Category — DPD

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…

(2/28 -Editor update - whoops, the grocery store that was previously here was a Safeway, not a QFC)

The North Seattle Herald Outlook just published a story detailing how QFC’s plans to rebuild their store at Stone Way N and N 39th St have fallen through. QFC originally was planning on replacing their one story store at this location with a new building featuring a ground-level QFC and apartments above.

QFC wasn’t able to get this project built and instead sold the property to Prescott Development (who is proposing a controversial townhome project in Maple Leaf). Prescott has said that it may scrap QFC’s original mixed-use grocery store/residential building plans with a mixed-use smaller retail/residential building, and that’s not something the neighborhood wants.
One thing local residents should worry about in the article was the consistent talk from the developer and the DPD about the powers of the Design Review Board to:

As of now, Prescott Development does not have firm design plans. “The Design Review Board does that for us,” (Mike) Derr (Prescott Development) said. “They decide what works and fits in the neighborhood.”
The Design Review Board looks at initial concepts for the proposal,” explained Department of Planning and Development planner Bruce Rips. “The board will review…and give guidance to the applicant on design issues.”

Anyway, they’re both wrong. The Design Review Board (DRB) is not the place to decide whether a full-scale grocery store or a series of smaller retail shops go into this space. The DRB has neither the authority nor the will to make such a substantial change. The DRB’s scope is limited to the details - the DRB can help with finishing touches like lighting, paint schemes, cornices, etc…

The decision on what type of retail will be built here rests with the property owner/developer. So to be effective, Wallingford needs to be lobbying Prescott, the local media, and the city council/mayor right now. If you wait until it gets to the Design Review Board process, it will be too late and Stone Way might just end up with more suntanning parlors and chiropractic clinics.

(North Seattle Herald Outlook photo)

Today’s land use notice posted, and here are some quick items:

Revised Land Use Application for the historic Camp Fire location on Maple Leaf filed.

***
2 seperate applications filed for two seperate but adjacent lots
1026 NE 125th St - Demolish existing apartment building and replace with (2) three-story four-unit townhomes with parking for 8 vehicles.
1030 NE 125th St - Demolish existing apartments and replace with (2) four-unit townhomes with parking for 8 vehicles.

The net/net is 11 apartment units gone, 8 townhome units going up.

*** 

And I have no idea how this tiny, tiny South Seattle lot can be divided into two unit lots. (Maybe it’s a joint custody thing - one family can live there during the week, and the other during the weekend)

And the bittersweetest of them all - knocking down the Taco Guaymas building in Fremont and replacing with a three-story six unit residence (w/ restaurant and retail).

The Pinehurst neighborhood does a great job of calling out problems in its neighborhood and having been burned by a developer before (check out the comments), actively monitors all DPD activity to make sure the same developer doesn’t strike again. Following up on a discussion about piecemealing/micropermitting that The Stranger picked up from the WestSeattleBlog.com, The Stranger followed up today with this article about Pinehurst’s experience with piecemealing.

This is definitely one loophole that needs to be closed sooner rather than later, and here’s hoping that when it is finally closed that no ‘grandfather’ status is granted to any piecemeal projects that happen to be in progress at the time.

(Below: the result of piecemealing.)

Here is a copy of an urgent letter I received from some concerned Seattleites. This letter does a great job of pointing out how the city’s attempt to ’simplify the zoning code’ is going to exasperate exacerbate many of the problems with the existing codes, and cause new ones to develop. Sadly, nothing in the ‘zoning simplification’ addresses fixing the larger problems with the existing code (like micropermitting) which are causing much of the bad development taking place in Seattle.

If you disapprove of this plan, contact the members of the city council land use committee: Councilmembers Tim Burgess, Sally Clark, Jean Godden, and Tom Rasmussen

Citywide Upzone Outside Villages Being Rushed Through by Planning Staff

Seattle Urgently Needs Your Help
Over the holidays, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) quietly issued a Declaration of Non Significance (DNS) on what it bills to the public and Council as a “Multi-Family Update.”Adrienne Quinn, the City’s Housing Director, perhaps unwittingly, misrepresented the changes to City Council when she called them “some proposed changes to the multi-family code, really more clean-up”. (This occurs at 4:13:12 of the video of the Urban Development and Planning Committee 12/12/07). See:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2140731

Actually, this is a total rewrite of all of the development standards for all the multi-family zones, a complete change in the comprehensive plan. Most important, it destroys the consensus reached after a long process in 1988 and 1989, when the city rewrote the code to deal with ugly, excessively dense conditions created by the city’s 1980’s attempt at an “experimental code.” The 1989 process took over a year and had an enormous amount of citizen input. Now the planning staff proposes to bring back the very problems that caused the 1989 rewrite-and even worse-to break all the promises made to communities who agreed to take Urban Villages. Some of the worst changes will:

Purge the rezoning criteria of definitive aspects that ordinary people can understand.

