Good morning.

Um, sorry, good evening, and welcome to have an echo.

Okay, thank you.

Uh, good evening, and welcome to the October 8th uh city of plan uh City of Bellevue Planning Commission meeting.

Um, this evening.

Mr.

Zimmerman, this is for your first notice.

You're not allowed to block the camera with your sign.

Um, for my second notice, you will be out of this meeting.

Okay.

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

Tonight's meeting will provide an opportunity for public comment during the oral communication portion of the agenda.

All written comments have been submitted prior to 11am today, Wednesday, October 8th.

And we'll be summarizing to the record.

We have three study sessions item tonight.

Um, the first session item is an introduction to the two neighborhood area plans that we will update next year as a part of the great neighborhood program, Eastcale and Factoria.

The second session item is um our discussion about housing opportunity in mixed use areas, also known as HOMA.

And a third study session item is an update on the affordable housing strategy.

While the planning commission does not make a recommendation on this, we may ask to make um recommendation on actions that follow the strategy in this plan.

Okay, let us move forward with the roll call.

Commissioner Ferris.

Commissioner Gopel, it's absent.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Present.

Commissioner Nil Chian.

Here.

Commissioner Velavesis.

I'm here.

Councillor Mliazan, Deputy Mayor Manacutian.

Here.

And I'm um Chair Hon Liu.

I want to recognize um that Commissioner Ferris has submitted her resignation from the planning commission, effective the end of the November.

Um, the city will uh be posting a vacancy later this week, and I encourage all who are interested in serving uh the Bellevue community to apply.

I have something written down and I need to read for you, and I write it down because I don't want to cry.

Um Chair Ferris, you will always be my chair.

Um Carolyn, you have been such a special mix of brilliance, empathy, and calm strengths.

Um, your leadership has always been thoughtful, kind, and deeply rooted in compassion.

You have shown all of us that planning is really about people, not just building and codes.

Uh, we will miss you so much on the commission, but hopeling is really lucky to have you.

Thank you for everything you have done.

Your heart and impact will stay with us.

Thank you.

Can I get a motion to approve um tonight's agenda?

Uh I move to approve tonight's agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion.

All in favor.

Aye.

Any reports from Deputy Mayor Momalakucheon?

Yeah, thank you so much.

Uh, I don't have anything prepped, but I also want to start with saying how uh amazing you have been.

I think when you joined, I was the maybe the chair of the planning right after.

Right after Am or so.

And uh what uh like there are many aspects of how amazing you are.

Uh, I think some of them being mentioned, your compassion, your experience, especially in housing, your kindness, your strategic thinking, how balanced uh you are.

But maybe the most important thing is how much you want to learn new stuff.

Like you have all of the experience, but you were still willing to learn new stuff, and that's very unique.

I have learned a lot from you.

You are going to be missed, and um, it's going to be very hard to find anyone that can be uh close to you in all of those attributes that you bring to the table.

So thank you as your co-planning commissioner and as uh a friend.

I really appreciate you.

And whatever you do next, I'm sure is going to be as meaningful and adding value to the community that you are always doing that.

So thank you.

Uh two updates, yes.

World Cup 2026.

Uh do you know how many weeks do we have to that?

Anyone?

It's in June, then that's not how many weeks though.

That's not how many weeks though.

Six plus three, nine, more to 36.

35 weeks and one day.

Uh there are three countries.

Of course, we are one of them.

It's going to be in Seattle, but of course, we believe Light Trail would be open and is a great opportunity for us to show Bellevue.

Uh, hopefully, some match day programming and the city is doing their best.

I think we still need a loss of prep.

We are not there, how we move people, traffic, congestion, and all of those uh kind of hopefully we do a stuff that is going to be there forever.

All of the infrastructure improvement that we do is going to be a kind of uh long lasting.

The other, so uh yesterday we had a lot of debrief on that.

So if you are interested, go and watch them.

The other thing that was very important and I'm sure uh was new for me was our hazard mitigation plans.

How we are prepping our city for some future national hazard.

I didn't know if you have your prepping for volcano, apparently we are.

I didn't know if you're prepping ourselves for dam failure, apparently we are.

I knew about some harsh weather or while uh or fire or earthquakes, but there are some stuff that I didn't even know we are going to hopefully not, but we may face.

So that was the main two things that we received.

And I talk about the uh minimum uh sentencing for uh repeat offenders.

Uh we have some tweak to that, and last night we now that's uh going to be an ordinance and we uh approved that as uh as a body.

So any question on any of those topics or any general question.

Great.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks.

Um now we're gonna go ask um staff, Liz and Catness to provide us any update about the meeting schedule or any update that you have.

Sure.

The schedule is current through the end of the year in your packet.

I'm working with staff on agenda items through the first quarter of next year.

Um so I hope to add at least January topics to your next meeting so you'll have an idea of what's coming up.

Um I also wanted to mention that I'm going to be sending out a survey to get your feedback on how the year has gone for the planning commission and any ideas for improvement.

Um I'll be sending that soon.

I got a draft today.

Um, and I'll be presenting the results of the survey at the retreat.

Um your participation is very appreciated.

Uh, the other topics for the retreat are um the overview of development in the city that you have usually at your annual retreat and uh this year an overview of the city demographics by our city demographer.

Yeah.

Um, we start with the oral and written communication.

The total time for oral communication is 30 minutes.

The speaker will be show up uh allowed two or three minutes um to speak.

Staff liaison Kate Ness will call on speakers in order in which um they have registered either online or in person.

If anyone from public has missed the 5:30 uh PM registration deadline, um you may well provide public comments if there is a remaining time.

Please use the raise hand function in the zoom.

Um there are rules adopted by city council limiting the topic about uh which the public may speak during the hour or meeting under 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 and duties of the planning commission.

Additional information about the rules uh you can find in the ordinance 6752.

Um, Kate, would you provide a summary of the written communication that we received?

Sure.

So, in addition to the 14 comments that I forwarded to you since the packet was published last week.

I have received four comments this afternoon.

Um person said they would be providing oral comment, but I don't see them on the list.

Um that person uh wrote to support HOMA, but had a couple of um changes that uh they requested.

Another comment was in support of option A for HOMA.

Uh a third uh opposed the amendment requiring the first 25% of the amenity points to come from affordable housing.

And the fourth comment, I believe you have a copy of in front of you.

Okay.

Any questions?

Okay, thank you.

We have total 30 minutes for oral communication before our scheduled business meeting.

Each speaker will have three minutes to speak.

And we mentioned earlier, topic are limited to matter that we are related to the city of Bellevue government and and within power on duty of the planning commission.

We're going with the speakers who haven't spoken last session first because we have a limited time.

Kate, I will let you to start over there.

We have 12 speakers registered or signed up.

Oops.

So that they were speaking on HOMA, except for one person, so I could let that person go first.

Okay.

That is oh, yes, it's uh I'm getting a lot of reverb, and so I am afraid it's too loud.

The first person, the person that's not speaking on HOMA is Leslie Geller.

Uh can you raise your hand?

All right, and uh that will be followed by Layla uh Kadami, who is also online.

Let me all right.

Leslie, can you hear me?

You bet.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay.

Hello, commissioners.

Um, I'm commenting tonight, um, following up on a letter that I sent on Monday evening about the primarily Eastgate, a little bit about the Factoria neighborhood area plans or NAP.

Um, so I live in Eastgate for over 31 years, and I'm also president and secretary of the Eastgate Community Association.

Um, I've been involved with the Eastgate NAP actually starting in July, and I've sent out communications to my lists about it.

Um my comment tonight is specifically on the neighborhood scan that happened on October 4th, last Saturday morning.

Umfortunately, staff scheduled them at exactly the same time, Eastgate and Factoria.

So we had to choose.

Um, I chose Eastgate and the ECA VP chose Factoria.

Um I asked two different times about why they were simultaneously scheduled, and I was told both times that it was most convenient for staff to do it that way.

And frankly, I think the convenience aspect should be on the side of residents who the staff wants to talk to.

So I arrived, I think just before the uh 10 a.m.

start time, and I was completely shocked to see almost 80% of the people there were high schoolers.

I have never seen this before in any uh city event.

Um, high schoolers certainly don't get involved in East Gay Community Association events since we've been doing them for six years.

Um I learned after asking that the students were essentially bribed to go on the scan.

They received extra credit at school as well as volunteer hours.

Um they hung together, they weren't interested in the reason for the walk.

Um let's see.

When I let's see, I asked how come there were all the students.

The staff were super excited about all of the students, and um the rationale is well, there's 16 now, but in 2044, they'll be in their mid-30s, and they should have a say in the direction of Eastgate, which I don't know that any of them even live in Eastgate because on the sign-up I saw other neighborhoods.

Um the other thing I learned was that anybody who lives, works, plays, goes to school in these neighborhoods, is given equal weight in the NAP, and I vehemently disagree with that.

Thanks.

Our next speaker is um Layla Kadami.

Can you raise your hand, please?

Can you hear me?

I can.

All right, go ahead.

Good evening, Commissioners.

My name is Layla Kademi.

I'm an attorney at Hill is Clark Martin and Peterson.

I'm here this evening to provide feedback on the current HOMA draft on behalf of several clients who own property in mixed-use areas.

HOMA should remove outdated barriers and give developers flexibility to build more residential dwelling units in areas well suited for growth.

We support the renew the removal of the limit on the number of structures per acre and the limit on dwelling units per acre.

These changes will increase housing supply and bring the city closer to reaching its housing targets.

Please make sure the zoning standards align with the building code standards and typical building types, allow mezzanines and partially buried floors not to count against FAR.

We urge you to remove suburban standards like impervious surface and lot coverage.

The recent Wilburton changes eliminated these provisions, and you should do the same in HOMA.

Please provide adequate flexibility for ground level commercial and active use requirements and recognize that some of these areas do not have a do not have meaningful foot traffic.

Finally, please be very thoughtful about mandatory affordability requirements.

It's difficult to get the balance right in legislation that spans so much of the city.

We urge your continued support for a practical approach to incorporating affordable units and where a site includes both townhome units and apartments to allow consolidation of affordable units in the apartment building.

This flexibility will encourage a mix of different housing types.

Bellview needs more housing and home is a critical step towards making that happen.

We appreciate your consideration of these comments.

Thank you.

Thanks.

The next speaker is Ruth Lipscomb, who is virtual.

Can you raise your hand?

Thank you.

And that will be followed by Ed Rittenhouse, who is here in person.

Can you hear me, Ruth?

Yes, I can.

Go ahead.

Good evening, Deputy Mayor Ballicutian, planning commissioners and city staff.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

My name is Ruth Lipscomb, and I'm a member of the Newport Community Coalition.

I'm here to share my enthusiastic support of a bold HOMA plan to allow housing in Bellevue's mixed-use areas.

I've lived in the Newport Shores neighborhood of Bellevue for over 30 years now.

And during that time, two related things have happened near me.

Housing has gotten wildly expensive, and our neighborhood shopping area in Newport Hills has become a ghost town.

I used to shop there often in the 1990s, but not anymore.

These aren't localized problems, of course.

Housing is wildly expensive across our region, and the city has many underutilized sprint malls.

I understand why those smaller centers are derelict, and frankly, they're sad.

The surrounding density no longer provides enough customers for most businesses.

And we all know why housing is so expensive.

There's just not enough of it at the right price close to jobs.

You can help solve both these problems of promoting housing and reinvigorating neighborhood centers by adopting a forward-looking HOMA plan.

Allowing plentiful housing can make it feasible for site owners to reimagine and reinvent their properties into neighborhood treasures.

A bustling, vibrant, and walkable shopping and living center in Newport Hills with community-focused amenities will truly be an asset for all of us.

My daughter recently moved close to Kelsey Creek Center, and it would be wonderful if there were more housing options next to that area too.

Please adopt a bold HOMA plan that includes both market rate and affordable housing.

For the Newport Hills Shopping Center, having three to five stories of housing makes perfect sense so that there's room to have both abundant open space and a town center feel.

It's also very important to me that you don't impose requirements that make it infeasible to develop this and other comparable properties.

We all know that no one develops land if they lose money.

So a generous HOMA plan can create a win-win-win-win for the city, for a developer for future new neighbors who will live there and for the wider neighborhood.

Please do everything you can to make sure projects can be built soon and built in a way that attracts a variety of businesses that are accessible by foot from the surrounding areas, including from East Trail, and that can be community gathering spaces for families, friends, and public events.

Thank you for making sure everyone who works in Bellevue can live here and enjoy all that Bellevue has to offer.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Our next speaker is uh Edmund Rittenhouse, followed by Sean Torsen, who is virtual.

I signed up a lot of the work ad.

Do you see me on the list somewhere?

No, I don't see one.

Can I get added or more than 10 people?

So you kind of sound easy.

All right, your microphone.

Go ahead.

Dear planning commissions.

I'm greatly concerned with the proposed changes to the HOMA.

I live in the Newport Hills area, and the increased building height changes to the HOMA that would allow 60 foot tall buildings and the and additional heights and uh levels to the housing around there is not appropriate for this or other similar mixed-use areas.

The existing buildings are currently three stories and have maxed out their parking lot capacities such that now the parking areas on the roads are also filled up.

The thought of a 50 plus percent increase in those mixed-use housing areas is totally unacceptable without a huge upgrade to the existing parking and the streets that the shopping areas rely on.

Additionally, the extra floors of units and people will increase the poor commuting that currently exists within the area.

The 1960s street designs are already not capable of adequately supporting the morning and evening commutes.

The additional height and people will only make the commuting mess worse.

Please do not approve the HOMA revision.

Thanks.

The next speaker is Sean Torsen.

And that will be followed by Alex Zimmerman.

Sean, can you hear me?

I can.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Well, good evening, commissioners and deputy mayor Melikucian.

My name's Sean Thorson, director of acquisitions for American Capital Group.

We're a Bellevue-based multifamily real estate developer and owner with nearly 40 years in this city.

Our company is major multifamily projects across the city of Bellevue.

I want to begin by thanking city staff for their dedication of this code update and the planning commission for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I'm here to express my strong support for the proposed changes, particularly HOMA option A, and to underscore that this change is greatly needed across the city, provided we implement it thoughtfully.

A key consideration is that no two sites are alike.

Each has unique variables such as size, configuration, and surrounding uses that can significantly impact feasibility.

For that reason, flexibility and less restrictive design standards and are essential if we want to maximize the number of sites in mixed-use areas that can benefit from your efforts.

There are, however, a few areas where the current draft goes too far.

One is building coverage and impervious service limits.

Capping building coverage at 65% makes development on sites under two acres nearly impossible.

For properties of this size, impervious coverage must be closer to 80% to allow projects to be financially viable.

We have a site that's been that's been preparing for years in anticipation of this code update, and this single restriction would prevent it from moving forward.

Two, mandatory retail requirements.

Not every site in the city is suited for retail.

When a location can support viable retail leasing, developers will build it voluntarily.

However, requiring retail in locations where market demand is insufficient turns it into a financial drain on the residential portion of the project.

This needs a common sense approach that considers differences across sites.

Addressing them now will unlock opportunities for projects that are ready to proceed immediately, including one of ours.

Thank you for your time, your commitment to this challenging work, and the opportunity to speak tonight.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I'm so sorry, guys.

I disabled men.

I need to find something.

Please.

What is I can see down comfortable?

This is a pro.

This would be good.

I can sit down comfortable.

Yeah.

I'm not too much sure.

Yeah, I need more little bites.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Oh, disabled men is no very good condition.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Book base.

Yeah.

Oops.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Good board.

You call my time hasn't started.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Good.

Yeah.

Uh my name Alex Zemmerman.

I don't know.

People know about me too much or not enough.

People know about me too much or not enough.

Yeah.

So I like you guys.

And exactly I love very much new new chair Carnival, you know what this means.

She's a brilliant.

She has too many shiny corner, you know what is mean, like uh terrorist, nuts anti-semite, crazy crazy, yeah.

Crazy, what is crazy?

I forgot my memory, not so good.

Oh, crazy female dog.

And what is very important, she absolutely copied from Mare Robinson.

So because Mare Robinson right now is a pure criminal right now.

Yeah, she will be in court, I guarantee you.

Yeah, for election, but as we have.

Okay.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah.

So and she has a very good partner.

Uh more Muhammad, more Muhammad is Iranian Muslim terrorist.

Uh, number one.

Yeah.

Uh making it.

It's gonna be past the time.

What?

Mr.

Alexander, if you cannot talk about the agenda item.

No, I don't talk about agenda item.

I talk about what is belonged.

What is below to your about ornament six, seven, two five.

It should be an agenda.

Exactly.

Is this your rules?

Yeah, possibly be talking about something, what is belong to.

Can we let the time go?

Okay, continue.

Yeah, I can speak.

Oh, good.

You're very nice people.

Yeah, you know rules sometimes.

So situation, what does we have right now is this call committee, very unique, you know what is mean.

Is this controlling by uh local uh council?

You know what is mean in a local council for my understanding is a pure criminal.

And the one from problem, what is we have right now is a camera, but is never show us faces.

And I complain to police about this dozen times officially, they give me a number of complaints.

Yeah, and I talk about this to manager to call to uh government, you know what is mean.

It's nothing changing across the street is no normal camera what is can show people faces.

It's okay.

For me, it's okay.

I spoke every day everywhere, so I'm not too much care about this.

Yeah, but freedom of speech, very important, guys.

Is this a point?

What does we have?

When you cannot see faces, it's not so good.

Yeah, I have experience with Seattle.

You know what this means for four years, never show people faces.

It's very interesting, you know what is meant.

Is mean Nazi guest up a fascist everywhere in King County because King County number one fascist county in America, number one in Trump list, one from 500.

Yeah.

So viva Trump, viva New American Revolution, stand up, slave in happy cow.

We need to stop and this bandita.

Your time is over.

Yeah, thank you very much.

No, yeah, yeah, uh second by second.

Our next speaker is Caramini, followed by Ann Rittenhouse.

I don't see her in the um room at this moment.

Do you want to go to the next one?

Yes, uh Ann Rittenhouse is our next speaker, followed by Jack McCullough.

Thank you.

This past year, the city has quickly made one housing decision after another.

Middle housing, D ADUs, lot splits, co-living, etc.

Each of these changes will increase density, eliminate parking, reduce tree canopies, and create both none, both known and even more scary unknown complications for current residents and the entire city.

Until we understand what the implications will be with all of these recent changes, HOMA just doesn't make any sense.

Home is trying to use a one size fits all approach that just doesn't work.

The mixed use areas, uh properties in the city are very different from each other.

Specifically, as you have heard many times, the Newport Hills area that this HOMA will impact sits on the crest of a hill.

Residents moving to Newport Hills are condemned to use a car.

This is partially due to this the steep topography of the area and the limit of only two streets to get off the hill, but it's also due to the lack of public transportation, lack of safe sidewalks, lack of say, and lack of safe bus lanes to get you on and off the hill.

I know because I'm a resident, and I'm a both an avid walker and a biker, but I have to use my car to get off the hill to go to the library, to my doctor, to the Y to work to the community club, or to the numerous uh numerous other establishments that I frequent.

But I have to use my car to get off the hill to go to the library, to my doctor, to the Y, to work to the community club, or to the numerous numerous other establishments that I frequent.

Many times in the past 10 years, and again during the recent comp plan work, the Newport Hills residents have come together to oppose any upzoning of the commercial district.

