There has been a lot of discussion about HALA, but a far broader change to Seattle land use policy is coming up in the form of a new version of the Comprehensive Plan. The City is required to draft a Comprehensive Plan which acts as a roadmap for urban planning over a 20 year period. We have reached the end of that 20 year period for our first Comprehensive Plan, so Mayor Ed Murray has undertaken to write another one, which will be the Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan. The Mayor’s office has released the final draft, and a public hearing will be held on the Comprehensive Plan on June 27th at 6:00 PM at City Hall.
The Comprehensive Plan is a massive document. It is 575 pages and its details could never be covered in one blog post. You may read through it here, or if you prefer there is a hard copy at the Wallingford Public Library.
The Comprehensive Plan includes a set of Neighborhood Plans. According to people involved in the initial drafting 20 years ago (our group was named Team Wallingford), it was a four year operation in which Wallingford residents were really given a chance to shape the policy and it included an extensive vetting process with the neighborhood. It served as a lovely example of true neighborhood engagement.
The Neighborhood Plan lays out a fairly specific vision of how and where development should occur within the neighborhood, and the Comprehensive Plan made a binding commitment to that vision. In particular, areas zoned Single Family Residential could be upzoned (for example to Multifamily Residential) only where the Neighborhood Plan provides for it.
If you have been following these housing discussions, you may have heard that Neighborhood Plans are still in the new draft of the Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan and remain unchanged. Well, technically yes. But the problem is, the requirement that upzones must be approved in the Neighborhood Plan has been removed from the Mayor’s proposal (specific land use elements included at the end of this article). The “bridge” between the Neighborhood Plans and the procedures for upzoning is gone. An important implication is that for the next twenty years that this plan is in place it would legally be much easier to upzone Single Family zones, even outside of the urban villages. Perhaps City Hall will start with upzoning inside the urban villages, but will it stop there?
Another element in the Comprehensive Plan may be used to justify upzones of Single Family zones by bringing them within urban village boundaries if they are near good transit. GS 2.12 reads: “Include the area that is generally within a ten-minute walk of light rail stations or very good bus service in urban village boundaries.” This would allow any area within a ½ mile of “very good bus service” to be considered part of an urban village, including large areas of Wallingford that are not currently in the Wallingford Residential Urban Village.
Improved transit and bike lanes to decrease our dependence on cars would reduce our carbon footprint and is a positive change. However, we must also address reality when speaking about cars. The Mayor’s plan continues to aggressively limit parking in an effort to force us out of our cars. His plan includes regulations on parking to “lower construction costs,” they consider imposing parking maximums in urban villages and centers, allowing fewer parking spaces for businesses and allowing “market forces” (i.e. at the developer’s discretion) to decide on how much parking to provide in buildings inside urban villages and centers.
Decreased reliance on cars is a good thing. But a car-free Seattle is not realistic for all situations or for all people. It is the working poor and the elderly and the handicapped that will be most hurt by vanishing street parking. The decrease in available street parking that we are already seeing in Seattle is due to policy decisions by the City that allow developers to build buildings with little or no on site parking. If compounded with upzones, it would only get worse. The “green” policy that this administration is pushing the hardest is no cars, but this happens to be the only “green” policy that increases the developers profits. If developers do not have to include parking on site, they increase their profit margins by having more square footage to sell. Improvements in transit and safe bike lanes should be encouraged. But reasonable on site parking requirements for new developments should also be mandatory. It is the balance of the two that makes our City more livable.
The expiring Comprehensive Plan included environmental protections without references to “lower construction costs” that are absent in the Mayor’s version. Noticeably missing is the “no net loss of tree canopy” goal of the previous version (E23). LU39, LU40 and LU41 regarding tree retention, and protection of significant trees, and the indiscriminate removal of trees are all discarded in the Mayor’s plan. Instead of actual protections to maintain our tree canopy, the Mayor uses vague, general language such as “foster healthy trees, vegetation and soils,” and “promote care and retention.” There are many beautiful, old trees in Wallingford that would likely be cut down and replaced with saplings if the upzones are passed. Which tree do you think is better for the environment? What kind of neighborhood do you want to live in?
