CHRIS RODGERS: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm just real happy that you decided to
show up. This is really great. We don't always get this kind of response, so
I appreciate your taking the time out of your busy schedules. This is a public
hearing. We're going to discuss Site Development Plan 16-00005, the Issaquah Apartments. We're going to
have a few administrative duties. Then our process is going to be that we're going
to have a presentation by the city, the city planner. Then we'll have a presentation
by the applicant. And then I'll open up the floor for public comment. And if
you wish to make a public comment, I'd like you to sign in on the
table right here. When you get a chance to go up to the microphone, we'd
like you to speak to tell us your name and your address. And then depending
on how many people, I think we need to kind of limit our time of
talking to about three minutes, three or four minutes. I'll kind of pay attention to
that. We have a great big hook that we'll start pulling-- no.
No, we don't. So let's begin. Yes, we have some minutes from
our September 7, 2016 meeting that you gentlemen have in your packet.
Are there any corrections? CHRIS JERRAM: Mr. Chair, I move we approve
the minutes of the September 7, 2016 Development Commission meeting. TODD BANDUCCI:
All right, at discussion? Second. Second motion. OK. Any-- all those
in favor, say aye. Aye. All those say no. OK. Minutes
are approved. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Lucy Sloman, Land Development
Manager for the Development Services Department. As the chairman mentioned, if
you're interested in speaking tonight, please put your name and address
and other contact information on the sign-in sheet. Tonight is a
public hearing. As the Commission and some of the public may be
aware, the applicant has made a request that the Commission make a decision this
evening. The staff has taken no position on that request and it will be
up to the Development Commission to make a decision on whether to do
that or not. But I'm going to go through as a quasi-judicial matter, I'm
going to go through our sort of standard discussion items related to that. So
the trigger for making this a quasi-judicial matter is that it is a site
development permit in the central Issaquah area on a site three acres or more.
The commission is the decision maker and it is a quasi-judicial decision, which
means that we have to treat it like a court and the proceedings have
to be both fair and appear fair. To do that, we have both procedural
due process and substantive due process. Procedural due process means that we have to
follow certain procedures, including notice and holding all of our decision making in the
public. A substantive due process means that we have to base the
decision on adopted regulations. So I would like the commissioners to please
take the time to read through these questions and then I'll ask
whether your answers are yes or no. No. No. No. No. Thank
you. Also, all of our proceedings have to take place in public.
So if there are any contacts, which we call ex parte contacts,
that have taken place outside of these this location and on tape.
We'd like to have you declare those at this time. And now the public
has an opportunity to challenge any of the decision makers. Okay. Thank you very
much. Lucy, obviously there are a lot of people standing. Do we have extra
chairs? The room is locked, so I don't have access to extra chairs. I
apologize. There's two in the front. There's four. There are a few more out
in front.
Good evening members of the commission
and members of the public. My
name is Mike Martin. I am
an associate planner with the city
and I am the staff planner
that conducted the review for tonight's
project. Again, this is the site
development permit application for the Issaquah
apartments. File number SDP16-00005. And I see that the 16
is missing right here. So hopefully that's the only error. First, I just want to
jump in and talk a little bit about the public process that we've undertaken thus
far and a little bit about the development moratorium that I'm sure everyone here is
aware of. This is a level three permit review, which means that there's various
forms of public notice that are required, including notice to neighbors within 300 feet. It
gets posted on our website and subscription notices. The site itself is posted with a
notice of land use action sign. Legal notice went to the Issaquah Sammamish reporter. and
parties of record. Again, if you wish to speak tonight, please sign in at the
sign-in sheet and we will have some time for public comment following the applicant presentation.
Additionally, we did have a meeting with the Agis Issaquah community, which is located directly
adjacent to the site to the west. Myself and one of our engineers met with
them on August 18th to kind of brief them on the proposal. Regarding the
development moratorium, which was enacted on September 6th, this project, as the development
moratorium is drafted right now, is not subject to the moratorium. And the
reason for that is that the project filed a complete land use application.
So where the council drew the line, where there was a complete land
use application, those projects were deemed vested under the moratorium. Now there
is a bit more process related to the moratorium on October 17th at 7:00 PM
in this room, the city council will conduct a public hearing on the moratorium. They're
taking additional public comment. If you wish to reach out to them, I, excuse me,
I encourage you to send them an email or provide testimony at the hearing on
the 17th. So that's my piece about that. A few more
kind of logistical procedural pieces before I jump into the site. There are two
AAS's, administrative adjustment of standards, that are proposed as part of this project and
they pertain to block length as it pertains to through block connections and tree
retention. And I'll touch on those a little bit more in the presentation.
