Good evening and welcome to the April 6th meeting of the Issaquah Development Commission.
The agenda is, I hope most of you know, there was a last minute change
in the agenda, which I'll let Christopher Wright, the city staff, talk about.
And we will go on from there. So Christopher, do you want to explain what's
going on? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. As you mentioned the first item on the
agenda after the approval of minutes was to be a public hearing for the Rita
Rita Riva townhomes and that public hearing is being postponed to
a Yet to be termed date in the future As you know the Commission as
you know, we try to make sure that we have when we're working with the
applicants that we're all in the same boat and and and presenting kind of a
joint recommendation when we come to you some issues came up very late this afternoon
that we want to be able to work through with them before we come back
to you so and it was nothing real significant nothing real earth-shattering but
significant enough that like I said we want to take some time get some more
information before we come back to you so I would expect it will be back
sooner rather than later, but we don't have a date yet. Obviously we will need
to re-advertise, re-notice, re-publish once we establish that date, and we will do that.
But the other agenda item is the public hearing for Sunrise Assisted Living,
and that's what I know this group of people is here for. And so you
will be the decision makers tonight for that site development permit. And we have
Peter Rosen, a senior planner with the development services to do the presentation for staff.
And then we'll open it up for the applicant team to present as they see
fit. And then if there's any members of the public that wish to speak, they
could sign in on the sign-in sheet. And then we'll open it up for questions
from you and then ultimate decision. So those of you who have been through the
community conference, the format is pretty similar to that. The difference is that at the
conclusion of all the steps that Christopher just
underscored, there will be a formal going through basically a checklist
that will elicit the votes of each of the commission members on the Sunrise application.
All right. So with that, Commissioners, the first order of
business is the approval of minutes, and we have a number of them. So the
first one will involve the minutes from the meeting of March 2nd. That is
deferred to the next meeting, I see. So we'll go to the meeting minutes of
March 9th. Does anybody have any corrections or suggestions for that? If not,
Mr. Chair, I move we approve the minutes of the March 9th Development Commission meeting.
I second. Commission has been moved and seconded. Are there any comments, any
discussion? In that case, all those in favor of approval, as they
are, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. The minutes from
the meeting of March 9th are approved. The next is the meeting minutes from March
16th. Are there any suggestions, changes, additions,
deletions desired by any commissioner on that? If not, may we have a motion? I'd
make a motion that we approve the March 16th minute. Second. It's been moved and
seconded. Is there any discussion? In that case, all those in favor of approval signify
by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Minutes are approved.
So we will move now to the city presentation on the public hearing for Sunrise
Assisted Living by presentation by Peter Rosen from the Environmental Center. Good evening.
Just a little background that this project was approved by the Development Commission in 2007.
I think that some of you might have been on the Development Commission at that
point. I realize you might not remember back that far though, So the
site development permits are valid for three years and it
expired because the applicant didn't submit building permits within that time. So
this proposal's been, the project's been scaled back a little bit, partly due to
some new codes that were adopted since the project was originally went through
the development commission and the new codes that apply are that the
stream buffer stream buffers that are associated with steep slopes can no longer be reduced
and there's also tree retention requirements that weren't in the code at the time.
Just a little bit on the staff report, the organization of the staff report. There's
first Part of the staff report goes through the development and
design standards, chapter 1807. There's also a section of the code that's
specific to assisted living facilities, and the staff report goes through
that, as well as sections on environmental review, access street improvements, parking,
utilities, tree retention. And then there's There's the
design criteria checklist, which are the green sheets, and I understand that that
may have inadvertently not been included in the packet, but that's Appendix A, and
I do have a copy that I'll be able to project on the screen when
we get there. There's Appendix B, which is a, there are two
administrative adjustments of standards, AASs, One is for the building setback
from the stream buffer. There's a 15 foot building setback required from the stream
buffer and there's a proposal to reduce a portion of that. And there's also an
administrative adjustment of standards for the building height, which I'll also discuss.