When the neighborhoods, who are intimately aware of their own special strengths and needs, share in the decision making process, they can help preserve Seattle’s unique quality of life. This Mayor’s desire to make all the decisions downtown can only lead to erosion of the neighborhood character and a city that is a less desirable place to live.
Take Action!
Please attend the Public Hearing on June 27th at 6:00 PM and make a public comment. The hearing will be held in the City Council Chambers on the second floor at City Hall, 600 Fourth Avenue. If you are unable to attend, send written comments to [email protected] by 5 PM, June 27th. Please also write the Councilmembers and the Mayor to let them know your concerns.
Council Email (will be delivered to all of the Councilmembers): [email protected]
Mayor: http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/get-involved/contact-the-mayor
Stay Informed
These are my website recommendations:
Wallingford Community Council
Outside City Hall
Rumblecrash
Seattle Fair Growth
Seattle Neighborhood Coalition
4 to Explore
Comprehensive Plan References:
Neighborhood Plans/Upzones
Below is a list of Land Use elements that were adopted as law in the “old” Comprehensive Plan that is about to expire. LU75 and LU76 represent the places where the Land Use element is bound by the Neighborhood Plans in a clear and accountable way. In the new draft of Seattle 2035 from the Mayor, the only one of these Land Use elements that remain is LU76 (now designated LU 8.5). The rest are simply gone.
LU5 1. Consider, through neighborhood planning processes recommendations for the revision of zoning to better reflect community preferences for the development of an area, provided that consistency between the zoning and this Plan is maintained. Consider relevant goals and policies in adopted neighborhood plans when evaluating a rezone proposal.
LU59 Permit upzones of land designated single-family and meeting single-family rezone criteria, only when all of the following conditions are met:
- The land is within an urban center or urban village boundary.
- The rezone is provided for in an adopted neighborhood plan.
- The rezone is to a low-scale single-family, multifamily or mixed-use zone, compatible with single-family areas.
- The rezone procedures are followed.
LU60 Apply small lot single-family zones to single-family property meeting single-family rezone criteria only when all of the following conditions are met:
- The land is within an urban center or urban village boundary.
- The rezone is provided for in an adopted neighborhood plan.
- The rezone procedures are followed.
LU75 Limit the multifamily zones to areas that do not meet the single-family zone criteria, except in circumstances where an adopted neighborhood plan indicates that a different zone is more appropriate.
LU76 Provide flexibility in rezone criteria for rezoning multifamily residential areas to compatible neighborhood commercial zones, if approved in an adopted neighborhood plan.
Parking
These are Land Use elements in the Mayor’s Seattle 2035 proposal:
LU G6 Regulate off-street parking to address parking demand in ways that reduce reliance on automobiles, lower construction costs, create attractive and walkable environments, and promote economic development throughout the city.
LU 6.3 Rely on market forces to determine the amount of parking provided in areas of the city that are well-served by transit, such as urban centers and urban villages.
LU 6.4 Consider setting parking maximums in urban centers and urban villages, where high levels of pedestrian, bicycle, and transit accessibility make many trips possible without a car.
A special thanks to Donn Cave and Lee Raaen. Their many hours of research on the Comprehensive Plan was instrumental in writing this article.
Wow, thanks for this research and information.
What makes you think that decreasing/eliminating parking requirements will increase developers’ profit margins? In a competitive environment, wouldn’t it be more likely that the savings will be passed on to the tenants?
There’s also a disconnect between the headline “Turning the Emerald City into the Concrete Jungle” and the proposition that a problem with HALA is reduced parking requirements. Cars *require* concrete to be stored. Parking, and the roads that lead to the parking (all roads must lead to parking, after all) are a big reason that a city’s trees and other green spaces are at risk.