And it's unconscionable that we have to do it again.

The fact is that additional additional increased density that this HOMA would allow on this site is not consistent with the character of Newport Hills, nor can it be supported by our limited 1960s era infrastructure.

And it will certainly not provide affordable housing.

Do not drink the Kool-Aid being offered by special interest developers and even city staff.

I urge you to stop the gross overdevelopment of the Newport Hills neighborhood center that this HOMA would allow.

It's complete overkill, especially in light of the other housing changes that has been have been passed this year.

Redevelopment done thoughtfully that blends with the existing multifamily housing will not only enhance our neighborhood, but it will also be genuinely welcomed by the residents.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Next speaker is Jack McCullough, followed by Sandra Valstar.

Can you hear me?

I can hear you now.

Can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Okay, thank you very much.

Councilmember Malikushin, Madam Chair, Commission members.

My name is Jack McCullough.

I spoke to you last month about HOMA on behalf of a bunch of downtown stakeholders, and I wanted to speak tonight to reemphasize two particular points.

Number one, um, many of you may have uh recalled 10 years ago we did the grand bargain in Seattle, where we uh effectively imposed um a mandatory affordability program in the city that was married with an upzone of large portions of the city.

And it is a process that, although everyone wasn't happy with it, has worked.

And we've raised over 350 million dollars in the past decade as a result of that.

And HOMA, I'm happy to report, is actually largely predicated on the same concept, right?

You're upzoning large portions of the city.

Uh, you're going to be requiring affordable housing, and the upzones will lead to an increased residential capacity across Bellevue.

So it's a it's a win-win, except in the downtown.

The downtown is will be suffering from uh new mandatory housing tax and will not receive any up zone.

There's no increase in capacity and density, there's no relaxation of any of the development rules downtown, and that's fundamentally unfair.

And we ask you to take the downtown out of this and revisit it carefully to make sure that there's equity in how the downtown is treated.

Number two, I made a point last month that there has not really been outreach of any kind to the downtown stakeholders.

Uh, there's a group of two or three dozen major owners and developers downtown who have built millions of square feet, thousands of residential units and permitted more in the last 30 years.

Uh, their lifeblood of downtown.

And no one's talked to them.

Uh I've spoken to all of them since last month, at least about 15 of them, let's say.

And uh they're very interested in hearing from the city.

And so, as I promised last month, I said I would put together a list, which I've sent to you.

It's in your packet of the names and organizations that they represent and their contact information.

And I would strongly encourage the city to reach out to this group.

They're desperately, they're eager to hear from the city.

They want to hear about the proposal, they want to discuss the proposal, its pros and cons.

And so far, no one has spoken to them.

So, as one of your uh directions tonight, I would encourage you to ask city staff to make that outreach.

Uh, we're here to try to facilitate that if possible, but it needs to come from the city.

I appreciate your time and look forward to completion of this process.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Our next speaker is Sandra Valsar, who is here in person, followed by Kevin Wallace, who is also in person.

Good evening, commissioners.

I'm deputy mayor.

Uh, my name is Sandra Volstar.

I'm uh I live in Newport Hills, and I am here today uh to express my strong support for the HOMA project.

I'm hopeful that uh having people living above uh the shops will enable the return of interesting and useful shops to our neighborhood for the benefit of the entire neighborhood.

Uh, you might remember me from my comments from a few weeks ago about flower shops and bakeries.

So I don't uh I won't repeat the same story, but I am here today to ensure we um uh keep uh focus on that vision that through HOMA we will create lively and interesting places that are sort of unique in Seattle.

All right, we didn't have a timer.

We're just gonna go unmute, imagine we did ed, but just continue.

I apologize.

Okay, alright.

Thanks.

Um again, I am here today to ensure we keep our eyes uh focused on that vision that we'll create lively and interesting uh places in our neighborhoods by making um small family-owned shops viable uh right in our own neighborhoods.

Um, but that said, I do hope that the commission members will ask some pointed questions during the study session about the proposal to reduce the requirement for retail frontage from 100 to 50%.

Um I'm curious, like, do we understand why 100% is considered infeasible and 50%?

Like why, where does this number come from?

Why not 70 or 80?

What kinds of buildings will we actually end up with at 50, 80 or 100%?

It would be helpful to see clear examples of that so that we understand what outcomes we are legislating.

Um, one concern I have, for example, is maybe at 50% we might end up with a lot of townhomes or residence-only gyms that do not really serve the neighborhood.

And in my opinion, it would be better to have uh buildings with storefronts and maybe have residents get membership discounts at existing gyms like the Newport Hills Swim and Tennis Club.

And if townhomes are allowed, could we maybe require that one out of three have a storefront?

That would, I think certainly make for a much um uh more interesting and unique landscape or streetscape.

Um, and it would also be supportive of small family-owned shops.

And talking about small family-owned shops, I'm curious how many flower shops and bakery shoot we actually expect at this 50% store frontage or 80 or 100.

Um I mentioned my little hometown has three of each, right?

But I'm reasonable person.

I'm having to settle for two in in Newport Hills.

Um, finally, I was also wondering if we could explore uh connecting the HOMA areas directly through adjacent lots by uh pathways for walking and rolling, because right now they're often fenced off, which I think is a little, it's kind of ridiculous, like uh have a neighborhood center fenced off from the adjacent apartment plot.

Um, so yeah, I almost want to say commissioners tear down this wall.

But uh, yeah, that's my comments.

Thank you for your time.

Next speaker is Kevin Wallace, followed by Jody Alberts.

And based on the time, I think Jody Alberts will be the last speaker.

Thank you.

The comprehensive plan calls for the creation of 14,500 housing units in downtown between 2019 and 2044.

Through 2026, less than 300 units per year will have been produced in downtown.

So for the next 17 years, we will need to average 700, more than double.

That will not happen with the land use codes as it is today, and the current draft HOMA only makes it worse.

HOMA proposes a new mandatory fee for affordable housing without providing any material benefit to offset the cost.

My request is that you allow payment of the fee as an amenity option, but not mandate it.

But if you decide to mandate this additional burden, at the very least, take the opportunity to apply the same benefits you and the council authorized in the Wilberts and Luca, such as eliminating the requirements for build two line trigger height and visitor parking for all buildings, and floor plate limits and stepbacks in mid-rise buildings.

All of these things are currently allowed by the Wilberts and Luca, but not downtown.

And all of the other changes the chamber suggests are consistent with or even more restrictive than the Wilberts and Luca.

So making these changes would provide at least some level of incentive to offset the mandatory affordable housing fee.

The staff memo indicates that changes should be left for yet another land use code process, but yet staff proposes to change the rules for stepbacks, floor plate averaging, and parking.

So why are some code changes appropriate for HOMA and others not?

We can't afford to wait any longer.

I appreciate that staff has restored the ability to count the affordable housing bonus points for the FAR exemption and the additional development flexibility.

So now we're back to status quo, what was already enacted in the IOC.

So that's great, but my recommendation is to make the buy-in proportionate.

So if you provide one square foot of affordable housing for every five square feet of benefit you get.

And then to also allow payment of a fee in lieu so that the opportunity is available to more than just apartment buildings.

I'd like to see the additional height flexibility increase from 25 feet to 30 feet in the perimeter areas and to allow an additional 60 feet in other areas.

This change is not at a scale with the wedding cake in downtown and would provide much more on-site affordable housing or millions in affordable housing fees, all on a voluntary incentive basis.

Finally, the agenda memo says that stakeholders requested that the Wilbertson open space requirement be adopted into downtown to replace the 10% outdoor plaza requirement.

Open space and outdoor plaza are not the same thing.

Changing the requirement to 7% open space as defined in the citywide code is acceptable.

Changing to 7% outdoor plaza is not.

The preference remains for you to just eliminate the requirement altogether by removing the trigger height requirement, but at the very least, change it from outdoor plaza to open space.

The time is now for the planning commission to consider all of these issues and improve the downtown land use code so that we can achieve the housing goals.

Please ask staff to provide you alternatives that allow you to vote on whether the chamber's recommendations are acceptable or not.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Ferris.

Appreciate your time.

Thanks.

How many more speakers signed up for us?

There were two additional speakers.

Two additional.

If anybody wants to take motion to extend, I'd be open to that.

But if you are not, I'm still open to that.

I I don't see either of them here.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening.

My name is Jody Alberts, and I'm with the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce speaking behalf of the plush committee this evening.

So first, I'd like to thank staff specifically for some recent dialogue that we had on the home ordinance.

And so we appreciate that thoughtful discussion and their commitment to continue refining the draft in the weeks ahead.

As you consider the next step for Hona HOMA, excuse me, there are really two distinct paths that the commission can take as we see them.

The first is you can choose to stay consistent with the IOC.

So to keep things very, very simple, make the necessary technical corrections to the code, which we outlined in the memo that we sent over, and move forward without the affordability provisions.

That approach would address immediate inconsistencies and ensure predictability while allowing housing projects already in the pipeline to move forward.

However, um alternatively, the commission can choose to pursue the broader affordability conversation, which is some of the stakeholders this evening, like um Mr.

Kim Wallace and others support as do we.

And this would choose to pursue the broader affordability conversation and opening up the downtown code more comprehensively to fix the long-standing issues that have made housing really difficult to build in the downtown.

These pop up time and time again, and this is probably a really good time to fix some of those long-standing issues.

And if the goal is to discuss affordability provisions, the framework must also be calibrated to make develop development more feasible.

Otherwise, the code will work against its own objectives.

In either case, the chamber and plush committee are ready to work alongside staff and the commission to ensure the final product results in a code that truly supports housing.

Um, the memo that we submitted to the commission and staff outlines practical test revisions, many drawn directly from the Wilberton Luca that were agreed upon by several different stakeholders coming to the table.

Um, that simplify the code, reduce cost and delay, and ensure consistency across Bellevue's key growth corridors.

And so carrying those standards forward is essential if we want downtown to remain a place where housing is actually deliverable.

Uh so this is obviously a pivotal moment to align intent with implementation.

Um, we encourage you to decide which path you want to take, either a limited update on the IOC or a broader affordability reform that tackles downtown's deeper co-challenges and to bull from there.

So thank you very much.

Thanks.

Um, Chair, there is one other person who is present.

Yes, they spoke at the last meeting on HOMA.

Okay.

I'm I'm open if anybody wants to take a okay.

Our first study session item is an overview of the neighborhood area planning process for the Iskad and Factoria neighborhood.

Council initiated comprehensive planned amendment of the Iskate and factory neighborhood area plan on August 4th, 2025.

The planning commission will review the updates to these plan next year.

Okay, trying me to pronounce everybody's last name correctly.

We have Tara Johnson, planning director and just be just I'm sorry.

And Zach Lock in both senior planner in the community development um department will provide a presentation on the East Gate and Factoria neighborhood plan updates.

I'm sorry for my bad pronunciation, Justin.

Good evening, Deputy Mayor Chen Kanlu, Planning Commissioners.

Staff's happy to be here this evening.

We're continuing work on the Great Neighborhoods Program.

Commission did a lot of work on crossroads in Newport, which are just wrapping up with City Council.

And as you may recall, the Great Neighborhoods Program, which was initiated by council in 2018, is really focused on a community-driven process to develop neighborhood area plans.

So the plans really reflect community values and vision and really inform future growth and of course implement some of the policy guidance within volume one.

So tonight we're here for information only.

We just launched this effort with City Council in the in August.

And so we're going to be providing Planning Commission with an overview on our overall process, talk a little bit about our approach with engagement for both the Eastgate and Factoria neighborhood area plans.

So we'll start off, provide some background on the process, also talk about the scope, which are very similar to what we had and developed for both Crossroads and Newport.

We'll talk about our approach with community engagement and then conclude with next steps on the process.

So that I'm turning things over to Justin.

Great.

Thank you so much, Tara.

So Tara touched upon a little bit about the comprehensive plan.

I wanted to provide a little bit more background here.

So Bellevue's comprehensive plan is the city's guiding policy document for how the city grows and develops over the next 20 years.

So the document is divided into two volumes.

Tara mentioned volume one being citywide policies around topics such as transportation, sustainability, parks and open space, just to name a few, and that was updated with council adoption of the comprehensive plan periodic update in 2024.

Meanwhile, volume two focuses on neighborhood specific goals and policies, implementing citywide policies at the local level, ensuring that Bellevue grows in a way that achieves both city goals as well as neighborhood specific needs.

Next slide, please.

And so the primary goal or objective of the Great Neighborhoods program is to develop neighborhood plans in our comprehensive plan that are relevant, community-driven, and reflective of both citywide and local priorities.

This planning process is done collaboratively with community members who live, work, play, and study in these communities to ensure their input shapes the outcomes throughout the entirety of the process.

Neighborhood area plans contain goals and policies consistent with the city's values and vision for the future.

And so these policies really provide an opportunity to really kind of localize the community vision and defines clear outcomes of what the community wants to achieve.

So it's essentially a guide for decision making for where the community wants to be over the next 10 to 20 years and informs how the city may go about implementing those policies through things like new programs, new partnerships, new regulations.

Next slide.

So this has been a program that has been going on for quite a while.

So in 2018, the city council initiated this program to update all of 16 or all of Bellevue's 16 neighborhood areas, many of which have not been updated comprehensively for several decades.

And so what's uh important to note about these neighborhood areas is that they often constitute multiple smaller neighborhoods or communities, which really stresses the importance of these plans and really strengthening social and physical connections all throughout the community.

We completed neighborhood plans for Northeast and Northwest Bellevue in 2021 and are taking crossroads in Newport to council for action later this month.

Eastgate and Factoria, which you see in orange on the map to the right, are being updated in this iteration, and just to kind of look ahead over the next few years, later in 2026, we will initiate updates to Lake Hills and Westlakes and Manish, which you see in green, and then in 2027, initiating updates to West Bellevue and Woodridge, which you see in purple.

As an ongoing initiative, we continually improve so that in subsequent years, we're building upon past successes and also responding to new challenges that we are facing so that these neighborhood plans can be more meaningful vehicles for neighborhood change.

So for Newport and Crossroads, for example, the scope was expanded to consider, for example, um property owner uh initiated land use map changes, as well as providing a uh urban design framework for improving the look and feel of public spaces within these communities.

We also continue to improve upon community engagement.

And so the team continues to work on fostering new relationships, maintaining existing relationships, iterating and innovating on previous tools, as well as identifying gaps in participation so that we work towards getting more equitable participation in the planning process.

Next slide.

And so the neighborhood area planning process is divided into four phases: discover, define, refine, and adopt.

In the discover phase, which we are currently in, staff is in the process of identifying community values and priorities and really sharing our understanding of issues and existing conditions that inform the planning process and uh kind of conveying that our understanding to communities for them to also weigh in.

So to date, we've had a project kickoff, which provided community with an opportunity to reflect on neighborhood level data across the different sections of the plan and to identify what they see as opportunities and challenges to address through neighborhood area planning.

We also had an active presence in the community, and we have given presentations to interested groups.

We've had a tabling presence at community events, and uh we have in this past weekend have even done walks out into East Gate and Factory neighborhoods.

As you look ahead to 2026, uh staff will engage community to identify and affirm the key policy and visioning elements that should be included in the draft plan.

In the refined phase, staff will have complete draft plans for community to review and provide feedback on, and the plans that go to the planning commission and to council for review in the adopt phase will address how this feedback is incorporated into those final draft plans.

Next slide.

And so I'll turn it over to Zach to talk a little bit more about the different scope items for neighborhood area plans.

Thank you, Justin.

Good evening, commissioners.

The scope of neighborhood area planning touches on three major areas.

The first is a full update to the neighborhood area plan, including neighborhood area boundaries and policies to be consistent with and supplement citywide policies in volume one of the comprehensive plan around topics such as land use, transportation, parks, and climate and environment.

The second is urban design, which broadly refers to the practice of designing the physical environment of a community and within the context of neighborhood area planning refers to strategies to improve the design and function of neighborhood public spaces so they are safe, welcoming, and inviting for the community.

The third is land use, which sets the direction for future growth as reflected in the comprehensive plan's future land use map, whose designations broadly describe the buildings and uses that are envisioned for each type of land use.

Neighborhood area plans are organized into subsections that provide updated policy direction for enhancing different neighborhood assets.

Each subsection includes an overarching goal and related policies that align with the overall vision statement for the neighborhood.

Neighborhood identity is the first, encompassing unique features and landmarks that make each neighborhood area recognizable, neighborhood history and heritage, and the different communities that add to the vibrancy and diversity of the area.

Policies in this section will be developed to identify and strengthen the physical and cultural elements that should anchor the neighborhood as it evolves to meet the needs of residents, businesses, and services that call these places home.

Mixed use centers and neighborhood centers provide goods, services and amenities and housing opportunities for the community.

Mixed use centers, due to their proximity to transportation options are places that draw regional activity.

Eastgate and Factoria are mixed use, unique mixed use centers in their own right, with Factoria being a notable employment center with proximity to future light rail stop, and Eastgate being anchored by a park and ride, Bellevue College, Affordable Housing and Human Services Providers, and commercial and mixed use development.

East Case also has a neighborhood center to the south of I-90 with retail and services for those living nearby.

Policies in this section help support the continued evolution of these centers as places that are convenient to get to, attractive to be in, and have unique offerings for the communities to access and enjoy.

Community gathering spaces include both indoor and outdoor spaces like parks or community centers intended to support different types of events and social interactions.

They are meant to be inviting places for Eastgate and Factories diverse communities to gather.

Policies in the sections will be developed to identify partnerships and opportunities for developing, enhancing and connecting people to gathering spaces within their community.

Next is mobility and access, and this is a key element for neighborhood area planning because it is how people safely and conveniently move around the neighborhood to get to daily needs.

Policies in this section can inform future capital improvements around streets, sidewalks, bicycle facilities, and trails, future development patterns that are more fine-grained and walkable, and collaboration opportunities with transit providers as new light rail and bus services transform how people get around both the city and the region.

And lastly, is environment, which encompasses all the natural elements such as trees, streams, wetlands, nature trails, and open spaces that foster connections to nature, support local wildlife, improve people's health, and contribute to Bellevue's identity as a city and a park.

Policies in this section will be developed to support and expand the neighborhood's capacity to contribute to the health of the larger ecosystem as a resource to be enjoyed for future generations to come.

The scope of urban design includes identifying strategies for improving how public spaces are used by the community.

Through both policies and illustrations, the neighborhood area plan provides a conceptual framework guiding how the city invests in public space improvements to create a cohesive, connected and well-functioning physical environment.

The community will be engaged with urban design through interactive workshops and activities that will get them to write, draw, and imagine the types of spaces that they want to see in their neighborhood.

The resulting outcome will be concept plans that identify at a high level where new or enhanced opportunities may exist.

The concept map on this slide from the Newport Neighborhood Area Plan explores strategies for developing and enhancing gathering spaces by identifying general locations for potential parks, environmental assets like lakes, streams, so they are better integrated and accessed by the community, and connections between spaces through better streets, trails, and pathways.

The concept mapped on this slide is a complementary graphic to the gathering spaces map on the previous slide that identifies new enhanced opportunities for neighborhood connectivity, which includes opportunities for better walking and biking connections, improving sidewalks and crossings, improved access to bus stops and wayfinding signs to help the community members more easily navigate around the neighborhood.

And lastly, we have land use.

The scope of land use sets the direction for future growth at the neighborhood area level, including adjustment to the future land use map.