There's exhibits that were included with the
staff report and the staff report the architectural civil landscape plans, the building materials
board, SEPA determination, river and streams board minutes, traffic concurrency,
public comment letters were all included as exhibits. I do want to go back to
the AASs for a second here, the administrative adjustment standards. Those are administrative
decisions. Sometimes they get consolidated with the SDP permit.
But the code, per the code, it's
up to the applicant of whether it gets consolidated. And we did have an email
that the applicant requested that it not be consolidated.
So the exhibits are written for those AASs,
but the decision on those has been done administratively. So just
to clarify that. At the back of the staff report are recommended conditions and there's
basically three sections. There's the SEPA mitigation measures, SDP conditions, and then
construction conditions. So
the proposal is for a site development permit for the construction of an assisted living
facility. The new facility would include 82 units, The building's
approximately 96,500 square feet, five stories. You'll notice that
there's not a lot of parking shown on the site plan because the parking is
primarily below the building. There's 50 parking spaces below the building and there's
two surface stalls.
Site location. The
site is located on Issaquah Falls City Road, very close to the intersection with Black
Nugget Road. You'll see here that it's also at the intersection with
Black Nugget Road, it's close to Highlands Drive. Here's the Issaquah Highlands, Overdale Park.
There is a steep ravine along the east and south part of the site, which
is the North Fork of Issaquah Creek. Then
obviously there's I-90 down to the south of the
site. So the site is currently
undeveloped and heavily forested. As the figure shows,
the site has split zoning. It's multifamily medium and single family
small lot. The use is allowed in both of the zones. In terms of the
development standards, what the code states is that you use the development
standards that compose the majority of the total lot size, and so the
multifamily medium is slightly larger than the single family small lot, and so
it's those development standards of the multifamily medium zone that apply, and actually
they're very similar development standards between the two zones. Not a big difference there.
I want to point out that, again, the North Fork of Issaquah
Creek borders the east and south of the site, and so on the other side
of that wooded ravine is single-family development. I believe it's
single-family estates is the zoning. To the south of the site is Lakeside
Industries, and the zoning there is is Urban Village
Lakeside. There's a development agreement for future development of Lakeside Industries
property after the gravel mining operation phases out.
Across Issaquah Falls City Road from the site is multifamily development.
Just a couple of views. This one is a
view of the site as you're coming up Issaquah Falls City Road and this is
a view of the site as you're going down Issaquah Falls City Road. You can
see that it is currently heavily forested.
This is coming down Issaquah Falls City Road when you're north
of the intersection with Black Nugget and this is coming up Issaquah Falls City Road
and it shows the intersection of Black Nugget Road as well.
I just wanted to discuss some of the critical areas and buffers because that drives
a lot of the project in terms of the developable portion of the site. The
site is very constrained by critical areas. There's a very
steep slope area on the east portion of the property. Again, there's,
at the bottom of that ravine is the North Fork of Issaquah Creek. The North
Fork of Issaquah Creek is a class two stream with salmonids, so there's a 100
foot buffer from the North Fork. And the steep slopes,
the code requires a 50 foot buffer. That can be reduced to a minimum of
10 feet. So on this figure, the orange line
here is the steep slope buffer, and what you could see is that in the
portion of the site to the north, the slopes are over 60%
grade, and the Geotech recommended a 20-foot buffer in that case,
and recommended a 10-foot buffer for the remaining, though in
this portion of the site it's also 20 feet. I do want to mention that
The buffer reduction in the geotechnical report went through a peer review by Golder Associates
who concurred that there wouldn't be issues with slope stability
with the steep slope buffer reduction.
Note at the south end of the site, there's an observation
deck and that projects into the steep slope reduced buffer area
so there is a SEPA condition that requires that the observation deck
doesn't encroach into the steep slope area and in the building setback area
the observation deck would have to be pretty close to
on grade in terms of 30 inches or less so that it's
not considered a structure in the building setback.
In terms of the stream buffer, that's the green line here,
and you can see the building setback is 15 feet offset from the stream buffer.
