Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to call to order our public meeting and
public hearing tonight. Wednesday, July 20th, we're going to
discuss two items, two agenda items, Clark Elementary School and Gibson Eck High School renovations,
site development permit, SDP-00003, and Silverado
public hearing development agreement, DA-16-00002.
We have some administrative things we need to do. We're going to approve some minutes,
but then we'll have some presentations and give people of the public the opportunity to
have some discussion. So the first order of business is to take a look at
the minutes of April 6, 2016. And I'd ask you if
anybody has any comments or issues with them. If not, could I get a motion?
Mr. Chair, I move we approve the minutes of the April 6, 2016 Development Commission
meeting. Second. Second. Any discussion?
All those in favor, would they signify by saying aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay,
looks like they're approved. So we'll move on to the agenda item of Clark Elementary
School. Right, and I was just going to suggest if there's any public that cares
to speak during the public comment period, there's sign up sheets. So just feel free
to come fill out your name at some point during the presentation this evening.
Yes ma'am.
Good evening, Mrs. Ahn. I'm Amy Tarr, Senior
Planner for the City of Issaquah. So tonight, before we start with
a presentation for the Clark Elementary School Site Development Permit, we wanna
do the same review with the Development Commission regarding the
quasi-judicial process. So we've done this in the past, so hopefully
we're all comfortable with this routine now. But just for the sake of the
public, we'd like to make sure that we're clear on what this process
entails. So tonight we are reviewing this project for
site development permit for the Clark Elementary and Gibson Eck High School. There are different
types of land use permits that trigger a development commission review.
So on the board or on the screen you have three general types for Central
Issaquah Development and Design Standards. The Issaquah Municipal Code which is
what we're using tonight. It involves any sites that are
three acres or more. In this particular case Clark has more than 10
acres but less than 15 acres. And anything that's less than three acres is
administrative or level two, which does not require a development commission review.
So the type of decision is a quasi judicial. And just a
general description of quasi judicial, you are serving or the development commission is serving
like a court. We have a very specific elements to this review.
which includes a public hearing, the presentation of evidence, and the
ability for the public to comment on the project. So the focus is to
provide fair
proceedings and also to make sure that we appear to be fair.
There's two types of due process that's involved. One is the procedural
due process and the other one is a substantive due process. And we have to
meet both standards. So for procedural due process, we're required that the process
is followed and that involves a lot of the
preliminary steps that the staff has already done in terms of providing public notice for
the project. And the focus is on the decision makers relationship with the
persons who benefit from the decision. The substantive due process involves
adopting regulations as a basis for decision. So our staff report and what
will eventually be the findings of fact are necessary to meet this
standard. And then the conditions are reasoned, have to be We have to establish that
the conditions are reasonable and are related to alleviating a problem created by the
project. What we often call our mitigation measures.
So for tonight, we have several questions to
ask the Development Commission and as a way of self-checking whether
you meet any of these requirements bullet points and so I'm just gonna
let you read through this briefly and then we'll take a little survey
or vote call.
Amy I have a question. What is the definition of near? and near the
property in question? Near the property in question. So
basically I'm not really sure that there's a distance.
I think it's again, going back to the standard of we have to appear fair.
Again, I think it's just providing full disclosure and meeting.
I could just add that Amy's absolutely right that Jim Haney, one of
our city attorneys said that there is no specific test. He said typically though that
if you're within 300 feet and receive a notice, that would be one way to
establish that you were close enough that it was necessary, but you can always For
instance, on the Urban Village Development Commission, the commissioners often who live in the
urban village that's under review just identify that they live there so that if anyone
cared to challenge it, they could. Thank
you.
So the general question is, is anyone in the Development Commission
or does any of these questions, would you say yes to
any of these questions? No. No. No. No. Okay, great.
So there's three things that we'd also like to make sure that
we cover tonight as far as this quasi-judicial process. So
one is have you, has any of you have an ex parte contact with
the applicant or anyone who has an interest in this project?
If you do have, or if you did have contact, have they been
revealed at the public hearing? So I guess tonight is an opportunity to
let us know. And has any opportunity been given to
object to the decision makers participation because of ex parte contact. So again, this is
something that we'll do tonight. So the first question is, did any of you have
any ex parte communication or contacts? No. Okay, great. So we don't have to do
the two other bullets. So that's, that's the
end of it. And I can now proceed with the
presentation for the Clark Elementary School.
So before I start my presentation, I'd like to let the
public know that we did receive one additional public
comment and staff has responded to that public comment and the
applicant also provided additional clarification. So the commission
members have been provided a copy of that and we're
submitting it tonight as exhibit one for the record.
So tonight as we said this is
This public hearing is for the decision on the site development permit 16-00003,
Clark Elementary School and Gibson Eck High School. The development commission
had reviewed a preliminary site plan and conceptual
plans for this project back at, as a community conference back in
April. So tonight we're following up on some of your questions as well
as some of the concerns from the public. I'm not gonna go through step by
step all the different criteria for our evaluation and recommendation.
What I'm going to focus on tonight is an update on the traffic impact
analysis, which we didn't have last time, and also some of the
revisions to the conditions of approval that we are proposing tonight as we
have gathered and determined new impacts or in some
cases reduced impacts. Therefore, we may no longer need some of
the conditions. So just to review,
this project is actually part of a larger Issaquah School District
project for multiple schools. It involves both the
Issaquah Middle School and also what used to be the Tiger
Mountain High School. And so for
tonight's, I'm sorry, so As we have presented
before, this is a three year phase project. So in September 2016,
which is this coming school year, the school district will open the
new Issaquah Middle School, which is on the, I guess my arrow,
I don't, yes. Which is just north of the Issaquah High School, and also a
new Gibson Act High School on the Clark Elementary School site. So the
Gibson High School is currently under construction. In September 2017,
they will be opening the new Clark Middle School, which is what we're
considering tonight. And in September 2018, they will demolish the
old Clark Elementary School to construct and install the new
play fields for the Issaquah Middle School. A little bit of context as
far as the neighborhood. So Clark Elementary, the new Clark Elementary School is in Old
Town and the right graphic shows you the various land uses
immediately adjacent to the school. To the north we have the Issaquah Community
Center and Pool and then further north is our downtown area.
To the left or west of the school campus is our single family
residences as well as to the east. And then on the south you find
the multi-family residential development. Along the eastern edge of
the campus is the Rainier Trail, which also serves as a
pedestrian linkage for the Clark Elementary School and the middle school and the
high school. So the lot size is 11.35
acres and therefore this is a level three site development permit review.
So this is just a general site plan that gives you an idea of what's
on site and later on I'm gonna show some more
detailed elements of the site. So the proposal for the Clark
Elementary School is 31 classrooms with eight classrooms in four portables, 664
students and 74 staff plus an expansion for 160 students and eight
staff is planned for to be accommodated in this school.
The main building will be a three story classroom building and
as part of the supports elements, the existing
building on the right of this image will be remodeled for a gym building, for
additional classroom space. What you see here in the middle is a courtyard
that will be used for the students
as part of their school program. For the Gibson Eka High School, which
The building itself will not be reviewed tonight, but as being part of the whole
site, we are reviewing its site improvements. It includes 10
classrooms for 250 students and 20 staff, and it
involves remodeling a two-story building and expansion for a new commons.
So existing conditions, so here's the same graphic earlier. We have nine
permanent buildings with three portables, a wetland on the southeast corner
and the Rainier Trail, as I mentioned earlier, and steep slopes along the east and
the west boundaries. So these are not regulated steep slopes. So the
proposal is to retain four buildings and one portable. The orange building
is the Gibson Act building and the blues are all part of the Clark Elementary
School. To retain the north parking lot for Clark and
also the other parking lot for the Gibson Act building. It also
involves wetland buffer averaging. and the
expansion of the existing Clark Elementary School, which also involves demolishing
some of the existing sections of the school to build the
three-story classroom wing. This project also
proposes relocating the Clark bus drop-off.
Currently on the site, the middle school's bus drop-off is here
and it will be basically the main bus drop off will be
relocated further south and in the interior of the property while
the bus loop will continue to be used for the Gibson Act buses.
It also include the addition of 11 new portables so that's shown here both the
brown and the blue. So the brown portables are They're not painting it brown,
but just for my presentation, they're shown brown
because they're actually meant as administrative offices and staff training
facilities. There's also going to be a new play field and a covered play area.
Oops, sorry about that. And everything else that's white
are new parking lots. So these are just photos to
show parts of the existing Clark Elementary School that will be retained.
So the top two photos are the main Clark School. The bottom left is
Gibson Act and the bottom right are the existing portables that will remain on site.
Elements to be demolished include again, parts of Clark Elementary School. So these three photos
and the track and field which will be replaced with a new play field.
So as far as the new building, which is the classroom wing, this is where
the majority of the new design or construction will be
happening. This is just an image of one of the elevations looking at the
building from the courtyard. So it shows you how they are modulating the
building and also providing additional articulation through the use
of colors and changes in materials. So the building modulation
for the west facade was originally what's shown in the top photo. We have a
significantly long wing and one of the things that staff required
is for additional modulation which is shown on the image below. So the applicant has
since revised their elevations to, so the character of this bottom elevation
matches the character of the elevation at the courtyard side.
So as far as colors of materials, we do have the color material board here.
So the major materials are brick
with the corrugated metal panels and also the
fiber cement boards. And you also, I mean, I guess you can
tell that they do have windows. So the windows are actually glass and fiberglass.
Oh, I'm sorry. So one other thing that you will notice is that the colors
that they are proposing are all earth tones, nothing bright and
drastic. The blue is basically used as accent color for the
building to provide some interest. And the brick will be a
natural red brick color. So the zoning for this project
property is community facilities slash facilities or CFF.
And as a CFF zone, we
are, I'm sorry, we evaluated this based on the land
use code requirement that any CFF zone will
require applying the most restrictive adjacent zoning. So this diagram
shows 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the different
properties and zoning in the area. So the Issaquah Community Center
and the pool are both CFF facilities also.
To the left where you have the single family residential, we actually have two types
of zoning. One is single family small lot and single family duplex. And then on
the south is the multi-family high density. So the most restrictive zoning is
this SF-SL, I'm sorry. So
based on the SF-SL zoning, which you see here in the middle column,
we compared what is being proposed for the Clark Elementary School. So they
basically showed that in most of the standards they do comply.
Where I've noted red text for the impervious area and
the height, the project actually exceeds the limit. However, in the CFF
zone there is a a provision that allows for the expansion of a
non-conforming condition. In this particular case, the existing
middle school campus already exceeds the maximum height and
also the maximum impervious area for an SF-SL. So they are
allowed to expand both the height non-conformity and the impervious area non-conformity.
So I'm not gonna go through this in great detail. This is simply to show
areas where we, so one of the things that we heard from the
community and the public is the excessive, what was
perceived as an excessive amount of impervious area. So we have
basically provided a, or recommended a condition to the, to the site
development permit for the Issaquah School District to reduce the amount of impervious
areas where they are reasonable. So some of the areas that we found
where that could happen is where they have the portables and
currently they're proposing river rock in most of those
areas and we are requiring that they provide some
pervious surface instead. The other area that, although this is just,
this is another opportunity for more green space is between the Clark
Portables and the future courtyard play
area. So that's all shown on the staff report.
So as far as the maximum building height, this is just to show how we,
evaluated their proposal and how we agreed with the
applicants establishing that their existing building is
actually already a non-conforming building. So I wanna talk
now more about site access. I know this was something that was brought up a
lot and also several public or residents have
provided their concerns and comments about this. So this diagram, this color coded
diagram shows the different modes of transportation, both to get
to the site and then in the internal areas of the site. So the light
blue is where the parent drop off and the bus drop off for the Gibson
Act High School. The Clark bus, as I mentioned earlier, and the
is along the western boundary of the site. The pedestrian
routes are all in yellow, so they're shown to be everywhere. Wherever
you have vehicular access, you also have pedestrian access. The
school staff and fire truck route, again, continues further in the property.
And this is primarily, the red is primarily used for Gibson Act and also for
the office portables. And then the existing pedestrian
facilities offsite are shown as the solid blue arrows. So there
are actually sidewalks on, this is Clark, this is First Avenue
Southeast, and then this is the Rainier Trail.
And as far as bicycle access, anything that's blue, red, and green
are all accessible for bikes, although we don't have designated bike lanes.
So here's some representative photos of the
existing roadways. These are the two primary access points to the site. So
as I mentioned earlier, Clark Clark is the
entrance, I'm sorry, not that I mentioned earlier. So Clark is the primary entrance for
the elementary school buses and also for
staff that serve the Clark Elementary School and also for deliveries.
And 1st Avenue Southeast is basically for the Gibson X school buses and
a parent visitor drop off, as I mentioned earlier. So here's other photos.
This shows just a character of what the street improvements. So there's a
sidewalk already on one side and actually on both
sides of the street. of the drop off and you have road
curves, no street parking and no street trees.
So in our staff report, we actually included and recommended conditions for parking
lot trees and additional pedestrian facilities and screening of the parking lot.
So these will be all new information which are included in
the staff, the additional staff memo sent to the development commission.
And I'm just going to provide a broad overview of where we're,
where we landed with the traffic impact analysis after working
with the school district on all the potential traffic
impacts for the school. So there are seven different intersections
that were analyzed for their level of service as well as access. I'm
not gonna go through each of them, but just kind of give you an idea
spatially where they are in relation to the school. So
we also provided in our staff memo an attachment of a
table that shows all those all those intersections and the analysis
provided as well as the impact, the mitigation for the impacts. So I
will only highlight the three major ones.
For vehicular access, the applicant will be required to
provide center turn lanes on Bush. This will be between First
Avenue and Front Street, and also from Rainier Avenue to Second Avenue
Southeast. For pedestrian safety, we are requiring new
race sidewalks with street trees, curbs and gutters along First Avenue
Southeast, and also crossing guards and or
rapid flashing beacons for Rainier and Bush and
Rainier and First Avenue and Clark.
And in addition to that, we are also recommending the elimination of the proposed
stairs to the Rainier Trail that was shown originally in their
proposal. This was after determining that we do have an
adequate connection on the side of the community center, which is actually a
safer and much more comfortable access to the Rainier Trail.
So given that we are recommending a new condition, which we're deeming
condition 32, that the four foot wide concrete stair connecting the sidewalk of Gibson Act
to the Rainier Trail shall be eliminated. So potential impacts to the community for
due to the mitigation measures.
While most of the mitigation measures are all
accounted for, we did want to notify the
community and we actually sent out additional notice for property
owners within 300 feet of Bush Street regarding this potential impact to
the on-street parking on Bush. So based on what we showed earlier
regarding the center turn lane on Bush Street, it is
possible and it's likely that the on-street parking on one side
of Bush Street will be removed in order to accommodate the center turn lane.
So while this is not part of the Clark Elementary School traffic mitigation,
one of the mitigation measures for the middle school,
which is the provision for a new traffic signal at Second
Avenue Southeast and Southeast Sunset Way also benefits the pedestrian
access and vehicular access for this site. So
with that, we are recommending additional revisions
on the conditions as originally presented now that we had more concrete mitigation
measures for the traffic. So staff is recommending that we revise and
replace condition five with the following. Road improvements to First Avenue
Southeast shall be constructed to provide safe pedestrian access. In addition,
pedestrian safety measures at the intersection of Southeast Bush and the Rainier Trail shall be
provided as determined by the approved TIA. Another
recommendation is to combine condition 21
and condition 29. This is more of a, a,
the intent here is to really just clean up two very similar conditions.