Nope. How many new roads are we building in Seattle? None. You present a false argument. The parking is underground or other interior to the building thus taking up no more land. The reference to the concrete jungle is about upzoning. I live near rowhouses, their walk-in closets are about as large or larger than their tiny little patch yards. To build the developments, the developers are indeed cutting down trees, I’ve seen it firsthand or you can use the Google street view time setting slider to look for yourself what happens after the effects of upzones. People don’t buy a house and fix it up anymore, but rather developers buy it, tear it down and replace it with much bigger boxes. If developers can make more money putting in parking then of course they do so, obviously so I have no idea where that bizarre argument by you comes from. They want as little control from the city/neighborhood on their developments as possible so want the option of having no parking. That means less parking for the longtime neighbors. Several developments have gone in with no parking because the developer thought they would make more money without it, as in, squeeze in more units. If the developers had chosen to put in parking they legally could have.
I’ll ignore the fact that the state is rebuilding two highways (SR99 and SR520) into Seattle, and adding a new 8-lane road to replace Alaskan Way.
I would ask though – where would you propose the city build new roads, particularly if you don’t want trees cut down? Where shall we put new parking to feed into those roads, without cutting down trees?
The best answer to these questions is that we should do neither. We should treat our land as our most important resource, and people as the most important use for that resource. Cars, particularly single-occupant cars, are among the most wasteful uses of land we can choose. Not only do they consume space when they’re actually being used (causing traffic jams, and impacting our transit system), they consume space wherever they happen to idle. That space can and should be used either for housing people, or moving them efficiently.
The best favor we can do for our working poor is to promote transit and housing policies that allow them to live close to where they work and shop, not policies that force them to own (and fuel, and park, and insure) a car.
I pretty much agree with you Skylar. Which is why I wish the city policy makers would include limits on the number of local zone parking permits they include with new multi-family developments. That would have the effect you (and I) seek by encouraging residents of these buildings to use public transportation. Unfortunately, this is not and has never been part of their policy proposal. Try to find a parking spot in Ballard before or after rush hour – it’s not the same task as it was 5 years ago. The cynic in me believes the City omits this because they don’t share our values.
Why should a newcomer be required to spend more on their apartment/condo/townhouse so they can have an off-street parking spot (which they may or may not use), so that your parking experience is not affected?
You weren’t deeded the parking spot outside your house.
Besides, isn’t the worst-case here that everyone has parking & everyone uses it daily? You can’t really mandate that the developers build underground roads to get their residents in & out of the neighborhood every morning with no effect on your commute, right?
Yes, and current HALA proposals for Mandatory Housing Affordability do nothing for those working poor in service-sector jobs. The policy would require an income of almost $38,000 for a single individual to get the $1,000/month rent to be included in the building.
But wait! There’s more! Developers have little or no incentive to actually include somewhat affordable units. Instead, one developer said in a public meeting that they would all pay the fee in lieu because including rent-limited units would make their project less valuable for later sale. This is doubtless why the City changed the branding from Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning (MIZ) to Mandatory Housing Affordability in February.
The only way this plan will meet affordability goals and spread it throughout the city is if we have 100% MIZ performance on-site, and if we require 1-for-1 replacement of existing affordable units. This is not hard, since most tear-downs are single-family or old, low-rise units, and mid-rise zoning increases the capacity by 8 to 10 times (800% to 1000%).
How do you suppose Mayor Murray and the City Council will be getting home after tonight’s meeting?
Horsepucky.
Thanks so much for putting your time and effort into crafting this. It’s hard to get one’s arms around this stuff, and, whatever views we may have on cars, single family, density, etc., you’ve made it much easier to take part in a community discussion.
May I car pool with someone? Happy to drive to your house. I am on 43rd and Densmore.
