically.

Even on Friday, I received a traffic updates, which is odd.

But um how can we reach to residents like like me, right?

I live in downtown.

I'm involved pretty in, but I didn't see any emails or anything to get uh touch in this specific downtown HOMA.

I wish I had something.

I know sometimes I receive some cards that it comes about like, oh, this loss next to your home is getting upsol and blah, blah, blah.

We need your commitment scan this barcode and I go and I write a survey.

But like, how did you guys outreach to the resident?

Because I know when people are talking about a downtown, they sing it's all only rental or rental should not say anything, or um, they don't count it like people who live in um kind of residential area or apartment buildings or condos.

Um, how can we outreach those people in downtown specifically?

Sure.

Um, so we outreach to people in downtown the same way we've outreached to other groups, um, specifically residents.

So uh anyone that signed up for our email list.

So as Christina mentioned, that was about 20,500 people received those emails on HOMA.

There have been several of those emails um both with invites to events and updates to HOMA um related to the code.

Um, so that's really our sort of main form of outreach.

We also you know advertised through social media.

Uh we have we held an event in downtown.

So there was an event at City Hall that was in person.

Um they're certainly open to all the virtual events, they're open to all the other uh sort of public events we have in downtown.

So residents are welcome to come to Bellview Development Committee if they want to, but um, you know, it's I will say engagement is it is a two-way street, right?

But you know, it's I will say engagement is it is a two-way street, right?

So if someone, if the community is not going to engage with us, we can't engage with them.

Um so you know, those people that are signed up for our email list, especially the ones that are related to planning um or engage with us on social media should have seen uh the home uh updates basically.

Add me to the list.

Um the second question that I have for some reason I missed that.

Um when you were talking about the all the slide that you guys have at about all the engagement.

Do you mind to add the dates there?

Like I think it'd be helpful because I heard you said it started from 2023 or something.

Like it'd be helpful if you guys sell like two virtual on, I don't know, one ritual this Monday, like one is gonna go be September 26th, and all of those.

I think be helpful to know the dates and how they're spacing out.

And then I know we all receive still my first question.

Uh I know we all get a public um um newspaper from the city.

I'm wondering this is some effort that city communication team needs to put efforts, like maybe it should be um really specific to the neighborhood and people get the public hearings and all of those in those newspapers.

I think those newspapers goes quarterly.

I don't know, don't code me.

But like something like that, if we can be proactive and people in their neighborhood get a little bit more like I love that I get quality of the water, like what happened in this like culture conversation event on all of those, but I prefer to have that one and know these are the public hearing is happening or these are the events that's happening that related to me, uh, and then just get somehow involved in it.

And I understand it's gonna go be hard because sometimes we make a decision now for like next week to have some um public hearing or two weeks from now, but I feel we should do something and not not sure who's in charge of those newspapers that get mailed, but I know it's a lot of money involved with it, and what what if we can tangle it with the public hearings and some engagement?

That was my first question.

The second question I have is um about how many permits I can count them.

I think when we have the call together, I was counting how many lot have been permitted in downtown Bellevue that will be impacted with this change.

I want to know that one.

And then how many of them are in the pipeline?

And then how many of them is like I think was the master plan the same as IOC?

Is it the same thing that the developer community is mentioning that?

I don't know.

That was saying like there was something, and I heard from a couple of uh communities, developer communities that about city Bellevue promised us and they are not doing what they promised.

And this is the worst thing that we want to hear.

Second to what you said, I'm from that country that there's no trust between government and the nation, and it sucks.

Then I think this is not good if we promise.

So yeah, that's why I'm here.

If we promise something to our to our people, I think we should keep, we should try to make it happen.

Um, and then I understand about that um fee and loo that it's gonna go be 200k for like a big giant tech project like Avenue, right?

But I'm wondering if we are changing in the middle of the process, now they need to go and change the floor plans to figure out something, or do you think no, they're not gonna go change anything and they're just gonna say, oh, we need to just pay 200k extra.

Like if this is that easy, I think this is something that we need to ask from our developer.

Honestly, is it gonna go be the impact that they need to go and change everything?