The code doesn't allow the stream buffer to be reduced wherein it's associated with steep
slopes. And as I mentioned previously, there's an
administrative adjustment of standards to reduce the building setback since the
stream buffer can't be reduced through buffer averaging or through the other provisions of the
code. That would reduce the building setback to a minimum of five feet.
And that just is in this particular area. Elsewhere, the
15-foot building setback is met. So the reduction is approximately a third
of the linear feet of the building area.
So the total site area is 2.32 acres, but with all the
critical areas, the developable area, the site is limited to 1.09 acres. The
On the east side of the building is in the stream buffer. The
observation decks and trails are permitted use in the buffer, but they need to be
buffer averaged, and the applicant has proposed, has taken the
total area of the encroachments into the stream buffer and has added additional buffer area
to the south. And I could show that
on a separate figure in just a minute. Mr.
Chair, just a quick question. Peter, the plans we have, the site plan is
different than this? So is this a more recent version you're showing us?
There was a plan sheet for buffer averaging for the buffers that was in the
plan set, in the architectural plans. This is, what we have
is different in terms of the deck that's
shown. Okay. We did, the applicant modified
some of the plans because it wasn't entirely clear of
the 20 foot buffer at the north end of the site, so this is, and
this may be a new figure that wasn't included. in the packet and I I
use this one because it it shows more clearly the steep slope buffer where it's
20 feet as opposed to 10 feet and it was just the clearest drawing to
highlight the the buffer line so it it um this wasn't part of this is
the more those deck areas and so forth they're the revised versions of them then
from what we have I believe that I don't think the um the
deck areas changed from what was shown on on the plans that we have. Yeah,
I think so. Like in here in the package and what's in here. I could
go to the plan sheets if you. Sure. If you go to A2. Yeah.
Okay, so. You can see that's a 90 degree angle on that.
Okay, so that compared to and it actually extends into the 40%
slope. You can see there's an angled...
It looks like to stay out of that. It may have been slightly modified. I'll
let the applicant address that. I know that... So what occurred here is that with
the SEPA review, there was a condition, as I described, that
the decks couldn't go into the steep slope area or into the steep slope reduced
buffer, the 10-foot buffer. And so the applicant may have
modified the drawing based on that condition. And Peter, that's
what we've got in our packet there. This is the illustration. This is the A2,
right? Yes, this is A2. So the difference is between the one that we have
in our packet that Commissioner Morgan pointed out. Could you just for the record here,
just run the cursor over and tell us what the differences are. So it's not
highlighted on this drawing, but this line is the 10-foot steep slope buffer, so the
difference is you could see that the observation decks
intruded not only into the steep slope buffer, but partly into the steep slope area
itself. So, I think it's been modified some
that it still goes into the, it still projects
into the steep slope
buffer some, but not as much, and it doesn't extend into the steep slope area
itself. Does that address your concern, Commissioner?
Okay. And in terms of, I wanted to,
also show that here is the buffer averaging that's shown. So
as I mentioned, trails and observation decks on grade are
allowed within stream buffers, but you need to buffer average, so you need to add
an area equal to the encroachment outside of the buffer. So
this figure shows the The patterned area is the encroachment into
the buffer, and then this is the added buffer area at a one-to-one ratio to
the encroachment.
In terms of the development standards, I mentioned that it's the multifamily medium zone that
applies because it's just slightly over 50% of the site area. So the
staff report goes through the development standards, the land use code development standards in 1807,
and the proposal meets the development standards for setbacks, for parking, for
impervious pervious surface coverage and tree retention.
I also mentioned there's a specific section on assisted living facilities criteria,
and the proposal meets that criteria as described in the staff report.
And there's also the design criteria
checklist, commonly known as the green sheets, and that was attached
as Appendix A to the staff report. and the building design and landscape
also meets that criteria. I mentioned that there's a administrative adjustment
for the building height. The code allows a 40 foot base
building height and that can be increased to 50 feet. There's
basically two provisions that have to be met or one of the two provisions have
to be met to increase the building height. from 40 to 50 feet, either the
upper stories above the base height need to be reduced by 25% or the pervious
surface area needs to be increased by 10% over the zoning
requirements. So the zone requires 50% pervious area
on this site and what's proposed is 64%. So that's how they
met the criteria for the building height. administrative adjustment.