Eastgate and Factoria communities are communities that will continue to transform through regional transportation investments such as light rail and redevelopment opportunities.

Updates are focused on ensuring that the changes in land use align with the change conditions as a result of these investments, community needs, and citywide growth strategies.

The land use scope also provides the opportunity for the city to consider map changes by property owners towards the creation and strengthening of third places, which we define here as policy as places outside of home or work where people can connect and build community.

Third places are at the heart of neighborhood area planning because of how they contribute positively to community, livability, and neighborhood identity.

And so they are an important criteria when considering any property owner-initiated map changes that are included as part of the neighborhood Great Neighborhoods Work Program.

And as a note, there were no privately initiated land use map changes as of the September 15th deadline.

Therefore, these will not be in scope for this round of neighborhood area planning.

And I'll hand it back over to Justin.

Thanks, Zach.

So we'll wrap up our slide deck to cover some of our community engagement uh strategies and approaches.

So community engagement is at the heart of neighborhood area planning and one that undergoes, as I mentioned, continuous improvement as we learn year after year.

Eastgate and Factoria, as we compare to our other neighborhood areas are unique in its diversity of residents, businesses, uh, faith communities, human services, educational institutions.

So you kind of kind of go on and on in terms of the diversity of communities there.

And all their voices are pivotal in creating a plan that represents these communities.

So staff's approach focuses on equitable, consistent, and inclusive engagement.

And this means staff being proactive, connecting with communities that typically do not engage with traditional forms of outreach.

And so staff offer both in-person and online forms of engagement and also priority, uh, prioritize opportunities for meeting community where they are at by attending meetings, uh, hosting events, and uh tabling in the neighborhood.

The project team also works closely with our cultural outreach assistants on our community engagement team, as well as community leaders to identify opportunities to connect with voices that we hear less from in the process and seek out ways to adapt engagement materials in a manner that resonates with those groups.

And finally, uh staff aim for interactive, accessible and fun ways to participate.

Uh, the images on the right, which are uh coming out of our crossroads and newport engagement process really highlights the use of tactile activities to make engagement approachable regardless of age or ability.

And so we really strive for engagement to be something that families, friends, and neighbors do together so that they are in conversation about what matters to them when they think about the future of their neighborhood.

Next slide.

And so I just want to end our presentation just highlighting some of our progress in phase one.

We launched uh back in August and have done uh quite a bit of engagement already.

So since launching uh with council in August, the project team held several events to introduce the planning process to the community.

Uh staff held an in-person kickoff at South Bellevue Community Center on September 4th that drew in 56 participants to contribute to one or both of the neighborhood area plans.

And so, as I had mentioned, maybe a couple slides before, participants had an opportunity to review maps, data, and key terminology associated with the neighborhood area plans and provide an opportunity for them to reflect upon what are existing qualities of places in their neighborhood and how that might be better enhanced or improved in the future.

Around this time frame, we also distributed mailed questionnaires to all households in East Gate and Factoria with an opportunity to weigh in on ways of strengthening neighborhood identity, enhancing gathering spaces and improving mobility.

And so the deadline for submitting those mailed questionnaires was actually this past Friday.

So we're in the process of collecting the next few or the last few.

And over the next few weeks, we'll be summarizing the inputs we learned from that.

This past weekend, we uh held neighborhood scans that drew in residents and students in East Gain and Factoria to participate in what uh maybe what some people consider a walk audit of the neighborhood where they had an opportunity to document through writing and photography things they like about spaces in the community today and ways to improve the experience and quality of those spaces in the future.

So the picture on the right highlights one of the tools that we use as part of the walk.

We did photo captions that described kind of different descriptors of things that people saw that they liked that they wanted to see improved, and they match that up with things they saw in their community.

So that provides us more, I think visually rich feedback in terms of like how are we connecting the qualities to the places that are there today or in the future.

And then I will just mention that we are continuing to do engagement and we are really focusing on communities that we typically hear less from the planning process.

And as to highlight an example, after hearing feedback from city council when we launched regarding the importance of engaging businesses, we updated our engagement plan to do targeted outreach with businesses.

So some things that we have done, we've sent out mailers to over 900 uh addresses in the East Gate and Factoria in terms of uh different types of businesses.

Uh, we are doing business walks in collaboration with our our our um our uh uh cultural and economic development team.

And in November, we are hosting a listening session um so that business owners and operators can connect with the planning team.

So that's kind of an example of how we are hoping to get more kind of specific feedback and to really learn what their needs are in terms of uh improving the environment where people live, work, and play.

And um we are also continuing to actively engage with Bellevue School District and Bellevue College on having more student voices in the conversation as key community members as well and to understand what matters to them in their community.

Next slide.

And so that wraps up our slide deck.

So thank you so much.

I will turn it over to Chair Conwin.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

I can go around and we ask questions.

We can start with one round first with two questions or even no comment.

Um, Commissioner Ferris.

Switching down here.

It's not me.

Picking on me intentional.

Uh I just really have one question and one comment.

Um, this is probably super obvious, but on the neighborhood plan that you put up there in terms of the neighborhoods and you told about the next year you're gonna be doing the um other ones.

Somerset, cougaridge, and bridal trails were not included.

Is that future future?

Okay.

So someday.

Okay.

Yeah.

Post-27, 28.

Okay, yeah, right.

Um, and my just a couple of quick comments.

We heard from a couple of folks that um having the high schoolers attend these um scans where they didn't think was appropriate.

And I, for one, think it's fantastic.

I love the thought of engaging with students that either live or live by the area and getting their perspective, I think is really, really critical.

I also really appreciate Justin when you're talking about engaging with business, because as you're going through this, I'm immediately thinking, especially in Factoria and Eastgate, which is so business focused.

You making that extra effort to reach out to the businesses would be great.

I'm I'd be curious talking to businesses, what would be the most effective?

Because it probably sending an email or a letter may or may not be very effective.

So I think it would be interesting to hear their feedback on how to get them really engaged.

Yeah, and I would also like to add in and thinking about what are maybe some like unique needs when we're engaging with businesses, some things that we're doing, like what our business listening session is doing in the morning.

So before businesses operate to hopefully attract more uh kind of attention that way.

Again, our uh cultural and economic development team are in the process of updating their economic development plan.

They're actively engaging with businesses, and that is also part of how we're also leveraging some of their uh relationships and um connections that they're making to hopefully also kind of have them see the importance of neighborhood area planning and supporting the success of their businesses as well.

So, yeah, it definitely is in terms of the messaging, in terms of even how we are timing some of these events so that it is conducive for their participation.

Great.

And again, I would just suggest that maybe you ask a few of those folks to say what is the most effective way to be able to reach those businesses.

So thank you for your work.

Thanks.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Uh yeah, thank you for the presentation and um kind of echoing several of the things that Commissioner Ferris went through.

I love that you've done community walks or scans.

I think that's so helpful.

Tours of the actual community for the community to think about spaces and really be involved in the environment that you're thinking about, I think is an incredibly helpful exercise.

So just thank you for doing that.

I love it.

I hope we do more of it.

Um echoing comments that we've received that raise concerns regarding robust and diverse engagement in these community sessions, would just encourage and ask that we continue to think about a variety of ways and to your point, times of day and places to make sure that people who otherwise wouldn't be able to go can go, right?

If I'm a single working mom, I've got to have evenings, right?

And so just thinking about that in a conscious manner to make sure that those communities that otherwise don't get engaged, get engaged.

And I hear that and what you're seeing.

So just continue.

Um thank you.

I also think it's wonderful that we had youth involved in those meetings, as long as it's not at the exclusion of others and everyone gets to listen and be heard.

And um, and uh so making sure that those events are diverse and and robust.

We'll we'll do that.

I know we're at the beginning and and that's fantastic.

Um last thought was um really appreciate that this is being coordinated with the economic development um work and plan.

I think that's incredibly effective and really appreciate the outreach to businesses to better understand how we can support uh the continuation of small local businesses and medium businesses and uh particular in those neighborhoods is is so important.

Um so really really appreciate that engagement.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Uh come Shine and Chia.

Thank you.

Uh and thank you all for the presentation.

Um, I'd like to start off by also expressing my support for what both Commissioner Kennedy and Commissioner Farr said.

Um, you know, I I think it's great and uh a nice maybe change to see so many youth come out and voice their opinion on on the city and what they'd like to see.

So I I guess my question is how can you talk a little bit more about your plan to continue to engage young people in the area?

I know Bellevue College is right there.

So it's particularly important for for these plans.

What is your plan to continue to keep that momentum?

Yeah, I could speak to a little bit of that.

So as part of our early relationship building, um, our team, I think did a great job of connecting with with with I think key staff in schools, and often that's kind of really kind of the first kind of barriers.

Like how do you get uh kind of to the door?

So we have had some great successes in terms of being able to leverage um some uh kind of existing back to school activities.

So we tabled at Tai curriculum night.

Uh we've had several teachers at Newport High School that were super enthusiastic about civic engagement and knowing that Newport uh high school sits in the heart of Factoria, having their students engage in the process and really connecting it back to what they learned.

So I as you mentioned, I think it is continued engagement with with students and also just showing them kind of like how is their input actually making an impact in the plan.

So it is our intent to be able to circle back with kind of the same kind of youth that we're seeing kind of right at the onset, just so that we are making sure that like they understand the value of planning and they are actually seeing their voice being incorporated uh into kind of how we are thinking about the future of those communities.

Great.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more and thank you for the work that you're doing to to engage young people.

Thank you.

Commissioner Vanavisis.

Thanks, Justin.

Everyone.

Uh I wanna plus one the comment about high school students being engaged for this.

Uh I have no comments about the presentation.

It was very clear.

I do have two notes.

Uh the first one is sorry, I blacked out for a second.

I have a question before.

How how was your experience of walking this area?

Which is not a very pedestrian-oriented area.

So I just want to hear your your thoughts about that.

Yeah.

And me and Zach led separate walks.

So maybe I could start off with Eastgate.

And so I think it was interesting being able to kind of connect some of the things that we were like seeing like in on maps in terms of like seeing like on a map a lack of sidewalk infrastructure, for example, and then going out into these neighborhoods and having um uh participants actually like recognizing that, photographing that, documenting that on their on their sheets.

So I think it was, I think a really illuminating um kind of experience.

And I think what was really interesting from from the walk in Eastgate was there are a number of uh families, so parents who were participating with their kids and um a lot of the parents were also starting to kind of connect the dots as well in terms of like, hey, I never really thought about this being a challenge in terms of getting from point A to point B.

So I think it was a very um, I think illuminating experience for staff and for folks who are participating.

And again, like we can only choose one route.

So, like our hope is that like we do have the um scans available on engaging Bellevue, so that we are inviting folks that if they have time in their day and want to participate, that feedback is super valuable and super rich for us.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah, I will just add, you know, specifically in Factoria.

You know, we walked on Factoria Boulevard, um, which is a main thoroughfare, and um, you know, some of the the right-of-way there in pedestrian environment has a lot of challenges, and uh again, not only informative for us, you know, we've kind of been able to talk about a lot of these things, but especially for students and community members, you know, comparing some of these areas where we have perhaps a narrow sideway, traffic going right by next to us, but then there's uh a couple spots farther down to the north, and then on the back side of the mall where we have wider sidewalks, we have tree-lined streets, you know, we have uh a vegetated buffer between traffic and just kind of having a conversation like how does this feel?

How do you feel in this area?

Are you more likely to want to walk somewhere if this is the feeling compared to on a narrow sidewalk with fast traffic?

And so we can kind of get them, you know, to understand what they can be advocating for and what we're prioritizing in the plan and how that might impact their connectivity and access around the community.

That's great.

Thank you.

And I hope you can invite more staff to go on this walks so that we can see the challenges of uh pedestrian uh infrastructure, right?

In in the city.

The the other comment I have now, sorry, I I lost my train of thought earlier, is we keep hearing this and receiving these letters of lack of engagement.

And from what we've talked before with staff is on one end, uh here engagement is being done diligently.

On the other hand, we keep receiving these letters that people are uh very surprised, uh, they haven't been contacted before, and I can't believe we didn't hear from you, but we heard I only heard because I belong to these neighborhood association or whatever.

How can we this is a rhetorical question only to answer right now, but we need to find a way to make sure people know that these things are happening uh so that we don't keep receiving the same comments over and over because it doesn't really make much sense.

Um I'm pretty sure there's an email list.

I'm sure this is posted on the website, but we should somehow solve this.

I don't know if there's anything.

I think um, as Justin said, our focus is really we do a lot of work on continuous improvements.

So trying to reassess what went well, what we could improve upon.

And so um we talked about you know several techniques, tabling, going to community associations, going to folks where they are.

Um Justin and uh Zach are gonna be tabling at Bellevue College next week.

So just finding all of those opportunities and then our cultural outreach assistants also help us form those connections.

I think I was at the um factoria event and I talked to a few parents that attended, and they had no idea things we did uh events like this or activities like this.

So they were engaged, so it's encouraging them.

So even even you as a planning commissioner, talking to your neighbors, spreading the word or activities that you do.

Um, that's helpful too.

Oh, great.

Thank you.

But I have no more comments.

Should we?

Oh, it's my turn, but we can ask if you want to second around.

Um thank you so much.

I think um I want to say we have 14 staff um on Saturday on side, just you know, on the Saturday, our staff are working.

I was there.

Um I had a chance to stop by in both locations, and um obviously it was really tangible that this is not my first time attending these community meetings, and usually it's like 10, 15 people.

We have like 90 people, and some of them were like youth, and it was so exciting to see their um energy and they took the pictures and they were like wanted to upload immediately on the site.

Like it was interesting to see their energy and I appreciate the efforts and um the relationship that you all built.

And as I thought I was mentioning that there's like parents that were just like, we want to be involved, how we can evolve.

I think that was a really good connection that the parents didn't know about that until they drop off their kids or pick up their kids.

And that was really uh good.

I just bring um two items.

One of them I just wonder we have a balance ratio between because we have in the statistic as deputy mayor knows about that.

Scoot data means like when we just collect information from one group of people, we basically we cannot generalize it to that bigger group of the people because it's just from one side of the thing.

I understand having the use is really important, but I believe we don't collect the information about age and anything.

I'm wondering if we can have that data, then we can at least understand that okay, we outreach to 200 youth or 500 youth.

Maybe this is a moment to uh come up with elderly population who maybe don't have a good mobility and we cannot outreach to them, how we can approach them or a single mom who has two jobs and they cannot attend any of these meetings.

If we can just be careful about our data won't be as good towards the group of people who don't have a digital barrier, who who have a good high mobility and have access, I want to see that one.

We will be able to be careful.

But I love that I don't want to underestimate the energy and how fun was it, because I was there.

It was so fun.

I highly recommend to come.

And then the other one was about um retail in shops and small businesses or businesses.

If we can be the same about those, like have small, medium size and large, we have a couple of large businesses.

We just reach out to all of those.

That'd be good too.

If you guys can target them, like don't go just only a small business and just ignore big businesses or just medium size.

You guys all have it.

Go just in.

Yeah, I should clarify uh for our business listening session.

Our list includes the businesses of all of all sizes.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It'd be good to have that category if we know like what like we only heard from like, for example, small businesses, or we only heard about like medium, and then we be will we will find out.

Maybe we don't approach them correctly, or maybe it's not a correct time to reach out to them, something like that.

I think that was one, two.

Yeah, that was my comments.

Should we go second round or we're good?

Anyone's second round?

Okay, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Chair, I wonder it's um we're the next topic's gonna be pretty heavy.

Quick break now.

Oh, yeah.

Let's have a break.

Um, what time is it?

46.

Should we come back?

55.

Well, let's short.

Okay.

50 53.

Okay.

We see you here 53.

The planning commission last heard about HOMA on May 14 when we declined to set a public hearing.

The goal of this aesthetic session is to provide information to the planning commission on a draft LUCA and gather feedback.

Staff will provide an overview of the land use code and zoning changes proposed through the Luca project.

After the study session, the planning commission will be asked to direct the staff to schedule a required planning hearing.

Christina Gallins, Code and Policy Planning Manager, Matthew Maynard, senior planner in the development services department, and Robbie Speller, sorry if I pronounced your last name wrongly, senior um attorney um the city um at in the city attorney office will provide the presentation on HOMA.

Sorry, I'm getting tired.

Eight.

Thank you, Chair Khan Lu.

Uh, Deputy Mayor Malikutian and planning commissioners.

Uh good evening.

We are here this tonight with our fourth study session on the HOMA Luca.

Uh, we have about three discrete components, so could provide a good opportunity to break up some comment between, which will help kind of prompt you there.

Uh so since we last spoke in September, um, there were a lot of concerns related to downtown since that time.

We have had uh a really productive meeting with downtown stakeholders to find um identify a number of items which we can commit to um updating with with the uh the next draft um and also clarifying those that we see is best suited for the upcoming downtown livability 2.0.

So uh while you haven't seen all of those updates yet in the draft attached tonight, uh Matthew will be walking through um what you anticipate to come.

We feel like there's pretty good clarity around these topics and how we can incorporate them.

Um, we see them as sensible updates to give more flexibility while maintaining HOMA's intent.

Um we uh also, as previously noted, council gave us direction uh earlier in the summer to incorporate uh consolidated non-conforming use provisions within HOMA.

So we had a bit of a crunch to get that draft along.

Uh we have that language ready for you all.

And so um have a bit of a two-parter presentation this evening in the latter half uh Robbie Seppler will be joining us to walk through those more technical components.

Uh so with that out of the way to keep things moving, I will pass to Matthew.

I'm close enough to the microphone here that people can hear me.

Uh so as Christina mentioned, we have uh two or three-parter for you tonight, depending on how you want to break it up.

I know we broke the last meeting up around sort of general HOMA topics and then downtown.

We can certainly do that again tonight.

The presentation is formatted in a way that we can take a pause.

I'll probably jump to schedule and then back to downtown if that works for everyone.

And then we will talk about non-conforming language at the end of the presentation.

So we can take a pause after general HOMA and we can take a pause after downtown for more comments, and then we'll take a final pause after non-conforming language as well.

So we are asking for a public hearing this evening.

We were here in October to also ask for public hearing at that time.

Planning Commission had a few more topics that they wanted to talk about.

So a relatively brief presentation this evening.

We're not going to go as deep into HOMA.

You've already seen that presentation a few times now.

We're really going to focus on what we talked about at the last meeting.

That doesn't mean that we need to be limited to these topics.

I know there was some public comment this evening.

So if you do want to talk about anything beyond these topics, certainly feel free to do so.

But we did want to make our presentation relatively short, knowing that you had three items on your agenda this evening.

So the first topic that Plan Commission wanted to dig more deeply into was the economics of option A, which is the mandatory affordable housing program.

As a reminder, this is a program that would require all developments over 10 units in the HOMA area to provide at least 10% affordable housing and 80% AMI, and then sort of waller falling down from there.

So less affordability or less units for higher levels of affordability.

It also provides a four to one bonus for that affordable housing.

So for every square foot of affordable housing you provide, you get four square feet of market housing exempt from FAR.

So a big density bonus included in that.

It also includes a fee in lieu option and a commercial fee.

It is essentially the same as what we proposed in Wilburton.

So making sure there is consistency across the city.

This does not apply to downtown.

I want to make that very clear.

So our economic analysis analyzed three prototypes and three market areas.