I wish I could give you a ride, but I will already be near downtown for an earlier appointment. I hope you can make it. 🙂
Ok, just thought I’d ask. I’ll send the email I sent to the council if I can figure out how to do it. I will try to make it. Will take the bus, maybe. Or you can text to me, 206 999 8515m and send your email address.
I think I have your email. Sending you an email now.
Thank you for publicizing this information!
I don’t see any mention of this in the Times or any other media outlets. The Powers That Be definitely want this to be a done deal without any dissent.
I hope many people attend or at least send an email.
I believe it’s important to get alternative views to the developers out there. However I think this is going to go through no matter what. I feel the only way to actually stop this development destruction is to elect a new mayor, new city counsel members, and get new people in the city’s bureaucrats offices. The developers completely own Seattle’s government right now.
Keep up the good work!
If build up is not desired, then one should come up with plans to suppress economy growth. Seattle is changing not because there are evil developers who love to build ugly condos. Seattle is changing because it’s booming and people are moving in. To fit more people, you’d have to build up. To reserve green belts while building up, that actually means you need to up zone even more. Only with the places that’s building up having high density can you afford to have places with no density.
An alternative would be what’s happening in San Francisco now and starting in Seattle: resistance to high density housing is making the city a place reserved for upper middle class and above. In many places in bay area, there are no places for people on teacher’s wage to afford at all due to lack of supply. The rich doesn’t want to see condos around their neighborhoods, so it’s just what it is.
I would be for razing ALL the single family houses in all neighborhoods surrounding downtown, including Wallingford. And we can have 50% of the land used as parks, and another 50% as concrete jungle. That way we can fit way more people, and have way more green zones.
“To fit more people, you’d have to build up.”
Or build in places where new construction would actually be an improvement, like all those abandoned lots and run down criminal-friendly motels on Aurora. But of course, you urbanistas never want to consider that suggestion, because it doesn’t promote neighborhood “equability.”
“I would be for razing ALL the single family houses in all neighborhoods surrounding downtown, including Wallingford.”
Of course you would, comrade. Let me guess, you’re also a big supporter of the SCOTUS’s “Kelo” decision?
So now that, once again, you’ve come straight and said you’d literally like to destroy our neighborhood to realize your socialist utopia, tell me: Why should any SF homeowner vote to tax ourselves even more with the Affordable Housing Levy or HALA? You’d like to kick us out of our homes, but before we go, please give you more money and concessions, hmmm?
It’s funny the same ideas can be “socialist utopia” and “helping developers” at the same time. San Francisco homeowners being selfish obviously would vote on their own personal interest, but I don’t see why “homeowner” should be made a privileged group with more says than others. And yes, I am all for giving the existing homeowners good compensation for their trouble, but to give in too much to the status quo just means the end results aren’t as good. We can design a good city that’s good for as many people as possible, as opposed to a so-so design that’s catered toward who bought the houses first.
No one is advocating that city hall bring bulldozers raze residents homes by force. They are advocating that land-owners be able to develop their land as they wish.
You are advocating that your neighbor should be able to tell you how you can develop your own land and how much parking you need to put on your own land.
Who is the socialist here?
“No one is advocating that city hall bring bulldozers raze residents homes by force.
I guess you missed the part where TJ, (who I was responding to) said, “I would be for razing ALL the single family houses in all neighborhoods surrounding downtown, including Wallingford.”
And it is the DIMBY’s who are trying to make the private gains of developers an externality and public burden to be borne by others in the community. And all you guys ever talk about it’s somehow “unfair” that some people can afford to live in nicer neighborhoods while others cannot, and so we need to remedy that by forcing nicer neighborhoods to accept housing “equability.” Which, by the way, your hero mayor has admitted won’t happen.
So yes, you are the socialist here.
You’re right, no city – San Francisco, Seattle, any city – can deal with uncontrolled growth, particularly in the highly mobile high-tech industries. This isn’t some kind of natural increase because of excessive fecundity, it’s a herd migration of high tech captains of industry who foresee a shining future for themselves in Seattle. We had better do something about it, sooner than later. Your vision of acres of apartments would be a solution – the hordes would certainly move on, once Seattle had lost the quality of life it still has – but I’d like to think there’s a better way.