Upzone the most common apartment zones (L2 and L3) and bring back huge ugly, ugly multifamily buildings where both the existing code and Department of Planning and Development’s own proposal says they do not belong-outside villages.

Sell zoning-additional height and bulk within villages (in addition to already increased standards) creating even huger buildings in villages that didn’t get listed against L3 upzones.

Dispense with all limitations to assure compatibility with existing development (overweighting DPD Objective 2–”foster creative design through development flexibility.” The rest of this list enumerates how this single-minded focus loses all sight of the comprehensive plan’s urban village strategy.

Repeal, in some places, and in other places enlarge building width and depth limits-critical limits that
did away with appeals by discouraging the assembling of lots outside villages.

Replace lot coverage limits in all zones, and density limits in L3 with the complex FAR (floor area ratio) used in commercial zones, so complex that neighborhoods lose the predictable densities and lot coverages promised in 1989.

Increase permitted height in all the zones below L3 (from 25′ to 30′ high).

Replace front, rear, and side setbacks with a flat seven feet (7′) all around.

Leave townhouse disasters unaddressed, if not worsened by the setback relaxations.

Repeal “open space” and “ground related”, even remove the terms from the glossary. *

Replace nature’s way of accepting storm runoff–open space-with the “Green
Area Factor,” a complicated numbers game just adopted for business districts that has not been demonstrated to have any real benefits.

Replace predictable development standards with vague design standards, such as ‘choice of articulation,’ with the DPD director (which usually means plan reviewer) as the sole judge and no community participation or appeal allowed.The Comprehensive Plan still elaborately documents the Urban Village strategy that neighborhood planners honored and expect to be honored-attractive density increases in villages, and in-fill projects that fits in outside villages. This “cleanup” cleans out the urban village strategy and replaces it with high density again scattered randomly around the city. It throws out neighborhood plans and upzones with a code change.None of the members of the present Land Use Committee of the City Council were there in 1989. The Department of Planning was there, and has the audacity to think we have all forgotten.”He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it”We do not need ANOTHER round of experimental zoning.This is the opposite of Simple.This is the opposite of Cheaper, Faster Permitting.There is no emergency yet, but there surely will be if we let this “cleanup” pass.

There’s a really good discussion on WestSeattleBlog.com right now featuring a letter from West Seattle Design Review Board member David Foster talking about how micropermitting allows developments to be built without going through the ‘rigor’ of the Design Review Board process.

David mentioned that one reason this is happening is because,

But when I spoke to the manager of the Design Review program at DPD, he admitted that all too often the bureaucracy lets these projects slip under the radar - “it’s too hard to keep track of”

This was the same thing I heard when listening to Diane Sugimora talk, that the DPD is the administrative arm of Seattle’s land use plans, but that we need to make our mayor and council close these bad loopholes.

Personally, what this means to me is not so much that the Design Review Board will jump in to fix the project (because they’re not allowed to), but that these micropermitted projects are subject to lesser mitigation requirements.

It was interesting to note in a follow-up post on WestSeattleBlog.com (props to WSB on the active follow-up, you’re kicking the Times butt with your news), they contacted City Councilman Richard Conlin who said that he was unaware that micropermitting was happening as much as he thought.

Well, hopefully that will serve as a wake-up call for him and it is now something we can point to saying that Councilmember Conlin is aware of the situation. We’ll follow his progress as he looks into it.

Anyway, just wanted to add this as a final point, here are two other key ingredients that make it easier for this kind of development to go through:
1. Look for properties that are L2/3 zoned.
2. The development occurs in communities with weak community reaction.

For years Camp Fire USA owned the historic Waldo Hospital and surrounding property in Maple Leaf (NE Seattle neighborhood), but according to neighbors, last year Camp Fire decided to put the property up for sale without even giving the neighborhood the chance to help bring buyers to the table. Instead, the property was sold to Prescott Development, who the neighborhood reports,

Prescott Development submitted a bid believed to be above $7.5 million to purchase the property. Prescott planned over 40 homes on the site and the destruction of Waldo Forest. Camp Fire turned down a $6.5 million dollar bid from a developer who committed to save Waldo Forest. Subsequently, a number of organizations and companies have approached the community interested in purchasing the property.