So basically a low rise, mid-rise, and high rise development in our what we'll call low rent, mid-rent, and high rent areas in Bellevue, not to say that there's a true low rent area in Bellevue comparative to other areas in Bell.

We have found through this economic analysis that there are generally poor development conditions right now.

Construction is expensive, interest rates are high.

There's a lot of economic uncertainty, especially with tariffs seeming to change day to day at this point.

So it's a tough market for development.

We are with all of our LUCAs, especially when we talk about housing, looking out into the future.

So what could those conditions look like in three, five, 10 years?

You know, these are long time frame plans.

As we've mentioned in previous meetings and as you'll hear a little bit later this evening, we do have a 10-year target for affordable housing at 5,700 units.

So I mean, we're really looking at that 10-year time frame.

We do think option A is the best way and the most effective way to get to that targeted unit count based on past experience in Bellevue and in the region.

So when you're basically earning money on every square foot, uh the bonus actually increases feasibility with those affordable housing requirements.

So in the end, developers will come out ahead based on the package that we have provided here.

And just some examples of that.

So residual land value is a market feasibility assessment tool that allows for at a pretty high planning level to control, essentially control for the cost of site acquisition.

So it looks for uh the estimated value that is left over available for site acquisition.

So holding um holding conditions like the characteristics of a project and um its its value constant.

Um so if you see uh positive residual land value, that generally indicates that there is some amount of availability to acquire a site.

Um, ideally, it should be greater than uh what uh it might cost to acquire a site.

Um there are many different ways that individual developers will look at feasibility, have individual requirements for feasibility, but it's kind of a planning level red face test to say, okay, our projects roughly penciling out, knowing that things can vary quite a bit for individual project characteristics.

Yeah, perfect.

Thank you.

Um, what you can see here in these two charts, um, you see a lot of red, which indicates poor feasibility.

Uh, you see one set of positive feasibility, which is that low rise um building type.

The big difference between low rise and the other two building types is the type of parking that was analyzed with the low rise type.

So surface parking was used as sort of the frame of analysis for low rise where mid-rise and high rise use structured parking.

In the economic analysis with the low rise parking, it was about 1% of total development costs.

When you use structured parking, it jumped to 20%.

So that is the biggest cost driver of what you're seeing here is parking.

Obviously, high interest rates, you know, economic uncertainty that I mentioned earlier, also large cost drivers.

Another big driver is rents.

You know, how much you can charge for rent changes this dramatically.

So rents increase, these numbers go up, uh, as you would expect.

Um, I really wanted to show you too the difference here between the two with the bonus and without the bonus.

So as you can see on the top chart with low rise where the numbers are positive.

Uh, without any affordable housing required, the residual land value is about 111 per square foot.

When you include that 10% requirement, which also gives that four to one bonus, so you'll get a lot more floor area out of it.

Uh, the residual land value goes up.

So we are seeing uh an economic benefit to developers through this option A program with that bonus.

If you exclude that bonus, uh the affordable housing requirement does cause that residual land value to drop by about $20 a square foot.

And you can sort of see there in the negatives as well, is that the uh bonus is actually creating a much larger difference between uh the no affordable housing required and the requirement when the numbers are negative because you are adding a negative number for every square foot you add.

So every time you add a square foot of market rate through that bonus, you're adding more negative to that.

So a small difference for the requirement without the bonus, an economic benefit for those projects that are feasible with the bonus.

Obviously, it's going to take some time for market conditions to be correct to make a lot of these projects feasible.

What we're hearing from development, some areas right now, seven stories is feasible, five stories potentially in our lower rent areas.

We're hearing a lot about townhomes, which you can see reflected here.

So the next topic that Plan Commission wanted to discuss was the transition standards.

We are not proposing any changes to these from the last meeting.

So, as a reminder, uh the proposed requirements are a 25-foot setback for any property abutting a residential district.

So that'll basically be any district that was included in the middle housing updates.

Those districts all do have at least a five foot side setback and a 20-foot set uh rear setback.

Uh, so at least 30 feet from each building essentially would be that setback when we talk about the transition area.

Uh, there were some concerns with very tall buildings being too close to the property line, even with that 25 foot setback plus the residential setback.

So we are proposing a 15-foot step back for buildings over 80 feet.

That aligns us with building code to try not to interfere with wood frame buildings.

Uh, right now, um, that's essentially the limit of what you can build for wood frame in building height.

Wood frame construction very much relies on vertical uh wood structures to be constructed.

So when you add a step back into them, uh it makes building that wood frame much more difficult.

And we'll will likely just uh encourage developers to push the building back an extra 15 feet if we were to drop that lower.

What we've heard from stakeholders, especially from affordable housing stakeholders is things like stepbacks and these setbacks can have a large impact on unit yield, which can have an impact on uh their fine their funding, essentially.

They need to hit a certain unit yield uh to get funding.

And if they don't hit that, they're not gonna get funding.

So the more we push these transition standards, uh, the more we're impacting housing negatively, uh, the more units we're gonna lose and potentially the more 100% affordable projects we're going to lose, which is why we have not changed anything between the two strike drafts.

There are also limited areas.

You can see in red there are the areas that are going to be over that seven-story height limit.

Uh, so over the mid-rise into the high rise, the red area is 110 feet, and the really dark red is the 16-story area.

Uh, the 16-story area generally does not abut any residential districts.

We have proposed a step down in the south end of factoria there, where it does abut residential districts to mitigate that condition.

Otherwise, there are some limited districts where the 110-foot district does abut residential districts.

You can see them there uh Jens to Factoria, so just to the east of Factoria, uh, Eastgate Plaza, which is south of I 90, the large block of red, and then around uh crossroads, specifically that sort of corner at the southwest corner of crossroads.

And I have provided some examples of those areas of what the existing condition looks like there to kind of demonstrate why we think 25 feet is appropriate and sort of what it would look like on the ground.

So what we see in a lot of these areas is what you can see on the screen here.

This is Eastgate Plaza.

So you have these, this row of houses directly adjacent to the commercial development, which is right now is quite low low slung.

But you do have this vegetated buffer with these very tall trees.

I mean, you can see those two fir trees behind there are probably 80 to 100 feet tall with the updates to the tree code and our protection for large and landmark trees.

Those trees would likely be maintained through any development.

So by maintaining that 25-foot setback and requiring a step back, we do think there's an appropriate buffer and visual buffer as well between a lot of these areas already and what would be built on the site.

This is an example that we that I found that doesn't have that buffer.

So you can see in the aerial to the sort of north end, there is a multifamily residential development that does have that trade buffer.

But just the south of that, where the red dot is, there is this residential sort of three-story building that you can see at the very right side of that image that abuts directly to the neighboring office building's parking lot.

What we would see with the transition standards that this lot were to be redeveloped is that parking lot would not be allowed to be pushed right up to the property line as it is currently.

They would have to provide 25 feet of a vegetative buffer in that area.

So we again we think that's an improvement to the existing condition.

Also on these some of these smaller sites with the vegetative buffer and our parking requirements and some of the restrictions on the site, we also don't necessarily think you're gonna get that 120 or 110-foot building height out of them.

And the more we push these stepbacks and setbacks on these smaller parcels, like you can see in this image, the less likely we're gonna see redevelopment into residential on these parcels.

And the final one I will provide for you here is adjacent to crossroads.

So that is that southwestern corner of the crossroads mall area that I was mentioning.

In the top right of the aerial, you can see the very edge of the crossroads mall.

So this is across the street, where you have these single family homes adjacent to another sort of strip mall type development.

Again, you see the similar conditions to what's in Eastgate with a large resetated buffer with large trees.

So we think with the proposed transition standards, our current tree code with the maintenance of these areas, you're not gonna see the large impacts on neighboring residential that you would see if it was just a 110-foot building that were sort of smacked there with no buffer.

So we do think that the proposal is appropriate to both balance impacts to the neighbors as well as try to encourage redevelopment and housing on these parcels, but certainly welcome any planning commission input on that.

We also with transition areas had some questions about the wedding cake and why the wedding cake was not necessarily applied to all areas of the city.

As you can see in the image, that is a diagram of the wedding cake.

What we're seeing through HOMA is very similar to that diagram.

So in our higher density areas, you'll see a jump from 35 feet to 110 feet, and then up to 160 feet, which is going to be the top off of the HOMA districts.

So we do think it is a similar philosophy and approach in those areas where there is sort of that wedding cake buildup through the future land use map.

We don't think the sort of wedding cake approach is appropriate in our lower density and lower height areas or for single parcels, so very narrow areas in HOMA.

There's just no weight of doing a wedding cake without putting a sort of a lot of stepbacks, which makes building expensive and again redevelopment much, much less likely.

And as soon as you get to lower heights, you can see here going from 35 to you know 70 feet or 50 or 60 feet.

Um, that sort of is the wedding cake.

That's the first step.

So that's really the lower density districts, what we're seeing in HOMA.

We were asked to discuss encouraging a few uses, uh, third places, indoor bike parking, and then uh specifically stacked flats.

So we are already encouraging third places through HOMA.

So we have not made any changes here, but we are encouraging third places through uh FAR exemptions for affordable commercial space, which we would hope to be dedicated to local and small businesses, which are often third places, and those requirements for pedestrian-oriented uses.

So as you heard through the public comment, we are requiring either 50 or 66% of the street frontage to be pedestrian-oriented uses in many of our neighborhood or larger center districts.

So that doesn't include the Oil B districts, which are a little bit more isolated, but it does include all the districts that are in neighborhood centers.

What that would require is that the building is pushed up to backup sidewalk.

Homer proposes that it's within 10 feet of the back of sidewalk to allow for street cafes and things like that, and provides a use that people would come in and out of.

So that would include third places like restaurants, bars, as well as other uses that people can do their day-to-day needs with.

So grocery stores, uh, medical offices, gyms uh that would have to be open to the public.

Uh, I know we did have a comment about resident only gyms that would not count as a pedestrian oriented use.

Uh, those pedestrian oriented uses also are required to have doors out onto the sidewalk there to further encourage businesses that bring people in and out of those businesses rather than being isolated either in the back as they are now, sort of back of the parcel behind large parking lots or around the back of a new building.

Um, I do want to clarify just based on the comment we had.

We do currently require in many of these areas that 100% of the ground floor be retail or some sort of commercial use.

It's not linked to the street frontage, it's just whatever the size of the building is, the whole ground floor has to be uh commercial use.

So this is a change from that.

Um, we did try to balance the need for these neighborhood centers to remain neighborhood centers with these commercial uses.

Uh, we've heard desire from every stakeholder that these uses be those uses that bring people in and out and are close to the sidewalk.

I think you saw that through the Newport uh area plan as well.

Is that that's one of the policies in there is to push those uses to backup sidewalk.

Um, and we should try to find that balance right between needing those neighborhood centers and what we've heard consistently from the development community and stakeholders is that our retail requirements are so high that it's preventing uh redevelopment and is also leaving a lot of vacant space.

So making sure that we have sidewalk facing with doors, um, third places, retail uses, medical uses that serve the neighborhood with the ability for development to be flexible.

So setting that floor in a way that makes sure that space can be used and also leaves space on site for uh parking to be wrapped around the back for open spaces uh for things like that.

So that's how we're addressing third places through HOMA.

Um, certainly happy to discuss that as well.

We are also uh adding requirements for indoor and outdoor bike parking.

So we don't feel that we need to give an exemption for this as we're already requiring it.

So that's something that's being added through HOMA.

Um, it has been added in other sections of the code as well as Wilburton, I believe, added it more recently.

Uh so using that language to make sure that we're requiring both uh indoor bike parking for long-term bike parking for residents and outdoor bike bike parking for uh for those utility retail uses, for example.

So uh we think the requirement is sufficient to get the bike parking we're looking for without uh providing any sort of incentive.

We do also exempt structured parking from FAR.

So if that bike parking were to be put in uh the structured parking, it would not count towards FAR in the first place as well.

We are trying to encourage all housing types through this.

Uh, that would include stack flats.

All of our form standards are amenable to stack flats.

Uh, we haven't heard a whole lot of interest from the development community around stack flats.

Really, what we're hearing is that the building code is the biggest impediment, unfortunately, to stack flats.

It's not something we can change right now.

Um the way the state building code is administered, we can't be less restrictive than the state building code.

Uh, so potentially something for the state to change or some future code updates when we have that ability to do so.

But we do certainly want to encourage all housing types through HOMA, uh, as is in the comp plan, um, sort of providing that diversity of housing types.

Right now, as I already mentioned, what we're hearing is that the row house style is more uh desirable style for development uh than the sort of stacked flat style.

And uh let me just talk about the schedule quickly before we take a pause for uh questions.

Uh we are again asking for a public hearing.

Uh, that does not mean you would have to make a decision or a recommendation on HOMA at that time.

Uh we can have study sessions after that.

The public hearing would likely be in early December if you were to make that motion to schedule the public hearing.

And we will certainly provide you with a full strike draft, including the non-conforming language prior to the public hearing.

We were required to do so.

And that public hearing is public notice as well.

Uh, so it gives the community another chance for input on HOMA.

And with that, Chair, I can turn it back to you for questions and comments.

Thank you.

I think we can go around only two items, and let's not make a decision, keep what if you wanted, we can do like a nodding vote if anything needs to be changed.

If it's okay, I have a list.

Commissioner Farris, not me.

Allow me.

I just really have one question.

Um, and it's probably super obvious to everybody else.

Would you mind going back to slide eight?

So the setbacks.

Um, we got a 25-foot setback, and that's if it's right next to the residential area.

And then five to 20 foot setbacks.

Can you distinguish between those bolts one and two?

Yes, absolutely.

So that 25 foot setback would apply on the mixed use property, so on their side of the property line.

And then currently under the land use grade.

Yeah, on the residential side, do you have a five minimum of five foot setback on side setbacks and a minimum of a 20-foot setback on uh rear setbacks?

So you're just sort of adding that on to the total setback area between the buildings.

Got it.

Again, and then bullet three, the 15-foot setback.

Is that because I remember the discussion this last time we talked about how the building was going to set back once it's over 80 feet, or is this the whole building is set back?

So they'd be able to build at 25 feet, they could build 80 feet and then you'd go 15 and then back.

Right.

That's all I had.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Should have been ready.

This is the similar order as last time.

Apparently.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was really helpful.

Um, okay.

So two questions.

One was just we've received a lot of comments on the HOMA on all on all sides of almost every issue.

Um I'm wondering if you can help us to better understand how this compares to other cities.

So if we were to look at what you've proposed here, how would that compare to neighboring cities?

And, you know, maybe highlighting, are we continuing to incentivize development while we continue to protect our tree canopy and our setbacks, etc.

Yes, I can talk about that specifically related to affordable housing.

Um, our friends at Arch have nicely provided me a very long list of what our neighboring communities are doing in relation to mandatory affordable housing, if I can find the beginning of it here.

Um but the sort of general overview is that our program is equivalent to or less restrictive than many neighboring communities are.

Um currently, right, we don't have any um mandatory outside of Wilburton, which is uh generally different than what the rest of the East Side is doing.

Um most of the east side communities do have some sort of mandatory affordability requirements through their land use code.

Uh I will sort of run through the ones I have here.

So uh Balfill requires between five and 10% affordable units at 60 to 70% area median income.

Um so again, a little bit lower on the AMI, but uh consistent with the amount of affordability being required.

Uh Isaquo requires 7 to 15% at 50 to 70 uh percent AMI.

So again, just a little bit more aggressive than what we are looking for through option A.

Kenmore is requiring 25% at 50 to 80% AMI, so much more aggressive than what we're proposing through option A.

Kirkland is requiring 10 to 15% at 50% AMI.

So again, much more aggressive than what we are proposing.

Uh, we have specifically heard from the development community to not emulate Kirkland's model.

Um, and it is significantly impacting development feasibility.

Uh Redmond is at 10 to 15% at 50 to 80% AMI, depending on where you're located in the city.

I will note also that a lot of these are sort of, I know the camera can't see this, but there's a large chart where there's sort of distinct standards for different areas.

Uh, we are trying to standardize ours to make it uh easier for the development community to understand and get through the application process rather than doing it by a sort of spot-by-spot location on how much affordability we're going to require.

Uh and to finish Samamish is requiring 10% only in their town center at 80% AMI, so consistent with what we are proposing through home.

Okay, that's really helpful.

Um I found that really helpful.

Thank you.

Tried to scramble to take notes.

It's a lot of information.

So thanks.

And that that has to do with the affordability pieces of this.

Of course, there's a variety of other pieces of it that we've received comments.

Do you have a sense for some of the other restrictions where we've received a lot of comments, kind of impervious surfaces?

Um the retail percentage that you were going through.

Do you have a sense for how that compares in neighboring cities?

It's going to vary greatly, um, especially impervious surface coverage.

Um, ours, I believe through HOMA, there is so right now under the code, we have two sets of impervious standards.

One is for buildings, which is much lower, and then one is just for impervious surface in general, which is gonna be higher.

Uh, we are proposing eliminating the building lot coverage is what we call it under the land use code to only uh regulate by impervious surface.

Those generally uh range between 65 and 85% of the lot area.

Um that is proposed to encourage more building and less parking lot on these lots.

Um, if you allow small buildings and a lot of impervious, you're gonna end up with a lot of surface parking lots, which is not the condition that we want to see.

Uh, we do want to balance you know the need for buildings and impervious surface with environmental concerns and sort of neighborhood uh fuel concerns, right?

So if you pave a whole lot, that runoff water has to go somewhere.

Um, often it ends up running off into city drains and is not slowed down sufficiently.

There are going to be standards uh both from the city and the state that are going to require some water retention.

So that will be built in, but we want to make sure that there is also some area for uh greenscaping and potential sort of landscaping around these areas.

Um by having a little bit required, uh we think that we achieve that goal.

Um we have heard from a few development entities that uh 85% or 65% is too low and is hampering development.

Um, so that is something we have heard.

It's something we've heard throughout the process that the regulations right now are much too restrictive.

So we have tried to open those up, but it's certainly something we could discuss uh the planning commission could discuss if they would like to.

Um, there's no reason that we necessarily have to restrict development by uh impervious surface.

Um we are proposing to remove a lot of the other development standards that would restrict development, specifically setbacks.

Um, so sort of in exchange for not having setbacks, having some of these impervious surface requirements does allow for or require some sort of um green space uh or some sort of natural space to not be uh asphalt or concrete or building.

Got it.

Okay, that's really helpful.

And um that was one question.

So I'm I'm just gonna quickly quickly go to the next.

Um, and it also has to do with asphalt parking lots.

Um, appears to be kind of one of the key economic drivers that's putting us in the red.

Appreciated the slide and the response to the requests for that economic drill drill down.

Um, really um thank you for bringing that in.

And I think it it highlighted um what poor economic conditions we have for development right now.

Um, and and so what I was wondering if a lot of the drivers for that red is parking.

Can you can you just remind us where we are with the timing for uh the state changes that will lower those parking requirements?

Do would you anticipate that once that change occurs, we would see some of the red uh getting a little bit better.

Um how do we think about that?

Yeah.

Um, so we did lower our parking requirements for residential through middle housing, which was also proposed through HOMA, middle housing finished before HOMA did.

So those have been lowered to one space per unit.

Um, there is a new state law that we must complete by January of 2027 that requires that we require no more than half a space per unit and two spaces per thousand square feet of commercial.

Uh, there are some exceptions to that with very small units or small commercial spaces where we can't require any parking.