And so in doing so, we are recommending a new condition
that the parking lot at Clark Street and First Avenue South E shall be screened
from the public streets with a solid fence or type 1 landscape screen while
maintaining safe sight lines into and out of the parking lot with the design and
materials to be approved at construction permit review. So now I'm
going to talk about the interior circulation. So this is a view, the first, the
top left photo is a view of what will be the future bus lane
and also the fire truck lane going into the interior of the site. So this
is looking south. To the left is the existing service
dock and this is all, and loading dock, and this is going to remain and
also expanded. The two bottom photos basically show the area that will now be
part of the staff parking lot on the southwest corner of the property
and also the bus drop off.
One of the things that we heard from the community is that there are some
concerns about noise due to this parking lot.
and additional screening is required.
And let me backtrack. It's not only noise, but there's concerns about visual impacts as
well as environmental or dust and dirt.
So, and exhaust from the buses. So staff addressed
Several of these issues, again, they can be found in the staff report. And basically
we required parking lot landscaping to minimize the amount of pavement
and the heat island effect and also screening of the parking lot and
play field for noise, light and vehicle fumes. And I'm just going to elaborate on
that because that was part of the public comment that we submitted today.
Basically, the school district will be required to provide
a solid masonry wall 10 feet from their property line. This will be a wall
that will also be softened with a row of hedge, evergreen
hedge, between the property line and the wall. And what you see here is
The area, this green area is actually the wetland buffer and so there's a limit
to how far they can build this wall. So
we are requiring basically, I'm sorry,
so we are recommending that we revise condition two to clarify that the
masonry wall will have sound absorbing properties that it will be no greater
than 10 feet tall and set back 10 feet from the property line, that it
shall be provided to mitigate, I'm sorry, and it shall be provided to
mitigate the noise, light and visual impacts of the bus loop and parking lot at
the Southwest corner of the site. A row of evergreen head shall be planted between
the wall and the property line to provide a green transition between the residences and
the wall. and the wall shall extend along the south property line up to the
building setback line for the wetland buffer.
So the remaining area of the site that I'm just going to touch on briefly
includes Gibson X East Drive or what would be the East driveway.
The Rainier Trail, and so you see a little bit of the character of the
trail below. This is offsite. And the parking lot of
Gibson Act. So for these areas, we provided conditions
for the loading area of Gibson Act and condition to address the
sidewalk in front of the shop doors of Gibson Act and condition for the wetland
buffer. I just wanted to highlight the condition for the wetland buffer because what
we're trying to do here is to acknowledge that while the land use code allows
for buffer reduction,
we have the authority and the criteria that allows, that
requires us to ensure that we minimize the encroachment into the
critical areas and the buffers. So what we're saying for this condition, and I'm not
gonna read the whole thing, is that we're requiring the school district to evaluate
the sizes and the location of these parking spaces and the
amount of what I consider like yards for the
portables and where there's an opportunity to further compress
and move them out of the buffer, that they will do so.
So as far as the buildings themselves, we don't
really have We are satisfied with the way they treated their
main structures. We do have some concerns about the blank walls, primarily
in the areas where the students will be congregating. So again, I'm not gonna read
condition 11. There's no revision to this condition. It's in the staff report. But basically
there's two areas where we are requiring blank wall mitigation. One is between
the new Clark classroom wing and Building 300. So
the new Clark classroom wing currently has a
door and also they are proposing to have planters
in this area. So this will be a major thoroughfare for the
students coming in from the main drop off on First Avenue.
And the other area that we're recommending for mitigation for blank wall mitigation is that
the corner of, again, this is an existing building. And this is the courtyard where
many of the students will be congregating in the morning before class starts
because they will be dropped off by the buses on this side of
the building. So,
Having said that, one of the things that we want, before I read off the
formal recommendations, we also wanted to clarify that in this particular
project, staff has received an extensive and more detailed
level of drawings and materials from the
applicant. Basically, it's a very important things that, or I'm sorry,
plans that are usually what we see during the construction review. So
we would, we have informed the applicant that we are reviewing this project
at the land use level. So as such, we are, we would like to also
inform the public and the development commission that our review and our
recommendations are based primarily on the level of review for at the land
use level and that any additional information that they provided that's
more appropriate for construction review, we have not reviewed those and we
are not implying approval of any type of information that
are usually reviewed at construction permits. So based on these
and the submittal of the application and plans, The administration recommends that the
Development Commission move to approve the site development permit for Clark
Elementary and Gibson High School, SDP 16-00003,
with plans, architectural drawings, and technical studies submitted between April 15 to April 30, 2016.
The staff report dated June 8, 2016, with attachments one through 10,
Exhibit 1 submitted tonight and the recommended conditions of approval
with revisions proposed tonight for conditions number 2, 5 and 21,
deletion of conditions 19 and 29, and addition of condition number 32.
and direct the Development Services Department to prepare the findings of fact which affirmed the
Development Commission's decision to approve the site development permit for Clark Elementary and Gibson Eck
High School, SDP 16-00003 based on plans,
architectural drawings, and technical studies submitted between April 15 to April 30
2016, the staff report dated June 8, 2016 with attachments 1 through 10, staff
memo dated July 13, 2016, and edits to the conditions number 2, 19, 21,
and 29. The staff analysis and conclusions in the staff report and
staff memo as well as the staff presentation tonight shall serve as the findings of
fact. I think I may have missed.
I think that should be correct. The second to the last sentence should include
all the conditions that I cited earlier. So it should be conditions number two, 521,
19, 29, and 32.
Sorry about that. That concludes my presentation.
Commissioner, do you have any comments at this point? I
don't know if the school
district has anything that they want to add before we ask questions. I'm sorry? Does
the school district have anything that they want to? I was going to ask if
you had questions for Ms. Tars and then we can ask the school. Do you
want to go? All right, how about the school? Does the school like to make
a presentation as well? Thank you. Would you please state your name?
Excuse me, I'm Steve Crawford, Director of Capital Projects for the Squall School District. And
I wasn't sure how thorough Amy was gonna be in her presentation, but she did
a very thorough job of introducing the project, so I think I'll probably kind of
skip through a lot of what we've got here. I would say that we tried
to listen to what we heard at the community conference and react and respond to
those things that seemed to be of a significant nature. That led us to
revised the whole access circulation pattern to the site and within the site.
Historically, Esquad Middle School, which has occupied the site for many, many, many years, all
the vehicular traffic staff, parents, etc., comes in off of Front Street at the Clark-Newport
intersection, and buses have used First Avenue as the bus drop-off pickup.
So there you're looking at 24, 26 buses on First Avenue and all the vehicle
traffic coming in off of Clark. And we listened to the community, we listened to
the neighbors and revised that whole circulation pattern to be what Amy illustrated
earlier, that staff and the six to eight buses for
Clark will access from Front Street at the Clark-Newport intersection and that the
parent traffic, which is much more numerous, will come in on First Avenue, have
access to the parking lot at the north side of the building for visitors, and
then drop off along First. So I think those were two, well, that was
two major changes. It eliminated a lot of the traffic that was headed to the
south end of the site along the west property line, and then looped around and
came back up to drop off. So I think that was something that helped quite
a bit.
This was just sort of the concept initially of recirculation pattern. We've talked about that.
We won't go there. That led to a reanalysis of the traffic impact
analysis, redo that to relook at new intersections. We just talked about that and the
impacts. One of the things that we went to address
here was safe walk paths and walk routes and the blue area here indicates the
walking area that's assigned to Clark Elementary. So there are no students that attend Clark
that come from west of First. I'm sorry west of Front Street
except for the section down here towards the Sycamore in the south end. This being
Front Street. That's the westernmost boundary for the Clark attendance area. It extends to the
south and up to the lower section of the Highlands.
We looked at staff with regards to safe walk routes and how we got kids
into the building from those areas where they would be walking. Amy's
talked very much about the site. We are retaining some of the existing buildings, trying
to be sustainable and reuse those things where it makes the most sense. Existing classroom
buildings are single story, very energy inefficient, have
significant safety security concerns. Those classrooms are coming down to be rebuilt in
a new three story classroom wing. Again, that helps to
minimize our footprint. minimize those impacts, reduces the exterior building
surface envelope and helps reduce energy consumption. Amy talked about the
fact the masonry wall coming back around the south end.
Talked a little bit about the hard surface play area. There's two covered play areas
that are associated with the hard surface play, one of which has basketball hoops in
it, one of which is a covered area for the big toy type equipment for
the younger kids. We have a sand playfield, that's a district standard at the elementary
level. We spent a lot of time looking at various different options for playground surfacing.
In essence, a sand playfield is healthier, offers a lot more playability time,
reduces our operational and maintenance costs, and is more sustainable. You don't have herbicides,
pesticides, costs 40, 50 thousand dollars a year to irrigate the field. You got mowing
and to do with all of the composting, et
cetera. Detailed site plan, we've kind of been
through that. This was just an aerial of the condominium developments on the south side
where we're talking about the wall that comes across here and down, across and back
up over here. You can see the one building here. This is a carport area,
another building, and then there's another building that's tucked right up into this corner. so
that this extension of the wall that goes out to the buffer line actually extends
eastward beyond the end of that building. Just as a little bit of a
reference in terms of the sound wall and trying to provide buffers and screening for
the properties to the south, this is a view at the south end of the
southernmost section along the carports. There's a six foot fence that runs right along this
line here. And you can see that an eight foot high masonry wall is pretty
much going to block any view, and particularly since they're looking at an elevation that's
about four feet lower, it's effectively about a 12 foot tall visual
barrier. This is the section further to the east where the angled wall would be.
The existing fence is pretty covered and intergrown with existing dense vegetation.
And again, that would be the fence and the line where the angled wall would
go. Floor plans.
I don't know that you really need to look at it, but these are the
areas of the existing building that are being retained. And from basically this
line over, there's a new gym, music, two music rooms, services.
The existing loading dock is in this area here, which served the kitchen and the
whole campus before. Portions of that are going to remain for the direct food service
delivery to the kitchen, but the larger area of service yard is in a new
screened-in walled-in service yard located on the south end of
the existing commons. And then the three-story classroom wing that gets added onto
the building to provide that. And you saw perspective elevations in Amy's presentation, so I
don't need to duplicate that. So any questions, I'd be happy to
answer or we can wait till later on. Commissioners? Any
questions? Yeah, I have a question, Mr. Chairman, on the site.
You've done a great job in revising some of those, but it seems like there
was a concern about the long driveway on the west side of the property line.
where instead of parents now we have buses that runs all the way on the
west side of the property. It runs all the way to the south end of
the property. Yeah, what we were doing in the original concept is all the parents
came in on the west side, came down to the south end, looped around and
dropped off, and then exited. We're looking at six to eight
buses for the elementary school. I
think that's quite an improvement instead of individual parents' vehicles.
Now you have buses, school bus. But I believe the issue was
vandalism that's going to happen way at the end of that driveway.
What have we done to minimize that? Well, we will have a
gate that's located at this point here. close off the backside of the
campus for after hours and there's another gate up here to
control access in and out of the parking lot as well as there is an
existing gate at this point here.
Okay, okay. Yeah, that's the other issue that I guess I want to bring up
is that is there any reason why we couldn't shorten that drive? instead of going
all the way to the south end of the property line, that's the longest driveway
that I've ever seen with schools. It seems like you can maybe run all the
way from on the west end where you come down, and then
when you hit about this point, you have a turnaround here somewhere. So you could
just turn around the bus and then go back out and then reserve this spot
for, I mean, in previous area, I forget what
your percentage is right now. And plus you have a lot of portables. That was
an issue last time also is that why couldn't we take all the portables and
add it onto the classroom itself? Is there a height limit on there? I seem
to recall it was a financial issue. But being so tight with space right now,
you got, I counted about 12 portables. And you got portables here, you got portables
here, you got a few up here. So all those portables seems like, seems to
me if you include that into the building itself, you got all this open space
that you can develop into some kind of a play field or impervious area. Well,
one of the things we do in all of our school projects, regardless of the
location, is provide for the potential expansion And we typically provide for
four double portables or eight classrooms. And that's to help mitigate the continued
growth or should growth continue beyond. We have
limited resources. We do have a big bond and we have a lot to do
with it, but it was predicated on the 31, 32 classroom permanent structure.
We wouldn't have the money to do that. expect to have the full-time need to
have additional eight permanent classrooms at this site. We do have two
other additional new elementary schools on the bond and when those are completed and opened
it's going to help reduce the population on our Valley Core Area schools.
And to add an additional eight permanent classrooms wouldn't be practical. We
do want to reserve the space and as Amy mentioned, this would go in as
an impervious surface and
it would go in as a pervious surface, I'm sorry, and be there as a
future reserve. We wouldn't want to put, and this is the radius that it takes
for a bus to circulate. You could shorten that a little bit, that distance across
there is what you need so you'd be looking at a circle that would pretty
well occupy that and we would not want to put future portables across the other
side of the bus loop want to put them as close to the building as
we can and in the future there'd be a security fence that links this cluster
back into the building so that it becomes an extension There is an
existing portable right here and these two other portables, the cluster of three will be
used for the ACT program, which is a district program for special needs students from
high school graduation to age 21 to help them assimilate the skills they need
to be productive community members. The area on the south here
is a re-utilization of some of the portables that are coming off of the existing
Tiger Mountain Campus. And that's for teaching and learning services. That's another function that we
need for staff development, training,
mentoring, and curriculum development. So those are spaces that are short now and need to
be provided for. So that's why we have a number of
portables. There are actually three different functions. with these four here being
additional capacity for Clark,
totally dependent on how much growth continues and how fast it comes.
That's all, Mr. Chair. Comments? Thank you.
Right at this point. I'm sorry, I do have a couple questions. I'm sorry. Just
a question, Amy, I've got a couple questions for you too. The first
one is the wall. So it says that you
change the condition, I think, to say a wall with sound absorbing
material. And I understand it to be a masonry wall.
doesn't sound like it's sound absorbing to me. I'm not sure really what kind of
material would be a sound absorbing material.
So actually there are the acoustic walls that
I wish I took a, like shown an example. So we're
talking about those kinds of walls that are engineered so that they actually have these
the holes where the sound gets absorbed by. Into the masonry? Yes. Okay.
Is it? Is it outdoors? No. Is it, I guess I'm thinking the sound we
want it to reflect that well, we don't want it to go to the other
side. We don't want to go to the neighborhood. Right. So the extent that it
gets reflected backwards, back to the school, is that a problem? I'm wondering, is it
much more expensive to have a sound absorbing masonry wall versus a regular or?
It's a change of material, not a significant difference in cost, but
we have one other elementary where we have a sound wall that's outside of
the play area, and it's actually adjacent to the play field on the school district
side, and it gets used for kids for bouncing walls and things like that.
But you can have sound observant masonry walls, you can have sound attenuating timber walls,
Masonry is permanent and durable. That's why we looked at that as a solution. It
reduces our long-term maintenance costs. Okay, and it's okay with the district then to do
the sound absorbing? And I think that the intent was really to provide for
attenuation of noise transfer from the site to the neighborhood. Yeah, and
so I guess my question is the condition okay then with the district? The condition
is one we'd rather not have. But? In terms of material type.
Yeah, okay. The other question on the condition, Amy, is
it says the, it's a masonry wall with sound-absorbed materials no
greater than 10 feet tall. Well, to me that sounds like it could be one
foot tall. It would still not be no greater than 10 feet tall.