Also, just wanted to mention in terms of the parking, the standard is that it
is one per two units and one per employee. And
so the proposal meets the parking standards. There's 52 parking spaces
provided, 50 under the building and two on the surface.
In terms of circulation, there's two access
points to the project site. An access off, the driveway
access off of Issaquah Falls City Road and a site access off of Black Nugget
Road. Both of these site accesses will be limited to right in, right
out only. That's due to the road grades to the to
speed and sight distance and on Black Nugget Road due to the proximity to the
intersection. For pedestrian circulation, there's
a crosswalk that goes across the main drive and
there's a condition in the staff report recommended condition that that crosswalk use distinct
materials like pavers, to distinguish it from the road.
So the crosswalk leads from the building entry to a sidewalk, and so
there's a sidewalk that would go to the intersection with
Black Nugget Road, and then there's sidewalk on Black Nugget Road.
There's not a sidewalk that would go to the south of this site along Issaquah
Falls City Road, and the reason for that is because the Lakeside Industries property,
which is to the south. There's not a sidewalk that's planned adjacent to the Lakeside
property, so a sidewalk to the south would not provide a connection
on this site. This figure is
pretty hard to read, so I'll probably just go to the landscape plan to show
it, but in terms of tree retention, The clouded areas
are where they are retaining the trees. The code requires 25%
of the total caliber of trees outside of critical areas and buffers to be
retained. The code also allows that to be reduced by up to 50%
and there's some specific criteria for reducing the tree retention. One of the
criteria is the modifications necessary due to the characteristics of the site, the size and
shape of the property and that meeting the tree retention would
jeopardize reasonable use of the site. As I mentioned, it's a very constrained site due
to the critical areas. The critical areas don't count toward the tree retention. And so
it meets that criteria of the site. the characteristics of the property.
Also one of the criteria is that it's necessary due to required ingress and egress.
And as we saw on this figure, the drive is connected between the two
access points and that's another reason that some of the existing trees
couldn't be retained. The applicant is proposing replacement
trees, 29 mitigation trees. Replacement trees are not required by the
code if you don't meet the retention, but they are providing 29
replacement trees, as well as in the area to the south of the building,
there'd be invasive plant removal and then enhancement with
native plants in the stream buffer.
In terms of the building design, the assisted living
facilities criteria has been met. That addresses barrier free standards. There's
community space, both indoor and outdoor community space that's required.
It meets those provisions. It meets the parking is also addressed in the assisted
living facilities criteria. as well as there's criteria in that section for building
modulation and roofline variation which are also
addressed in the green sheets in the design checklist. And the design checklist
criteria also addresses the building modulation and roofline variation
and the variation of building materials. I
do have the building materials board is an exhibit that
was included, and I could pull that up.
But I think I'll just leave the details of the building design to the applicant
to go over. There is a
condition, recommended condition, that's also addressed in the design criteria of screening
ground and rooftop mechanical equipment, so that would be reviewed with construction
plans. That's the end of what I have right
now. There aren't questions or if you want to. I think
probably what we'll do is if there are specific questions
of staff on his presentation, we'll go ahead and do it. do it now since
we don't have two meetings or two different agenda items tonight. So if you do,
we can always come back to them later on in the period where the commissioners
get to see clarification and so on. But if anybody has a question now from
Mr. Rosen, you'll be fine. MR. Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about the frontage condition, landscaping,
what's happening there because we have a road profile there that's, if you include the
turn lanes, I think it's like six lanes wide. And we're adding another road right
adjacent to it. And so now we have a sidewalk and it looks like a
very narrow landscape strip in there. And so can you talk a little bit about
what's the condition we're going to have and what the code requirements are for that?
Yes, so there is a landscape strip that is between the
road and the sidewalk, and it's a five-foot landscape strip, which is what is required
by the code. So just five feet between the sidewalk and the roadway? And
then street trees? Let me go to the landscape plan. Might
be a better choice here.