Um, so what we're seeing and what we've heard from the development community is right now uh lenders are specifically driving the minimum parking amount.

Um, we've heard that in Bellevue, lenders are not going to lend a developer to build their development at less than one space per unit.

Um, so I don't anticipate unless I will say unless they're in sort of high transit area, so right next to a light rail station where we've been told they might go down to 0.75 for lending.

So we don't anticipate huge changes to what's actually built on the ground through the state law at this time, just because there is that demand from uh for parking from residents and uh banks generally work pretty conservatively to make sure that they get the money that they put out coming back to them.

Um so I don't expect that uh calculus to change anytime soon.

Okay.

With the state parking updates, we do want to make sure that we do a robust process to see where it may be appropriate for us to deviate from that state requirement and potentially go beyond the state requirements, which is going to require uh a huge process from us.

Parking is often our hot button issue.

So making sure that that is the focus and has its own airtime is very important.

Uh, by the time we finish HOMA at this point, we are looking probably at no earlier than late spring uh of 2026 for final adoption.

So we also don't think the sort of six to eighth month lag time between the two adoptions is going to necessarily uh negatively impact development that much.

Uh it's just not that much time in the sort of development scheme of things.

So uh we think it's appropriate to address those in their own land use code amendment to make sure that uh we followed the right process.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Commissioner Nietzsche.

Yeah, thank you.

And uh first of all, thank you for your explanation about parking.

Uh, that was one of my questions at the last uh meeting where HOMA came up.

So that this explanation was was very beneficial for me.

Uh, and also for getting back on our uh comments about third places and indoor bike parking.

Um, those were also things that I was interested in.

So thank you for for your explanation.

Um I guess my main question is um, and we had a commenter about this, and you addressed it a little bit in your in your presentation, but can you talk me through a little bit on um how you reach the numbers for frontage um and just kind of run me through what HOMA does in regards to that and how you see that actually uh playing out.

Yeah.

So um I'll use Newport Hill Shopping Center as an example.

Uh, it's in the neighborhood business district.

Right now, the entire ground floor of in the neighborhood uh business district has to be commercial uses, um, which we've been told, and in in neighborhood business, you can then add one floor of residential, and that's all you can get out of your development.

So, what we've been told is that is much too much uh requirement, especially for retail in these areas, uh especially these areas that aren't such high density areas.

Um, we're seeing vacancies in these retail areas throughout the city, um, but specifically these sort of older shopping centers that are potentially ripe for redevelopment.

Um, so in those discussions with developers, um, and based on what we saw through the comprehensive plan and our neighborhood area planning processes, there are a clear desire to maintain these areas as these neighborhood centers, which you've heard this evening.

Um, and we, you know, sympathize with that very much and think that's very important.

Um, and we've heard that loud and clear.

So to make sure that these areas are vibrant and also more walkable, which is consistent with our comprehensive plan, um, trying to instead of making the whole ground floor of a building be retail, um, pushing that retail to the back of the street.

So, you know, activating these these streetscapes and encouraging these uses that are going to have people coming in and out of them, um, not necessarily with a car as well.

That also allows uh at the back of sites, again, some uh site like Newport shopping center, where you have a larger site at the back of site, you can build a residential only building, which may be uh more desirable for certain building types.

Uh, we've heard about townhomes, it's more desirable for townhomes.

It's also potentially more desirable for apartment buildings, not to have to have that retail element on the ground floor.

Uh, even in dense areas like Seattle, you don't necessarily have to have that retail element on the ground floor.

Um, the 50, so in our lower density districts, which is going to be NB and CB, we're proposing 50% of the street frontage.

And in the higher density uh districts, we're proposing 66% of the street frontage.

Uh, really, we're trying to find that balance between what we're proposing for density, so how many more people we're gonna bring in, um, and trying to set that floor of the retail at a level that can be supportable.

Uh, we don't want empty spaces, essentially.

You don't want vacant storefronts and allowing the sort of development market to go up from there if it's appropriate to have that demand, but making sure that at least some retail is provided.

What we really don't want to see in these areas is uh, you know, Newport Hill shopping center turn into a field of townhomes with no retail because we've lost the whole point of that neighborhood center, right?

So uh trying to balance those two things as well as balancing, especially on some of these smaller sites, making sure that we're not requiring so much street frontage that you can't uh provide any open space or you can't punch a driveway through for things like garbage collection and parking around the back.

Um we through HOMA, we are requiring that the parking be to the side or the back of the building.

So we have to provide some access to that parking.

Uh, we think the condition we have now in a lot of these shopping centers with the building all the way at the back of the site with large parking lots up front uh is uh we'll say an old school way of doing uh planning and development, and we'd like to sort of flip that script again for that vibrancy and that walkability and getting these third places that people can walk in and out.

So we are trying to find that balance between the two things.

We think we've done a relatively good job of that.

I will say, you know, there's no guarantee either way that we'll get more or less retail or you know what we're calling pedestrian-oriented uses on these sites for an area like Newport, which has a very large mall right now, uh just with some vacancies, but if you take the whole square footage of the mall, you'll probably see a smaller square footage of that commercial than you have currently.

Uh and you'll see that in a lot of these strip malls, I think.

Um we've just heard the demand isn't there.

Uh hopefully, as these areas develop and get more housing, we'll also see the demand for more of these uses and more of these uses will be provided.

But uh we're really just setting the floor and hoping to see as much as sort of the market can bear.

Great.

Uh thank you.

That was a fantastic explanation.

Um, and yeah, it's a it's uh, you know, difficult thing to balance there.

So I'd, you know, very sympathetic to your having to pick a number and go with it.

I guess my only follow-up question to that is uh what is it in comparison?

I don't put any on the spot for this, so you don't need an answer, but comparing to neighboring cities, is it what are the frontage requirements for for that and RB higher?

Do you have you looked at that at all?

It's gonna vary greatly.

Um it's gonna be lower, right?

Than somewhere like Seattle, yeah.

They're gonna have a much higher density.

Um, a lot of places have also required uh instead of these pedestrian oriented uses, they'll require the whole front edge to be something like that, but they'll also allow for live work units.

So you'll end up with residential on the ground floor anyway.

Um, which is really what we didn't want to see, is to include something like live work um or the lobbies of buildings as these uses, and then you end up without the the element that we the sort of pedestrian orange use that we want to see anyway.

So um it's you know, I we think it's appropriate, right?

For these sort of mid, we'll say mid density off, you know, some of these areas are quite low density in comparison, um, falling between the Seattle level of everything has to be some sort of ground floor commercial able use in the sort of neighborhood centers um to the more suburban communities, which are going to require very little, uh, if any outside of their town center areas.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Commissioner Velaveses.

Thanks for the very eloquent explanation.

Uh I have a couple of questions on on this slide.

We're saying that this applies the the 20-foot setback applies to the areas in red, right?

The 25 foot setback applies to any colored area that is adjacent to any yellow or orange area.

So it's not just the areas in red, any building uh would have a setback if it is directly adjacent to uh a residential district, regardless of height.

The red areas there with step back would also be required.

So I'm looking specifically at the area of Victoria that is in front of the mall that has like that serrated profile.

Yeah.

Have you looked at that zooming in to see what the 20-foot setback around all the perimeter of those lots does?

Is are those lots wide enough to support that setback, or is that going to render those properties unusable?

So this is an example of exactly that.

Um, this is in that serrated area.

So at the bottom where that red dot is, you can see the residential building.

Uh, the building to the west there, so to the left with the white roof is a current office building.

Uh using Google Earth to measure that lot, it's about 175 feet wide.

Um, you can see by requiring that setback, we are totally uh removing an entire row of parking that they'd be able to put on the site.

So we are certainly impacting the ability for them to redevelop their site.

Uh we are forcing parking to go somewhere else.

Um, with a 110 foot building, parking is going at somewhere else anyway, because there's obviously not enough site area.

So um you're on these smaller lots, you're probably pushing it.

Um, you may be limiting the building size, which is not necessarily a negative, um, especially in these 110-foot parcels right now, as you know with building code, you're likely to see those seven-story buildings anyway.

You're probably not gonna see much over that unless it's mass timber.

These sites are probably gonna not be mass timber um just based on their location and their size.

So uh we don't think we're negatively impacting with 25 foot too badly.

When we start seeing sites that have a double setback and small sites, you're probably going to see more of that.

Those are relatively limited and sort of isolated spots.

There was a wall green, sort of the north end of town that had that condition where we were really squeezing the building uh and you're gonna have to be creative basically as a developer and architect.

Anytime we take site area away and require a stepbacks and things like that, we are you know impacting their ability to develop, but we think it's sort of trying to find that balance between the two.

Does it make sense to pair that provision with an alternative to say limit building height?

So you could potentially take over that space that you're not allowed to evolve because of the setback, but allowed to do like a three-story or compatible high building, so that in the case where it just renders your property undevelopable, uh undevelopable, you could still do something there.

And and that's without zooming in and looking at it, but it's just like the feeling I got from that profile.

It seems like you might be running into some issues uh preventing development in some of these properties.

Yeah.

Um, and it's certainly something we've heard from stakeholders as well, is a request to eliminate the setback if the adjacent buildings were no taller than the what was allowed for the adjacent residential districts.

So it was certainly something we could look at and be amenable to.

Um our concern, as a lot of our concerns are now with uh some of those standards is we are hyper encouraging townhomes, which is not necessarily a negative, but I do just want to make that clear.

But the more we do that, the more we're gonna see townhomes rather than apartment buildings.

But maybe that's the right place for a town hall, right?

Yeah.

Uh okay.

Uh the second one is bike parking.

And every time bike parking is great.

I think it should be required or at least incentivized.

Uh, but uh uh something that would be good to see is not only the requirement to provide bike parking, bike parking as a chunk of area within a building, which is sometimes difficult to accommodate similar to the trash management, that kind of stuff, right?

But you can optimize that program.

Essentially, you could you could provide bike parking in each apartment unit.

So I mean, sorry.

No, you could you could have each uh resident bring their bike up into their unit and have a dedicated bike space inside their unit, and that eliminates the area by just providing it a little bit of area for sorry, is that true for me?

No.

Uh providing uh each unit a small space within each unit, providing each owner with the small space in each unit to provide uh to park their bike.

That is a way in which you could uh alleviate the the requirement in terms of area needed for bike parking, just by simply distributing the requirement across all units.

That may or may not be the best option for a given project, but having the option is usually a good thing.

So that's that's my comment about that.

Um besides that, I I don't have any any other codes right now.

Can someone entertain a motion to extend the meeting to 1015 or something like that?

Chair, I would like to make the motion that we extend our meeting until 10:30.

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor.

Hi.

Thank you.

Um I think I have um I love the bike um suggestion.

I do live in the building with the bike storage.

People don't do that because they get stolen.

People leave the door open, they forget to lock, and then somebody comes and stole your parking.

Then basically do your bike.

Then basically most of people, including me, I bike inside my unit.

I bring it inside my unit and put in my unit.

Then it's like really interesting, like how many people in the buildings they use it.

And we are 164 units.

I barely see like five or six, and I think it's just occupy two parking lot spots.

But that was a great point.

I love that.

Can you bring slide 11?

I think it was factoria.

Um, I'm sorry, crossroad.

Yep.

Um you were talking about all those trees are gonna go beyond tree canopies.

Like how they're not significant trees.

None of those trees are significant.

Then so we uh we've updated our significant tree definition so that um all trees that are greater than six inches in diameter at roughly four and a half feet above ground, um, meet that significant category.

And so when you're going forward to develop, you get credit for retaining those trees.

So like those tall trees behind the building for sure will be significant trees that you can earn.

The one on the west side of the crossroad, you mean and the 100 which one are you referring to?

I'm just talking about on the left picture.

I just want to see which one is significant because that's crossroad.

That's like a delay.

I can't we don't have like individual tree data, but you know, a six-inch diameter is like this, the trunk.

So just eyeballing it, like all those mature evergreens are gonna be well over even probably landmark territory.

And is this the same one as a did you guys just change it?

Or just is the one that this is not the one that we worked on it, the significant tree that we oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Our updated uh standards for significant landmark trees.

That was we adopted that code last summer.

Okay.

Yeah.

I will walk around cross-store and get back to you about that.

Lots of big mature trees.

And you know, I can't guarantee there is flexibility to remove trees, but um, it's extremely likely a lot of those mature trees around the perimeter are going to be prime options for retention.

We'll earn a lot of credit in the retention.

Okay.

Um that was my only question.

And I think we can go to the downtown area.

Favorite part.

All right.

Uh yeah.

So um we did meet with stakeholders as was mentioned by public comment around downtown.

Um, they reached out to us to set up a meeting, and we did have that meeting about uh two weeks ago.

Uh, there were some points of agreement between us and the stakeholders.

Uh, there's agreement on the $13 fee and the four to one bonus being uh generally fair.

Uh, as you heard from public comment, there was a request to alter the outdoor plaza requirements to be consistent with the Wilburton uh open space requirements.

So right now to cross our trigger height.

So basically to get a taller building, you have to provide 10% what we call outdoor plaza in the downtown.

What we found through analyzing some of the existing applications is that requirement was actually requiring that developments provide more amenity incentive points than they needed to get the to the max FAR and building height.

So it's it essentially rendered the affordable housing portion of the amenity incentive bonus pointless.

So lowering that requirement and also allowing developers to count more things in that requirement.

So not just outdoor plaza, but things like streetscaping and landscaping alleviates that concern.

We did hear from public comment that they want to make sure that it is open space and not outdoor plaza for that 7%.

We totally agree with that.

We think that's totally fair.

So in the next strike draft, we will make that update to be consistent with Wilburton to make sure that the bonuses we're providing for affordable housing are actually bonuses and are not sort of being overridden by these outdoor plaza requirements.

There was a request to alter the flexible development standard requirement back to what was required with the intern ordinance.

So through HOMA, we're proposing that you would have to provide 0.5 FAR of affordable housing to provide some development flexibility in the perimeter overlay.

So it's some additional building height, some stepback reductions and some lot coverage increases.

The IOC proposed that you have to provide 0.5 FAR of basically exempt space.

So for every one square foot of affordable housing, you get four square feet of exempt space.

So it would be essentially be 0.1 FAR of affordable housing and 0.4 FAR of that exempt market rate space.

We agree with that as well, and we think that's fair.

That's what we did through the IOC.

So we're happy to make that changes, that change.

There are requests for several form standard changes throughout downtown.

We do think these are more appropriate to be discussed through downtown livability 2.0, which we plan on starting after HOMA is completed.

We think a lot of the form standards, especially as more major ones that are not just minor tweaks, they need their own outreach and input process and they need to be focused on more.

We appreciate our downtown stakeholders, but there are more stakeholders related to downtown than just the development community, like our residents and the neighboring residents as well.

So we want to make sure that that outreach is sufficient as we're if we make large scale changes to downtown livability or to downtown code through downtown livability.

It's on our work plan.

It's been discussed with council.

So we do have that list that you is you are also provided of uh recommended changes, and that's certainly something that we will discuss through that downtown livability process after HOMA is completed, uh which will give us uh more time to also analyze what those changes might do to what downtown looks like, what downtown feels like, and just the code in general.

Uh so we do want to uh request that those stay uh separated into downtown livability 2.0.

Uh as was mentioned at the last planning commission meeting, there was uh some asked to allow the same square foot of affordable housing to count towards the amenity incentive points and the exempt FAR.

Um so basically that one square foot of affordable housing, you'd get four amenity incentive points, and you'd be able to exempt four square feet of market rate development up to 50% of the base FAR in the district.

Um that gives you a huge density bonus as well as an amenity incentive bonus for providing affordable housing.

Um there were a couple of comments that say there were no density increases through this program.

This is a massive density increase of up to 50% of the base FAR.

A lot of the districts, uh, for example, downtown mixed use district has a base FAR of 45.4.

So you're looking at over two FAR potentially of exempt market rate development.

Uh so that is, I think we think a quite large uh bonus we're giving.

Right now, that bonus is at one to 2.5 square feet and is uncapped at one FAR.

So there is a lot of benefit we are providing through this change.

Uh we also don't agree that this is a mandatory program.

It is still an incentive-based program.

Uh, we are uh holding the line, I'll say, and we are still recommending that that first 25% of affordable housing be uh or amenity incentive points be affordable housing rather than the recommended or I won't say recommend the requested um May or sort of optional program suggested by the stakeholders.

Uh, we through our economic analysis with downtown, we do think for future projects that uh at least the fee in lieu at $13 a square foot is actually slightly less expensive for developers than providing the open space on site or paying the uh just over $38 per square foot fee in lieu.

So uh in future, it is potentially a money saver as well for this development.

So we do think this is a fair exchange that we are asking between exchanging that open space and towards affordable housing uh to try to meet some of those affordable housing goals or at least get some funding to meet those affordable housing goals.

Uh, we did discuss with you all last time and with stakeholders about exempting pipeline projects, so those projects that are in the application process from these changes, that is something we have to discuss with council.

It's something that council had done through the Wilburton process.

Uh, and we will we are committing to discussing that with council again through this process too.

Uh we know it's difficult if we start changing standards in the middle of these very large scale processes.

So uh making sure that we cover that with council too.

Uh that's all I have for downtown.

So happy to answer any questions on that.

Okay, same Ferris.

Commissioner Ferris.

So we have to give you huge congratulations.

I literally had like six or seven questions.

And as you went down your list, you checked off like all of my questions with a couple of minor exceptions.

Um there was a comment tonight earlier about allowing affordable units to be in just the apartment part of a development and not necessarily in townhomes.

I tend to agree with that.

Just just but what are your thoughts on that?

So uh different project, but we are I'm currently working with Robbie uh on an affordable housing director's rule, which is required basically through what we adopted with the Wilburton Code.

Uh the way that is written, and Robbie, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the land use code also has some provisions for this.

Um the affordable units have to be in proportion to uh the market rate units on site.

So if you had uh say 15 for sale uh townhomes and then you had 75 uh for our rental units, the affordable units would have to be in proportion to those two.

Uh so if you have 10%, basically one and a half uh for sale affordable units and then seven and a half uh rentals.

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm having a harder time getting my head around affordability when it you come to um home ownership.

I mean the delta between what you'd have anyway.

I think that's hugely problematic.

So I would I guess encourage you to go back and do a lot of math around that.

Um it's different on apartments, those are a little bit more transient in nature.

Um anyway, I would I would like to see you like put a little bit more effort on really doing analysis on that one.

Just a note on that one, and because it is part of the director's rule, it would be separate from the HOMA process, it would be through that director's role process, which we are currently working on.

Okay.

So in other words, you don't have to address it right today.

Correct.

We can still move forward to HOMA and you'll still look at it.

Okay.

Um let's see if there's anything else here.

I went just again, I the you obviously you had this meeting with stakeholders.

I'm not sure exactly who the stakeholders were, but in an earlier comment, supposedly you're given this list of all of these, you know, owners, developers, and supposedly they haven't heard from you.

Something's not lining up.

Yeah.

So uh the stakeholder meeting we held a few weeks ago is organized by Blush, so that's the chambers land use group.

Uh there may be other stakeholders that uh would like to meet with us.

I would encourage them to reach out to us like Blush did uh to set up a meeting.

Um, there's certainly a list out there.

So I think we can point out there were names on that list that were in that meeting.

I didn't know I think so.

I think that's all I have for now.

Thanks.