So it sounds like the plan is for an eight foot wall. So it maybe
the condition should be no less than eight feet and no more than 10 feet
or? Definitely we're open to the commission proposing a revision to that. And would no
less than eight work for the school district then? Given that's your plan? We've been
communicating with the community to the south and we've indicated to them an eight foot
wall and largely and that's based on looking at the height of the
existing six foot chain link fences. If you add a couple of feet to that,
we're up into the bottom of the existing trees. They're not gonna see anything from
their side. We're just gonna be looking at the tops of trees from our side.
Great, okay. Thank you. Amy, I also had a question on the parking.
In the staff analysis section 11,
the required parking stalls I went through the math and I came up with 212
and it shows 215 in the chart. And then there's a comment
in the responses to the community meeting that said that the 226
bases are required to house all the different activities. I think that was in the
school district's comment. So I
thought that I had the table here where I corrected that from 215 to 212.
So it's just a typo and
just can't find it. I saw it earlier.
So I appreciate the scrutiny and basically it's just a number.
Okay. And so and and to tell you the truth I was not as concerned
about meeting that requirement because it's really a minimum and they are
proposing more than that and then you know
you know we we basically let the school district decide you know how you know
what many parking spaces they needed. The land use code doesn't have a
maximum, so we can't really control how much. Right, right. They need it either way.
Okay. I guess my question was, it sort of related to the impervious surface because
I guess when I looked at it, the impervious surface, the river rock between the
portables and the condition says that would be replaced with an essence
vegetation of a pervious surface. And then I look at
the parking stalls, I think eight or 10 of them at the very south end
of the site. It's my preference would be to eliminate those stalls
at the very south end of the site and add pervious surface there and let
them put river rock around the portables that would be I presume far lower
maintenance than trying to do take care of vegetation around the portables and
just want to get your input too, Steve. So our thoughts is we've been working
with a number of parking spaces. We have some different and distinct uses that have
different time schedules and such. We're going to be looking towards meeting the
minimum. There may be a few more than that, but that there's also suggestion that
we look at reducing some of the areas in here
to pull the buildings back, reduce some of the parking along this section here to
reduce some of the buffer averaging. And so as we move into the construction documents
phase of things, we would be looking at maintaining at least the minimum number of
parking spaces and working towards reducing the buffer averaging that we're currently showing.
I think another point is that there were about 83 spaces that were shown in
light as overflow parking spaces that would be available
for those unique activities, kindergarten roundup day, special Christmas programs and
things like that in the evening times where you can park on the hard surface
play areas to accommodate traffic. And so we would look to minimize the amount
of impervious and meet the minimum number of spaces for each of the
different user groups. Okay, and then I guess the question, you're fine then with changing
that river rock to a pervious surface? And I guess I even had a question
for staff, why river rock would not be a pervious surface? It seems like it
eventually, like a river, sort of flows down through the rocks into the ground, but.
Yeah, I have that question too, but. So traditionally we actually not only
look at the surface but the compaction and that determines whether something is considered pervious
or impervious. And in this case, the subgrade would probably still be
impervious. So we don't treat anything with stone technically,
we don't treat that as impervious. Our
primary consideration would be that for future uses and the future needs of those portable
spaces that it's accounted for as impervious surface now So that when we come back
to apply for a building permit for a portable We don't have to go back
through a whole site development permit review because the impervious surface areas changed
But it can be a pervious surface until We need to
have portables. We have some other school sites where the kids use some of that
area for gardens and things like that until there's a need to put a portable
there. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Any comments? Another question, just real quick since they're both at the microphone.
So there's information in the staff report regarding pedestrian access off of First Street. I'm
trying to get clarification in some of the documentation here. So there's a condition that
essentially says, you know, meet the transportation study requirements
for access. But there's also a spreadsheet, and I've got to put my fingers back
on it, or a table, I think it was exhibit 11, that says that
Sidewalks, raised sidewalks were recommended on both sides of First Street, providing access. And
then Mr. Crawford provided a response and an email. Thank you. It is, yeah, attachment
11. an email talking about the conflict between parking requirements for
the city's facility versus access. So I guess my question is, what's the solution?
Because it's not from the doctor. At that time, we just wanted to point that
out. The city does have some shops at the intersection of Bush and First, and
that the requirement will be that on the east side, we will
add to the existing five foot sidewalk another five foot sidewalk with a six inch
height curb. Currently that's a tapered asphalt that comes up flush with the surface of
the concrete walk. And then there'll be street trees that go into that along
the length of that. On the west side there would be a new curb line
and a five-foot landscape strip with street trees and then a new sidewalk behind that.
And that in part accommodates the fact that there's a fire hydrant and a telephone
pole that are sort of in the street right now. It cleans up the street,
provides a good five-foot pedestrian walkway on either side, and the city's come back and
said that the solution at the shop area would be for parallel parking and that
the sidewalk would jog back behind the parallel parking and then tie into the intersection
at Bush and first. Because I recall in the last discussion about this, that was
a big concern about pedestrian, you know, school kid access and safe and the road
and the sidewalk were essentially at the same elevation. So it sounds like we've made
some significant improvement there. Yeah. Great. Thanks.
Commissioner,
any other comments? All right. At this point, I'd like to open a comment
opportunity for the public. If you choose to speak, we'd like you to sign up.
We've got some sign up sheets on the tables here. When you get to the
microphone, we'd like you to state your name and address and make your comments. So
if you choose to do that, this is the time.
Good evening, my name is Chris Craven and I'm a resident of Issaquah Crown
at the 580 Front Street South on the southern edge of the property. And I
just wanted to take opportunity first of all to thank the staff and Amy and
the commissioners for really digging into the details, listening to the the neighbors
listening to the community of our concerns because I think you've done an excellent job
in addressing a lot of those and I really appreciate the time and effort spent
on that. I just
want to reiterate Commissioner Long's
comment and would like to see it be part of the conditions that the gate
called out and included and that it is part of the conditions that the property
be closed off when the ISD staff are
officially not on the site primarily nights and weekends I'm assuming I do
still have concerns about the long driveway and the safety of the buses
coming in that very narrow slot and between the existing building and the
property line. I've walked it just as a physical person and it feels tight, so
I can't imagine with traffic going in and out, buses that may be
coming and going at the same time, having to slow down
significantly, children becoming bored in that long
driveway back to the drop off, I do appreciate the effort of moving the
parent drop off to First Street. I think that's pretty significant and improving the pedestrian
access for all the children and parents and hopefully staff
coming to the site. But I hope that the northernmost
parking lot is left flexible in the future so, I
still see there being opportunities for incorporating a bus drop off at that north
parking lot and eliminating the need for the buses to take the long drive back
to the southern edge. So just a couple of
observations that have come to my attention with this project in my mind is,
My husband actually observed from the play field currently, I luckily had
drove my car to work that day, but a baseball or softball coming over our
existing fence and hitting right in the middle of my parking place, which probably would
have been a windshield. So I do hope if there's a
distinguishing line coming from the ball field over
that fence, you know, looking at higher being better there.
It somehow made it over the current one. That was one. And
I guess at this point, with the exception of still the buses coming down that
long narrow driveway, my biggest concerns are during the construction phase.
I know they started on the work at the Gibson Eck
Walked by at one evening, I asked Amy, what are the work hours permitted?
And it's from, correct me if I'm wrong, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. I walked
by at 6.30. The boom truck was still running. There was still work going on.
A nice summer evening, our bedroom faces to the north across the fence. We
had our windows open. Nice breeze coming, the prevailing breeze was coming from the north.
Somebody was smoking on site and we had to shut our windows down. So
I don't know if we have any abilities to request that
there be some sort of monitoring or contact with the school
during off hours. Their contractors aren't playing by the rules or, know
abiding by what is said as regulations so that's
that's my biggest concern we have started now the demolition I'm sure it's going to
closely quickly get closer and closer to our properties during
summer times and I assume throughout the winter so is there
Any advice or any part of this process that we could address the actual construction
process as well Thank you
Other comments from the public
My name is Jimmy Lee. We are the owner of the spot sheet in 80
South East Bush Street. Can I ask you to speak up just a little bit?
Sorry. Thank you. My name is Jimmy Lee. We're the owner of spot sheet in
80 South East Bush Street. So I understand there's going to be changes along the
Bush Street where the parking is going to be eliminated on one side of the
street. I'm not so sure what side of the street is going to be eliminated.
But it would be great if the elimination would be on the opposite street where
the pool is located, pool side. So that's my concern
because since we own the business, it would be great the parking is on our
side of the street and not just on the opposite. And there could be some
safety concern with people crossing the street, things like that.
So that's it. Thank you. Thank you.
My name is Mary Lynch and I reside at 2690 Northwest Oak Crest Drive, Issaquah,
Washington. I just want to thank the school and Amy for
going and hearing some of the comments and working on it. I am still concerned,
especially when I hear now though on Bush Street that you're looking at a turn
lane along there, because those sidewalks along that section of Bush Street are street level.
There's nothing keeping them separate from the roadway. and would like to know what's
gonna happen with those sidewalks. Are they gonna be raised or is there gonna be
some sort of buffer? So these areas need to be looked at from the walk
and roll plan also. You also need to not only consider the elementary
walking pathways, but also the high school and the middle school that have a lot
of people and riding their bikes and walking along those areas. One of the things
that exists right now and is very highly congested and hasn't been resolved is the
food bank. And on any given day when the food bank is open, you have
people parking where they're not supposed to park and up to the corners. And
so again, taking the parking away from that is going to be bad. and it's
already bad right now and the city really needs to look at the food bank
and parking and coming up with some better ways of handling parking for the food
bank. Also that needs to be looked at is there is talk about
changing school hours. So when those happen you need to look at walking pathways when
school hours change because if they change middle school or elementary could go you know
just prior to the middle school and the high school which my concern there is
those streets are highly congested when the middle school and high school are
coming. And if you have then put in the mix, middle or elementary is
walking along those routes, there needs to be look and consideration on
improving all the crossings. And as we've heard from the crosswalk study last year,
Adding the turn lane makes the likelihood of someone getting struck in the crosswalk that
much higher percentage. So in these areas where you have a lot of pedestrians, adding
the turn lane, when we know people don't, even though they're supposed to stop on
red, they don't, is gonna be accidents waiting to happen. And then
where are the bicycles? Amy mentioned there are no bicycle routes along here. Where are
they going to happen? And I think we need to look from a biking, because
there are a lot of, middle schools there's who ride their bicycles and some high
schoolers or at least they skateboard which is a little bit different because they'll try
and use the bicycle pathways for that Chris brought up the
constructions and actually they're proposing seven to seven on construction hours is what they're proposing
right now is before the City Council Monday through Friday still, they haven't opened up
Saturday yet. But that is by the time could be in effect. But I really
recommend that when this gets to construction phase, you need to very clearly identify what
is the construction route into the site and make sure that it's well marked. Because
you're gonna be having, again, large trucks that are not familiar with this area trying
to turn into some very narrow streets that are heavy populated with
school children and also food bank people. And if you remember, a lot of the
food bank are elderly people that don't see well, don't hear well, and are very
slow walkers and probably don't check before they cross. So this is gonna become a
really, some major pinch points in there. And as of yet, I still don't know
who we go to with construction concerns as far as traffic and would like for
that to sometime come up from city council on who we go to with construction
concerns. Thank you.
Okay, please do. David Kappler, 255
Southeast Andrews Street. Bush Street elimination or addition of
a turn lane. We've been told that west of Front Street does not include the
kid, those kids don't come to Clark. So it seems to me the interest in
making turns that could be a bottleneck for traffic would be
westbound on Bush Street making the left turns to go up to the elementary school
or for parents or for the high school. I don't see the need to go
up West of First there, that section between the pool and the
restaurant and the food bank for needing a center turn lane there or an
extra turn lane because it'll just be a free right, a relatively free right for
those people. The whole food bank area is a problem because
when the middle school basically starts early enough that their traffic is done
before the food bank opens for operation. As elementary starting later I believe you're gonna
have more of a chance of conflict with in the morning with the food bank
possibly and the elementary school or even traffic.
Also I have to think more and more kids take classes at other
schools that they can't always get at their school. Gibson Eck is gonna be a
small high school. We're hoping that we have a lot of highly academically oriented
students there. They're gonna be wanting to take AP Physics and some of those AP
classes and those kinds of things likely that they're simply not gonna have enough students
at. gives an act to get all of those and they're gonna need to get
to Bellevue or to Issaquah High School for some potentially for some classes.
Maybe advanced music, whatever, advanced languages, some other things the possibility. The
easiest way for them to get to there instead of going completely down and around
the community center on the north side of the community center is the now blocked
off grass area that goes down to the Rainier Trail. For seven years I
walked down that when I worked at Issaquah Middle School and lived over on Andrews
Street. And it was slippery and I fell several times and got completely muddy and
everything else, but it was always the shortest way for me to go home. I
think having a stairway there, trying to do a walkway with ADA is
not going to work there with trying to get the grade down because it's kind
of steep. A stairway would work easy there and be a way for those kids
to save significant time in getting up to the high school if they're gonna need
to go to Issaquah High School or the Rainier Trail if they're walking or whatever.
I think northbound it's fine that they go past the community center in the
north, but if they're going more southbound, they're gonna have to walk around that building
and I don't think we need to have that. Thank you.
Don't forget to sign in, thank you. Other comments, other comments from the public?
All right, I'll close the open public comment right now. Would the city or
the applicant care to make comment? Okay, okay.
What about commission discussion? Mr. Chairman,
it struck me listening to this that several of the concerns that are still being
voiced amount to enforcement issues. And it would seem to me to be
relevant for the school board and the city and the Issaupel Police Department
to come up with a plan to perhaps assign officers there
for traffic control. for a couple of at least, I would say, a month. I
mean, I don't know technically how that personnel assignment is made. But I
agree with the comments that the food bank and the combination of the food bank
and the school, it's already congested there. And so if people are already routinely
ignoring the existing laws of statutes, parking, and so on, So I
believe it would be prudent for there to be a discussion with IPD to look
at the potential for when this does come into full, when it's opened,
having IPD presence there for enough time to get the message across that certain areas
are not permissible for parking, that speed limits are going to be enforced and that
there are other things that are relevant for not only the students, but the people
that use the food bank and others for their safety.
How do we do that? How do we do that? I don't know. Well, I
don't know. That's what I'm saying. I think the city and the NIPD and ISD
need to talk about when the schools, what the hours are going to be, what
the risk levels are, and what the staffing of IPD is, because it's probably going
to take a police officer rather than a civilian in a neon vest
to get their attention. But I think that without that, people are gonna continue to
ignore things at the risk of the pedestrians and others. So I'm just suggesting there
be a conversation to address the potential. Okay.
Okay. Mr. Chair, point of clarification. You know that long
driveway we're all fighting about? There's a gate that shows on the drawings,
Amy. Is that a chain link fence gate? Or is it one of those?
bar just for vehicle Is that what it is? I see you know,
I think that's what it is there So is that is that just currently a
chain link type gate at the rear end of the school campus it's a chain
link fence that Yeah, okay people have to climb up. Yeah, they want to get
up. Okay Thank you, Mr. Chair Other discussion
Something that comes up a lot and the lady from the community that lives to
the south about the construction Timing and again, it's another
enforcement item be nice. Maybe if I think there is a process or part of
the city That addresses that or has some regulation of that isn't there?