I assume most of the folks here are familiar with the location. I've identified
it here on this aerial map in the red box. It's just south of
Safeway and southwest of the current Atlas development. And we can revisit this slide
if needed. Seventh Avenue is the primary street access and Locust is up there
as well. Brief summary, the project proposes 110 apartment units
on a 1.24 acre site. 8,100 square feet is proposed as affordable housing and
that comes into play through the density bonus which I'll touch on here in
a moment. There are 112 parking stalls provided on site in addition to some
on street parking. Primary PED circulation is via the Juniper Trail, which is, if
you're familiar with the site now, it's the sidewalk that's right in front of the
project. It's a 10-foot wide sidewalk. We'll talk a little bit more about that. Vehicle
circulation, again, is off of 7th. There's one driveway for the future residents at the
south end. There is actually a north drive as well that will be not available
to private vehicle use. It's an emergency access. There is a class four
stream directly to the north that will receive full buffer enhancement. I'll touch on
that in a moment. And lastly, this project provides its required community space through
three different ways. There's two rooftop decks and a ground level courtyard on the
Juniper Trail. Just a couple photographs just to get folks more oriented. The number
corresponds with where I took the photo and the arrow corresponds with the direction.
So the first one's looking north up Seventh Avenue at Atlas. The second
is looking west down the Emergency Access Drive again. So that'll be paved,
but that's about all of the finish it'll get. To the right there,
you see those bushes, that's the stream. It's severely overgrown with Himalayan blackberry
and other things. Number three is kind of taken from the core of
the site looking northeast. And then number four is looking south down
Seventh Avenue. This is your general zoning compliance, height, floor area ratio,
setbacks. In general, it complies with all of the requirements. They do
propose to enact the density bonus, which is they exceed the base
height limit and the base floor area ratio. And by doing that,
they're required to provide affordable housing. I'll revisit the
site plan here, but I do want to talk about the density bonus. So the
base height limit for the zone, and this is the mixed-use residential zone, is 48
feet. The code allows you to go up to 65 feet as well as to
increase the floor area ratio, which starts at a base limit of 1.25 up to
2.0 with the density bonus. So you're able to get more floor area ratio and
more height by providing affordable housing in short. This project proposes to do that and
it works out to 8,100 square feet of affordable housing in exchange for the additional
building height and floor area ratio. The applicant has indicated that right now that factors
to be 11 units, but that number might go up or down one or two
depending on the final layout and in our workings with Arch. So I'm not going
to revisit that previous site plan because I just don't think it reads well. This
color one works a little bit better. This is pedestrian circulation. So the site's
very straightforward in terms of vehicular and ped circulation. You see the shared use
route juniper trail right there in the front of the project. That's there today.
It will be reconstructed. There's a five and a half foot right of way
dedication necessary to provide all the components of the core street. So the trail
will shift slightly to the west so that we can accommodate the on-street parking
and a wider planter strip. The travel lanes will remain at 10 feet. The Juniper
Trail kind of loop as you go north it loops back to the west on
the opposite side of the stream. So you can see that there that links you
up to Newport Way. Additionally this is where the first of the two AAS's comes
in. You see these two pedestrian access easements here and here. That's
an adjustment from the requirement, which requires typically there's a through block connection
every 300 feet. However, given the adjacent land use, which is the Agis
Issaquah community, if we were to plug one in somewhere more in the
middle of the site, its landing spot would be in someone's backyard. Not
only that, it wouldn't be feasible at this time to provide the connection. So what
we've done is we've made provision for when there's future development, we can provide those
connections and we've done that by way of two easements. The AAS comes into play
because the easements are not provided at that 300 foot length. It's a slightly longer
walk, probably on the order of 75 feet. but it makes sense because the easement,
especially to the south here, would be through a parking lot which has better visibility
for PEDs. And again, this is all in a future tense, so I don't want
to belabor it too much, but I think the main thing is that the provision
has been made now to realize those connections decades in the future when there's an
opportunity. So that would be green space now? So I think we need to limit
the public comment to the open public comment period but I'll take your one question.
What was it? So those easements will be eased? Oh, so actually good question. Right
here, this is actually a walk that exists from the parking lot out so that
will be paved. This part will be green space and additionally there's a walk that
goes to about right here but the easement itself will carry the full width of
the parking lot for a future access.
On to vehicular access. I think I covered it mostly there on the last
slide, but the primary vehicle entrance to the site is located here at the
south. There's one driveway entrance right here. And I'll talk about the parking in
a minute. I mentioned the five and a half foot right-of-way dedication, and I
talked about the street section, which you see here below. This is a core
street design. Absolutely. Thank you. Parking. We've definitely
heard some comments from the public on parking. And so firstly, I
want to say that we've heard those comments. We have to view
this under the terms of the central is a quad development and
design standards as they are. So as we have continued to have
community discussions about parking, and that's certainly part of the moratorium. This
also comes into play with traffic. We're having those greater community discussions, but I want
to make it clear as it pertains to this project, we have to stick with
the rules that we have in play, which are the Central Issaquah Development Design Standards
as they're adopted today. As they're adopted today, would require this project to provide 100
parking stalls. And the way that works out is, well you can see it here,
studio units which are less than 600 square feet are required to provide .75 stalls,
and then one and two bedroom units have a minimum requirement of one stall each.