What’s interesting about this project is how quickly it appears to be moving from:
A property with bald eagles,

a landmark building,

and tons of trees on the property,

to instead become a series of 40 wheelchair inaccessible, 30′ townhomes who currently are planning to site their dumpsters alongside 85th and 86th Streets. (click for a better scaled photo)

This project needs alot of help, in term of protecting this property’s existing green space and the landmark building that is sited there. The city is taking comments on this proposal, and if you have an opinion it is important that you submit yours in writing so that your comments are reviewed by the city. If you want to take a more active role, you can visit the SaveWaldo.org site built by some of the residents of Maple Leaf.

I saw a great post called We are the Public on At large in Ballard with Peggy Sturdivant, a Seattle PI blog. Peggy covered a NW design review board meeting in Ballard back in November to learn about the “plans for the 31 condominium units at 5803 NW 24th”. Having been to a few of these reviews myself in the NE area, Peggy’s coverage of the events was right on (with the exception that we had far more people in attendance at our reviews).

What I can’t agree with her more is that these Design Review Board meetings are really just about clarifying the minute details on projects that are pretty much going to be approved. That’s because the real decisions are made well before these meetings. These decisions are made when the zoning requirements are made into laws. And unfortunately Seattle has a terrible set of zoning regulations on the books with tons of loop-holes that ironically work against the city’s goals of ’sustainability’, ‘respect for adjacent sites’ and ‘directing development towards public transportation’.

Anyway, this is what Peggy seemed to discover at the Design Review meeting where all the city was doing was clarifying nit-picky details to the architect and the owner where their plans could better meet existing requirements laid out by existing zoning. And I think this is also why Peggy ends her post with,

“I didn’t have to stay for the end. The design will be approved give or take a few modifications. A setback may move, the landscaping may shift, minute specifics will change slightly – the modulation, a slope bonus, who knows? The building will still be six stories with 31 units and at least 38 parking stalls, although they’re aiming for 39.”

So, the lesson here is that change isn’t going to happen in Design Review, change needs to happen with Seattle’s zoning.

At last week’s North Seattle District meeting, local residents kept asking DPD Director Diane Sugimura why the city was permitting land owners to build in sensitive areas prone to slides and flooding. Diane mentioned she’d look into how approvals like this could happen, and I’m glad to help her out by finding one she might want to research.

Last week the Meadowbrook/Thornton Creek area of North Seattle was featured prominently in the news for all the urban flooding that happened in the area. This kind of flooding in the area is nothing new, and happens every few years. So…of course you’d expect this to be noted and addressed in the permit approval for five new townhouse units on the site of a single family home.

However, all the DPD noted about Thornton Creek in the decision was:

Thornton Creek is located approximately 102 feet from the project site.

Which is accurate, but to help make this statement even more accurate I would have slightly tweaked this to say, “On a good day, Thornton Creek is located approximately 102 feet from the project site. On a bad day, whoopsie!”

Yesterday night I had the opportunity to attend a North District Council meeting with 40 other folks at the Lake City Library. The guest speakers were Diane Sugimura of the Department of Planning and Development and Mike McGinn of Seattle Great City Initiative.

Mike’s talk was interesting. He showed photos of what the Seattle area might look like in 100 years (very scary) and presented ideas for building smart sustainable urban development. All were great ideas, but I feel like Seattle Great City is more of a theoretical, ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ kind of organization, instead of the in-your-face dog-fight politicking group needed in this city to actually change our zoning and land use laws.

Then Diane Sugimura spoke. And after presenting the DPD’s roles within the city, opened it up to the floor for questions. And boy, she was grilled (especially by a North Seattle audience who wasn’t too happy to begin with since most of them had just been flooded out). And to her credit, Diane handled all the questions with grace and patience. The audience peppered her about ‘crackerbox’ style development, houses built on wetlands and unstable slopes, and developers that level all the trees on the property to build even bigger single family houses. However, while listening to bad development story after bad development story I had a profound thought - the DPD is just a bureaucratic entity and nobody is leading any kind of land use planning within Seattle’s neighborhoods.