Yeah, be nice to at least Mean Have that available
because it comes up as part of our discussions here at the Development Commission. We
don't necessarily have purview of it, but there is some other recourse for the citizens
to bring comment to that. Yes, there's a telephone number that they can call
if they observe work outside of allowable hours. And it's one of the city
departments. I forget which one, but it would be nice to maybe share that information
with people here. Sure. because I see it coming up with several of our
projects. And just to follow up on that, Lucy, as I recall, in one of
the construction projects that's underway at present, the contractor was contacted by
the city and reminded of the hours and it resulted in them implying
so that it is a viable mechanism for people that have that concern. Right. I
mean, if there's work observed outside of hours, we do want to know about it.
Sometimes they are granted the rights to work on Saturdays. If they work on
Saturdays or Sundays or holidays when they're not allowed to, they may lose that privilege.
We currently have proposed revision to construction hours and construction
permitting in front of the council to both try and clarify the process,
simplify the permitting and make it clear for both residents, staff
and builders what's allowed so that hopefully that will
go more smoothly and we'll have better compliance. But we can provide the telephone number
after the meeting. I just want to make sure I give out the right one.
Other comments? So I think we're, process wise, we're at the place where we can
start looking at the design standards, the old green sheet if you will, and
make some decisions if the standards are acceptable or not. And so
if you look on your packet, it's about page 58 of 277 is where the
design standards start and I'll just go through. I won't read the full text but
I'll read the heading and then ask each of you to identify whether it's acceptable
or not. I do have a point of order in the commission there. Only supposed
to be seven commissioners voting and so Mr. Beck, since you were the last one,
I'd just ask you to refrain from voting on that. I know I would be
interested in your comments, but we can only have seven votes. So we'll need each
one of you to say acceptable or have your comments. So if you're OK, let's
move ahead and look at the design standards, the site layout, and overall design concepts.
The building location, is it acceptable? It's acceptable.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Okay, thank you. Energy efficient design. Acceptable.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Thank you. Functional site design.
Acceptable. Acceptable with conditions. Still with conditions.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Lighting.
Maybe not applicable because it will be reviewed later.
And just a quick comment on that. There was some discussion about shielding of light
spillage to neighboring and that will be addressed during the lighting review that happens with
permit? Yes.
We have the standards in place. So all those things like requiring full cutoffs and
and lighting levels are all in our land use code. Thank you.
All right, natural setting views is the next top heading. And
hillside design is not applicable. Primary views.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Acceptable. Existing vegetation topography
features. Acceptable. Acceptable.
Historical, cultural landmarks. Any? Not applicable. Landscape design and use of plant
materials, design elements. Acceptable. Acceptable with conditions. Okay, thank
you. Design unity.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Okay. Enhanced
design. Acceptable with conditions.
I lost my page here. Page
eight. We open, I did lose my place.
Okay. I think
we're still, under that same heading of enhanced design. So the next item
is usable open space design. Acceptable. Acceptable with conditions.
Plant material selection.
Acceptable.
Acceptable with conditions. Acceptable with conditions. Design
harmony and compatibility, accessories, structures. Acceptable. Acceptable.
Acceptable. Building material components. Acceptable.
Acceptable. Durability and maintenance.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Compatibility.
Acceptable. Acceptable. Modulation.
With conditions. With conditions. And I'd say I appreciate the changes that were made subsequent
to the community conference at the school district and with staff's help. So. Chair Greg
Musil. Facade.
Acceptable. Chair Greg Musil. Acceptable. Chair Greg
Musil. Ground level.
Acceptable. Acceptable. With conditions. Large structure. Hmm.
Acceptable. Acceptable. I'm going to skip car. How about signage? Proposal.
Not applicable. Not applicable. Transition conflicting
architectural styles. Acceptable. Acceptable with conditions.
Projects with multiple structures. Acceptable with conditions. To the
portables. Non-motorized or vehicle areas.
Agree of free. That will be reviewed during the permit review, but
from the information we've got, I would say acceptable. Okay. Agree. And circulatory trail access,
circulation trail access. Acceptable. Acceptable. Just maybe there's a question here
that did come up with regard to the elimination of the stairway to the trail,
and if anybody had any thoughts on that, Mr. Kapler brought up the I think
if he thinks there should be a stairway to the trail there, but he's been
eliminated and staff have any thoughts? Could staff and the applicant provide some additional
perspective because there was quite a bit of discussion. Uh-huh. That'd be great.
So we actually included the next rationale for why we recommended the removal of that
and it's included in the staff memo.
So this diagram kind of gives you just an existing
condition for pedestrian circulation in the area. So
in evaluating whether or not that stair really warms or that,
basically the stair was proposed for this, part of the
site. This area basically is the only area along the
east property line where you could actually make that connection because of the steep slopes
and the wetlands. So in evaluating whether or not
that would contribute to providing additional pedestrian amenities
to the site, we actually look more holistically at pedestrian
connections. We were thinking about the middle school children
who were used to walking to this particular campus. And in the future, they will
be walking all the way down to their new school, which is on Evans and
Second. So what you're seeing as the red arrow are the existing sidewalks
in the vicinity of the Clark campus. These are basically
where eventually the kids will, you will find the kids walking or traditionally
walking to get to their school. In the future, what we would like to
ensure is that they can continue walking in a safe environment to get to their
new school. So when we looked at what's already existing out there, we actually realized
that there's a I'm calling it a plaza, but it's a
paved, very wide, what looks like a sidewalk on the north side of the community
center. And it's actually wheelchair
accessible. And so that also means that it is bike accessible. And
we actually found that that's a more ideal connection for both bikes and
pedestrians to get to the Rainier Trail and for the middle school students to use
to get to their new school. If you may recall, during the middle school
site development permit and master site plan review, we
recommended that a new trail connection will be provided between the Rainier Trail and the
new 10 foot
wide sidewalk and bike. Basically it's a multipurpose trail
that serves as a sidewalk for the new middle school. So
by maintaining this route, or I'm sorry, so in
comparing the quality of the environment for this existing route and
this new connection here, given that it's so close to each other and the fact
that this allows the kids to walk in a very open
public area versus having to go down into what constitute
the parking lot and the loading dock of the Gibson High School in order to
get to the trail, we would rather encourage the students to walk
on the north side of the community center. And we also spoke with the
Parks Department who had quite a few concerns about the new stair connection
because the parking lot that that connects to at the bottom not only is not
really a place for younger children to be crossing, but there was a concern that
parents might begin to try and pick up their children there. That parking lot has
no turnaround in it. So there was a concern that it would create
more complications in the traffic patterns by providing that connection. I can
understand Mr. Kapler's, you know, the shortcut attraction for the high school students.
I think that there was a greater concern about how elementary school children may be
using it or encouraged to use it by parents who are trying to find alternative
places to pick for pickups. Mr. Chair, can I have a follow up
on that? Yes. Amy, when you say we hope to encourage the
students to do that, traffic, whether it's
pedestrian or bike or car, is like water. It's going to seek the path of
least resistance. So I'm curious about, because that obviously it takes
more time to go that way. How are you gonna encourage
kids to go there as opposed to down through if they're going south?
I'm sorry, are you, referring to this route? Yeah, that's what you want them to
do, right? You want them to go past the community center and then head south
on the east side of the community center. Right. Whereas now the arrow looks like
it goes through the parking lot there. So if I'm not
mistaken, what you want them to do is something different from what they're doing now.
So... I guess, you know, how are you going to get that across to them,
particularly if they're pedestrians? So the red arrow,
and maybe I'm not showing this very clearly, simply shows where
currently, because this, or at least up to this past school year, this was the
middle school. So these would be the primary pedestrian connections
to get to their school. And so in the future, the middle school children will
not be taking this route. They would, if they're coming from Bush or further
North, they could take either second avenue or they could take this route
going down instead of going straight down to their former school. Now they would just
take, you know, a turn, you know, make a left turn and then get down
to the trail. I don't know if I'm explaining that. I think one thing to
keep in mind too, that while Gibson Eck is not unique on a national basis
in the Puget Sound and certainly for the Issa School District, it's a unique program.
It's a blend of a big picture school and maker spaces. And the kids are
here, they work closely with their staff to develop their curricular program. And
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they're on site. Tuesday and Thursday, they're in internships off site. And
it'll start out with 120 kids and it'll grow to 250 kids in two more
years as we build up the subsequent grade levels. I really don't think
there's gonna be much traffic between the Gibson Eck and the Isquah High School. Just
because A, they're only there three days a week. Two, they're working on a very
specific curricular program and that their schedules probably,
not going to coincide with when there may be a class available at the high
school. I just don't see that there's going to be a lot of pedestrian traffic
between the two sites. I do think there is a valid concern about the
potential for the parking lot to get used for pickup drop off.
To piggyback on the other commissioner, I mean I can see kids coming down the
street Boehm school and it what is currently the middle
school coming through the parking lot across that grass field and down that hill to
cut you know cut off a couple minutes to get to school if they're running
a little late I think that's gonna be a concern for us with the middle
schoolers trying to go down there without a staircase and going down and falling down
like that gentleman down the slippery slope I was walking down that street that's what
I would have done as a child if you're walking to school going from east
from west to east here going to the middle school. Instead of going
straight across to that Rainier Trail, I would cut through the parking lot, ask the
little roundabout through the grassy field, and then down that hill. Yeah, right to the
Rainier Trail. I think that ends up being a more convoluted route than just coming
straight across. I'm talking about middle schoolers, though.
So maybe that gets back to my original question. If in fact it takes
longer to go down through the property as opposed to going out to Rainier Trail,
maybe that's the answer. They'll figure out themselves that if they're running late, then
it's easier or faster to go the other way. It just isn't apparent here because
it seems now to address that, Even if they're not running late, that the shortest
route for them is to go through the property. But if it isn't, then they'll
learn that they're gonna be late for class if they do that, as opposed to
going on the trail. Currently, the school district fence comes up and stops at about
this point. That's one quick way to discourage that being used as a cut through.
Okay.
Okay. All right, let's move along. Design. Parking
areas.
Acceptable. Public access adjacent to site.
This is where the Rainier Trail comes up. I'd say
acceptable with the explanation we've received. At the same
time, I would believe that Water will follow its own course and if it becomes
a problem, they can deal with it then too. So. Great. Public access within
the site is not applicable, I guess. Trail and non-notarized
facility design. Acceptable. Acceptable.
Transition of design elements and amenities.
Service and storage areas screening service yards and outdoor storage. Acceptable.
Acceptable. And
the last one is screening mechanical equipment. Acceptable
conditions.
Acceptable conditions. Other comments?
I know Amy what might be helpful. You put the condition or excuse me the
motions up on your introductory slides and what we have is not consistent
as far as the conditions where the conditions are being either edited or deleted and
I didn't catch when you put that up what the which one is the right
one. So could you possibly put that back up?
So when I was reading it, it should be identical because I
copied the text here and printed it on the word. Maybe something happened along
the way. It's your first A and B don't match. That's what you said when
you went through them. Right, you have different conditions for A than you do for
B. If you look at the conditions line on B, it says in the edits
to the conditions 2, 19, 23, whereas before it says for the conditions 2, 5,
21. Yes, so when I was reading
it, I corrected myself for the second, for B. B
didn't cover all of the conditions that were cited in A. So
basically it should read identical to A. It should say, edits
to the conditions 2, 5, 21, 19, 29, and 32.
That would be a simple way of
correcting it. So there's no deletion of conditions there, just the modifications? So in other
words, when I say edits, it includes the addition, deletion, and revisions.
And if you so choose, you could always replace it with the exact text that
was used in paragraph A.
And I think Commissioner Morgan wanted a clarification for the wall,
right? Do you have that revised condition that you could pull up?
I'll make a motion when we get to that.
Number
two.
So do we have a motion?
I don't know if I've got a, I don't know if they're straight, but we'll
give this a try. Mr. Chair, I move that the Development Commission
Move that the development commission approve Clark Elementary and Gibson Elk High School SDP 16-00003
with plans, architectural drawings and technical studies. Submitted between April
15th to April 30th of 2016. The staff report dated June 8th, 2016
with attachments one through 10. Exhibit one. and recommended
conditions of approval with revisions proposed tonight for conditions two,
five, 21, deletion of conditions 19 and 21, and the addition of
condition 32. I'm sorry, 29,
excuse me. 29. That would be, again, deletion of conditions 19 and 29.
Right, so again, The first sentence was move that the development commission approve the site
development permit for Clark Elementary and Gibson Elk. It wasn't included in our draft.
Do I have a second?
Is there any discussion? Mr. Chair, I move that we revise condition
number two to state in the sentence no greater than 10 feet tall
no less than eight feet tall and then the remainder. Second.
So now do I need it? I need a motion.
Okay. Okay. So any discussion? Is there any discussion?
So all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye.
Opposed? Okay, thank you.
Any other discussion?
So let's, now we'll vote on the main motion. All those in favor of the
main motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed?
Okay unanimous. And then there's a second motion. We're getting there. We're just getting warmed
up. We'll try this again. Okay.
You did so well the first time. I don't know about that. These are a
little confusing tonight. Mr. Chair, I move that the Development Commission direct the Development Services
Department to prepare the findings of fact which affirm the Development Commission's decision to approve
the site development permit elementary and Gibson High School, SDP 16-00003.
Based on the plans, architectural drawings and technical studies submitted between April 15th to April
30th of 2016. The staff report dated June 8th, 2016 with attachments
one through 10. The staff memo dated July 13th, 2016 and edits to conditions
DELESTION OF CONDITIONS 19 AND 29, IN ADDITION OF CONDITION 32.
THE STAFF ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS IN THE STAFF REPORT AND THE STAFF MEMO AS WELL
AS THE STAFF PRESENTATION TONIGHT SHALL SERVE AS THE FINDINGS OF FACT.
SECOND.
ANY DISCUSSION? So would all those in
favor of that motion signify by saying aye? Aye. Opposed? Motion
passed. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I'd like to add one thing too. I think a
lot of these proposals we're getting recently, it seems that we're getting input on construction
hours and conditions and so forth and some offsite items with traffic or
changes in streets offsite. And I want, I guess, the public to be aware of
fact that those are the kind of things that we don't control, can't vote on,
can't change. But hopefully by people speaking up here, the city staff are going to
hear those things and address them in the way they can. So
thank you. On that note, hello there. I'm Christopher Wright. I did want to offer
to you because construction impacts to existing residents is something that you've heard a lot
recently and it's something that the administration and the city council has been grappling with
as well. I wanted to offer in an upcoming commission meeting, maybe we could spend
10 or so minutes just explaining what the regulations are, what they're going to be,
just so you understand and so we have a better response when it comes up.
And let me just add one other point because through the miracle of texting technology,
I'm able to confirm that development services, that's the department we're all from,
that's the department to contact, and our main telephone number, 425-837-3100
would be the number to call if you're observing work outside of the
allowed hours. Would you repeat that number? Sure, 425-837-3100.
1-800, no, 425-837-3100. Great,
thank you. Yep, thank you. So we'll move ahead
in our agenda and start our discussion, our public
hearing on Silverado Public Hearing Development Agreement DA16-00002.
Mr. Chair. Point of order. I failed to bring any water with me.
Is there any procedural problem with me going out to the water fountain? Or you
can take a break for a few minutes. Why don't we, maybe we could all
stand, it's getting later, why don't we all just take a five minute break? Is
that acceptable? Let's just take a five minute break.
Thank you. I first wanted to take this opportunity to officially and formally
introduce our new, relatively new Director of Development Services, Keith Niven.
He is new as our Director, but certainly not new to the city. He was
a manager of the city's major development review team for many years. And then in
2012 or so became the economic development director and then as of earlier
this year became in addition to that the director of development services. And we are
all very fortunate to have his history and experience and insights.
