Category — DPD

I don’t usually come across too many application decisions that the DPD rejects, (and that’s ‘cuz I gotta think you will receive some pretty strong hints from the DPD that your application isn’t going to make it). But here is one rejection today - the applicant wanted to rezone from L3 to NC2-40.

However in this case, it seems like that the source of this rezoning application was the result of a mistake made back in 2003 when the DPD made (but didn’t publish) a decision on a project that was submitted for NC2-40 zoning when in fact the zone was L3. For this particular rezoning application, the DPD weighed the reasons for making this rezone while neighbors submitted 28 written comments and a neighborhood petition with 130 names opposing the rezone.

Anyway, it’s an interesting decision documenting what criteria are used to make an upzone decision and to learn about some errors within the process.

Quote from the decision,

On December 17, 2003, an application was submitted to DPD for a Master Use Permit for Early Design Guidance and SEPA review to construct a four story building with three floors of apartments, ground floor office space and below grade parking at 1966 Thorndyke Avenue West. The application indicated that the zoning was NC2-40. The applicant (Frank) was informed on the same day that the zoning was, in fact, Lowrise-3 (L3) and that a mapping error had occurred that affected not only the applicant’s property but those at 2000 and 2012 Thorndyke Avenue West as well. The L3 zoning had been in effect for many years and research by DPD staff found no ordinance changing the zoning to NC2-40. On June 8, 2005, applicant Frank was then joined by the owners of two other properties where the same mapping errors had occurred in an application for a rezone from L3 to NC2-40.

Check this out. The images below are actually of the same page (one just shows the trees a little better).

What you see here is from a Design Review Board presentation made last year. The ’squarish’ building is a four story mixed-use condo building (zoned NC2-40, neighborhood commercial 40′) located just to the right of single family homes (zoned SF-5000, single family 5000 sq ft lot). The solid lines of the two single family homes show their current size and the ‘dashed’ outlines around each house shows the potential zoning envelope they can build. Each of these homes can build up to 35′ if they make sure to include a pitched roof.

And when these neighbors asked why such large NC2-40 zoning was located directly next to SF-5000 zoning (instead of say stepping from NC2-40 to L2 and then down to SF), here’s what the DPD had to say,

This zoning pattern (NC2/40’ adjacent to Single Family zoning) is a very common occurrence in the city, contrary to what some have suggested. Single Family zones have a 30’ height limit, with the ability to go to 35’ with a pitched roof. For planning purposes, a 30/35’ zone is generally considered a gradual transition to a 40’ zone.

So…what this basically says is that a homeowner who finds themselves next to a big house/building can solve the problem by building a big house themselves. I don’t know, I just find it to be so wrong that instead of transitioning to a less-intensive form of multi-family housing, like say smaller townhomes or duplexes, that the city is content with encouraging inefficient single-family mega-homes to be built in their place? Doesn’t seem too smart to me.

In Wedgwood we pulled the rip cord on our the condo building process right before our appeal to the Hearing Examiner, and so we didn’t get to the land use petition stage that Dennis Saxman has with the Pine Street and Belmont building on Capitol Hill. Of course, the ironic thing is that both of our developments are currently stalled - ours due to the economy and Capitol Hill’s due to the petition (or perhaps due to the economy too - could the developer be receiving better tax benefits due to the pending petition).

If there’s development in your neighborhood that you absolutely want to challenge, here is a quick summary of a path we took.

1. Engage your community council or neighborhood organization ASAP. Your council’s willingness to challenge a development may be good (ie Maple Leaf, Laurelhurst) or not (ie POWHAT, Wedgwood), but they’re good channels for finding like-minded individuals who can help.
2. Put together your case of what you don’t want, and what you do want.
3. Publish that information, send it off to the media, your land use planner, and any government official who will listen.
4. Attend all the Design Review Board meetings and collect names of people who attend.
5. Keep going back to point 5 until the DPD issues a Master Use Permit (MUP).
6. Within 2 weeks of the MUP, you can then appeal the decision with a $50 filing fee.
7. The Hearing Examiner will call you, the developer, and a DPD representative to a pre-hearing meeting to clarify your testimony, witnesses, and exhibits. This is a quasi-legal process, so anything you present during the hearing you need to offer up here. (It’s a good idea to work with a lawyer here).
8. (At this point, this is when we negotiated a settlement with the developer)
9. You present your case to the Hearing Examiner. Don’t be late to this one!
10. The Hearing Examiner rules.
11. You can appeal the Hearing Examiner’s decision by filing a petition against the decision with the State of Washington.