It actually, it may be a 10, I think it's a 10-foot landscape strip. Landscape,
landscape, okay. So you have the landscape strip
between the sidewalk and the road. And what? With street trees. What
are the street tree species? Yes, so the street trees
are. They're just deciduous or conifers? They're deciduous. I'm sorry. I. All
right, that's what it was. But they're deciduous street trees. I
know I had a discussion with the landscape architect about the choice of the street
trees there. But it's a little hard. I can expand the drawing to
read it. We can get that. I'm going to go to the applicant. Are there
any other questions of Mr. Rosen? I just have a quick question. That's actually the
slide that I would have you reference, as we don't have that one in our
packet, at least I don't. So my question is, what kind of
trees are going to be replaced? So what is the
applicant using to replace the trees that are being removed? So in the...
On the east side of the building is basically all stream buffer. And so all
the plantings are required to be native species. If the question is about
the replacement trees,
these are the added mitigation trees. And so there's
vine maple and red cedar and Douglas fir. the
replacement trees. Thank you. Mr. Seiberg, do you have a
question? I do.
The steep nature of that slope is a concern, and I don't really
understand what a tight line stormwater down the steep
slope means. And exactly, are they gonna have a retention pond with a pipe going
somewhere or? Right. So there's, I could pull up the civil
plans here. There is a stormwater vault and
the discharge, there were,
so there's a stormwater vault and so there were two options. that were shown for
the discharge from the stormwater vault. One was a dispersion trench, but
given the nature of the steep slopes, and this is also a high erosion area,
there were concerns about releasing the stormwater at the top of the slope. And so
tight lining entails that it would basically be piped
down the steep slope. To where? Bottom of the slope
and then it just percolates somewhere? Well,
there's a pad where the pipe ends. And so
the details of that haven't been worked out yet. And I'll let the
applicants civil discuss that further. But
there's a SEPA condition regarding that the that the discharge be tight
lined down the slope to avoid the erosion and slope stability. I know, it's a
big paragraph in the conditions and I just wanted to kind of explain. So
the Geotech Golder Associates, the peer review, had some very
specific conditions that they recommended for the stormwater tight
line because it hadn't been designed yet. And so the conditions,
those would be reviewed with the construction permits for the timeline. Okay.
Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Rosen? The commission? All right. Thank you, sir.
We'll go now to the applicant. By the way, before we go any further,
lest I forget, if there are members of the public that do want to speak
when it comes to that segment, which is the next one, We would ask that
you sign the sheet here and give your name and your address on the
sign-in sheet that's there on the table, if you care to speak. Good evening. My
name is Todd Wyatt. I'm an attorney at Carson Knoll here in Issaquah. I represent
Sunrise in this. I want to thank the members of the commission as well as
city staff for their cooperation to date in getting this project going. Before
I make any comments, I want to introduce, we've brought a number of people here,
part of our team today, to help answer any questions you may have, and I
want to introduce them to the members of the commission. First is the Vice President
of Investments and Development at Sunrise. His name is Jerry Liang. He came out here
from Virginia to speak to you tonight. Also is James Brown from Wattenberger Architects
in Bellevue. James is the principal architect on this project. Mark Keller from Biler
Construction here in Issaquah. He's our civil engineer on this project. Kurt
Gonberg, did I pronounce it right, Kurt, is from Transpo Group in Kirkland. They did
the traffic engineering for this. Brian Beeman from Icicle Creek
Engineers was the geotech engineer on this project. And is Tom
Deming here? There's Tom. Tom Deming, he's from Habitat Technologies and did the
critical area assessments. That's the team, and we are here to answer your questions, but
before we do that, Jerry Liang is gonna speak to you for a few minutes
about Sunrise, who we are, and what kind of services Sunrise offers, and then James
Brown is going to go over with you some of the architectural details of the
project and answer those questions. Before we do that, though, I do need to make
two, because this is a quasi-judicial thing, I need to make two comments just to
get them on the administrator.