And he's not just saying that because he works for me. Moving on
to what I'm presenting to you this evening is a proposal for a development agreement
for a clustered plat for Silverado and the development agreement includes
subdividing a parcel into nine different lots. Six of those parcels would be used for
duplex units. One parcel would be used for a banquet facility kind of clubhouse.
Two parcels will be set aside for, and dedicated to the city for affordable
housing. And then the rest of the parcel is divided up into
parking areas, and then private road, and most of it will be a native growth
protection easement that will include a trail system. And the entire parcel is about, a
little less than 22 acres. I don't know if the Development Commission has
reviewed a clustered plat development agreement or not,
and if you have, it's been a really long time, so I will kind of
walk you through it. But first, to show you where this property is located, this
is kind of an overall map of the city to show that this particular property
is kind of in the southwest corner of the city. This is zeroing in a
little bit, so it's off of SR 900 on the east side of SR 900,
kind of directly across from the entrance to the Talus development. And
it's surrounded on three sides by single family development.
The zoning of the property is what's called single family estate. If this
property looks familiar to you, it's because a little over a year ago, the Development
Commission did host a community conference for a proposed assisted
memory care facility at this site from Silverado. And in order for that project to
move forward through the site development permit process, it required a code amendment, and that
code amendment was not approved by the City Council. And so since that time, the
applicant has been working with the city to find a way to do a similar
project, but within the confines of the existing codes and regulations. So
that's what we've been working on since then. And out of those discussions is where
those zoning interpretations came from that were included in your packet.
and including the one that I think I emailed it to you yesterday, the most
recent interpretation that was issued this past week regarding the use of the site as
it relates to assisted care. And I bring that up just because it is
an issue that's related to this site, but as I pointed out in the email,
the discussion and interpretations of the allowed uses there is of independent and
separate from what is before you tonight, the development agreement. The development agreement is
basically for the creation of the lots and the clustering of the units. And I'll
talk more about that in a minute. So first of
all, what is a clustered development? This is the official definition, there are many words
there, but I'll basically just say it's an option for large parcels in any single
family zone to basically create lots and
houses that are closer together, sometimes attached, oftentimes on lots
that are smaller than the minimum lot size in that zone, but they must maintain
and fall below the maximum allowed density in that zone, but by basically putting things
closer together, then it preserves a greater amount of open space on
the lot that is set aside as permanent open space, and that's what is being
proposed here. Mr. Chair, can I ask a question Christopher, I read this in the
packet where the first sentence, a development design technique that concentrates buildings to housing.
Is there a word missing? Is that what your question? Hey, you know, I didn't
write the code. I just copied and pasted it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it concentrates the
structures, the houses closer together. Okay. We need a typo for the code. Yeah.
Sorry, what should it read? I noticed that too.
Yeah, the structure of the housing in specific areas. I
think you could get rid of the housing. If it's just read a development design
technique that concentrates buildings in specific areas on site,
I'm not sure you need both buildings and housing, I think you could use one
or the other. Right, yeah. Or you could just take the S off building. Or
dwellings. Just say it concentrates building housing in specific areas. Concentrate dwellings.
Rather than buildings and housing, just say dwellings. Well, I don't know that it's our
job to do it here, but the fact is. It's a good thing Keith is
here so he can direct our policy planners and straighten that out. Christopher, the fact
is that it's unclear. Yeah. So it, it kind of puts the whole thing in
question because if that's what we're basing this evening's proceedings on and it's not clear
or it's got grammatical errors and something as fundamental as that, I think that needs
to be addressed. At the same time, Mr. Chairman, I think we all
understand what it's saying. It's not, grammatically it's not correct. Yeah,
and I would also say that what you're viewing tonight is parcels
basically so the creation of the lot lines and we're not looking at structures
as part of the development agreement anyway right yeah I think we can move ahead
tonight with that in mind Okay, and
this next slide actually describes in a little bit more detail what the purpose of
allowing clustering is. And again, it's to allow the property owner of a large
parcel to achieve maximum density, the maximum number of units that are allowed on the
site, but again, putting them closer together so that more critical areas can
be preserved. Again, as a result of that, you have more common usable open space
and preserve more of a contiguous forest area.
It also affords an opportunity for more affordable housing. And just again,
by putting the structures closer together, it's more efficient as far as
providing for sewer and water and all of the infrastructure and streets as well,
rather than spreading it out across the lot. As I
mentioned, for larger parcels that are greater than five acres, if a clustered plat is
what is being proposed, it does require a development agreement. And that is what we're
reviewing this evening, is the proposed development agreement. And I also say at this point,
with regard to process, I'd point out that the development commission tonight is not
making the decision final decision on the development agreement in fact what you are doing
is making a recommendation to the city council so it's the city council that's the
final decision maker on the development agreement but what we're looking for tonight is a
recommendation and as you see here these are the components that are
included in a development agreement including a project description and conceptual site plan which you
have those should include showing the open space that'll
be preserved, show the layout of the lots, you know, on kind of a high
level, show that the infrastructures and roads and everything will be able to be addressed.
Which brings me to the site plan, because as you know, the actual narrative, the
actual written development agreement draft was included in, in your packet,
but I think it's more important just to briefly show you the site plan itself.
And again, the details of this will be worked out in the next step. So
this is kind of the first step in this course. process again you'll make your
recommendation to the City Council on the development agreement the City Council will make their
decision on the development agreement and then the applicant will need to submit their formal
preliminary plat application and that will go through that will be the more detailed review
of the subdivision that will then go to the city's hearing examiner through a public
hearing process and then after that there's a final plot process so There's many
steps after this. But just to kind of show you the proposed site
plan that's associated with the development agreement, as you see, the white part is basically
the developable area of the site and the Tibbets Quarantine
bisects the site kind of right down the middle. And this, if you throw it
off by the orientation, the orientation of this site plan is a little off
actually, because it's north is to the left. So this is SR 900 at the
bottom, and as you know, that goes north-south. So just to kind of orient you.
But as you see, the lots are kind of clustered around the flat front buildable
portion of the site that's outside of the critical areas and buffers. The exception to
that is the two lots that will be dedicated to the city for affordable housing
are actually across the creek. And then as you say, the shaded area
is what would be set aside as permanent open space. With the exception of,
you'll see one of the recommended conditions in my staff report includes a trail connection,
because there is a regional trail that runs along what is the eastern
boundary of the site. Parts of it are in the county, parts of it are
in the city, and so the cities, Parks Department and the King County Parks Department
want to make sure that the applicants work with us to find the most appropriate
location for that trail through the open space. So again, as I said, the
details of that, along with the details of the bridge location that crosses
the creek, those will all be addressed with the more detailed preliminary plat application.
We wanted to make sure they were shown on here so that we'd know they
need to be addressed.
And as I said, there are just three conditions that are recommended. We are recommending
that you recommend approval of the development agreement. The conditions are, the
first one is just related to the SEPA mitigated determination of non-significance. There was one
issued for this development agreement. There was not a whole lot in it other than
acknowledging the fact that with the more detailed preliminary plat application, when we have more
detailed information, we will issue a more detailed
determination on SEPA. The second condition is
kind of the standard code language that will ensure that the native growth protection easement
will be set aside and preserved. And then as I mentioned, the third condition is
just ensuring that the applicants will work with the city on determining the most appropriate
location for a trail easement through the buildable portion of the lot and then
also through the NGPE. And that concludes my presentation.
Thank you, does applicant have a presentation, choose to make some comments?
Good evening, thank you for having us out another year later and
very much appreciate you approving previous plan, we hope to get to the same place
with this plan. My name's Paul Mullen. My latest residence is at 4400
Columbine Drive in Bellingham, Washington where we're opening a new community for 81
seniors in November. So that's one of our corporate
addresses. Our corporate headquarters is at 6400 Oak Canyon in Irvine, California.
We're very grateful to be here in the city of Issaquah. Our original intent was
to build senior housing for the citizens of
Issaquah. At this point, we're working with the owner, John Stefani, who's here tonight with
me to map the property for housing, and maybe that's where the housing is applicable
on the code. We like to provide housing whether it's for seniors for
market rate or affordable housing as we pointed out on the map or just for
residents here in Issaquah. So that's really the intent of me being here tonight. I'm
happy to answer any questions. I did want to bring up some points that Christopher
addressed and we did also receive the letter from King County to provide
a trailhead on the road side of the property for the Cedar River to Lake
Sammamish Trail we agree that makes a ton of sense to us how that actually
gets done because it's wetlands we'll have to figure out with the county and with
the trail system but it absolutely could be done what I'm excited about is possibly
the old horse trail also being connected through this property at the top which has
been I know somewhat contentious but why not allow it especially if the
Cedar River to Lake Sammamish Trail is through the property so we're all in favor
of that and would welcome that condition I'd like to also point out with the
cluster housing development I think Christopher and the code bring up a very important point
95% of the native growth trees on this property will be preserved
so really you have a hillside of timber that is preserved with this plan There
is the opportunity for other developers to build the entire hillside if it were allowed
or it is entitled It could be proposed our proposal really is for
seven duplex lots on the state route 900 side of Tibbetts Creek And and
if the opportunity arose where the city would want to provide market rate or affordable
housing here in Issaquah seems to be anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000
home values, we'd certainly welcome that as well, but we're not necessarily proposing that tonight.
We're offering it as part of the development agreement. But our real intent is to
stay as far away from Tibbetts Creek and the natural habitat of the salmon that
spawn in that stream and create this clustered housing development that doesn't
impact the hillside and the native timber. There are two native growth trees on the
property that would be impacted, but our intent is to leave the other 95% of
the trees alone. So I wanted to just address that.
The other point I wanted to make about the housing that we hope to build,
whether it's with Silverado Development or with another development partner, and John Stefani, the owner,
is that Timber Ridge is obviously right across the street from state route, Ed
Kinney is the CEO of the company that operates Timber Ridge. It has hundreds of
independent living and assisted living and skilled nursing units on that hillside. Ed is a
big supporter and friend of Silverado and believes that there should be more senior housing
available whether it's adult family home, memory care, assisted living, whatever it might be.
So we have his absolute support and be happy to provide of support from him
to the commission if needed. And that's basically
everything I had to say about the plan. I'm happy really more to be here
to answer any questions that you might have about the plan. Thank you. Do we
have,
members of the public that would like to make some comments. I don't see any
sign up sheets.
If you will just give your name and address for the record when you get
to the microphone. We'll see if we can make that happen.
David Kappler, 255 Southeast Andrews Street. First a question. This is not a quasi-judicial issue,
this is a legislative issue, is that right? Development agreement?
So yes, we're treating it as a legislative item. Which just means that
we can lobby the mayor, we can lobby the city council and talk to people
outside of whatever. But just to be clear, will be quasi-traditional when we
get further in the process.
The two, the low income lots, the lots proposed for low income, I don't really
think are reasonable. I mean if you're just gonna
build houses and sell them at a somewhat reduced price or something, but the location
is very remote from transportation, in terms of public transportation.
And you got the bridge across the creek, which has got a lot of little
salmon in it, I can attest to that as of today. And
there's other critical area issues there with the creek.
And then the cost of, I'm not sure how you get a sewer over there
to deal with the sewer. And it's pretty, a lot of wet ground over there,
trying to do on-site septic could be a challenge. I don't see that as being
an advantage that that offer is there. But that's
that. Trails, this business of
connecting it actually to 900, Ren-Niziqua Road, Sunset Highway,
up the east-west connection is really great. That would really be beneficial. And then the
north-south, The missing parcel up there at the top
left is already King County. I wanna extend that through there. And actually
from that point all the way to the city's Tibbetts Valley Park is public in
either city or county park. The origin and history on
the Sammamish Cedar River Trail is almost as old as the
East Lake Sammamish Trail. They were both dreamed about a long time ago. We just
didn't have a current railroad connection from here to
the Cedar River to make it a lot more viable. We do have a lot
of Puget Sound Energy corridor through there that goes back to the 1890s and the
original AC generating plant at Snoqualmie Falls that completely changed
generation of electricity in the country. So we do have some of that corridor through
there and the county has bought a lot of property and is planning to buy
more through that corridor. But from May Valley to the Cedar is a whole nother
problem. But it is really a viable connection there and it would be
a great trail for people walking from Taliesin stuff instead of on 900 being and
going up there and walking that trail to Tibbets or something. Not like they're gonna
do that. It's definitely be a longer walk, admittedly. But it's also got, it's very
close as you go south to existing property that the city acquired from
the Talus developers and then it connects to 700 acres of King
County property as well as 2000 some acres of Squawk. Interpretations.
For this site, this kind of a situation, I think,
can make a lot of sense in the quality of that open space or the
creek through that corridor and the hillside above the creek,
east of the creek is really something and to be able to get that much
preserved open space and to get potential east-west trail connection, north-south trail connection,
are significant, so thank you.
My name is Mary Lynch and I reside at 2690 Northwest Oakcrest Drive, Essequel, Washington.
I'd just like to piggyback on saying that I'm a little bit concerned with the
affordable housing being on the other side of the creek and deeded without any time
constraints on when that would be done. My concern is again putting another bridge across
Tibbets Creek and endangering what we started there and the
rehabilitation of Tibbets and also the flooding of that area.
As David pointed out, it is a long way from any sort of regional or
local transportation. So if you go back out to S900, you've got cars that are
going 40 to 60 miles an hour along that road. So the only viable pedestrian
access is on the other side of the road. And yes, there is a stoplight
there. I don't know how many times I've seen people run the red light coming
especially into town, going well over the speed limit. So
without some sort of pedestrian improvements on that area to cross the
street, a major concern. If it does become a senior housing or someplace where you've
got service people that have to walk there because of their livelihood, they can only
take a bus, you're gonna have people that are having to walk from the transit
station, just like it's my concern with what's happening at Talos now with all
the stuff that's going in there is you've got service people who are not gonna
be able to afford to drive, a lot of them, so they're gonna have to
walk at all times of the night along S-900 on that one side. They can
at least hang a right and go up the hill. Anybody that's going to have
to work here is going to have to try and cross that busy street at
40 miles an hour plus and it's gonna be very dangerous. So although I believe
in cluster housing, I'd also like to point out if you look at the access
for that road back there, it would mean you're gonna give up two to five
probably parking stalls that right now they're including as part of their coverage.
So that's not been well defined. So if it goes forward, those things need to
come out, need to clearly say who's gonna do the affordable housing it's going to
be there. I really think it should be some other place closer to the road.
But those are questions that need to be addressed and cleared up.
My name is Connie Marsh. store at 1175 Northwest Gilman Boulevard, Suite
B11, and I was at home relaxing, watching you all on TV and saw this
come up and heard the language beginning and had to come down. So imagine how
happy that made me. So in a cluster housing development agreement, the
use is required to be an allowable use. Right now the use that they had
proposed is not an allowable use via the interpretation, which then sends
me down the rabbit hole of what is this now
if the interpretation is indicating that they don't have an allowable use. We now have
a few houses with a clubhouse. So what exactly is that and
who would build that? is that even a legitimate use for cluster housing
that somebody would do? So it does not seem
very realistic that this proposal is being put forth
without the use that they had already considered, which would be the
use that's not allowed. So that put me in my circle.