Additionally, there's a five stall credit as the applicant is proposing electric vehicle charging stations.
There's a code allowance that allows them to reduce five. That nets out to 100
stalls. In terms of required stalls, they provide 100. They also provide 12 additional stalls
that we're not counting in the minimum requirement because they're part of a tandem stall.
We recognize that they're provided the real total parking stall count is 112, but as
it pertains to the code, we're counting 100. Additionally, there are about 11 parking stalls
provided on the street, which do not receive credit, though we acknowledge their presence.
So that's the story about parking. As it pertains to the code, this project complies.
Bike parking. The minimum is 22 bike stalls. This project proposes a bike room, which
I think the applicant will highlight in their presentation, that's proposing right now 42 stalls
for bikes. So they're well over on that element. Traffic. Again, I
want to recognize the discussions that we're hearing in the community. We know that folks
are frustrated about traffic. Again, we're limited to the rules that we have in place
for this project, however. As part of the land use requirement, we are We review
a traffic impact analysis, a traffic study. The traffic engineer that prepared that study
is here tonight and can answer questions in the applicants portion of the presentation
as well from Gibson. In short, the traffic study concluded that there is sufficient
capacity on Seventh Avenue in the roadways to accommodate the project. Right now
the intersection at 7th and Locust is operating at a level of service A which
is the highest level of service meaning that it has the least amount of wait
time. In a future development condition in 2018 it would drop to a level of
service B which is still well within the city's allowance. Additionally I want to note
that the city collects traffic impact fees on new development. It's about
$4700 per unit and that nets out
to just under $500,000 in traffic impact
fees and then additional nearly $50,000 for
bike and pedestrian mitigation fees. Excuse me.
Talk a little bit about building and
architecture. There are several building standards that apply from the Central Issaquah
Development Design standards that apply to the project that we review against. Overall, the
project does a pretty good job of meeting the requirements. There are some areas
where we feel it's deficient and we have identified conditions for those issues. But
first I'll identify the areas where it does comply. First, you can see there's
a requirement that the large buildings like this be broken up through architectural strategies. And
forgive me, I'm not an architect, so when I try to describe architecture, it can
get sloppy sometimes, but I'll do my best. You can see they have broken up
the building through the presence of these larger cube elements at the corners and in
the middle of the building, which I've highlighted here.
The ground level has multiple public and private entrances, which I know is something that
the commission wants to see and is a requirement. This project has eight private residences,
which have front doors that front right onto the Juniper Trail. There's a small setback
area for a terrace and some landscape to provide privacy. The primary entrance for the
project is here at the north. So that'll be the public entrance that brings you
into a lobby. Additionally, there's another entrance right about here and then two more residential
units. So it's really defining that ground level plane. I talked a little bit about
the community spaces. Um, there are three with this project. Two of them are on
the roof. I've kind of identified the area here. The applicant presentation maybe can touch
on the programming that's proposed for those. But you have one on the top level.
This is again a five-story building. And then you have one here at level two
above the third open space, which is right here. And this is the primary elevation
off of Seventh Avenue. There's a requirement for
the building corners to be kind of strong and dominant to really create that
presence at the corner. I think this building certainly does that through those cube
elements again. And then the last piece is a kind of a site design
piece, but the building certainly plays into that and that's how the building relates
to the pedestrian environment. This particular design I think has a, a strong
relationship and creates a positive experience for a pedestrian. There's a lot going
on at the street with the various private and public entries in the
community space. This should be a pleasant street to walk on. So getting
to where the building falls a little short in terms of complying with
the standards, there are three conditions that we've proposed, 13, 14, and 15.
The first one has to do with creating a base, middle, and top of the
buildings. So there's a code requirement that says you have to really define the base,
middle, and top. I think on this building, the ground level, the base is there.
It's clearly differentiated from the rest of the building. The top and middle, I don't
think quite achieve that base, middle, top. And that's what condition 13 talks about. I'll
go ahead and read it. On all facades, additional treatments as specified
in 14.3.a.1, materials articulation and/or modulation are required to distinguish the
building floors four and five from floors one through three. In
addition, on the western facade, supplementary actions are required to create a clear top.
For instance, as well as color, further modulation or articulation such as a three-dimensional
band between floors could be used to establish a top for the building's facade.