However, a word of caution. This is a grueling process, and it takes a rare individual to be able to tackle this on their own. We were so exhausted by stage 8 (and there were four of us!) that I really can’t imagine how much work we’d have if we were at stage 11 right now.

Want to read the Hearing Examiner’s decision, you can find it here. And if you want to read the entire Capitol Hill petition, you can grab a copy here.

(Stranger photo - Pine Street and Belmont building being challenged)

Thanks to Scott for this link. Up on the Columbia Citizens Wiki, they’ve posted a nice summary of how to get the most out of your comments to the Design Review Board (DRB). This is a ‘must read’ for anyone going into the DRB process.

One other tip I’d add for those of you who go into DRB as a group, make sure to meet before the review and assign different topics to different speakers. That way you aren’t repeating the same thing over and over again, and by focusing on one topic you do a better job of drilling into that subject.

And for you advanced students I would also recommend reading this really interesting summary of a Design Review Board experience written by Peggy Sturdivant on her At large in Ballard blog. (Back in December I summarized her post here.)

I have a question for the Board, is ‘none of the above’ an option?

Whenever the DPD issues a conditional approval for a master use permit, you will usually find within the approval a number of zoning departures. Zoning departures can serve a benefit where the strict enforcement of a code on a unique property would otherwise cause problems for the surrounding area.  However, what seems to be the case these days is that this departure process is instead used as a bonus process for developers to gain more buildable space.

Much of the problem lies with the inherently arbitrary process the DPD uses to grant these departures. Rather than using some kind of structured trade-off process, departures are granted solely by the discretion of the DPD. And very rarely are these departures married with equally significant trade-offs elsewhere that would return a benefit to the neighborhood.   

Just looking at one zoning decision  at 411 Summit Ave E. on Monday, it’s interesting to see the zoning departures that occurred between the city and the developer.Here’s a summary of the proposed project:

The project proposes four (4) residential units in one townhouse structure and four (4) garage parking spaces at alley grade.

The site is approximately 4,800 square feet in area with 40 feet of frontage on both Summit Avenue and the alley to the west. The site topography is primarily flat except for an approximately six and one-half foot grade drop from east to west approximately 25 feet from the rear (alley) property boundary. The site contains a former single-family structure, now divided into multiple dwelling units, with vehicle access from the alley.

Okay, so this looks like we have a multi-family house with a steeply sloping backyard which the developers want to replace with a four-story four-unit townhome. Fine, and here’s the list of zoning departures that the developers requested:

No north side set-back for the proposed garage and 6-foot minimum and 7 foot maximum side set-backs for the principal structure. (FYI: Code says - The average and minimum side set-back is 11-feet and 6-feet for the proposed 94.75 foot building depth)

Place the majority of the open space adjacent to Units A and B on the proposed garage roof.

Provide more than the required amount of open space for the project and units (15% of lot = 719 sq. ft. and 800 sq. ft. for 4 units) but have most of the ground or garage level open space for common tenant usage (620 sq. ft. common, 180 sq. ft. private).

To exceed the maximum structure depth by approximately 17.75 feet. The proposed depth of the largely underground garage is approximately 21 feet and the proposed principal structure depth is approximately 74.75 feet for a total of 95.75 feet.

So what this is basically saying to me is, well, if you let us build out a covered garage on land otherwise reserved for a setback, we can be good developers and build open space on top of the garage - thereby delivering more open space than what code requires. Oh yeah, and it allows us to set the building back from the street in a way that matches the neighboring buildings.

This may be great, but what it doesn’t do is address concerns that a couple of neighbors brought up. 

• There should be a community benefit from granting departures from the requirements for open space and side set-backs,

• A concern that a four-story building will dominate this lot and reduce a sense of openness and light. The request to vary the open space and side yard standards seems to place monetary profit ahead of creating a pleasant neighborhood,

• A concern that a four-story building will block light to and views from the neighboring Summit Terrace building. Building height and open space should be appropriate to the neighborhood and not vary from the zoning standards,

• A four-story building would be in scale with the surrounding buildings, but the building footprint should not be too large for the site and should include front and side yards with landscaping.

I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t seem to me like the DPD did such a great job of negotiating anything for these neighbors in exchange for the zoning departures it granted.