I disagree. Then you want to put affordable housing in a place where
the affordable housing people are required to build a bridge across the Salmonid Bering stream
in order to be built, which we're just building a bridge for what a minimum
amount of 500,000 well it's a million something but say minimum amount of $500,000
just to build the bridge. Well I think you aren't going to get any affordable
housing out of that. you actually have to build the houses too. So I
believe that's a specious place to put affordable housing and is
ill considered and again not based in reality. So,
so far I'm in the rabbit hole twice and I'm pretty sure the next door
neighbor is gonna put his tailpipe down the rabbit hole and turn on his car
pretty soon, but Now, I'm going to be a little
bit generous and start talking about the trail linkages
because who doesn't want a trail down that side of the creek that has been
allowed for a long time? But I'm also realizing that we don't really have anything
in our city plans that actually link that trail to anything in particular.
It doesn't go through Tippetts Valley Park. So
even if we have a trail, what in the rest of the city plans have
made that trail turn into something that would work? And so we have a
trail that ends nowhere, which I'm not really in the rabbit hole again,
but I'm sort of circling the rabbit hole in that situation. So
if I, oh, I do have one more thing. See all that parking? Now we
have all that parking for a clubhouse for very few houses. So
what exactly is the use of this clubhouse? And if we go to my rabbit
hole, which is the use has to be an allowed use within the development,
within the code for that zone, we don't know what that use is. So if
we're looking at this as cluster housing, I would just say we don't have
enough information to put this forth. Christopher was indicating that the
interpretation is extraneous. That may be, but the use is
pertinent for any cluster housing because it is required to be allowed in the zone.
They have not provided exactly what this use would be. They say a clubhouse.
Now, because I was watching, I'm going to give you two things from your prior
because I can because I'm at the microphone. Providing the
DSD phone number for after hours work does not work because DSD is
closed and it usually happens on weekends. after hours when most of DSD
has gone home or they don't answer the phone. So I have often looked at
Atlas who is working on a Sunday and said wow who do I call? The
police I guess for stop work that seems like a pain but even if it
is a Saturday where there is potential could there not be a place on the
website indicating that they actually have Saturday hours that the public could actually access so
that they would know what to do. And one little last bit is the crosswalk
on Front Street is making people walk in the middle of the road during construction,
which is another one of those construction concerns. We're after hours, so who do we
call? So I'm standing in front of the microphone and I'm announcing it because one
of the members said that if we say it out loud, then it might get
resolved. Now circling back to this, I would say we don't have enough information as
what this is or how it functions and so we would like to see a
delay on this cluster housing development until we have more complete information as to what
is actually happening. Thanks.
Other comments from the public? So I'll close
the public comment period and ask the commissioners if they have questions. Yes sir.
Mr. Frye, I have some questions for you regarding the background for this. I
looked at the city website today and specifically looked for green necklaces,
the definition of that, the map showing it and so on. And it didn't appear
to me from what's on the website, which is kind of an echo of what
one of the members of the public said, that there's any connection at all
into the green necklaces from this site. So that's question number one. Is there
even a conceptual connection east? Not directly. I mean,
north to Tibbetts Valley Park, eventually. And
that's kind of on the outskirts of central Issaquah where the green necklace is really
conceived. Okay. So part of the reason this isn't part of our trail
planning is because this is private property, right? And so there really wasn't the ability
to put that public corridor as David mentioned. There wasn't a big right away that
we could say hey this is a great trail corridor, let's go ahead and put
it on our maps. When things like this happen, when development starts to establish trail
opportunities, that's when staff and the community start saying, how do you
now link this to other trails because that's the real value of trails is to
link them to other trails and actually allow people to go somewhere and get somewhere,
right? So I think that would be a to-do that might come out of it
if this project moved forward. Well, all right, so that leads me to my next
question, which is whether or not there is any conceptual possibility
of the acquisition by King County or the city of
those sections of this property that had talked about affordable housing
to compensate the property owner, but to add that to
the publicly held land there. Through a partnership with Forterra or
some entity like that that's been very active in working out agreements like the Nature
Conservancy does on a larger scale. So if I understood your question right,
it was actually had two components to it. One was, can we add to the
trail system, but it was also at the potential removal of the affordable housing? Well,
so the question is, is there, even a theoretical connection at this point. It wasn't
obvious on the city map of the green necklaces and the existing parks. And
also, I couldn't find anything later than last year as an update. It was the
last thing that had a 2015 date on it.
This is such a great opportunity with the trails here. When I looked at it,
when I looked at the packet, I just wondered if there was any possibility that
it could be connected through some kind of cooperative effort to
what the city's already got on plan. So the city is,
as a new park director coming in two weeks. And part of what's on the
parks department's work program, which will probably, my guess is, he's gotta get his
feet underneath him and kind of move along, but there's a parks recreation open space
and trails plan number two that is going to be one of the most important
things one of the major work products of our parks department probably in 2017. And
so part of that, if now we have a new basically asset that's maybe orphaned
out here, my expectation is that's when public agencies like the city and
King County would start looking at how do we make land acquisitions to link
that up with other things. Now, obviously we try and cooperate with private property owners.
And so, you know, I don't know that anybody knows enough about this area. David
probably knows the most sitting in this room. I don't know enough to know what
the likelihood is of us actually successful in connecting this up. So
it would be definitely something we'd have to try and figure out. Okay, well that's,
you emphasized earlier on that there's a whole lot more to go, this is essentially
a restart point for this whole project. So it just seems to me that this
is an opportunity to look at that. The other question that I had, and
I haven't looked at this property because I understand we're not supposed to do that.
So I haven't actually gone out there and walked it. But there is such an
emphasis on the amount of money and time and effort that the county and the
city and the state, frankly, have already put in place to reintroduce
Kokanee and to reinvigorate the coho run on Tibbets Creek. And
it does seem that the prospect of building, I mean there's an emphasis in the
packet material about the amount of land that's being protected permanently
by this proposal. But then you've got to build a road across there to the
affordable housing sections which would include a bridge over Tibbetts Creek which
frankly seems to be kind of problematic in terms of the environmental impact of that.
anything like this would have to have the complete cooperation of the property owner. But
I just, let me stop right there. What is the nature of the zoning or
the ownership of the land on the other side of the affordable housing
lot? The other side like that's hatched? Yeah, what is that? So that's all
part of this property right now. Okay, no, if I'm looking at this, you emphasized
earlier that State Road 900 runs? North and south. East, west, right?
North, south. North, south. So north of this property? So we're looking at the north
of the property, right? Okay, where that racetrack thing is there?
Yes. What is that? Wetlands. I'm sorry, what? Wetlands.
Okay, so that's all the property there that is in this, and that's gonna be
dedicated, right? Yes. It's gonna be protected. So the trail is gonna run through that.
Just just or at least conceptual I can jump in a lot of good thoughts
and questions There is no plan as of now to build a bridge There's no
plan as of now to do affordable housing that property needed to the city to
decide whether or not they wanted to do affordable housing I personally believe the
idea of a trail where that property is makes a lot of sense to me
to get to that property you probably need at least a footbridge and wouldn't necessarily
know, but the civil engineers we've employed quoted more along the lines of $100,000
rather than $500,000 to build that bridge. The Army Corps of Engineers would absolutely be
involved. It would take about a year or two to figure that out. But it's
not impossible and would be part of a trail system if that were to be
figured out. But right now, we have no plans other than part of the development
agreement, we were asked to provide some ideas around affordable. And so that's more or
less a placeholder for that. We're not dedicated to having that particular spot being affordable,
but we wanted to at least conceptualize, hey, these are lots the city could use
if needed for affordable. So to address my final question is to address the issue
that was raised by a member of the public is sewer of the
consideration at this point? The extension of provision of sewer service. Go ahead, Keith, sorry.
So just to put this into perspective, so the idea here is those two lots
would be created with the plat and they would be deeded to the city at
no charge. Okay, so we're talking about if the city, and this is a
conversation that ultimately would happen with the city council because part of a cluster development
agreement or not grammatically spelled out in the city code is to consider affordable housing,
right? So part of this proposal is to create two affordable housing lots
on that side of Tibbetts Creek. So what you would do, so now I've got
my development hat on. What you would do is you would the bridge in and
the bridge is like, so it's like a driveway basically. It's not, don't think of
like city road with sidewalks and street trees. Think 12 foot wide basically drivable
surface with rails on the side that keeps a car from going in. Would it
be like the one at Squawk Mountain Nursery that goes over the creek? Is that
what you're talking about? It's been a while since I've been at Squawk. It's basically
like what the city just permitted at Confluence Park, which is going to allow city
trucks to go across it, but it's not going to have the dragonflies and all
the other art that's incorporated into that structure. So these things, they
are allowed. We would likely hang the sewer and water pipes under the bridge.
So what would happen is those wet utilities would cross the creek under the bridge
deck. and service those two lots. So as you think about it, you've got two
lots, they could be two duplexes that could be Habitat for Humanity lots, and you're
paying the sole cost of the improvement of those lots is the infrastructure to
get there. So whatever the bridge cost is, whatever it costs to hang two pipes
under the bridge, then you split that cost by potentially four units, and what I
can tell you is that's a deal, and that is affordable, and we could easily
get affordable housing there. Now, what I would then say is there is a conversation
to be had with the city council about is that what they want? Or do
they want to leave it undeveloped and as a trail and whatever else. That's a
conversation that I think they get to have. You guys get to make a recommendation,
but at the end of the day that's part of their decision on this development
agreement is what's more important to the community. More affordable housing, which we all know
we're not getting enough of, we'll never get enough of, or keeping another, and I
don't even know what's the square footage of those two lots, keeping another whatever that
is in forested open space. I mean that's a great question. That's the ultimate question.
Thank you. Can I go ahead? Yes, Kevin. I had questions
surrounding density. Can you help me understand that? I'm not sure if I asked this
to staff or the applicant. It says there's a maximum of 24 units
allowed and 14 are being applied for. There is the potential that could
almost double to the 24? as time goes on, they could continue to develop these
lots to add additional units, or will they always be duplexes, two per
parcel, I assume? If this development agreement is approved and goes through the planning process,
then there would be no possibility of developing that back portion in the future. Where
the number came from, the 24 units, is calculation based on, so in the single
family estates zone, it allows 1.24 dwelling units per
acre, but applicants don't get the full credit for areas that are critical
areas and buffers. So there's kind of a big calculation in a sliding scale based
on how much of that lot is critical areas and buffers, and that's how we
come up with the number of units. It won't exceed that. And then in my
understanding that each of these parcels is approximately two acres. Is that
true? No, these are really small lots. They're really small. Yeah, like seven to. I'm
having trouble. Sorry, that is in the code though. It basically calls out that you
need two acres to do this. We have 22 acres. So these lots are all
of five, 10, I think the max was 11,000 square feet on these lots.
7,000 is on average, so no, not two acre lots. It's really a clustered dense,
nice town home kind of development. It hasn't, like we had mentioned earlier, nobody's really
gotten to the point of identifying the actual building or structure, but the pads themselves
aren't much more than 7,000 on average. Clustered densely, so you're not impacting
the 95% of the trees on the hillside. And then I guess lastly, I'm confused
about this clubhouse. where it occurs and is that
use indeed not permitted? The code does allow what's called,
I use the term in the staff report, a banquet reception meeting facility.
Okay. Yeah, the idea really there is to provide amenities for the folks living
there and that is right at the head of, sorry I know this isn't working
on TV, But that is the clubhouse lot. So it was an
amenity lot. There is Tibbetts Creek Manor, which is also banquet hall in the same
zoning. Think of it that way. Rotary Club has meetings there. Right. That type of
thing. So there's no reason to reasonably think if this is senior housing that
somehow that turns into a pub. You know, the use isn't going to change. And
it's not necessarily going to be senior housing. Yeah, sure. And it's accessory to these
and it's. Right. Okay. I got it. But it's a, the banquet hall, it's a
dining hall, right? It's intended for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the residents of the
memory care facility. Under the code, it's called a banquet hall. I always think of
Tibbetts Creek Manor. I'm sorry, but that is kind of the banquet hall there, two
doors down. As of right now, it would be an amenity facility.
Nobody's figured out the interior of it. Memory care was the option that was approved
last time we were here under the Planning Commission. That's not necessarily what we're saying
tonight. Tonight we're saying, count these as housing lots. It could be age
restricted. It could be under the code. It could be adult family homes,
which we may very well build, which are similar to senior housing. So from a
clarification standpoint, this gets back to, I think, the thing that was making Ms. Marshall
a little crazy. So what they're asking for is they're asking for, is it 10
lots or is it nine? There's seven lots here and two on the other side.
I'm gonna call it nine. So they're asking for a nine lot clustered subdivision, okay?
And part of that would basically say, unless you guys were to specifically say
it has to be a certain use. Right now there's uses that are allowed within
the code or the SFV zone. And they include, you know, it could be a
single family house, it could be a duplex. You know, since they're trying to line
up a builder, I think they would appreciate some flexibility and not be pigeonholed in.
So this conversation about a clubhouse, clubhouses are allowed and they could ultimately build that
there. But if you guys don't specifically say it has to have a clubhouse, then
they could use that lot for another duplex potentially, or just a single family house.
You know, whatever the market bears, the highest return for is where they're headed right
now is to try and say, hey, look, we wanted to do assisted living here
unless something happens and that changes. This is going to be just a nine lot
subdivision which might have a clubhouse and might have two affordable housing lots
associated with it depending on what the city council does. Okay. So can I wait?
So this gets a little bit confusing because under what's being
proposed here without the actual use being well defined, and then we have the associated
interpretation that was included with the packet and then updated here just recently,
which is speaking to something that is more aligned with an assisted living facility.
So I'm trying to figure out what is the, how do you,
that it doesn't become an assisted living facility because if you read
the letter from McCullough Hill and it's talking about what constitutes a family and
having five unrelated people living together and then suddenly you configure this as essentially
rental rooms with a dining facility and you provide care, memory care,
suddenly it is an assisted living facility with care being provided
in a zone that doesn't allow it. So how do you control what this is
and what it isn't? Where's the line? So one of the reasons why we did
the interpretation was so that was our concern as well. It started to
feel a lot like this was going to be something that
might not be allowed there. And rather than them at risk. So they
were concerned that after they bought the land, after they built their facility and started
operating it, that someone would come in and basically say, I've got a zoning enforcement
issue here because they're using the property in a way that's not allowed by code.
My concern was not so much for us because we know what will
go there or not. It's five years from now, 10 years from now. It's that
what actually was approved, what was talked about, and if the city's put in the
place of doing a code enforcement action on this property, we want to make sure
that there was at least a clear trail of what is and isn't allowed there.