Because they really wanted to have two units affordable and they need to change their floor plans to which unit they want to pick, or they just gonna go pay us 200k.

Because if it's only 200K, I think that's gonna go impact my decision making if it's that easy.

But what I'm hearing from developing a community, I think is harder than that.

And again, correct me if I didn't understand it correctly.

And I think I want to add that commercial, returning the commercial and retail people in the um in the development um lots that we have.

Like, for example, for Wallace property, I know it's on because it's close to my home.

It's on Bell Vaya and between 12 and 10, and there's so many um uh tenants and retailer there.

Like, and I know they want to build in the uh in the phases, then can we do something about if they retain those uh businesses?

They can some incentive if we can be creative about that part and bring it up to them.

If you guys have another round of commitment, like commute communication with them.

Sorry, I'm losing it.

It's like 10 PM.

Like if you can bring up these and see how they feel about it, that'd be helpful.

These are the three things that I have.

Should we go second round?

Okay.

Commissioner Ferris.

And do you want to answer anything or are you a good?

Uh we will follow up on the number of permits for downtown.

And yes, we will discuss uh at our meeting with Flush.

We can discuss some commercial.

Okay.

And then if you have a table, just say like how many, how many um develops as developments um lots are impacted.

That'd be really helpful for me.

I can kind of count them, but I really don't know in which phase of permitting there are when they put the proposal, is it done, is not done.

And then the other thing that I was going to tell Commissioner Kennedy is about the AI system the city of Bellevue is doing that is going to go really reduce the time of the permitting.

I think they're in the perm they're in the pilot section now and knock the wood.

Um, but um that's another thing I think you guys can talk with Rebecca Horner and I talk with the with the software company who are doing because uh AI project.

I think that's a really exciting thing that it's gonna go really reduce a time of permitting, hopefully, and Commissioner Ferris, your turn.

Mine will be very quick.

Um I'm one you had mentioned at the very last part of when you were chatting to me about how being able to potentially double dip on.

I think that's a great idea.

So I would very much support that.

And I also agree with Commissioner Liu that it feels like when we have this public hearing um to separate out the neighborhood centers from downtown.

It's it's too easy to get things confused, and I think it would go better um and more clearly somehow we could separate it.

Um Commissioner Geppo.

Yeah.

Um thanks.

I'm usually kind of gung-ho for like proceeding with the public hearing and and uh and getting things uh completed.

This is one where I am not feeling quite that way.

I I feel like this could use um another study session and a little bit more maturation on some of the issues that we talked about um tonight, including the uh you know, more details on the uh on the economics of um, you know, both the general um fee in lieu and and the impacts associated with downtown.

So I my thought is that uh we we don't um schedule the public hearing um quite yet.

That's my two cents.

Okay, Commissioner Velavesis.

I plus one uh Commissioner Goppel's request to not schedule the the meeting yet.

Also, to talk about why these price are not penciling, and we're talking about 200,000 is just 200,000, but that's I mean, the the way it's it's a death by a thousand cuts, right?

So you add here and not here, and not here, not here, and then all of a sudden, I mean two hundred thousand that could be half of the profit that the number makes over five years.

And it's just if we keep adding and adding uh requirements, it's just gonna be hard to to do this.

So we really need to really listen to what people are saying and make uh a sound decision about how we're gonna proceed with this.

That's that's it.

Can I add one more thing briefly?

And I I just wanted to um say it's not a reflection on the great work the staff's done in this area, because I think you've done a really good job, but it's a complicated topic.

Thank you.

Commissioner Nilchia.

Yeah, thank you.

Um personally, I I think I err on the side of moving forward with the public hearing, but I would like to see a split between the general plan and the downtown plan.

Um just for ease of access for people during public comments during that time.

Um my preference is move forward with the public hearing, but um since there are so many things um uh kind of up in the air.

Uh I can be persuaded.

Thanks, Commissioner Kennedy.

Oh, but persuade, I agree.

Um, I would I would just pause, take a moment to review some of this information, um, both on both of these, just to get a bit more of the data that we asked for today.

And I just want to echo the fact that I don't, I I this is not a reflection on the amazing work that I think has been done, all the outreach.

I am so thankful.

