Category — Multifamily Zoning Update

I’ve been working on a post to see how much neighborhoods pay in the long run when a development as a whole is able to wriggle around design review - and one of the most well-publicized examples of this recently was a 13-unit West Seattle townhome development built by Soleil Development.

The West Seattle Herald, Seattle Times and West Seattle Blog all wrote about how this townhome development as a whole largely avoided design review by taking advantage of a loophole in Seattle’s zoning code called ‘micropermitting‘ (which the proposed multi-family zoning update still doesn’t address).

(The WestSeattleBlog.com image below shows what this Soleil development looks like.)

The West Seattle Herald summed up negative impacts of this development not going through design review as:  

A 13-unit townhouse development under construction in the Gatewood neighborhood is raising hackles among neighbors who claim the developer flew under the city’s regulatory radar by dividing the project into three seemingly separate projects.

Had the Gatewood development been more thoroughly scrutinized by the city, Soleil would have to make improvements to the public infrastructure around the site such as better sidewalks, storm-water detention and street trees, Oustimovitch said. Probably the biggest environmental impacts of the project will be on traffic and parking, he said.

The developer might also have had to stabilize a 22-foot-tall bluff just east of the site. Perhaps a view corridor would’ve been required so passersby could still see an old log cabin that neighbors call the hunting lodge, Oustimovitch said.

Okay, great, this article helps my future post by providing some really good examples of infrastructure improvements the neighborhood (ie you, a city taxpayer) may end up having to pay for in the long run because this project as a whole did not go through design review.  

I then went over to Soleil’s web site to try and find out more about this townhome development, but wasn’t able to find more about it (maybe I’m just not looking in the right place). However, while reading about their other developments I did find something that I found to be a bit ironic - their description of the neighborhood benefits of their cottage properties.    

Our Cottages -Preserving Neighborhood Flavor
Our cottage projects have been specifically designed to integrate harmoniously into their single family neighborhoods. These in-city developments meet the need for more urban housing as well as fitting the character and feel of the neighborhood. Built on a smaller scale than the townhouse, our cottages are only 17-20 feet high versus 35 feet high, benefiting the whole dynamic of street appearances and property values in the area.

To me this kind of says that they are well aware of the benefits of lower height buildings within neighborhood settings - and how carefully designing buildings to fit into a neighborhood can both meet the needs of density and preserving neighborhood character at the same time. 

So, I went back to the Soleil site and found a townhome of theirs at 4117 SW Morgan Street. From the photo below the development looks to be in a neighborhood with a single-family home as its neighbor. The building also looks to be about 30-35 feet tall. So, if one were to apply their cottage projects benefits statement to this building could one assume that this townhome of theirs neither benefits the whole dynamic of street appearances nor benefits property values in the area as much as it would have if it were 17-20 feet high?

This all makes me wonder, if even a developer who is skilled at leveraging zoning codes understands the benefits of more thoughtful, lower height new development in neighborhoods - why is the multifamily zoning update rewarding developers who have been very skillful at finding zoning loopholes to build even higher in the future (35+ feet). Shouldn’t we first focus on closing down the zoning loopholes so we don’t encourage even bigger problems? 

(Soleil townhome development - 4117 SW Morgan Street) 

Okay, for those of you playing at home, each day I’m going to focus on one part of the Multifamily zoning/code update  being proposed by the DPD and the Mayor, and which will be brought to the Seattle City Council for approval this year.

Today the focus is on the MF update’s Introduction. This section sets the expectation for the report, along with the main reasons why the DPD feels this update is necessary. So, reading through it, I had a couple of questions.