Last month Seattle Metropolitan published and article talking about development in Wedgwood and Phinney Ridge. In it DPD director Diane Sugimura was quoted as saying, “We hear a lot of concern about what is happening with neighborhood character.” and “Change is hard to accept.”

In the article this comment was actually directed at neighborhood activists like myself, but in reality, Sugimura is the one most resistant to change. And what she’s resistant to changing are the broken elements of our zoning code which permit really bad infill development. (And this goes beyond just townhomes and condos, our land use code is being abused to allow bad single-family development too).

So…what does this change that the city is avoiding look like? Well..the good news is that a group called ‘Livable Seattle’ has done this work for us by publishing a 21-page commentary on the Multifamily Update draft that Mayor Nickels is using the Department of Planning and Development to push forward. (quick note: this was first reported on the Seattle Community Council Federation’s blog)

Why this update is bad for Seattle is because it expands (and doesn’t fix) the scope of our current zoning problems while also significantly removing neighborhoods’ voices from the discussion table. And removing these neighborhoods from the discussion takes out an important element of the process which has had some success at preventing many more of the kinds of problems detailed in Livable Seattle’s report.

Anyway…getting back to change, maybe the change that Sugimura should start making starts with accepting what the City Auditor wrote last year and was reported by the Seattle PI as neighborhood neglect.

“The City made a commitment to the neighborhoods when it adopted the Comprehensive Plan – that in exchange for accepting growth and density, the neighborhoods would be engaged to participate in designing mitigating measures to make their communities more livable. This kind of engagement requires an ongoing City commitment to provide the resources to draw all interested community members into the process.”

Visit Livable Seattle and grab a copy (or you can click here and grab it).

Here are just a few visual examples and comments from the Livable Seattle’s report where broken zoning codes are causing problems:

There used to be yards, and kids, and trees. Then the code writers decided that townhomes would make affordable “starter homes” for young families, and now yards, kids, and trees are gone.

Where’s the back door? Instead of using alley access to put the parking in the back, the developer used stock plans, tried and true, and fenced off the unpaved alley. No gates. Developers are allowed to reduce the rear setback to almost nothing when facing the alley. Maybe the City can plant trees or make a playground in this now useless city-owned alley for some real open space.

This story is really disturbing. First, the city rezones the Denny Triangle to reduce spacing between an existing condo building and a proposed office building in the Denny Triangle from 60 to 18 feet, next, it upzones the planned office building from 13 to 34 stories, and finally - after the Cosmopolitan condominium is notified of this change by the city it communicates none of this to its future residents who will be moving into the condo.

The Cosmo Seattle web site is doing a great job of digging into this situation, detailing how this happened and making sure this issue doesn’t just go away. In fact, they’re still waiting for the mayor to respond to this letter signed by over 70 people .

This story was featured on KIRO news on Monday and the station put together a nice piece about the situation. However, one part that made me roll my eyes was when KIRO interviewed one city employee who explained the situation by using a ‘density is good for the environment’ argument to sugar coat over what really was a ‘we made a bad decision that flies right in the face of our goals for creating a livable downtown’.

Anyway, the moral of the story is don’t expect condo developers downtown to share important information like this with you, the city isn’t doing a good job protecting downtown condo owners from hasty zoning changes, and in order to protect their interests downtown condo owners need to get organized and have their voices heard.  

Tonight at 8pm at the University Heights Center, the Design Review Board will convene for its recommendation on Prescott Development’s proposed 46-unit development at the old Camp Fire USA site in Maple Leaf.

You can view the entire presentation by checking out this link to the recommendation Prescott will be making tonight.

In addition to Prescott’s point of view, Maple Leaf Community Council’s very detailed response to Prescott’s project assumptions will also be submitted to the DPD.

Personally, I think Prescott overpaid for this property by both incorrectly overestimating just how much development would be allowed here and underestimating the effectiveness of Maple Leaf’s response. I guess these are the risks you run when you purchase property from slick-talking Camp Fire girls.

Below are some photos of some of the proposed designs for the property, along overhead views of the development.

(Overhead shot of the current property - the Maple Leaf reservoir is located to the left of the property)

(Overhead view of the planned development)

(Views of the types single-family and duplex housing proposed for this area)

On Monday the Design Review board will get together for their recommendation (Monday 6:30pm University Heights Center) to go forward with this planned Marriott Residence at the corner of NE 45th Street and 12th Ave NE.