Thanks, Commissioner Kennedy.

Um, I wasn't ready.

Uh hold on.

Gonna go to the next.

I can come back to you.

Um, no, that's okay.

Thank you.

Um so this question kind of bridges both topics that you've just gone through.

Um, and following up on Commissioner Ferris's question regarding outreach.

So to better understand and place the comments that we've received.

I know that we do not have a comprehensive red line for today to review.

Um, appreciated walking you rocking through the schedule and how we think about um our potential for voting on moving toward an uh open hearing, open meeting.

Um we would be doing that on the new revised red line that we are yet to receive, but will receive prior to that meeting, which will include the edits that were just discussed.

Um, for instance, with downtown.

Yes, okay.

So when we have hold a public hearing, we have to notice that public hearing.

Um so we'll have to have a complete strike draft that includes everything you would make a recommendation on when that notice goes out.

But we'd hope to have another draft of the strike draft in a few weeks with the changes proposed through the downtown meeting a couple weeks ago and the short turnaround and some of the nonconforming language that you're going to hear about, uh, it's gotten complicated to change the strike draft.

So we wanted to make sure that before we released the next draft, we had all of our ducts in a row to release a draft that meets our quality standard and was not confusing people when we made very quick turnaround changes.

So we should have a new draft shortly, but there just wasn't enough time between the two meetings to get all of those things together.

Okay.

And just I know you said this earlier, but I just want to just get make sure we have a finer point on it, which is to the extent there are stakeholders of submitted comments that are concerned that their requests or clarifications that they've put through in in a couple different study sessions now are not currently represented.

They will have an opportunity to review that red line and to provide additional comments at the public hearing to bring in those changes.

And we'll we'll also get to chance to review for our edits as a planning commission or are getting in as we talk about here.

Okay.

And certainly with a public hearing, we have to take all comment on the item as well.

So with no time limit essentially.

So they will all also get to make another set of comments.

And if planning commission did want to hold future study sessions after that public hearing, they could do so as well.

And obviously, those are all open for comment as well.

So certainly more opportunities for engagement.

And again, encourage anyone that wants to talk to me about specifics to reach out and I have not turned down any meetings, and I don't plan on doing so.

And to must not sleep to be a bit more specific on dates too.

Um, our earliest opportunity to hold the public hearing if it's scheduled today would be uh December 10th.

So that notice would be going out probably the week of Thanksgiving.

So, you know, the absolute latest we would be able to get that full public draft out would be, you know, late November.

We anticipate we're going to be able to have a fully updated draft circulating well before that point.

So there will be that official notice with the official updated draft, but we are going to be getting it out there even in advance of that.

So those stakeholders will have the opportunity for a few weeks to be able to reach out on that offer.

Watch out for your your Thanksgiving holiday.

Um that's really helpful.

I do think we've received comments that provide really clear uh detailed red lines and very clear specific changes in language.

Um you mentioned you you uh met with the PLESH group and the downtown, some of the downtown stakeholders, um, just would welcome and look forward to seeing how we weighed that and and what comes up in this red line in addition to all of the other stakeholders' comments and our comments here.

So thank you for walking that through.

Um it's kind of a confusing timeline.

So thanks.

It's the first round of your public hearing.

It's good.

Good questions.

Right.

Yeah, good question.

Uh Commissioner Nilcia.

Yeah, thank you.

Um like Commissioner Farrell said, you guys did a great job of answering basically every question that I had.

Um I had just kind of a general point and then a broader question to follow up on it.

You know, it I think going through the HOMA process, um my priority, and I know the priority of of a lot of people has been to kind of find that equilibrium point of, you know, we want affordable housing, and we also want to create an environment that encourages as much development and uh new units of housing as possible.

Um, and and I know these changes that you've you've made have been uh to you know, try to find that equilibrium.

My broad question is um what effect do you think these changes as a whole will have on development in downtown and uh moving us towards that kind of goal of affordable housing and building new units.

Yeah.

So um, I mean, the anticipated effect is to in all likelihood produce us a small amount of funding for affordable housing in Bellevue.

Um, what we've seen through the existing uh program, which is that uh one to 2.5 FAR exemption capping out at one FAR is very low utilization.

I think we've had a handful of developments, probably less than that, a couple of developments use it in the past.

Uh what we saw through the IOC, which we upped that bonus to one to four was much better utilization.

Uh, about five percent of the units in those projects were affordable.

Uh, we're always sort of trying to push towards that 10% number, as you can see.

So trying to get a little bit more out of that.

Uh, if you look at the amenity incentive program and the numbers we're looking at, we're looking at uh probably a couple units uh or a few hundred thousand dollars per project.

Um, but a good way to make sure that every project provides a little bit uh towards affordable housing in downtown.

Um different from what we're proposing in other places where we're looking at mandatory programs or certainly not proposing that here.

Um, in terms of development feasibility, based on our economic analysis, we think it's a small money saver for future projects.

So uh don't think we're impacting development feasibility in a negative way, certainly.

And with that four to one bonus with the ability to go up to 50% FAR exempt.

Um, we think that's quite a large bonus for development.

So we're hoping that uh they sort of synergize together to increase uh residential development feasibility in downtown while providing the city with uh what will likely be a um a decent amount of funding towards affordable housing.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Commissioner Melevises.

Thanks again for the very clear presentation.

I have a couple of comments and questions.

First one is in the agenda, and then you mentioned it again today.

There seems to be a general agreement about a fee and loop between different stakeholders, including four for market developers and nonprofit developers.

Is that is that correct?

I have not heard any comments really from the nonprofit development side of things on the fee and lie.

Um what I've heard from the stakeholder group is that the $13 seems fair.

Um, it's consistent with what happened in Wilberton.

Great, great.

Um I have.

So they say that no plan survives its first contact with reality, right?

And uh I wanna focus on a sentence from one of the letters that we received from Macaula's Hill.

It says, if the city wants more affordable housing, you should collaborate directly with the developers that create it, asking what tools, incentives, and flexibilities would encourage the desired outcomes.

Uh these developers, they probably have a couple hundred years of experience all together working on this.

And I think the feedback they're providing in the letters that we have received is is pretty uh uh precise and and it could be very helpful.

So I would encourage you to discuss with them.

These items, as you said, you're not uh rejecting any meetings, which is which is great.

Uh there's a letter out there providing some contact information.

I would encourage you to reach out and say, let's let's meet up and let's go through these items because they're the ones with the boots on the ground.

They're the ones that are paying for this and making it happen.

And ultimately, that's the outcome that we need.

We need these buildings to be built and these housing units to be produced.

Um, so I would encourage you to talk with them and address those concerns.

Uh on the plush letter, I would like to highlight a couple of things.

I think generally most of the items are requesting clarity, which seems to make sense.

There was one that was a little bit of a stretch asking for uh open space to become Test Plaza.

Maybe that's not uh the right approach in that in that case, but I wanted to highlight uh two or three items here.

They talked about uh I guess a fauna decision.

I suppose that's fauna development, and there's some background to that.

Uh, they said uh there's some decision here that has been taken a long time and is causing a lot of trouble.

There's one about uh pet relief areas.

And the point is not the pet relief on itself, is just that there's no clarity on the code, and that starts to drag the process, right?

Same with uh outdoor places, outdoor plaza criteria, which apparently it's a little bit vague and is becoming so these things when we don't have clarity, it's like having a traffic light that is turning brown.

Like, are you are you stopping?

Are you going?

Like what's going on?

So at some point it's better to have like a uh something that is not ideal that is very clear, so you know what you need to do rather than having something that still needs to be interpreted and is gonna drag on your time, is gonna drag on your staff's time, is gonna drag on the developers' time, it's just gonna stop and delay development.

And that's as we know, it's a huge uh uh increase to cost because time is money.

So ever since I joined the planning commission, we've talked about looking for clarity in the code, that is evident clarity.

And uh, I would encourage you to just really look deep into this to make sure there's no there's no room for, I mean, every code has room for interpretation, but but it's it's as clear as possible.

We want to avoid this this this types of uh issues.

Um besides that, uh I agree with uh Jesse Claus's comment about non-conforming codes, but I think we're gonna talk about that later, okay?

Um yeah, that's that's that's it.

Thank you.

Um I think I have um two comments.

One is like Matt, um when you said there are some um development on the pipeline.

I'm curious about a number.

I'm I'm wondering if a council will be curious about a number too.

Like it's like 20 permit that we have it and down the pipeline, or it's only five that we want to exception, have exception.

I'm just curious if you guys can come up with the data specifically for council in downtown 2.0, because they wanted to know if they're dealing with like 20 or they're dealing with only eight or two.

Uh I can count around 1011 by my only walking in downtown area.

Uh, but I'm sure it's more in that.

And I think about the um the plaza or open space.

Um, I personally think some open space are not useful.

And we are like too much talking about open space.

But like for example, the South Lincoln has the retail community area food bank.

That food, what is it?

Food at food, what I call it.

Uh forgot.

Sorry, I'm losing my uh second language.

They have like a food area, and then uh thank you.

Food courts, and then mostly like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it's just packed.

It just built that third place.

Like I see people are sitting and playing a game and boards and stuff.

Like tons of youth are sitting there every weekend and they're playing games because it's like a nice area to grab a coffee and just hang out and play.

And it's really create a third area that we are looking for it.

And there's like an avenue and residential area that it's a windy big open space, and people just smoke cigarette there.

And none of the retails are um only two retailed areas now um occupies maybe a change, but I just want to say how are what is our perception from the third place and openness space can play really in the community differently, because that's like uh indoor covered area with couple retails, it's really more attractive for some people compared to like a big open space that nine months of the year we cannot use it.

It's pretty windy.

I really suggest to walk on 100 third Avenue Northeast.

Um it's like a wind tunnel that hall rises, swear it is horrible.

Um and then the pet area, that was another thing.

And I think the other thing that came to my mind with pet area and um roof, green roof.

We do have a green roof, it's just turned to, I don't know what to call it.

I can give a tour to you if you want to specifically, and it's costly.

Um, no one is gonna use it, it's ugly.

I even feel it's the fire hazard now when it's getting warm, because we can because the HRA does not take care of it, and as just was a rooftop when they started selling the units, and now it's not it's nothing.

Then I don't know if if we can have something about who's maintaining the rooftop, that'd be interesting, or is it even the rooftop is a good thing?

Um that's another thing that I really by leaving in a downtown is other thing, and the pet um relief area is the same, like it's in the really moddy wet area that I don't think if it's in hygiene, but uh those are my comments.

Should we go second round or we are good?

I have a couple more comments.

Okay, please go ahead.

Is it anyone else?

Okay.

So rooftops, uh well, I'm not sure right now if there's uh something in the language in the code that it encourages or allows it, but there are cities like Bangkok that allowed and encouraged the use of rooftop decks for public use, so with bars or restaurants or activities like that.

We have such an amazing uh surroundings.

Like if you've ever been to a scent, like you have the Mount Rainier and you have the lakes on one side, you have the cascades on the other one, you have the sound.

Like this could be a really interesting approach if you somehow encourage or allow commercial uses on the top, which could be part of the I mean an incentive system.

Um and the the other comment I had is is uh echoing some of the comments that we've heard.

Uh uh, and I mentioned this about certainty, eliminating uh vague language from the code.

Uh the other one is consistency.

And I think generally a lot of people are happy with Wilburton.

And there's there's this uh plea for making sure the downtown code is consistent with Wilburton.

I know they're different, so we have to look at them separately, but but it's a good uh fallback to just always check and make sure that we're we're approaching it the same way.

So I would also suggest that we use that as a as uh as a baseline at least uh to check check against these.

That's that's all yeah.

I think a lot of these things that we're talking about, especially when we're encouraging, especially when we're starting to talk about commercial, are things that we're gonna look at through downtown livability 2.0, um, especially with Wilburton consistency as well, and making sure that the code is clear.

Um, so I do want to put that out there.

Um, these are probably not things we're gonna look at HOMA through HOMA, especially when it relates to commercial uses, um, but it's things that we can start to look at uh with downtown livability 2.0 uh as we move into that project after HOMA's complete and we do a real deep dive uh with a real microscope on the downtown code.

Is there a reason or is it do you think this is gonna have uh uh unintended consequence against uh developing that could happen now by delaying this portion of the work?

It depends on who you ask, I would say.

Um I mean, we've seen significant amounts of development under the current downtown code.

Um there are certainly a list of things that the development community would like to see um changed in the downtown code.

Um, and we're certainly amenable to looking at that list.

I think with the scope of HOMA, which is we're really targeted downtown, and that's sort of the way it's been scoped since the beginning, that the downtown updates were very minor.

Um, and the way we've done outreach and sort of looking at HOMA is very minor changes to downtown, not around form standards.

So we haven't done the same outreach we would do if we were changing large-scale form standards around downtown or changing a lot of standards of amenities that people use.

So we just want to make sure that we are doing the appropriate outreach and doing the appropriate scope for what we've told people we are gonna do with HOMA, um, especially as we have already committed to doing that really detailed update through downtown livability 2.0, and that's been on the slate for a while now.

Um, so uh at this point, really what's holding up downtown livability 2.0 is is HOMA.

Um I will transition probably pretty quickly into downtown right after we finish this, but we can't do both at the same time.

Thank you.

I I did have a follow-up, but I can't sure we can't say until 11, but go ahead.

Hopefully, hopefully my follow-up is not two hours long.

Um just just to just to create clarity on on kind of what we just talked about around what is happening with downtown 2.0 earlier.

It sounded like the potential for consolidating affordable units within one development tool to apartments rather than having the percentage split that we have proposed or in place right now between other types of housing is a possible revision we can do through downtown 2.0.

The Wilburton updates that have been highlighted by commenters and were brought up by Commissioner Villevasis could happen in in downtown 2.0.

Um these are revisions that will be possible even with the non-conforming provisions that I'm sure you cannot wait to start talking about.

And our HOMA you will have the opportunity to make these changes and we will be able to reserve um the comments we've received to include and consider in that process.

Is that what I just heard you say?

Yeah, I just want to make sure partially.

Um so the affordable housing standards, they're not standards, but sort of some of the rules around affordable housing uh are in the affordable housing director's role, which is a separate document that's pointed to by the land use code.

Uh Robbie has been working on that diligently uh for the last what couple months now.

Uh, we had a comment period on that uh where we did receive several comments from, well, one of the main commenters was plush.

So the same group that we heard from downtown stakeholders.

Uh that's where that rule for the split would be located.

Um so it would have to be a change to that director's rule.

That has not been uh signed by the directors yet.

So that is still open for potential change and final drafting.

Uh so we're still working through that process as we speak.

Uh I don't know if we have a timeline on that yet, Robbie, but some probably sometime around the end of this year is when we're looking at adopting that director's rule.

Um, also trying to make uh the rules between the land use code and the MFDE code as consistent as possible through that.

So that would not be addressed through downtown livability 2.0, but a lot of the standards and clarity and potential simplifications of the downtown code uh would be down through downtown livability 2.0, looking at some of those Wilburton standards as well.

Uh, I do want to note, you know, Wilburton has its own plan, downtown has its own plan.

So those are two separate entities.

Anytime we write the land use code, it has to be consistent with the adopted plan for that area.

So it's not necessary necessarily that we can just take Wilburton and put it on downtown because those plans are not the same.

So uh we'll have to analyze that too as we move through uh downtown livability 2.0, uh, which we also haven't done that analysis to sort of move that stuff around through HOMA as well.

So that gives us more time to look at uh those types of things and where we can find those overlapping uh standards that can be consistent that are also consistent with our planning documents, which were required by law to be consistent with when we read the code.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then I separately just had a quick question that I also um following on to prior prior comments.

Um there were several comments from affordable housing advocates talking about support for the proposals.

Um, when Commissioner Vilvices was asking about have you done outreach to um uh particularly developers that are nonprofits.

I took that as meaning developers who are working on affordable housing.

Um, but I just wanted to could you repeat your response?

So you were saying we have done that outreach.

We've spoken with them, and they are happy with this fee in lieu of and the provisions here.

Reading comments, it does seem like that's case, but I think I heard differently.

I just wanted to make sure.

Yeah, so we've heard a lot from the affordable housing community on option A specifically, um, and in support of that.

We haven't heard so much from the affordable housing community on this fee and loo.

Um, just generally because um these projects will be market rate developers providing this fee and loo.

So it's not necessarily something that the affordable housing community is going to get involved in as much as they would get involved in a mandatory program or 100% affordable projects outside of downtown.

So thank you.

Any more questions?

Okay, I think we're ready for the third part, and then we have another study if you guys can do faster.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Thank you.

We have only one hour left.

Understood, Chair.

I mean, I know you are all here tonight at nine o'clock to talk about non-conforming things.

So I will be quick.

Um, I'm Robbie Suppler, I'm an assistant city attorney.

I advise the code and policy division, these fine folks right here.

And we're going to go on a journey today to talk about non-conforming.

So let's talk about what we mean by these terms.

So we're kind of on the same page as we get started.

So non-conforming uses, what are they?

They're uses that were allowed when they're established, but now are prohibited.

And why is that?

It's because council changed their mind at some at some point in history.

Uh, here's an example.

This is from Seattle.

Uh, have any of you been to the Volunteer Park Cafe?

Um, it's a wonderful place to get a bite.

It is completely surrounded by residential uses with no other cafes in site.

So, kind of an example of what in many jurisdictions could be viewed as a non-conforming use.

Non-conforming structures, the theme is similar.

There are structure that was allowed when they were built, but now does not conform to current codes.

And why is that?

It's again the council with their planning commissions, have changed the rules.

They've changed the zoning, they've changed the design standards.

They want a different outcome.

And you can see that in this photo here.

This is from Lynn Wood.

This is in their uh light rail link area.

And on the right, you see what was there before, the any time fitness kind of strip mall.

And on the left, a new apartment building.

You can kind of see the difference in policy that the city is trying to achieve.

So, you know, the the example of the non-conforming structure would be what's on the right that was built under a prior code in a different era and is non-conforming.

Um, same story with non-conforming sites.

Uh here's the example.

This is from Seattle.

This is the Othello Link station.

You see a brand new or relatively new apartment building, the lower right, and the rest, you kind of see large surface parking.

Um, not exactly the sites that you probably are would develop under the current code, but we're sites that were historically that was the way they were developed, more car-centric with less um pedestrian-oriented kind of development.

So that's what makes some of those sites or in many jurisdictions, but would make them non-conforming sites.

So that was the background.

Let's get to why I'm even talking about this to you at nine o'clock at night.

So on June 17th, which is the day that council adopted the Wilburton Luca, they gave staff some direction.

So the concern that they expressed was that from their perspective, the city's non-conforming provisions are not working well for phase development under something called a master development plan, which is uh we abbreviate as an MDP.

So the direction that they gave to us is that through Homa, they want us to look at our non-conforming provisions and propose amendments to ensure that future phases of an MDP are not inadvertently or prematurely treated as non-conforming, and that we basically make it so that we're not requiring investment until it's really necessary for for some reason.

So as we go to this, I think you need to know we have seven current provisions in our land use code relating to non-conforming.

That is a lot that is somewhat redundant, and we are proposing to try to consolidate them down into uh at least one provision that would be more consistently applied across the city.

So breaking down the council direction, there's kind of two things we're going to look at, two key issues.

The first is when must future phases make improvements to come into compliance with the code.

And when that's triggered, that's the second question.