In fact, the DPD’s role in city planning is actually pretty small - they’re here to make sure that the pipeline of permits, complaints, and various questions are efficiently processed. Although they may actually think they have some influence, don’t look to Diane or the DPD to propose the kind of updates to the zoning code that these neighbors and others are demanding. Instead, look to the mayor who is choosing not to invest in fixes to our broken zoning codes and to conduct important neighborhood planning.

Sadly, unless you fall within one of the following areas I’ve listed below - you’re pretty much on your own. And if you don’t have the backing of a strong community council, you’re going to have to build up your coalition to fight any bad projects in your neighborhood.

The areas where the city of Seattle is actually devoting its urban planning attention.

• The city is demanding more from it’s own buildings in terms of environmental and community sustainability.
• The city is actively planning growth in South Lake Union and the Downtown area. (note: the Denny Triangle area is strangely outside this area)
• The city is will retain the 65%+ portion of the city that is zoned single family (note: and this is old school thinking too, there are plenty of single family areas that would be ripe for improvement if they could be zoned multi-family. What is important here is to manage the transition between single and multi-family zones)

Anyway, I now believe more than ever that to get the kind of land use planning attention throughout Seattle that the city deserves, that we’re going to have to either change our mayor’s attitudes, or get a new mayor.

So…when my neighbors and I went to our very first Design Review Board (DRB) meeting earlier this year , we were really excited with the opportunity to tell our story to a group of our peers (the Design Review Board) who we were sure would be sympathetic to our story. However, the reality of the process was that we quickly came to realize that the DRB doesn’t really have the power to deal with the tough issues of modifying a building’s plan.

But this doesn’t mean things can’t change, and if you’re someone who thinks they can make a difference, check out these openings (openings are on the right). But hurry, applications are due by Dec 10th!

Northwest Board
– community at-large representative

Queen Anne/Magnolia Board
– community at-large representative
– development representative

Southwest Board
– development representative
– community at-large representative

Capitol Hill Board
– design professional

Southeast Board
– local residential representative

I was down at the South Lake Union Discovery Center today checking out all the displays about the upcoming South Lake Union redevelopment and had a thought, “what if the city spent as much time thinking about neighborhood development in other neighborhoods throughout Seattle as it is doing in South Lake Union?”

I have a feeling that if the city did spend time carefully looking at developing neighborhoods as a whole instead of piecemeal, I don’t think you’d see bad development like we’re seeing in:

• The Denny Triangle neighborhood, where the city is permitting a high-rise to be built just 16 feet away from a neighboring residential high-rise?!? This kind of close-in high-rise development has not been successful in any major city and is terrible urban planning. 
• The Pinehurst neighborhood (North Seattle) where Kohary Construction has pretty much ticked off the neighborhood by using a loophole to avoid the DPD’s Design Review Process and using this lack of review to build dull, characterless townhomes that push most of their development’s traffic issues into the surrounding neighborhood.
• Wedgwood (again in North Seattle) where Murray Franklyn wants to build a huge mixed commercial/residential property that is only 8 feet away from single family homes and is going to really screw up traffic on 35th Ave NE.
• Summit and Belmont on Capitol Hill where Murray Franklyn is planning to put in a less than dynamic mixed use building leased out to even duller tenants.
• Dearborn Street just south of downtown where there are plans to build a major shopping complex, which the neighborhood feels will have a devestating Walmart effect on their neighborhood businesses.

Anyway, this is just a list of problem developments I’ve learned about while working on this blog, and I’m sure there are many more out there. Perhaps what we need is the DPD to put together a ‘South Lake Union Discovery Center’ that covers the entire city and lets us think about development holistically. Or perhaps what we need is a mayor or city council to realize that this is the major issue facing Seattle neighborhoods.

I have the day off today, so it’s giving me lots of time to read. And what’s my reading of choice? How about land use decisions (I know, it’s sad).

But…I did find something that really highlights how ineffective Seattle’s Design Review Board has become. (And this isn’t due to the quality of the board members, it’s really due to the fact that they are not permitted to make significant changes to proposed projects).

The Design Review process is supposed to give citizens, the applicants and the City an equal voice in discussions. However, what happens is that there is alot of horse trading that goes on specifically between the board and the applicant during the final 25 minutes of the meeting. (The board also hears back directly from DPD if the applicant has any concerns about their recommendations). Citizens are specifically told to be quiet during this time and not interrupt the discussions that go on between the City and the applicants. So…here’s what is supposed to happen with this process.