Um, this is incredibly complicated and complex, and there are so many pieces of this that I think just being able to have some of that comparative analysis associated with here's what it was before, here's where it is today.

This is why we are doing it this way, is really helpful.

Um I I wasn't here in May, so maybe you know, but but I think you know, hearing that echoed from others, I think I think that would be beneficial.

Um just just to get just to get our heads around it, just some more concreteness both in both of these different HOMA opportunities downtown and and otherwise.

Um schedule of events uh was brought up um uh by Chair Conloo very, very much support that the more we can get information out there about opportunities to engage, um the better.

It's great to be able to hear, I think Commissioner Villa Vasis mentioned we got to listen to the people.

And I think you've done a ton of outreach, just being able to get that somewhere that we can absorb and and look at.

Um downtown was the the context in which it was raised, but I think in everywhere, the the more we can we can make all of the opportunities to engage that staff is doing such a great job of of presenting um apparent and present for folks.

That's great.

And I I have to I have to take the bait on AI.

Boy, am I excited um about the opportunities to be able to expedite permitting through through AI?

I also think there's great opportunities when we're discussing the CAO on maps and and being able to do some of the analysis associated with uh critical areas.

Um I also think it could be helpful for the public being able to do code research and and look onto the website and really access information about prior meetings and information.

So really excited about that.

Um so thank you.

Yeah, I think some of this is also just human nature because who really engages with the project until the very you know, like deadline.

Um I I I totally see that.

Um I I'm comfortable splitting it out, and I think I'd be okay with scheduling the public hearing for the first uh part of what we discussed.

I think that one, you know, we've gotten a lot of public input, and we don't have to make a decision at the time of the public hearing.

A lot of it's we can you know give people the space to speak and then decide on it later.

Um, I think the downtown one just given um, I think you guys have a couple future stakeholder meetings coming up that that might be a good one to to push back a week.

Um, so I'd be comfortable with scheduling with splitting and then scheduling the uh uh excluding downtown uh uh home up piece and then uh you know pushing back the uh the downtown one a little bit.

Um I think that's it.

Yeah, yeah, I was going to say the same thing that the public hearing doesn't mean that we're gonna go make a decision and do the recommendation to the council.

We can have a public hearing and they have a study session again, one more time with us, and we can't say like we need another session if this is something that the commission fails.

But I just I feel if we split, we're gonna go have a vote for this is how I feel.

We're gonna go have a vote to have the first section.

Like, do you guys feel comfortable if we split it?

Yes.

Before we take a vote on splitting, does that make sense and does it help or that's what is going?

Sorry.

You're welcome.

I know I'm so letting people chairing, but do you guys feel comfortable about that?

I think okay, Matt is coming.

Oh, geez.

Matt is coming.

Oh, Matt.

So I didn't, I'm not gonna have a chance to give the training.

I know.

But but you need to follow the process for land use process for this Luca.

You can't split up a public hearing.

You need to have one public hearing on this LUCA.

I don't know if that's what the planning commission is considering is splitting up a public hearing into two public hearings on one legislative item.

That that's not consistent with the process for it should be in one day, right?

Okay, one public hearing.

Now you could you could split up the presentation for the public hearing where the general presentation comes first, you leave the public hearing open, you you take comments on the general, and then staff can present the downtown and you can take comments on the downtown all in one public hearing.

But the planning commission doesn't have authority to to change the code to have two public hearings on one legislative item.

Because we didn't go to the training.

Um that's in the code.

Um, I'm just trying to figure out because if if these are two different, if these are in effect, two different subjects.

I mean, what's what's SACR saying about having them in one land use code amendment?

Well, well, I I think and and development services can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was going to be one LUCA.

Isn't that the direction and the scope that that council provided?

So council anticipated that this would be one land use code amendment, which is one legislative action.

I think that's correct.

So if if one if I'm hearing what the commission wants to do correctly, is the commission is saying we want to split this up into two different process for land use code decisions, which is two different legislative actions, not one.

We're more suggesting is splitting the the time for the public hearing into we can't.

Yeah, yeah, we can I guess that's that's kind of the question though.

You need to close it as one.

You open the public hearing and then you close the public hearing.

Oh, okay.