When that's triggered, when they need to come into compliance with the code, what level of investment are we going to require them to make?

How much improvements are we going to require them to make?

So we'll take these in turn.

So here we are under current code.

So we're talking about the question about when will future phases, when will they be triggered to have to make improvements?

So let's take this example of a two-phase project under an MDP.

We've got phase one on the left, phase two on the right.

So under our current code, and I'm using that kind of broadly.

Again, we have seven different provisions, but generally, this is what um would be applied is that improvements in phase two would only be required during the construction of phase one if there was a change in phase two during during the construction of phase one.

So the biggest example of that is a change if there's a transfer of floor area ratio or FAR from a future phase to the phase under construction.

So this is done to make a bigger building in an earlier phase.

And so under our current code, if you were to transfer, transfer unused FAR from phase two, it's basically development capacity from phase two that was not being used.

If you want to transfer that to phase one for use there, that would be considered a change under our code, and you would have to make improvements to phase two to bring it into compliance with the code.

I think Mr.

Villavesi, as you mentioned the FANA decision, that is essentially it.

Um that is that was that was what results from that.

So oh yeah.

Um having to take plenty of questions here at the end, it's dense.

I'm gonna try to lay it out for you here before we get there.

So what we're proposing here is to that would change the answer a little bit.

So under what's proposed, we'd be consolidating our seven nonconforming sections into the non-conforming code that we just adopted through Wilburton.

Um, and some of you here on the commission heard me last time when I came and spoke to you similarly at a late hour about the Wilburton non-conforming code.

So, under the proposal here, what would happen is that the phase two improvements would only be required during the construction of phase one if the value of the change was more than a basically a quarter million dollars.

That number is funky.

The reason it's funky is it was set during the bell red, the initial bell red code and has been adjusted before inflation since then.

So, as the commissioners and deputy mayor would remember during the Wilburton discussion, we created the Wilburton non-conforming code based on Bell Red.

So that's where that number's coming from.

But then the second part of the change here would be that a change triggering improvements doesn't include transfer of FAR so long as no more than 50% of the available FAR is transferred.

In other words, if as long as you leave 50% on phase two, you don't need to make improvements to phase two, but you could transfer it all as long as you make some improvements to phase two.

And let's get into that.

Why 50%?

So let's start with the photo.

We've seen this.

This is from Lynn Wood.

The kind of idea is that if you took the non-conforming structure on the right and you transferred all of its development capacity away, everything that wasn't used, it's never going to be redeveloped.

It's never going to get the nice big sidewalks, the street trees, the frontage, the active uses, everything that appears to be what Libwood wants in that new building.

If we keep 50% there, or alternatively can view it as a trigger of when improvements are required, we're going to allow a significant transfer of development capacity to a future phase without requiring improvements.

But we're also then going to encourage improvements by retaining a good amount of development capacity on the future phase.

So it's either going to be enough, hopefully, to let it redevelop sometime in the future, or the developer can choose to transfer it all and just make some improvements in phase two at the time of the transfer.

And so in that way it kind of provides a choose your own adventure of figuring out how you want to phase it and when you want to trigger making those requirements or making those improvements on that future phase.

And this is definitely a number we would love some input on the commission from tonight during during questions and comments.

So in summary, for the first key issue, when must future phases make improvements to conform to current code.

We're going to, we're proposing to allow the transfer of up to 50% of FAR from a future phase without requiring any improvements.

And we're also going to apply the Wilburton non-conforming codes uh trigger, higher trigger for requiring improvements in the first place.

That's that roughly quarter million dollar number.

So moving on to the second key issue.

So we've talked about when should future phases have to make improvements.

Now we're going to talk about what level investment should be required at that time.

So you're triggered, you got to make improvements.

How much money do you have to spend?

So under our current code, if you have to make improvements in phase two, if there's that trigger, you've got to spend whatever amount of money is needed to bring phase two completely into compliance with the code.

So it's it's whatever would whatever resources, whatever investment is required to bring phase two fully up to what the code would require.

What we're proposing to change is that there'd be a cap on the level of investment.

It would be equal to 20% of the value of the proposed change.

So by way of example, if the change you were proposing on phase two during the construction of phase one was worth a million dollars, you would have to spend 200,000 on improvements to phase two.

And once you reach that amount, um, going through the required list of improvements, you could stop until such time as you are required to make further improvements through a subsequent change.

So in summary, we would be capping the level of investment required on future phases to match what we're currently doing in Wilburton and also in Bell Red.

So the summary of major changes are we're going to allow the transfer of up to 50% of floor area ratio for a future phase without requiring improvements.

And we're going to consolidate the city's seven non-conforming provisions into the Wilburton non-conforming code, which provides a higher threshold for triggering improvements.

And it also provides a cap on the required level of investment.

And with that, I would love to answer questions and also love to hear your comments.

I'm going to the round.

Can you keep to two questions?

And your follow-up question is your second question.

Just one to be sure we are staying on the track.

I see the next presentation team while we're waiting there for the last three hours.

Commissioner Farris.

If we get a really dense subject like this, don't do it at nine o'clock at night.

Also add um slide numbers so that we can refer it back.

So anyway, those are couple quick comments.

And this is actually pretty straightforward.

How many times does it, when it's a phase development, are they transferring far?

Does it happen like all the time?

Just some of the times, few times.

How often is that used?

You know, I don't have clear statistics for you on that.

It's really the developer's option about whatever the assembly and whatever the project limit they they put together is.

I don't think it's unusual for FAR to be transferred.

So it's it's pretty common.

If do my colleagues here have a further further grasp, uh in talking to land use, I think it it happens relatively frequently, but I don't have an exact number for you.

Okay.

Yeah, and you'll see it more common in sort of a higher density development areas where you have these larger sites.

So especially downtown where the issue has arisen and it arose enough in downtown where it was important for Wilburton to work it into the code.

Um and important enough for council to direct us to work this into this code as well.

Okay.

I don't know if that's correct, but I think Mira and Mari Flack that were one of those phase two phases that they transferred a far, if I remember correctly.

Um Commissioner Kennedy.

Um thank you for the presentation.

Uh my one question is uh on the last part, the second bullet here on the on the summary of major changes.

Can you explain one more time?

The 20% applies to what value?

It applies to the value of the change to the future phase.

So it's if you have the two phase example here.

Yeah, if you're if phase one is under active construction, that's the first to develop.

If you're doing something to phase two that is worth uh more than the trigger amount, you would then um that now not and and now it doesn't conform with the code.

So you're saying I'm gonna do something different than I had originally proposed in my development that now doesn't conform with the code, the value of that total development cost for the for the change for the change would be it would be capped at 20%.

So if the value of the change, if you had to build uh at a parking parking lot to be on phase two for use in phase one, yeah.

Um, if that value was worth a million dollars uh for that change on phase two, you would then have to pay 200,000 worth of improvements to phase two.

So that's the 20%.

Okay.

So it's based on bring it up to the new code.

Exactly.

Make the change to your phase two.

Yep.

So it'd be the way and the the contrast again is currently under our current code is if there's any change to a future phase, you have to spend whatever is needed to bring it completely up to this is the reduction, so it's an 80% reduction.

Correct.

And then the only thing I would add is there's a for each land use district, there's a sequence of improvements you look at first.

So we try to prioritize the most important improvements um until the money runs out.

Commissioner Ninja.

Yeah, I uh I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about how that 20% number was was reached.

I know you mentioned Wilburton, um, but I wasn't here for that.

So how did how do we arrive at that 20%?

Absolutely.

So the history of the 20% is it's present in the Bell Red nonconforming code, and then that was adopted into the the Wilburton for application there.

The reason for the 20% is really to um lower that investment in improvements whenever it uh whenever it's triggered.

So essentially it operates to provide a longer, more gradual transition to new new code than um other numbers.

So uh I wasn't around when Bell Red was adopted.

Um so I don't know exactly why 20% was there, but I do know from the Wilburton discussion, the idea was let's pick a number, let's find a number that would provide that nice gradual transition, a little bit more runway.

Okay.

That makes sense.

There's so there's no one special number, it's just 20% seemed like a good number to what had been used before right in the city.

Okay.

Thanks.

Commissioner Veneves us.

Thank you.

Thanks.

That was very clear.

Except the 20%.

I want to I want to make sure I understand this right.

So the the first part of the transfer of a phase, let's suppose phase one, the that side has a capacity of 100,000 square feet.

And let's suppose phase two has a capacity of 50,000 square feet.

What you're saying is you can develop phase one.

The 100,000 square feet plus 50%.

So you could develop up to 125,000, right?

And leave those other 25,000 like for phase two, right?

Okay.

So that's the item number one.

Now, when do you need to when does the 20% kick in?

I I didn't understand that.

Is if you choose to say provide parking for phase one in the property or phase two, or is when if you decide to transfer instead of 50%, you decide to transfer 60% or more.

Well, how does the triggering happen?

I'm right.

So under the proposal, there's first a threshold that would need to be crossed in order to trigger the the requirement at all to make improvements.

So that trigger is that odd number, the 242,000.

Yeah.

So you would look at what you're doing with phase two.

And if the values of the change of whatever change you were doing exceeded that amount, um, then you would have to make improvements.

It's something I'm choosing to.

So I'm developing phase one, and I say I want to put some parking spots here, and those are 241,000.

So I don't need to do anything else, right?

Correct.

In that example, yep.

There would not be, you would not have triggered the need to do any improvements on phase two.

But if you if it was 250,000 was the cost of the parking spots, it would trigger you would have to make improvements, but the um it would be capped at 20% of that value of the change.

So in the example, if you was if you were doing 200, let's make it even 300, just to make it clear from the trick-of-the-rigger amount.

If you're building a parking lot that costs 300,000 on phase two, that would exceed the trigger height.

You would need to make improvements, but then the amount of money you would have to spend would be 20% of 300,000.

And I'm just realizing that I gave a number that I don't know how to easily do that math in my head.

68,000.

I am blessed to be here at this table with people who do math things.

You do many words is easier.

I'm like, okay.

Or is that 60,000 on top of the 300,000?

So the what you're doing is you're building the parking lot in that example, but that's not necessarily the what the code wants you to do.

Like I think the code, what we're brought to talk about, bring it fully into performance is we're talking sidewalk width.

We're talking street trees, we're talking active uses.

You choose to build this parking lot to serve phase one and you choose to build it in the property for two, and the parking lot exceeds 242,000, then you need to spend a certain amount of money doing improvements like sidewalks and planting trees and doing this stuff.

That's that's 20% of what of the total value of improvements is calculated for that lot.

Yep.

Okay.

Yep.

That's it.

And certainly they could design it in a way that might be able to help double count to reduce that further.

It's kind of functionally like we wanna allow people to make some adjustments that might be helpful along the way in a future phase, but we also wanna be nudging people towards a consistency with the code, but we don't want to push them all the way over.

So yeah.

It sounds reasonable to me.

Um, I think it would be good to get input from the development company because they're looking at these numbers every day, and they might say, hey, this is good, but is this numbers they need to be tweaked so that they they help?

But I I really like the the approach that allows for something and then incentivizes the rest.

That's that's all that's all from from my I haven't added my comments.

If you want to go to second round, I can skip mine.

No, are you?

I don't have any comments.

Does anybody need the second round?

I had to go for it, yeah.

Just a really quick question.

So just so I'm understanding the the trigger number here correctly.

Is it if let's say I wanted to do a change of like adding in a parking lot that's gonna cost 150,000, and then several months later I add in some other thing that's not a parking lot completely different, but takes it above that trigger amount.

Is it cumulative or is it per change?

So as drafted, and also what's currently in both Wilburton and in Bell Red, is we look at a three-year horizon.

So will we look at the past three years?

So they could you could do it slowly over time, but if in a three-year period you exceed the trigger height, then we require improvement.

And it's a delta of the change, right?

It's basically a delta of the change.

That's a thing.

The 20% of the delta of the change.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

And uh thank you.

And and so if you propose no change at all, no trigger.

So like your you're agreed upon phase two can go forth and prosper.

You do not have to conform with the revised code because you are not asking for a change.

Correct.

Period.

Yep.

Okay, just thank you.

Thank you.

Um, I have one question to ask.

Sorry.

Um, um what was the motivation of this?

Because we have so many phase one and phase two project at the phase two is transferring, or we have so many phase two has not been built.

Uh, what is the motivation?

What's like what is really like the reason that we are going to do this?

I'm a little bit curious about that if you have any information or data about it.

Well, the the purpose of uh oh, thank you.

The purpose of a non-conforming code in general is to make sure that the policy decisions that you and council all participate in eventually get to be applied to all development within the city.

So the purpose um here is to figure out the right pacing for to require that transition.

So um through the Wilburton Luca, there was a lot of discussion that um you know the Bell Red approach made the most sense.

So that's why we're proposing consolidating into that approach um to provide that gradual pathway to eventually make sure that all phases and all future development will eventually um get to where we're we want them to be under our current code.

And does that mean, for example, it might there was a phase one has been built in downtown right now?

And then with the change that we are doing, the phase two will fall into the new code.

That's why they might use this regulation, or no, it's not really the case here.

So I hope I asked my question correctly.

Right.

I think that um the the immediate question we're answering is what happens when you uh make a change to a future phase while constructing that first phase.

Okay.

That's kind of the main question.

Um, if you're concerned if like they build phase one and then 10 years later come back for phase two, you know, they think there's different things that would come into play, like vested rights and different different things that guarantee what set of rules will apply to the code under development.

Commissioner Val assessment.

Yeah, one more question.

So what we're talking about is you transfer 50% and you decide to make some improvements and those improvements exceed that value, then it triggers uh uh it triggers the improvements.

But is there a scenario in which you might choose, for example, to transfer 80%?

What happens if to be absolutely clear, nothing in the proposed code would prohibit the transfer of a hundred percent of the unused FAR from a future phase to the current phase.

If they do, if you transfer more than 50, um, you would just be required to make some improvements.

Some oral.

Um, you would be required to you would trigger the need to do improvements, uh assuming the value of half of the FAR was more than the trigger amount, which is likely.

And then that would be the amount of improvements you'd have to do.

That's where the 20% cap comes in.

So you would look at the value of the um of the of the amount.

I don't want to be that horse, I just want to make sure it's is it's clear.

Uh so the we're talking if if I transfer 50% of this and I decide to build something on phase two, that's gonna trigger some improvements.

But it I don't want to build anything on phase two yet, but I want to transfer 80%.

How do we calculate the value of improvements that are required?

Right.

So 50% um transfer doesn't count as a change.

So we'd be looking at that 30%.

So you're to do a 30% of improvements?

Well, so yeah, so be because if you in your example, it was uh you're transferring 80%.

Yeah.

So 80 minus 50 is 30.

So be looking at the value of that 30%.

Um that would likely exceed the trigger amount of 242,000.

And then we would look at that value um do we take the 20% of that value of what you have to spend?

Even though that is not being built on phase two, you're just using more.

Okay.

But it would be it would count as a change to phase two because you're taking um more than 50%.

So that that's the So that's included within the change.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, like the magnitude of the change is informing the magnitude of the degree to which you have to bring that um non-conforming site towards compliance.

Yeah.

Okay.

So far if you are transferring an addition to 50% is considered a change to phase two.

Okay.

But I guess the other question is it would be good to have uh an example, like like a real like step-by-step example so that we will understand this better and and this is helpful.

Thank you.

Quick comment.

This is really complicated.

You did an amazing job explaining it.

So thank you.

Thank you all for your your patience.

And I look forward to coming back at a future nine o'clock uh for a detailed example of this.

We can bring you at 10.

Um, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Okay, I think do we need a break or should we go power out?

I'd like to make a motion, however, that we um the planning commission directs.

Yeah, sorry, I was going to say, can someone entertain the motion?

Are we already?

Just let me ask that question.

Are we all ready to have a public hearing?

Having public hearing does not mean that we gonna go suggest or recommend to the council.

We can have another study, although we have an end of December timeline for this item.

We don't, then we are good.

Okay, can I have the motion?

I would like to move that we direct staff to schedule a public hearing for the housing opportunities in mixed-use areas land use code amendment.

Can I get the second?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor.

Thank you.

Finally, I could turn this around.

Okay.

The final study session item is the update to the affordable housing strategy in 2024.

The council initiated an update to the city's existing affordable housing strategy to implement new policy direction from the comprehensive plan and reflect current needs and more kids condition.

Council also approved a new affordable housing target to build or preserve 5700 in 10 years.

Bianca Siegel, Office of Housing Director and Hannah Bon Miller, a senior planner in Office of Housing will provide this update.

Thank you.

Thanks for being patient with us.

Happy to be here.

We'll keep this brief and exciting for you.

Happy report on progress on the affordable housing strategy.

Well, good evening, commissioners.

I feel like we actually had the perfect setup with the previous two items.

I heard a lot of discussion about affordable housing.

And really now the briefing tonight is to get you thinking about what's next.

You have all of this work on your plate that you're doing really meaningful, great job on.

And the affordable housing strategy that we're updating right now is really thinking about what is next for the city to continue to address housing affordability issues.

And just wanna say I'm really glad to be here tonight with a couple of new commissioners.

I know that several other folks on the commission have heard this background a little bit more, but for your benefit, I will dive a little bit into some of the background very quickly.

I promise I will get you here out by 12 uh 10:30.

Not 12.

Um, so again, today we'll go a little bit into that overview of what the affordable housing strategy is.

But really, today is to share a progress update with you, uh, both on the engagement that we've done in our phase one and phase two work, but also where we are in terms of the overall project goals and our draft strategies and actions that we're um beginning to prioritize right now.

Um, our hope is to bring a draft, a full draft strategy to our city council in January.

We do have a study session with them at on October 31st, where we'll be presenting an update to them.

So the affordable housing strategy update launched last November.

Our council initiated this work plan that uh is been undertaken over the course of about a year.

We're really in the final stretch of this work.

We've been working really hard over the course of 2025 on this project, and we're in the final couple of stages right now.

Where we are is we have draft strategies and actions that we're working to prioritize and refine through our final rounds of engagement before we bring that recommendation to council.

Um, so again, for the benefit of some newer commissioners, just a reminder that the affordable housing strategy is a functional plan or a strategic plan of our comprehensive plan.

So this is a near-term planning document.

We're looking at the next seven years for affordable housing implementation.

And the work within this plan is really driven by the policy guidance that you all established in the comprehensive plan update.

And so while this is an informational briefing for you, and the planning commission does not formally recommend um the affordable housing strategy.

It does go directly to our council for consideration.

You all informed uh the policy guidance that's driving these conversations, and many of the implementation um actions will be coming back to you for further consideration and refinement.

Um, so we do want to make sure that you're involved, aware of this process.

Um, while you won't be signing off on the document, you are you've had a stamp on it, and you will continue to in implementation.

Um the affordable housing strategy, um, it's also a little bit of a misnomer.

Um, while it is very much focused on that income restricted affordable housing, it is not exclusive to it.

We are also thinking about other housing priorities at the city, like housing equity, housing stability, and overall supply, as we know they have a very big impact on affordability and accessibility in our community.

Um already hit that bullet point there, so I'll just go to the last one on this slide, which is that um uh as planners, we love to say we don't want our plan to sit on the shelf.

Um the goal of the strategy is really for implementation, um, and that the implementation steps within um the um action plan of this strategy document will inform work programs of individual departments within the city.

Um we are also thinking about how to prioritize those implementation steps.