So they wanted that, we wanted that, and so that's why there's a very specific
interpretation on how you could do assisted living there, it has to be
ancillary and incidental another permitted use. So
if you and I buy a duplex there and we want to put our parents
in one of the bedrooms as an assisted living function within those residences, we could
do that. That's not inconsistent with the code. But for them to run a business
solely out of all the structures that they built on those lots, that's what we
considered not allowed because it's only allowed as an accessory use. So that's
why we did that interpretation now because it is a little hard to understand the
code and how this potentially would fit or not fit. And so rather than leave
that ambiguity, we felt like it would be better for the city if we clarified
that now. That's why we did that. Yeah, and the only thing I'll add to
that is that we're facing an epidemic. We're facing a silver tsunami that we've
never seen before in aging. 10,000 people a day are turning 65. As I mentioned,
Timber Ridge across the street has hundreds of units, they're all full. What could be
is adult family homes, as Keith said, you're living with your parents and taking care
of them. It is certainly in the latest interpretation not assisted living. Our
hope is it's developed into housing and it's multi-generational housing. There's a trail, there's horses,
there's pets, there's kids running around, and there's seniors there. Because there's seniors on the
hill and they're all gonna want intergenerational and pet therapy and trails and everything else
that we want. And so that's what we hope to see at the end of
the day. And what's really operating there at the end of the day is housing,
residences, very simply put. I can't tell you exactly who's going to be in those
houses, though. I don't know who will buy them. So I don't disagree with what
you just described as the need. The question is, is it allowed at
this location in the city's code? And that was my point. You crossed the line
at some point into a use that's not allowed in this particular zone, because it
would be considered an assisted living use. And I understand the need for the interpretation
and try to provide some clarity. There's still a little ambiguity in there, but it's
better than just trying to deal with the code. Can I ask just another question
for more background? So we did have a proposal here previously, assisted living. It did
require a zoning code amendment that the council elected not to
approve. So that project couldn't advance any further. Why did they elect not to approve
that zoning code amendment? CAN RECALL. SO
I'LL TRY AND CHANNEL THE CITY COUNCIL. SO WHAT
BECAME CLEAR, I THINK SILVERADO BECAME THE POSTER CHILD OF LEARNING KIND OF HOW
COMMITTED THE CITY COUNCIL WAS TO A BELIEF THAT THEY
UPZONED A HUGE AMOUNT OF THE CITY TO ACCOMMODATE BASICALLY THE GROWTH OVER THE
NEXT 20 YEARS AND THAT'S CENTRAL ISSAQUA. AND SO their minds,
they basically open the doors for things to happen. If
this project could happen on this property without any code amendments, they would have said
fine, that's great. But because there's an ask that came with it, what they said
was, we just up zone 900 acres. Why don't they pick of those other 900
acres to put this facility where it's allowed outright. And so that was it was
that easy and I think I
THINK WE UNDERSTAND IT NOW.
IT HELPS US COMMUNICATE TO THE REST OF THE PROPERTY OWNERS IN TOWN THE CONVICTION
THAT THE CITY COUNCIL HAS. IF YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ON A PIECE OF PROPERTY
IN WHAT THEY CALL THE FRINGE, GREAT. OTHERWISE IF YOU NEED A CODE AMENDMENT OR
SOMETHING, YOU SHOULD BE TALKING AND LOOKING IN THE CORE, IN THE REGIONAL GROWS in
the North Center area and in Central Issaquah. Mr. Chairman, may I
point a clarification? If the
development commission tonight says, okay,
then the process basically, as I said earlier, restarts. Did I hear you say
that it could be single family homes, it could be duplexes, it could be. So
at this point, we're looking at the platts and recommending yay or nay to
go forward with it. But if we say yes, the nature of the ultimate
construction on the site is TBD. So you guys can decide. I mean, I think
you guys could leave that open to the uses that are allowed in the SFV
zone, or you could say, well, they talked about duplexes. Let's
say that we're going to approve this clustered plat for duplexes. You guys could be
as specific or as broad as you want on the uses. We can't change the
uses with the development agreement. So you couldn't say, yeah, we approve this development agreement
for mid-rise office space. That would not be okay. But as far as if you
want to leave it open to the uses that are allowed within the zone, you
can do that, or you could a tighter box around it if you wanted to.
So I'm assuming that the packet that we have now represents what the applicant wants
to do with the property. which is duplex housing. Right. And I was going to
point out. That's why I was a little confused when I heard earlier, well, it
could be duplexes, it could be single family homes. Yeah, in the single family state
zone, as far as attached housing goes, the maximum of attached housing you
can have is a duplex. So on each lot, the maximum they could have is
two attached units or one unit. But what you cannot have, which is allowed in
other single family zones, but in the SFE zone, could not have a triplex or
a fourplex. And the duplex really concentrates and maximizes the site and allows all that
open space. So that's really the thought at the end of the day. Mr. Chairman.
Yes. Yeah, can I have the floor? Paul, thanks for coming again. It's good to
see you again. I know we, I was involved in looking at the earlier design.
And I appreciate the thought that you need to look ahead There's a concern that
I think you can understand if we say duplex and then eventually somebody turns around,
you're gone, we're all gone, 20 years later they want to turn it into other
views, then that's an issue that I think we're concerned about. And I share that
concern. And then the other point that I want to make is that
we're subdividing this lot and you said it's kind of like brand new design now.
subdividing it to actually 10 parcels. I'm not sure why
the driveway's still there. Is the thought that the driveway will remain
there as part of parcel 10 and all those individual ones that's in the,
in that circular thing, all those parcels. Are there boundary
lines down here? Yeah. Where the driveway is? It's an incredibly challenging site. There's
really only one way onto the site, which is actually a roadway. The whole
bridge system here does not allow for any access to the site. But there is
a road. a legitimate road coming onto the site here and take some elevation down
into it. So that really makes the most sense for a direct drive and parking.
Sure, but if we're subdividing it, who would own all this driveway?
It would be part of a homeowners or development agreement, kind of like a homeowner
association, I guess you'd say. Okay. Yeah. So would you keep all those parking then?
It's on the sheet. I mean if we approve this. Yeah we require we were
required to have that amount of parking for those number of lots basically if we
could have less with you know. Okay nothing certain there but that was kind of
the requirement. Okay so it's possible that you would put a duplex here. Yeah
with no parking and the parking would be assigned somewhere here. Yes, and actually there
is parking if you come down, there you go. So you have to with the
duplexes have parking adjacencies. I forget the footage but it was about 100 feet or
so, 200 feet. We made sure all the parking, like you said, could be assignable
and accessible within the required square footage. Yeah, and I guess I'm kind of confused
because if we're subdividing it and yet we already have parkings there, so
maybe that's ahead jumping ahead of the horse maybe? And at the same time you
said there's no preconceived idea of how the design's gonna be, but yet
you have this little jog there. Apparently somebody thought about something going on between that
parcel and this parcel. Yeah, that would be the banquet hall, the first one, the
jog. So having access trails going between the housing to the banquet hall is kind
of one thought. Basically, you're pretty constrained. With a duplex, it'd probably be 7,000 some
odd square feet. You know, would want to have the
vernacular of State Route 900 very country kind of rural looking
homes. But yeah, we haven't really gotten to that point. But yeah, certainly there's been
a lot of thought given to circulation, trails. We spent a lot of time with
city staff thinking this through to make sure it's ALL ALLOWABLE UNDER SINGLE FAMILY
ESTATES. EVERYTHING THAT YOU SEE HERE IS COMPLETELY ALLOWABLE UNDER THE CODE. THAT WAS OUR
GOAL. SO SOMEWHERE YOU HAVE A SHEET THAT'S ALL DESIGNED ALREADY. SO WHEN THIS
IS APPROVED, YOU JUST SLAP THAT SHEET OF PLAN OVER THIS. WE HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT
FAR. WE HAVEN'T GOTTEN THAT FAR. WITHOUT THE ENTITLEMENT, WITHOUT THE APPROVAL, WE COULDN'T DO
CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS AT THIS POINT. THAT WOULD BE A HUGE WASTE OF MONEY. Mr. Chair,
can I just maybe it'll help a little bit process wise here on how this
works? Because so the development agreement talks specifically about cluster housing
and meeting the requirements of the code. It's not specifically defining the
use, a specific use other than what's allowed for in that zone at this point.
Interpretation kind of is an administrative action that the city, that the director took. as
a process that's appealable and that has essentially run its course so that's got
standing, it has standing now, the interpretation on the
uses that would be allowed in this zone that are more than just single family
in nature. Is that an administrative process and we have a legislative
decision that's going on? There are definitely two things and they are separate, They have
some bearing because of who the applicant is. The second interpretation
I don't think has run its course yet. It's in the process. They have not
indicated that they are going to appeal it, but they could. That's part of the
process. We would go to the hearing examiner. We think we are on solid ground
with the interpretation, but there is a process for that. Right now,
As you heard from the applicant, they are looking at this as a home building
site and no longer as an assisted living facility. I'm
just going to finish the process question. Then the permitting process
for this development would require what additional steps and what's the public's ability to
weigh in with the next steps? Let's say the development agreement is approved.
The development agreement is approved. As I mentioned, the next big step will be the
submittal of a preliminary plat application, or in other words, a subdivision application, which
will go through a whole other set of public notice of the application and then
ultimately through a public hearing with the city's hearing examiner who will
make the decision on the preliminary plat. And then from there, we go into the
construction review and the final plat. So we have a long way to go. Yes,
you do. And again, back to the action, the recommendation, or what's in front of
us this evening is the development agreement, not the interpretation.
That's right. OK. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. But to clarify
that, the development agreement does include the specification of a banquet hall clubhouse
as one of the specific things that would go in here, correct? As a permitted
use in the SFE zone, yes. of uses once again how that's
developed it doesn't necessarily say they have to do that it just says that's a
permitted use well but the the agreement with the city actual specific agreement
says the neighborhood will consist of 12 single-family duplex dwelling
units consisting of six buildings a banquet hall clubhouse open space parcel and
two parcels of affordable housing. Sounds to me like it says this is what's going
to be on there. It doesn't say seven, nine
parcels that could be used for whatever is allowed within that zone. It specifies that.
So it seems to me it says. Well, that's why I asked about the single
family earlier, because that's what I thought. And I do have a question. The
July letter from McCullough Hill Leary that each duplex will
include a kitchen, living room, and between four and six bedrooms occupied by up to
six units, six residents. Is that each one of, in a duplex, would that be
each of those two units would have up to six residents, so like 12 in
a duplex, or six in a duplex? That letter was written before the final
interpretation letter, so it's no longer valid, at least in the extent of the design.
So that letter was trying to make the case that each duplex would have a
kitchen and therefore it would be a residence even though all the inhabitants would be
assisted living patients. And what we said was, okay, we didn't agree with that.
So that's why that letter is structured the way it is, Mel, is because they're
trying to say, hey, they're like a house, there's no difference. It's gonna have a
bathroom and it's gonna have a kitchen. Well, but the inhabitants are actually different because
they're there particular reason not because they own the residence itself. So when
they said that the banquet hall will be used for common dining, the project will
function as a memory care community. That was previous to the final interpretation letter. So
a lot of the agenda items that are in there are very contradictory and confusing.
I think what's most important is that at the final outcome we're really looking at
a plat map. We're not considering assisted living because the final interpretation letter bodes against
that, but with the owner, John Stefani, multi-generational family here in Issaquah, we
believe he has the property rights under the single family estates to do just
this, build seven duplexes in a clubhouse. So I guess
the question that would come up in my mind, then if we have, right
now we have 42 parking stalls, If we develop those two
parcels, we lose three stalls. We're down to 39 stalls with 12
duplex units. And then if we have a banquet hall, and if it's truly a
banquet hall by the code, it's
gatherings by appointment only may serve as a regular meeting place for a specific organization
such as fraternal association, a trade union, Interns Association or for weddings,
other such gatherings. Then I start thinking about, okay, is this design,
would it be adequate for what that kind of use is? If you said, okay,
we've got potentially 39 parking stalls for 12 duplex units and then
somebody's gonna come in and throw a wedding in a banquet hall Is this plat
designed appropriately for that? So I guess that would get to maybe our decision whether
we want to recommend approval the way this is designed as a cluster
development. And to be clear, wouldn't be a wedding hall. It would be an amenity.
You know, banquet hall is very amorphous. I always think of the Tibbetts Creek Manor.
The Rotary Club might show up, which I counted about 10 cars at the last
Rotary meeting. You know, so. The parking is almost over
parked with 39 spaces to tell you the truth on the calculation.
So when the plaque comes through, there would have to be, so this shows common
parking and don't discount the fact that those duplexes might have
garages. There may actually be parking spaces within each lot that actually has
street access. We do have one that that doesn't have street access so that clearly,
unless there's some sort of an access easement that comes off of the tail of
that one street, you know that those people will have to park in the common
parking area. But it could very well be that there's additional four or eight
parking spaces. So if they each have two car garages and aprons that are 20
feet deep, then you've got an additional eight parking stalls per lot that actually has
street frontage. One of the reasons why you've got actually this much street around it
is fire access to the back, so we need to get back to those back
lots just in case and part of this is the fire access that you see.
So I guess my comment to you about the number of parking spaces is clearly
it's going to have to have, it's going to need to meet minimum code requirements
for the number of housing units that are approved. But then this clubhouse thing, if
they ultimately move forward with the clubhouse The size of the clubhouse is gonna generate
a certain number of parking spaces by code and then how they intend to use
it. So if it were for weddings, it's gonna have a maximum occupancy in the
room. The reality is there's nowhere else to park, right? I mean if there's not
enough parking spaces in this plat, where are you gonna park? You over in Talis?
Along SR 900? There really isn't anywhere else. So I think that piece of this
would definitely need to be well thought out during land use. If
we were going to recommend that this would be approved with 12,
I guess we would, if all the seven parcels, if it was just
approved as seven parcels for uses acceptable that
are within code within this area, Instead of actually saying yes, we're
specifically agreeing to put in a banquet hall here as part of the development agreement.
Just said we like the clustering, we like the design of the parcels, great, go
ahead. And then when you come back and you tell us what you want to
do with those, could they then come back and say, okay, now we want to
put a banquet hall here, here's the plan for it. I think you guys could
go either way. You guys could either be specific and say if you guys thought
that this clustered plat really only works with a clubhouse, then you could say and
it has to have a clubhouse on a common parcel. If that's not a determining
factor for you guys, if you say hey look, the cool stuff about this is
the affordable housing and the acres of open space and the trail opportunities and therefore
putting in nine lots here is the
win. I think you could leave it open. I think that's your call. I think
you should be specific in your recommendation to the council so they understand this conversation
that we had tonight. So on that point, so the question, I mean,
this is a contract. So between the developer and the city. So if we say
banquet hall or clubhouse, that's going to be required. Right. It's not an option unless
they go back and amend the agreement for the It goes back to the council.
So this one's a head scratcher because really the question you just posed is,
is this an amenity that we think has public benefit that we want to put
into this development because we're allowing for a development agreement to create this sort of
a development that's allowed under the code, which wouldn't otherwise be allowed without a development
agreement. So it's the public benefit piece. So obviously the.
dedication of the significant part of the property to native
growth protection, et cetera, is a huge public benefit. But I'll be honest with you,
I'm torn on the question about forcing this
piece of a development for really is a small number of units. I'm just wondering,
it may end up just being wasted space, depending on what the, We're certainly not
married to it. It was really an amenity. Would work just as well as a
duplex, quite honestly. And there will be, this will be decided
by the hearing officer. The recommendation, I mean, if it goes, whatever we
end up doing tonight will be between you and the applicant and the city and
the staff and the applicant to receive their plans and look at it, there will
be another public hearing in front of a hearing officer, correct, who will determine the
yes or no. So the next step THE NEXT STEP IS CITY COUNCIL.
CITY COUNCIL WILL TAKE WHAT YOU DO AND DO THUMBS UP, THUMBS DOWN. THEY MAY
ADD ADDITIONAL CONDITIONS. THEY MAY DECIDE YES OR NO ON THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING. WHO KNOWS.
ONCE THAT DIRECTION IS CLEAR, ASSUMING THEY APPROVE IT, APPROVE A DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT OF SOME
KIND AND OF SOME CONTENT, THEY CAN MOVE FORWARD WITH THE PRELIMINARY PLAT. THINGS LIKE
HOW DO YOU GET THE BRIDGE OVER THE CREEK WITHOUT KILLING THE SALMON, THAT'S WHERE
THAT EVALUATION COMES INTO EFFECT WHERE YOU ACTUALLY DO A C-3 You keep a checklist,
you do the review, and you figure out how to mitigate that new shade crossing
of the creek. That's when you get down to some of the brass tacks on
these conversations that we've been having this evening. And HPA, so there's
lots of permits to get. Mr. Chair. Yeah, Kevin, one of the things that maybe
you can help clarify is that the applicant can do whatever they want with that
lot. Is that correct? He's presenting it. The applicant is presenting as assisted
senior housing because that's the need right now. And the city needs it. So
it's like a carrot in front for the city to approve that.