If it’s really as I said, half of the land are built up, but half of the land are converted to parks. Let’s say the middle of Wallingford is a Wallingford Central Park linking Lake Union and Green Lake, and the east quarter is high-rise zone next to I5 and U-District, while the West quarter is mid-rise zone linked to 99 and Fremont. How is that worse for quality of life? That’s much better quality of life than what we have right now.
You know, TJ, earlier today I happen to be driving in The Highlands, just north of Seattle. It is a beautiful and wealthy forested community. I really think I should be able to live there. It would be wonderful for my child to go to go play in the woods and walk down to the beach overlooking Puget Sound.
It’s not fair that I can’t afford to live in The Highlands. All those privileged, lucky rich people need to vote to make themselves more equitable, throw out their zoning laws, and let people like me come live in a condo that towers over their mansions. Don’t they understand that doing so would give them a much better quality of life?
Now, most reasonable Americans would recognize that as a ridiculous position. Why can’t you?
From Wikipedia. Most Americans would, I think, recognize them as a bunch of pretentious 1-percenter-a**holes:
Purchasing a home in The Highlands requires potential residents to submit an application to the Highlands Board, usually provided by the listing real estate agent.[7] As of 2007, the board requires two sponsors; one of the sponsors is usually the seller of the home and the second is another current resident with whom the purchaser has been previously acquainted. If the potential resident of the home does not know a second member, the seller of the home often arranges a cocktail reception with the neighbors to acquaint the potential resident with current members who become the second sponsor. The Highlands HOA requires all major construction or renovation to be approved by the Buildings and Sites Committee of the Board.
Hayduke, you talk about “reasonable Americans”, but I think you’d be surprised what a thin veneer it can be. We are the official scapegoats, of an official crisis, and it’s not only the moral duty of party adherents to oppose us, it’s kind of essential to getting anywhere in the party.
The widely held assumption is that we must build enough units that the price of housing will go down. An extremely logical assumption. But it may not work that way on the ground. Supply may not be able to outrun demand and we will simply have single family neighborhoods transformed into more housing for the wealthier tech class, not for the workers or the poor. Goodbye neighborhood character and vibrant, diverse, equitable dreams.
If it were true that density reduced housing costs, New York City would be the cheapest place to live in America.
Density in itself doesn’t reduce housing costs, a higher ratio of homes to jobs and income does.
Density is just how you fit that onto a finite amount of land.
If most of New York City’s residential areas were zoned single family 5,000 it would be the most expensive place to live in the world.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f763db5169c961244e05588ce580e0e2507942a08749dbcb6d79c4048c0bf553.jpg
Yes, thank you so much for the hard work you and others in the Wallingford Community Council are doing to help us understand the current regulations and the proposed changes. The residents of our neighborhoods will be affected significantly if these changes are adopted. It is fair to ask who actually benefits from these changes. It is fair to ask whether and how our quality of life will be impacted. It is fair to ask if these changes will accomplish what their promoters claim, or if, in fact, something else entirely will occur. It is vitally important that the residents of this beautiful city participate in the decision-making process about how we want our city to grow or change or maintain itself. It is also important not to give in to scare tactics or hate mongering or red herrings or dog whistles or false dichotomies or irresponsible assertions.
Rob Johnson said at the hearing that it is still possible to submit your comments, so please don’t think it’s too late if you haven’t had a chance to write yet.
This is a really good run down of what has been deleted from the Comprehensive Plan in regards to Affordability, Livability, Neighborhood Plans, Tree Canopy, Growth Targets and Sustainability. It was taken from testimony given at the Seattle 2035 Public Hearing.
https://rumblecrash.com/2016/06/29/voice-of-the-people-4/