Uh, we've identified a lot of work, and we know that we can only take on a portion of it at the time.

Um, so that's going to be key to our implementation efforts.

So I asked, as I mentioned, we've been busy working in 2025, engaging with the community.

And for this project, we've really identified three overarching engagement objectives as well as three different constituencies that we're targeting our engagement to in slightly different ways.

So one of the key parts of the affordable housing strategy is to make sure there's a foundation of information about housing and housing affordability in the city.

There's lots of different levels of understanding, and we want to make sure that there's a foundation that people can access.

So if they want to participate in this process, they can do from do so from an informed grounded approach.

We also want to make sure there's opportunities for everyone to have input on the plan.

That includes our residents and community members, but also folks who participate in Bellevue through work, play, or study as well.

And then finally, within the housing work, we have new policy guidance around making sure the engagement we do is with diverse and representative voices.

And so these three objectives really do feed into these different constituency groups that we've identified.

And we have been targeting our engagement slightly different to our organizational partners, those with lived experience, and the general public.

So in March, we held a short film festival showcasing different small creator housing stories.

We also held a resource fair and housing 101 event.

We also got to engage our YouthLink members through a board game at their youth involvement conference in the spring.

So through a variety of different events in our phase one, we were able to connect with over 300 people through in-person or virtual engagements and over 25 organizations.

And the actual feedback we collected was through housing stories, film reflections, and other inputs through these events.

And we took all of that information and we have published a phase one engagement report that really is showcased what we heard.

Just some highlights are that a lot of belonging in the city and belonging meaning that you know, you not only do you feel like you belong in your home, but also you belong in your community and neighborhood.

And some specific things that came out of those conversations were the importance of aging in place, not necessarily your home that you're in right now, but being able to stay in your community, as well as inclusive design that lets all folks of all abilities and stages of life to be able to benefit from neighborhoods.

In phase two, we targeted our engagement a little bit more, focusing in on our organizational partners and those with lived experience of being impacted by housing issues.

So we did this in two ways.

For our organizational partners, we sent out a survey to them to help get input on how we should assess our different actions.

A couple of themes that came out of that unsurprisingly was reducing cost is a big priority for our organizational partners, really drove that point home.

But some other things that came out of that were some comments about improving navigation for community members trying to access housing resources from our community-based organizations, as well as a lot of comments about how we balance some really hard trade-offs in this work.

We know we can't do it all.

We know there are some conflicting issues.

And so thinking about how to balance those trade-offs, we really heard about the importance of leaning on values for those decisions.

Because if you try and just weigh all of the details, you really can't balance all of those items.

To reach folks with lived experience, we actually put together a pilot community facilitator program.

So we recruited and hired nine community facilitators to engage community members in listening sessions across the Bellevue community.

And so this is really based on the understanding that city staff, we're not going to be able to go to every place that people are.

And even if we could, we might not be the best person to be having the conversations to be able to hear what people have to say.

So using the community facilitators' existing connections, they were able to host listening sessions and reach to over 150 community members who we would likely not otherwise be able to hear from.

And again, some key themes in these conversations were really around the difficulties to access affordable housing and housing affordable to them, as well as the information barriers and the challenges of navigating in a complex and often fragmented affordable housing system.

And so we do want to briefly touch on our goals and draft strategies with you all as well.

Because our project goals are really derived from the work that you all did last year.

We pulled our overarching five overarching goal areas from the housing element of the comprehensive plan.

You can see those five areas on the screen.

And while we know all of these different areas are important, we did get clear direction from our city council around setting a goal to achieve a new affordable housing target.

And so while we are thinking about all of these different areas, we are also prioritizing those actions that result in new affordable units.

And for everyone's reminder about what our affordable housing target is, our council set this goal for us at this project's launch, asking us to identify ways to help the city achieve a 10-year affordable housing production target of 5,700 affordable units.

And within that, we are identifying sub targets for those different below 80% AMI income bans.

What is not shown on the screen is kind of that order of magnitude about where we are versus this target.

And really what we think that we can achieve in the next 10 years based on our current market and tools is about 65% of that overall 5,700 affordable units.

So we do think that there is a gap that we do need to make up through actions within the affordable housing strategy.

We have seen that the majority of our expected units in the next 10 years are really at that 50 to 80% AMI level.

In fact, over 85% are.

And so really the challenge for us is weighing some of the trade-offs between meeting the overall 5,700 affordable housing target versus potentially aligning better with some of these income district income band distribution needs.

So our affordable housing target as well as those five goal areas have informed our development of draft strategies.

But of those 27 strategies, these are really the ways that we make progress towards those goal areas.

And the strategies, you know, are specific, but they are a little bit more high-level.

And so we have specific actions underneath them.

Some only have one, some have up to six.

And so those different actions, they're not all code changes.

We know we can't just put everything in the code, make it super complex, and as you said, commissioner.

We are also looking at other mechanisms like new programs or modifying existing programs at the city.

Advocacy is one of the big things that we can do around affordable housing, as well as like communication and other efforts.

And so just wanting to emphasize that the work we're doing is covering a wide range of tools that the city can undertake.

And then also wanting to note that this work that's happening on the affordable housing strategy has some parallel work that's happening with the development of the Office of Affordable House of Office of Housing.

This is work that is scoping out the future development of the office and really looking at funding streams to be able to fund the Office of Housing's work.

And so while that they are separate efforts, there's a lot of overlap in terms of future resources, resource needs to meet the affordable housing target.

And so at our council presentation on the 21st, we will be sharing a full list of draft strategies with our council for brevity today.

We have just pulled out some of the strategies under our affordable housing goal area.

So this is 11 of the 27 strategies that we're considering right now.

And so as you can see, this really does span a wide breadth of work.

And underneath each of these strategies, there is a lot to be able to be accomplished.

A couple of things to call out for you all.

Strategy number six there, supporting qualifying properties.

This is really referring to the C1 program that the Planning Commission has played a really big role in.

And so under this strategy, we're thinking about ways that we can make projects more feasible under the C1 program by potentially allowing mixed income projects to receive that density bonus.

And we're also thinking about are there ways to expand it from just religiously owned parcels to parcels owned by nonprofits and single family or previously single family areas as well.

So that is one example of work that you have already done that's informing the work of the affordable housing strategy and also example of things that may come back to you in future discussions as those would require uh modifications to the land use code.

Um so just really want to share uh with you our next steps and keep us before that 10 o'clock.

Um so as I mentioned, we have a lot of really good work that we've identified, and we know that we can't do it all at once.

And so we are um uh thinking about our action plan as more of a menu of actions, and within that, we're going to identify a prioritization approach.

And so we're currently working with our organizational partners and technical stakeholders to vet through this prioritization method and think about how do we really want to elevate different strategies and what are the trade-offs within that.

Um, soon after that work concludes, we'll be launching right into the drafting of the plan to have a beautiful document to present to our council in January.

Um, and we do plan to come back to you in quarter one next year to provide um a recap of the updated strategy so you all are aware of the work um that was uh accomplished and what might be coming back to you in implementation.

And while we are uh um near the conclusion of this work, there are still opportunities for engagement.

As I mentioned, we um are engaging with our organizational partners in October on those prioritization approaches.

We're doing some presentations to forums as well as having a virtual feedback session on October 30th.

Um, for our general public, we also want to make sure that there's uh feedback opportunities for them as well and are planning a in-person November 6th public info session, and that would be followed by a public survey.

So folks who can't attend the session or want to make sure their feedback is captured in a written format can also complete that survey to make sure that that input is gathered in this process.

And so, yes, five minutes before 10 o'clock, plenty of time for questions and discussion.

I leave it at your discretion, but would be happy to answer questions on the process, the strategies, goals, actions, um, or what you can expect next.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Um, Kaisha Faris.

Um one question, a couple of comments.

Um, so I my calculation, we've got about 4200 units that are required below the 50% AMI level.

And I I was not entirely clear.

Are we really serious about trying to meet that goal?

Because I know that's incredibly difficult to do, or were you saying we're trying to balance that requirement?

Um anyway, help me understand where we stand on that.

Yeah, yeah.

Um return on my mic.

Um, thank you for that question.

Um, so this is really uh the discussion that we're trying to dig into with our conversation on prioritization.

We have an overall 5700 affordable unit goal.

We also have sub-targets on there.

And, you know, when we're thinking about actions, do we want to first move the actions forward that are going to get us to that overall target fastest?

Or are we going to focus on actions that really shift that alignment so that we're um seeing more deeply affordable units come on?

There's pros and cons to both approaches, and there's value to both approaches.

And so, what we're having discussions with our organizational partners right now is some of those trade-offs, how to think about balancing or mitigating them, and that'll inform our ultimate prioritization recommendation to council.

So I don't have an answer for you yet, but just wanting to acknowledge that that is really kind of the crux of the issue that we're trying to identify because we unfortunately cannot do it all.

Right.

Right.

A couple quick comments and then I'm done.

Um, one is you mentioned it very briefly about potentially tweaking C1 and allowing mixed uh income, which I think is a fantastic idea.

It makes the project's pencil that much better.

And similarly, um, the first project that is going to be underway at St.

Andrews, I'm I'm sure you're already doing this, but um highly recommend that you stay really close to that one because I know that there's going to be a great deal of learning that's going to come out of that very first project to say what's working, what can we tweak that make will make this more powerful?

So thanks for your work.

Thank you.

Commissioner Villaveses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Can you go to slide 15, please?

Might be another.

Thank you.

So I mean so many 5700 units in 10 years, that's that's a lot of units, right?

And uh I think is great to have all the strategies.

And I think we need to be as creative as possible because uh otherwise it's just not gonna happen.

And so there's a couple of things I wanted to mention here.

One is uh number two.

Can you can you tell me a little bit about how you're anticipating this is gonna happen or what's uh uh an example that you could uh use to illustrate this number two?

Yeah, so um number two.

Uh number two is really thinking about um uh banking land for affordable housing.

Uh, where we primarily see this as an opportunity in Bellevue is near future light rail sighting in Eastgate Bactoria and other places in South Bellevue.

Um, and so we anticipate um that with those future infrastructure improvements that there's gonna be additional value added to that land.

And if there's opportunities to acquire land um before that value is realized, that we would be able to leverage that value uh for affordable housing at a at a cheaper um price.

And so um, this is something that a lot of uh communities are talking about for affordable housing because land costs are such a challenge in getting these projects um to move forward.

And so we're thinking about ways that can we uh potentially acquire and hold parcels either as the city or through a partner entity in some of these areas where we expect large value increases and then be able to leverage it for affordable housing at a future date.

So I've I always suggest like looking at examples around the world uh for better or worse.

Uh for my hometown, there was a program who which was highly successful.

It has these problems, but uh between 2000 and 2010, it delivered, I just checked 9200 units.

And the way it was done, it was the city acquired either on its own or through public-private uh partnerships, uh, land on the peripheries of the city.

So around the city and even uh working with uh adjacent municipalities, large swaths of large large areas of land.

And what they did is they developed the infrastructure and then they sold the parcels to developers with a maximum uh with the maximum price for sale.

So they would need to they they they were able to buy the land for very cheap, but they would sell it at a cap price.

And they it was a highly successful program.

I would encourage you to take a look at it and see if there's anything that you could uh take from that.

The name is Metro Vivienda.

I can uh send it to Kate uh in in uh after this meeting.

Um another point that you raised is reduced costs, right?

And that's a very open question.

And we really need to look at how we can reduce costs.

And I think one one of the best ways to reduce costs is to uh use prefabricated industrialized systems for specific systems.

And I don't know if we talked about this before, but um I had the chance to work with uh bathroom pods.

So they're they were fabricated in China, the ones that were used, but there were like uh prefabricated bathrooms that you could just deliver on site and install in the building, and you were just connecting the plumbing.

And this just reduces the the cost, the delivery it it saves a lot of money.

And I know things like that, they're challenging to implement if we haven't done it already.

But as I mentioned, I think we need to be very creative about how to do these things.

And if we incentivize and open uh an environment in which when these things can happen, it could really uh have uh repercussions across the the ecosystem of affordable housing, uh, I guess in in this area.

So those are my two comments for now.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner.

Uh, we do have um under our supply and diversity goal area a strategy around innovative building methods that does include um some actions around uh uh modular prefab building um as well as some other building types.

And so that's that's something we're aware of.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you so much.

This is so helpful being one of the new commissioners.

It's great to get a chance to meet you and just to hear more about the project.

So look forward to hearing what comes out of the program that's presented to council in January and really appreciated all of the information today.

I don't have, I mean, I have a lot of questions.

Um, and I'm sure um as we as we hear um how you finalize the documentation, um, a lot of those will be answered.

One thing I wanted to better understand is um what the stakeholders are.

You mentioned we're talking with our stakeholders several times.

Who are the stakeholders?

Yeah, um, so uh in general, when we're referring to our stakeholders, we're referring to um these three groups um all together.

So our organizational partners, the general public, which includes Bellevue residents and people who visit or um spend time in Bellevue, as well as those most impacted by housing issues, which a lot of times we say have people who have lived experience who may live in affordable housing or need um assistance to have housing affordability.

Um oftentimes when I'm saying stakeholders, I'm referring to our organizational partners.

And so that includes both our development community, but also our provider community and our affordable housing advocacy community.

So those are often represented by organizational entities.

And so we've kind of captured them under that heading.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

And I think Commissioner Villevas's comments around the 9200 units that were built in his hometown, which is amazing, was really inspiring.

And so it made me think, boy, where are these innovation partners?

Are they part of the of these key stakeholders?

And how do you find out the best and the um the most efficient opportunities that there are out there and stay up to date?

It sounds like you're doing a great job of that, but um just would encourage that because um the more cost we can reduce, the better.

This is probably a pretty clear answer, but can you explain the distinction between the 5700 and the 8300 on that slide?

Yes.

Um thank you for calling that out.

Um, so how we came to this affordable housing target is using our overall housing growth target for from our comprehensive plan, which um in 25 years, we're aiming to build 35,000 um housing units.

And so basically what we did to develop this target is we took a 10-year slice of that growth.

Um, and then we used a need methodology within a 22 bell-view assessment to basically break that down by income.

So of those 14,000 units you're seeing on the screen, how many would have to be affordable to under 80% AMI?

Um, so that under 80% AMI is that 5700 number.

The 83 um uh hundred unrestricted units, that's just in recognition that we still do need to have other housing growth in the city to meet our overall housing growth target.

Um and so that's just in recognition that we do need the market to bring on additional units in addition to the affordable housing that we're seeking to develop through this plan.

Commissioner.

Thank you.

Uh, and thank you guys for, you know, especially me being new.

It's very helpful to meet you and to hear from you and to hear about the the work that you're doing.

I I my questions are kind of centered around location and kind of what you've seen and what you're envisioning.

The, you know, I I know on slide 15 when you listed out the um the points, the 27 points, it was you had one on there that was prioritize uh affordable housing around uh transportation, light rail stations, or I forgot the exact wording, but something along those lines.

Around new light rail stations, yeah.

Um talk to me a little bit about what you're envisioning as the kind of spread out of this affordable housing, what you would ideally like to see and what you know might be specific challenges in Bellevue is as compared to to other locations.

Yeah, great question.

And something we hear really often when we say the 5700 units, people say, where are those gonna go?

Like I wanna, I want to know are they in my neighborhood?

Um, so there's a couple of ways to answer that question.

Um, so most of our strategies are not location specific.

They may be specific to certain geographies or zones, um, but are primarily looking at actions that impact the city citywide.

Um, obviously there are um certain efforts around like transit-oriented development that we're trying to um uh achieve through our actions that are reflected in say the strategy you identified.

Um, in general, we uh there are certain areas that affordable housing um just tends to get built because of the building type is most conducive to um uh the development feasibility.

So our mid-rise zones where you can do uh wood frame construction or five over two podium construction, um, those are often the places that we're going to see affordable housing development be most feasible.

When you start to get into uh very low density or start getting, on the other hand, into higher density uh steel construction, those costs and the um the feasibility do really change for the affordable housing element.

And so we'd be less likely to see that affordable housing development in those types of zones.

Um that being said, uh, while this uh plan does focus on that income restricted affordable housing, we are thinking about supply and diversity overall.

And so we do have some additional actions that are thinking about our middle housing work and expanding housing opportunities in our previously single family zones.

And so uh while that wouldn't necessarily be those income restricted units in those areas, we're trying to think about how can we have uh, you know, more neighborhood appropriate supply so that there's more opportunities for folks to be able to buy homes or live there.

Great.

Yeah, thank you.

And you know, I'm a big fan of trans-oriented development.

And you know, I'm a big fan of trans-oriented development, and you know, it seems like that's you know, just naturally where a lot of this housing is going to be centered around kind of the more dense mid-rise areas of the of the city.

So it's um, you know, I I appreciate your explanation and it was very helpful for me.

Yeah, we we do have the benefit that there's been so much great work done at the city, like around transit-oriented development that you know, we're really in the situation where we're thinking about new light rail stations that have yet to be cited and how to ensure affordability near them.

And so um just want to uh you know give kudos to our code and policy team who's done really great work in our existing transit areas and hopefully that this strategy will set up the conditions for our future planning efforts.

Thanks.

Um I do have um two points.

Um one of them was about the C one.

I think that'd be really good to just um do just those adjustments and I think that lesson learned from the current um um churches or faith-based um uh organization who are working on those.

Um I do have a passion for that.

And the other one is about um when we when I'm in the women board advisory of King County, we're hearing a lot about um elderly women about senior housing, and they're really struggling about there were so many community um uh based um organization came and provided and one of the five theme was affordable housing.

And on the other hand, I always hear some people say, oh, if you have affordable housing, we are good, but it's really hard for women who are elderly to get affordable housing.

Um I'm wondering if you guys can bolt that somewhere or just um if you have heard from other uh community member, maybe maybe you have a similar experience because we are hearing from so many um districts in King County.

That's one of the things that is in my heart.

And if you guys have it heard about it, it's good to make it bold because it's going around.

Um and then the other one was you mentioned about just from my learning standpoint.

You mentioned about uh facilitator facilitators that you guys hire to do that.

Is that super expensive for our uh from the budget standpoint, where is something we can use uh for some of our neighborhood things, or like how is that working?

Is it easy?

It's hard, it's just give me like two sentences.

I don't want to, and I can take it offline too if you want it.

Yeah, um, for the amount of work that our facilitators put in, we got a steal.

Um, and I'll I will say the city um we did use um a consultant um to help facilitate uh that community facilitator program, and so they were issued stipend to that consultant.

Um, but we we uh estimated out what we thought what might be the time commitment and based our compensation schedule on that.

Um, what we heard reported out from our community facilitators is um either because of um uh the length of the conversations or their own interest, they often went above and beyond those time expectations.

Um, and so we did we did try and recognize that time and effort with uh a commiserate uh compensation schedule.

Um, but um we as city staff could not do that level of work for the same amount of cost.

And so uh we think it was a success um and uh are treating it as a pilot that we'd be able to improve and build upon for future engagement efforts.

Yeah, I'm wondering if our team wants to see if that's a good thing for our community um outreach, or maybe we are already using them, Kate.

I see you are um well, we use the same community outreach team.

So I'm sure we can share uh share information.

Okay, good, thanks.

Is there any other second round?

If no, Commissioner Ferris, I will let you to make the motion that we adjourn this meeting.

All in favor, I didn't see that, but I was wondering.

Yeah, sorry for.