But it's one public hearing.

I see.

And I think what the commission's wanting to do is have one public hearing on the general, close that, make a decision, and then have a second public hearing on the downtown portion.

Another day.

Yeah.

Correct.

Which we could continue the public, you could leave the public hearing open and have it over the course of two meetings, but you can't close the public hearing and then have discussion on half the legislative item.

Oh, okay.

And and then and then make a decision on that and then turn around and have a second public hearing.

That that's not the process that they're well, that'd be issue with the staff if we keep it open for two weeks or something, because they're gonna go just maybe receive more comments.

I go, okay.

Oh, okay.

That Kate can that's things similar, right?

Um, folks that were here for the adoption of the comp plan.

Um the commission chose to hold the public hearing open across two meetings because uh there was a heightened level of interest, and basically you just didn't think you could accommodate everybody in one meeting.

You'd be here until 2 a.m.

Um and and so you open there was a staff presentation, you open the public hearing, there was no discussion, nobody closed it, you just ended the meeting, and then at the next meeting, you continued the public hearing, people had the opportunity to comment.

Um not again, but to continue, other people can continue to comment, and then you close the public hearing and then you discuss the entire comprehensive plan, all of the elements and and uh made your recommendation.

Does commission fail that we should do that?

Like I think it was successful last time, but if you don't fail, this is just my own personal opinion.

I think the most straightforward approach is and thank you for the clarification.

Um I would have preferred two separate ones, but given that that situation, I think that we should just have another study session, and at that next study session, hopefully that we would direct study.

Any other discussion?

Everybody's comfortable?

I agree with that.

Can I just ask a procedural question on how to move forward?

Is there a reason why or I guess for my understanding, if we schedule it for a public hearing, we have the we have then the option, if at that time we feel comfortable to move it on to the council, but if we don't, we also have the option to set it out further again.

Is there a downside to just doing that just so we have the option to pass it at that hearing?

But my thought though is that we are asking for some additional information from staff.

Um, and it seems like it would be good to get that under our belt before we open it to public hearing.

I I think and then plus there's gonna be meetings at plush that might inform us.

I don't know, that's just my choice.

I'm just gonna say between public comment and our discussion if we delay too much.

And you can and you could also always have study sessions after the public hearing.

Yeah, I mean, part like the process would normally anticipate that the public hearing is is your venue to get public input.

That's your fact-finding venue, but the planning commission doesn't have discussion during that public hearing.

You're getting information from the public provided to you, but then the code anticipates that there might be follow-up study sessions after you get all of that information.

Yeah, oh, sorry, I was just gonna note um a lot of the this backing information that we've been requested to provide will be available in the packet for the public hearing as well for the public to consider.

You know, they won't have the benefit of the PC discussion, but just something to consider.

Okay.

And if we go go, Commissioner and Kevin.

I was just gonna say I I support what um Commissioner Ferris was saying.

I mean, I to me, I I feel like there's enough things that we were asking for feedback on and enough additional information that I would feel more comfortable if we had one more study session and then go to a single integrated um public hearing to just one public hearing.

And Kate, how are we doing from the calendar standpoint and all the due dates that we need to uh I'll have to work with the project managers?

Um Thanks, man.

We missed you.

To to um look at the calendar a little holistically.

We're we're pretty late in December, so that's um we didn't have a lot of things.

feel more comfortable if we had one more study session and then go to a single integrated um public hearing just just one public hearing and Kate how are we doing from the calendar standpoint and all the due dates that we need to uh I'll have to work with the project managers um thanks man to we missed you to to um look at the calendar a little holistically we're we're pretty late in December so that's um we didn't have a little move things around pretty good christmas eve here oh yeah um then I do I sense well that we prefer to have another study session and that time we're gonna go make a decision for one big public hearing for both of them okay um any other round of questions okay motion to I have some minutes to approve okay can I get a motion to approve minutes of the July 9th and 23rd um I'd like to um move that we approve the um minutes for both of those meetings any discussion all in favor a Ferris you are going for the favorite part I would like to be able to make a motion that we adjourn our meeting second any discussion all in favor?

Aye thank you everybody thanks for audience I was asking if no we would go there I'd be like lack of