• Are we really on track to add 100,000 residents over the next 20 years? Crosscut recently wrote that Puget Sound Regional Council’s Vision 2040 (which was overwhelmingly approved last night) is missing on the target on where this growth will occur.And after reading the MF Update’s Intro, I wish the DPD had also included the anticipated demographic breakdown of those new residents. Are we anticipating a huge influx of baristas moving into the city? Are we expecting a baby boom? Are we anticipating the growth to be largely among 25-35 yr old single professionals moving into the city? Anyway, shouldn’t we know who exactly the MF update is for - instead of just a randomly distributed group of people?
• It seems like the Intro focuses alot on affordable home ownership, I don’t really see anything here that addresses the 800-pound gorilla in the room that Seattle loves to ignore - affordable rentals. And is owning a home the right thing for everyone, it seems like that’s a pretty big assumption to make.
• In conjunction with reducing the city’s carbon footprint - nothing is mentioned in the update about what carbon footprint reducing efforts the DPD themselves could undertake. I’d love to require the DPD as part of this update to reduce their green footprint by requiring Multifamily developers to publish digital copies of their documents and enabling the DPD to stream its Multifamily Design Review meetings online.Oh yeah, and how about strengthening the DPDs ability to actually ensure that these updates are being followed by developers - is there anything worse than having green rules on the books but not having the resources to check up and enforce code? 

So…that’s my take on the Intro, please feel free to add your thoughts, questions, to the discussion, and for those of you who would like to read this part of the document, I’ve copied it for you below.

Introduction
The Department of Planning and Development is proposing to update multifamily zoning in the City’s Land Use Code, to advance the City’s growth management objectives and better achieve the City’s goals and policies for new development, and make the code easier to use and understand.

[Read more →]

The times I’ve published information from neighborhood groups about the multi-family zoning updates in progress, I generally tend to get one or two responses saying, “Whoa, this process has been 2-3 years in the planning, how can it be a surprise to you?” And my response back is, “Hey, cut me a break, I wasn’t paying attention to land use issues in Seattle 2-3 years ago, I was busy with other important stuff - do you think that 6 seasons of ‘The Sopranos’ were just going to watch themselves?”

But now that I do care (and that ‘The Sopranos’ has ended) I thought it would be fun to read through the entire MF Update…until I saw that it was 94 pages long. And if it took me 2-3 years to watch an entire TV series… 94 pages in one sitting is probably not a realistic goal.

So…I thought, what to do? Should I just skim through the document and focus on a few items, like a City Councilmember would do? But then I thought, ‘Hey, I bet some of you haven’t read through this document either, so why don’t we have some fun and read it together with you, chapter by chapter?’

Sounds fun, yes? So, if you’re game, your homework is thus, grab a copy of the MF Draft Proposal (you can grab it for FREE here) and read the ‘Introduction’ on pages 2 and 3 for tomorrow’s discussion.

And if you don’t want to read the update, that’s cool, I’ll just keep posting some more land-use photos for you (I’ve got some super-awesome Wallingford thermoplastic ladder crosswalk photos just waiting to see the light of day).

In the meantime, here is something fun I did with the update. I searched on a few key words to see how many times they were repeated within the MFZ document.

1) ‘Children‘ are mentioned 3 times in the 94 pages.
2) ‘Parks‘ are mentioned 4 times
3) ‘Condo‘ was mentioned 6 times
4) ‘Schools‘ are mentioned 10 times.
5) ‘Mayor Nickels‘ is mentioned twice, ‘Mayor’ is mentioned 11 times
6) ‘DPD‘ mentioned 15 times
7) ‘City Council‘ is mentioned 16 times (that’s 1.78 mentions per council member)
8 ) ‘Townhouses‘ are mentioned 47 times.
9) ‘Urban village‘ mentioned 55 times
10) ‘Affordable‘ mentioned 56 times
11) ‘Single Family‘ was mentioned 59 times
12) ‘Zoning‘ was mentioned 71 times, ‘Zoned’ mentioned 75 times
13) ‘Green‘ was mentioned 90 time
14) ‘Neighborhood‘ was mentioned 133 times
15) ‘Multifamily‘ mentioned 270 times

So…taking the top terms in their category (’Multifamily’ beats out ‘Single Family’), dividing by 2, carrying the 1…and we get this…

Multifamily Neighborhood Zoning for Green, Affordable Townhouses

It should be interesting to see whether at the end of this exercise, if this is what the document is about.