Design Review “Triangle”
The Design Review Program is built on the concept of an equilateral triangle, with the three major stakeholders — the citizens of Seattle, the project applicant, and the City — given a voice in the process. Design Review Board meetings are structured to mirror this relationship, with a meeting’s 90 minutes broken down as follows:

• 30 minutes for the project applicant’s presentation and the Design Review Board’s clarifying questions;
• 20 minutes for citizens to address their concerns and ideas to the Design Review Board about the project’s design; and
• 25 minutes for the Design Review Board to deliberate and make recommendations to the project applicant.

So, what’s an example of horse trading? Well, how about getting zoning variances pushed through in exchange for insignificant concessions to citizens. One example I found occured with the proposal for what is now the fini condos on Phinney Ridge. While reading through the design review decision for this project, the applicant was able to get a total of seven zoning exemptions.

• Reducing the rear setback of the building from 18 to 10 feet (putting the building 8 feet closer to the single family homes
• Increasing level two and three lot coverage - making the building boxier and bulkier
• Reducing the sidewalk width in the front of the building
• Reducing aisle width for commercial parking spaces - this creates more parking spaces
• Reducing % of large parking stalls - again, more parking
• Reducing setback between fence and retaining wall - coming up with a nice landscaping solution would be too expensive
• Replacing sight triangle on driveway with mirrors - creates more retail space

The neighbors challenged many of these departures, but what did they receive in exchange? Not too much. Here are the conditions the design review board imposed in exchange for the zoning departures.

• The canopies along Greenwood Ave. N. should be redesigned to be more continuous and
  in a form which in most areas should extend at least six feet from the building.
• Art pieces proposed at each side of the pedestrian entry point on Greenwood Ave. N.
  must be of a large enough scale to be compatible with the size of the building elements
  they are part of.
• The landscape along the west extent of the proposal site continue to be varied, a mix of
  deciduous and evergreen trees and bushes, but, that it be intensified with additional trees added, especially in the north and southern extents of the rear setback area. At a
  minimum, six more trees, half evergreen and half deciduous, shall be added.
• Garage exhaust fans shall be internal to the building at as great a distance as is practical
  and no restaurant exhaust shall be directed out any side of the building.
• Along the south side the arborvitae proposed are a good screening solution and shall be
  maintained.
• The sidewalk in front of the garage entry shall have a different texture and possibly a
  different color from the remainder of the sidewalk in front of the Project.

I just don’t think that the citizens were well served with this recommendation, because these conditions are minor cosmetic changes. And what’s really disappointing, is that there are lots of other decisions like this one. If we want to put some more teeth into the Design Review process, maybe it’s going to require a voter led initiative, because it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen from either the mayor or the city council. What do you think?

Photo of the single family homes behind the new fini building

The Seattle Times reported today that the Odd Fellows Hall on Capitol Hill has been sold and is going to be updated and restored (not torn down!). They report that many tenants are justifiably worried that in the updated building rents will be so high that many of the current artist tentants will be displaced.

But rather than speculate on what will happen, these are three major factors that will go into what is eventually built.

* The Owner - The owner has tremendous leverage determing the final development. They can set binding requirements in the agreement for what is built next and they can determine the final scale of the building by raising/lowering their asking price. Properties are usually sold to developers outright or on contingency (this means that the property sale occurs when some other action happens - usually when a Master Use Permit is issued). You have more sway over an owner if the property is being sold on contingency since an active neighborhood has lots more time to actually lobby them. (In the case of Oddfellows it looks like the sale has already happened).

* The zoning envelope - For each project, there is a corresponding maximum amount of ‘build’ that can take place. This maximum amount is capped by whatever type of zoning is in place and this really dictates the kind of building which will go there. So, think of this as what sets the price, because it determines what the potential build could look like. (This is also where the design review process kicks in, where issues unique to the site can reduce the amount of buildable space the city will permit).

* Developers - These are the folks who actually decide what is going to be built, how it will look, and how it will be priced. They have to push their proposal through the city and depending on the integrity of each individual developer - they choose whether to work in partnership with a community or not. However, they can be lobbied too, and their goal is to get a Master Use Permit with the least amount of headache possible. (Since Oddfellow’s new owner is the group that refurbed Trace Lofts, I don’t think quality will be an issue. However, they will need to be lobbied hard to preserve affordable space for artists!)