In the future, the need may not be there. And to be fair to the
applicant, they may feel like, you know what, we're gonna sell this piece of property
to somebody that's more commercial and not want to provide senior housing.
Is that... So I am not under the impression
that the request is to Pigeonhole this as senior housing. I think what they said
was they envision multi-generational housing housing that would allow for
maybe seniors and Children and and parents all the
potentially be living within the same neighborhood But I didn't hear them say this was
specifically going to be a senior housing project Well, it's a Silverado senior living.
So I presume right now it's for senior housing.
Am I wrong? That's the. Based on the last interpretation letter, no. The one,
allowable use within single family estates is adult family homes. It could very well be
adult family homes, which is a senior housing use. There's adult family homes, assisted living,
independent living, skilled nursing are the designations within the senior living kind of universe.
So adult family homes are allowable as a use and could be one of more
of the duplexes. Right. And I'm trying to be fair to the applicant in that
they have the prerogative to right now they say senior 20 years from now you
don't want to run it anymore you sell it to somebody else somebody comes in
and say we're going to turn it into a housing unit. being a duplex they
can sell it to individual they can sell it to young family. That's our goal
today. That's our goal today. That's possible. That's the goal today. Maybe you can guide
me on understanding can we put a time frame that says you know for the
next 30 years it will be it shall be senior housing and then after that
they have the prerogative to use the structure for something else other than senior housing.
So if your question is could you do that, yes, you could do that. There's
a covenant that you could put on the property that would say that. I don't
think the applicant is asking to do that. I think even, I think The application
that you have in front of you to do senior assisted living was their
original desire for this property. The city came out, issued a code interpretation and said
you cannot do that as a primary use here. So what they are now looking
at this property for is a market rate duplex subdivision
that is clustered, and no age limitations, so
it could be first time homebuyers, it could be seniors, it could be people that
are downsizing, anything. So that's what they're asking for right now. And that's a point
well taken, and I think that's what the concern was earlier with all the conversation
is that what's the option for the applicant
later on as far as turning it into something other than senior housing? They have
all the prerogative to do that long as it complies with whatever the zone is
only precisely as long as they comply with the zoning right now So
if we're thinking about the future I mean, we You know I'm just
proposing maybe we should think about a time frame that when the 30 years let's
say or 50 years when senior housing is not required that much, then
they have the prerogative to do something else. Well, why would they not have the
prerogative to do something else? I don't know that the development commission. On the agreement,
they said they should be senior housing. Yeah, I'm just saying, though, commissioner, that I'm
not sure that the development commission has the wisdom to set a
time frame for anything that's going to be a contract. Yeah. This contract will
be forwarded to the council with recommendation. Right, and I understood you to say that
you think that perhaps we should put a time frame in this. And my question
or my concern is, I don't know how to set a time frame.
So I don't know what the basis for that would be. Wouldn't that covenant be
a function of the deed and have nothing to do with us? Yeah, that's possible
too. It seems like the confusion
is really what the long term proposal for the project is. And we've sat here
and talked about it for an hour and we still don't know. And it doesn't
appear that we're gonna know. If I understand what's being requested is
they're asking for approval to develop that piece of property as cluster housing and
to be given the ability to decide what makes the most sense
that can get approved by the City Council that will be consistent with the constraints
that are put on the zoning, the zone. So the real issue is not necessarily,
I'm not thinking we can agree on an agreement other than something about as
simple as that. And then. I couldn't have said it better. Yeah, I think that
was right on. I agree. Yeah, just our thoughts going into this agreement
goes to the Council. Mr. Chair, can I ask another question of staff? I
guess interpretation of the cluster housing development. I'm trying to figure this out in my
head. We have a cluster housing development, but then we're also including in it what
would be a commercial use, a banquet hall, community
facility. So the cluster housing development really has to do with saying you're going to
cluster your housing units in one spot. Then we are saying banquet halls are also
included as an acceptable use within SFE, but are they an acceptable use
within a cluster housing development? Because it is not housing.
I think that is discretionary on your part. I don't think that is absolute. I
think you can make the case that it is and you can make the case
that it isn't. I think your point is an interesting one and I don't think
there is an absolute answer to it. I think you could choose.
Sorry for the leash, but I think you get a leash. I think the chair
did a nice job of summarizing what is in front of us here. I think
that when we are thinking about a development agreement like this and cluster housing, thinking
about what is the that comes from this action, because that's what we need to
point to. I think there's significant benefit to having affordable lots dedicated as part of
this proposal, and that's specifically stated in this agreement, that there is going to be
a significant amount of property that is preserved as open and natural. I think that
is a significant public benefit. I think a banquet hall and clubhouse is
probably more centered to the nature of the development and what's happening in the development.
And I don't know that there's significant public benefit to that. I don't know if
you have a shortage of banquet halls in this city. I'm guessing probably not. And
this one is probably not something that would be used beyond probably the people who
reside in the homes that are here. And so I guess for me, that's a
constraining piece to require that they build that. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But
I would recommend that we advance this development agreement
with our recommendation for approval, but I would recommend that we modify, recommend modification of
the cluster housing development recital number two in the agreement and
have it consist of seven buildings, changing from consisting of six buildings to seven buildings,
and then strike banquet hall and clubhouse open space parcel and two parcels of
affordable housing. And then it's at the discretion of the developer and of the city
on how the configuration of the development advances, as long as it's consistent with the
zoning that's allowed for this area of the city. And so being very attentive to
not crossing the line, particularly on the assisted living piece, otherwise
this gets tangled up in a hurry, I think with public and
our responsibility to ensure that we're staying consistent. So that would be my
recommendation and I can present that in a motion if people want that. So would
you say right now it says 12 single family duplex dwelling units consisting of seven
buildings. Would you take out the 12 single family dwelling units and just say seven
buildings? That's part of the question, does it
have to be specific on how to be in a single family? Whatever the maximum
development would be allowed in the cluster house. It says the maximum allowable density on
the property is 24 dwelling units, so why would you constrain it any more than
that? But you can't have more than a duplex. So with seven
lots, you could have up to 14 units. And I think there's also the
related parking, if it goes up to 24, the code requires a
specific number of dedicated parking spaces and with the constraints they've got there, I don't
know, I think that the property itself wouldn't
be conducive to the additional parking that the code requires for up to 24 units.
So I think that was, I thought that was. It's pretty much parked to the
lot count there. It's a little over parked, but I think you hit it on
the head. Park for seven parcels and I like the idea of it just being
buildings That makes sense to me seven which would effectively be 14 duplexes
So it could just say seven lots yeah seven parcels 14
buildings Leave out the discussion the mention of whether it's a duplex or
a family or banquet hall or You can
pretend it's just like that with just lots. Yeah, just lots.
What's the thought from the applicant? That's the original intent of this meeting was we
wanted to just get the lots approved exactly as Richard had mentioned. I couldn't have
said it better or more precisely than Richard's statement earlier. In fact, that would be
a perfect motion.
Good.
I would go for that. It would make it a lot easier. It becomes a
housing property. It will consist of just seven lots, seven parcels.
Don't forget about the two affordable housing ones. So there's technically nine, I think, right?
Well, and then I guess that would be the other question. I have real questions
about the wisdom of having those
affordable lots up there. pointed out, it's sort of up to us to make
a recommendation to Council. And I look at the cost of
putting bridges in and utilities and crossing over the creek and potential
impacts there to get two segregated single family lots that don't have
good access to mass transit or things like that. And I don't know. I'd rather
see all of that just open space. I mean the developer might not care either
way. They're deeded to the city. Yeah, because we just go to the city.
It'd be the city that'd be making the decision on the use of those. It's
kind of offering to the city trail, habitat for many homes.
So the cities, so to give you something to think about, because I think it's
an important piece. trying to take you down a rabbit hole. So the city is
actually in the process of working on a housing strategy. And I think what that's
gonna do is, and I've been asked to try and tighten up the timeline, but
we'll see how quickly we can run. So the idea is the city needs all
kinds of housing. We need affordable housing, we need housing for adults with disabilities, we
need workforce housing, we need entry level housing for kids getting out of college or
high school. We need it all. And there's no way we can ever build it
all within our community. We will always be wanting and needing more housing of all
kinds. And so part of what don't want you guys or what
I want you guys to think about not giving up is access to land. So
those lots and whatever they end up being, whether they end up being just forested
forever or whether they end up being housing sites, Having the access to the property
is powerful and it puts the city in a good spot to make good decisions
later. Because if it gets given up now, we'll never get it back. It will
just be with this plat deeded as open space and then it's open space. But
if it's deeded as lots for affordable housing, then the council can decide
that's a better value for the community or leaving it forested. There's a choice there.
I guess you guys can provide some clarity for that choice or at least some
nudging for what might be concerning about that choice. But I would urge
you guys to, it's an asset, it's one that we're to find more of them
in our community and to potentially give up two here. You're right, they're not in
a great location. But I know a lot of affordable housing developers that would jump
at a chance to get access to two lots, even in this location. Perhaps we
approve it with those, if we want to try to put in a recommendation that
they not be developed. the city
in terms, you know, if I felt it's better to save the creek
and so forth, we could have that as a recommendation, but we could still recommend
they approve this the way it's platted so they get that opportunity. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Density and zoning are the same for those two lots.
Yes, same zoning. It would remain the same. So you could put duplexes on them
if you wanted. And again, there is ample. There's ample opportunity for
public discussion, debate, subcommittee of the council
to examine, recommend, and so on after we make our decision tonight.
This is, as he said, a long road with ample opportunity for debate and discussion
of the public before any final decision is made on the application
specifically the two parcels that are deeded to the city would be deeded to the
city. So and and so that is there's actually even another process associated with that
so so the disposition of city land so so the city at some point would
decide okay we want to go ahead and make those affordable housing parcels and let's
just I'm just going to use Habitat for Humanity because it's easy and we want
to sell them or give them to Habitat for Humanity. That takes another council action.
So there would be an opportunity for the public to weigh in on whether even
after it was final platted and those were legal lots, before the city council ever
disposed of them, there would be another opportunity. Mr. Chair, I personally,
because of the amount of opportunity that exists for public comment
and discussion and debate by elected members of the government, I am
personally comfortable with approving this as the applicant has
defined it. So if we were the final counsel on this, if this
were a traditional public hearing where we say yes or nay, I'd be
really hesitant to go forward. But because there is so much further review of it,
I'm okay, personally, with saying let's make a decision here. How about
somebody want to make a motion on an action?
Do you have some changes, Mike? Well, the part I'm struggling with is the
language. If we're going to propose a language change, I don't know that we need
to necessarily propose language change. We can make a recommendation for the outcome that we're
searching for maybe and let staff propose the language. I don't know what your preference
is, what works best with the council. Are you struggling with
the banquet issue or the 12 versus 14? Well, if
we say the challenge, here's the challenge with the language. If we say seven lots
and we want them to be duplexes, now we're saying it has to be lots
with duplexes, the banquet hall option is not on the table anymore because we just
said they all have to be duplexes. If we don't specify anything, then we're not
getting as high of density potentially. We might get single family development eventually on this
instead of duplexes. Higher density, I think, is better in this instance. So I think
that's a more positive outcome. So we could set it as a minimum of 12
single family units A minimum of 12 single-family units. Do you want to force them
to? If they decide they just want to put seven homes on them? Single-family homes?
Yeah. Or maybe we can say, you know, we can 12 single, or 14 single
minimum of 12 single-family duplexes with the option of providing a banquet.
So can I suggest maybe something that's easy? So how about the development commission
recommends approval of a clustered plat, a
cluster development agreement for nine lots where two are given to the city for affordable
housing. I mean, I don't know that it's more than that, is it, at this
point? Can you strike out the banquet room? So if you guys want to
mention the banquet room, you can. If you'd rather stay away from it, I wouldn't
include it in your motion. I agree. Because we don't have to, well,
we have the agreement in here. So
would we want to reword this to any extent or? So you might want to
also, so part of the of your recommendation might be recognizing that this application was
prepared for an assisted living facility and that is not what the applicant is pursuing
at this time. And therefore, you're basically recommending approval of a cluster
development agreement for nine lots where two are given to the city for uses that
are allowed within the SFE zone. I think that's what Richard
said earlier, too. I think it is, too. Sounds good to me. I mean,
because I don't know that there's much beyond that at this point. I mean, you
guys have created a good public record in terms of concerns over
potentially transitioning uses, concerns over impacts to the creek and the salmon in the creek,
trail, the importance of getting trail connections. If the city were to get this trail
segment, that there needs to be priority in terms of connecting it to other trails
so it actually fits into a network. So all those pieces I think are important.
I mean, I think we could probably put those in, I'm sure they're in the
public comment, but we could help the council understand that those were key pieces to
the conversations here this evening. All of which we support. Okay.
So then, trying to capture, I'm comfortable with that language, it leaves more flexibility, I
think, in future development. I won't debate whether we should push more density, but let
the zoning, which I've been, I guess, arguing, guide what happens on this property.
So I would say that I recommend, I move that the Development
Commission recommend to the City Council approval of the development agreement.
I don't have the title of the development agreement. Clustered Housing Development between the City
of Issaquah and Silverado Senior Living that would include
nine lots for cluster development with two of those lots deeded
to the city and an open space parcel.
Second. Do you want to reference that, Mike? Do you want to say as
generally shown in exhibit A2-2? Yes, I think that's,
yes, thank you. So Mike, do we need the permit? Do we need the number
in the motion as well? I don't think we have one. I don't think so.
I think the title of the agreement is probably what's in front of us. A
friendly amendment perhaps to add, and including the three conditions
listed in the administration's recommendation due with
SEPA and Native Growth Protection easement and the Trail Connection easement. Yes.
So, did we have a second for him? Yes, second. Yes, we did.
Just for the sake of getting late, could somebody read the motion that we have?
Could anybody read the motion? Did she get it? Why don't we have the
secretary read?
The Development Commission recommend approval of a cluster development agreement between the city of Issaquah
and Silverado for nine lots of cluster development with two lots
given to the city for future affordable housing units for uses that are allowed within
the SFE zone and including the three conditions listed in the staff report dated July
20th, 2016. And
Also, as generally described in exhibit, whatever that is.
A22. But I thought one of our points of discussion was that lots eight and
nine were not necessarily affordable housing units, but they were units that were going to
be left to the discretion of the city to decide if it was. She said
affordable housing loss or I
thought we were giving them to the city for future affordable housing units. I didn't
think we were. You know what, I think on that point, since the agreement speaks
specifically to that and the cluster housing regulations say that's the thing that
needs to be considered, I think that we'll let the city council decide what specific
language they want to agree to in the development agreement, but it's specifically calling out
affordable housing as a requirement. I think I'm comfortable with
that language. Okay. I think we're all comfortable with it. So we have a motion
that's been seconded and we've had some discussion already. Any further discussion?
This works. All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye.
Opposed? Motion carries. Looks like we have a proposal to forward. Thank you very
much. I want to thank Christopher and Keith in particular for shepherding us and all
of you for staying so late. And I want to recognize Connie and David, thank
you for your contribution to the city. I see you guys here all the time,
so appreciate that. So do we. Well I appreciate your patience with us trying to
figure this out too. I as well would like to thank the members of the
public. At this point at the meeting,
146, the meeting is over.