And I hear that Marriott Residence’s have free breakfasts in the morning, so you gotta wonder how many UW students will be posing as hotel guests just to crash their waffle bar? (Silver Could Inn just NE of the UW…you know what I’m talking about.)

You can download the entire design packet here, and learn more about the schedule on the DPD’s site.

Tonight’s the night for this 6-story building at 14349 15th Ave NE’s Design Review board recommendation meeting. I’m so nervous…will this building be approved to build? I don’t know, there’s only a 0% chance that it won’t!

Time and location: Feb 25th - 8:00pm University Heights Center. Check it out after the Smarter Neighbors meeting!

Challenging parcel to work with:

Hmm…I wouldn’t upload this image to its myspace page - not hip enough.

This one’s the winner - always go with the corner drawing.

Here’s my interpretation of how Green Lake’s Hearthstone on Woodlawn’s design review would go down…

Michael Kors: I don’t get it, here you are with a great location to work with, a neighborhood with personality, and you come to the table with something that doesn’t reflect any of that.

Heidi Klum: I don’t like it, it’s so brown. It looks boring.

Nina Garcia: This building looks old and tired. I’ve seen some of your other work, where you’ve put together some really innovative projects (like your Hillsboro Civic Center). Why didn’t you show us any of that today?

And if you want to play ‘Project Runway’ judge for these two buildings (project 3006394 and 3006399)- make sure to attend it’s Early Design Review Meeting:

Early Design Review for 6850 & 6870 Woodlawn Ave NE
Monday, Feb 25th at 6:30pm
Location: University Heights Center

Throughout the rest of downtown, towers must be spaced at least 60 feet apart from one another. This distance was set as a standard for ensuring a livable downtown for those who work and reside there. However, for reasons that still don’t seem clear in 2006 one specific area of downtown (The Denny Triangle) was exempted by the council and mayor from this 60 foot requirement. If you want to read how the whole process unfolded, I definitely recommend checking out the Cosmo Seattle blog.

The result of this spacing exemption can be seen below, where the 1918 8th Ave building is sited just 18 feet from the neighboring Cosmo condos. And if you’re a Cosmo resident on the 8th Ave-facing side, your personal result is that you’ve just been exempted from the livability standards that are granted to other downtown and condo dwellers.

A three story apartment/retail complex is planned for the corner of MLK and Cherry replacing the building that has housed ‘The Facts‘ newspaper. Three massing options will be presented at the early design meeting, and if you have any thoughts on what you’d like to see the designers include in the building (types of businesses, elements of the community reflected in the design, and which massing option you prefer) then get to the design review:

Wednesday Feb 20
6:30PM, Seattle Central Community College

The three massing options:

And check out this overhead photo, is that a van on the building?!?

Wednesday’s Design Review Board meetings at the Queen Anne Community Center
1101 Dexter Avenue North
(What’s nice about this building is that it actually has a well-designed entrance which opens onto Aurora Avenue. Most of the new buildings on busy Aurora between the Viaduct tunnel and Aurora bridge have responded to their highway neighbor by moving their entrances as far away from it as they can.)

(View of the proposed building from Dexter Ave N)

(View of the proposed building from Aurora Ave)

1001 and 1021 Mercer Street

Some people follow sports teams, others follow their stocks, but when it comes to excitement in the Seattle area I don’t think anything holds a candle to zoning interpretations. So, in an effort to force me to understand the rules behind our city’s zoning decisions (and so I can be a more accurate, yet still obnoxious blogger), I’m going to try and break down one ‘hard-to-understand’ decision of the week. (And if anything I say is completely off base, just leave me a comment).

Located in Wallingford, these two decisions give the okay to divide two neighboring lots into two different five-unit townhome lots (basically permitting 10 different townhomes to be built). So here’s the question, is this kosher? 

If this was taking place outside of an urban village I would have been fully in my right to jump up and down typing  ‘micropermitting‘ all over the place since these decisions would essentially have allowed 10 different townhomes to skirt around the Design Review Board process.  (In non-urban villages, it takes 8 different townhomes for the Design Review Board process to kick in).

However, since these townhomes are planned for an urban village, developers are allowed to build up to 20 townhome units before the Design Review Board process kicks in. So, even though these 10 townhomes might have raised eyebrows elsewhere, they come in well below the urban village thresholds and so no eyebrows need disturbing!  See how much sense that makes! Now if I could just figure out why urban villages have significantly higher thresholds…