I believe the applicant's presentation has responded to some of these, so I think
we're going to see some different building designs in response to these conditions.
Number 14 is very straightforward. This red box here, if you can see that,
that's kind of the secondary public entrance and that part of the building is
set back from the street and there's a requirement that says public building entrances
need to be pulled out to the street. So this condition is requiring that
they do additional treatment to pull that door out, not necessarily pull the door
to the street, but create a design that engages the street so that
it feels like you're entering the building at the street level. I'm not
going to read that condition, but it's there for you. And then finally,
the third condition pertains to blank walls. There's five walls in the project
that are generally blank and do not comply. I've highlighted three here. The
other two are this wall and this wall. the sides. So three walls
over here by the community space and then kind of the end caps at
the north and south. The end caps utilize brick which is a desirable material
but the single plane doesn't quite achieve the requirement to not be qualified as
a blank wall so they'll need to do additional articulation, building materials, colors,
there's a number of different solutions there. And the same thing goes
for the concrete walls around the community space. I did mention the
class four stream that's located north of the project. It's highlighted over
here with the red box. It was created, I believe, in the
1930s or thereabouts as an agricultural drainage. The photo to
the left is looking down the emergency access and the critical area there, the stream
areas to the right. And then the second photo is the massive overgrowth of invasive
species vegetation that's kind of choking out the creek. I bring up this slide
because there will be buffer mitigation around that stream so that all of
the invasive species will be torn out and new trees and shrubs will
be planted in place. Almost done with my presentation. This is the second
of the administrative adjustment of standards for trees. The requirement is
that projects retain 25% of the existing tree diameter. This project is proposing
to cut all of the trees and not retain any. And in order
to do that, we need to do an AAS. There was an Arborist
study provided a lot of the trees on site were deemed to be
diseased or dying or decaying or various states. So
that's the piece about tree retention. There's a secondary piece about minimum tree
density on the lot. So all developed lots with new development are required
to achieve four trees per 5,000 square feet of lot area. This is
a 54,000 square foot lot, so that nets out to 43 trees. The
kind of concept plan below highlights 29, I believe. which is obviously less
than 43. So in short, they need to plant more trees. We've heard from the
commission previously and the council and members of the community that there's a desire for
green buildings and to integrate some landscape onto the building. So this condition, which is
kind of wordy, I won't read it. You all have time to read it while
I wrap up my comments. There will be trees required on the rooftop decks and
then elsewhere on the site. to the greatest extent practical and feasible. If they
were to fall a couple trees short, there's a provision in the code that allows
them to pay into a tree fund or plant trees offsite to make up that
difference. Community space. The code requires 48 square feet of community space
for each residential unit, either public, well, either private or community. This project
proposes kind of a hybrid approach. Actually, in this photo, you can see
there are some units have private decks. Many do not, but they're to
meet the requirement. They're providing two rooftop decks and the areas are provided over
here. You can see one of them here. This is not the final kind
of proposal, but you can see the area that is provided for the ground
level community space. In total there are three. The minimum requirements 5,280 feet. It
looks like they're north of 6,500. Additionally, there's a resident amenity space, which is
only 400 square feet, typically like a fitness room, which they're proposing, and they're
also proposing a lounge. So they're required to provide 400 there, and they're providing
1,580. So in terms of the required community space, they're meeting it.
that's kind of the conclusion of my my staff report the staff
recommendation for this project is to approve we feel that with the
conditions proposed it does meet their code requirements for this type of
project so with that i will turn it back to the commission
chair okay i think we'll hear from the applicant now
All right. If you are going to want to
make comment, we'd ask you to sign in. At
the desk here, there's a place for you to
sign in. So please, please do that. And there
is one more chair here. I don't know if
anybody wants to sit there. Make sure how to
make that full screen. View. Oh.
Good evening. I'd like to thank the Commission for meeting on and off week and
being flexible with your time. I'd also like to thank the public for coming out.
My name is John Shaw. I'm the Director of Multifamily Acquisitions for American Classic Homes.
I'd also like to introduce Kyle Weeks. You can raise your hand. He works as
our Director of Development. We have Michael Gladstein and Joel Mezastrano as well here. They're
the two principals. Between all four of us you have our entire multifamily
division. A little bit about American Classic Homes. We're a local family-owned company that
has been in existence since 1999. As odd as this is going to sound,
I'm truly excited to be here tonight. Both Kyle and myself are local boys.
We're born and raised here in Issaquah. I still live here. I'm raising my
family here. This has really provided Kyle and I, in American Classic, with
the opportunity in our eyes to provide a legacy asset that we can
be proud of within the community that we were raised and we still
live. We have put tremendous thought, energy, and time into the development and
the design of this project. We've worked over the last 14 months very
closely with city staff, wonderful collaboration and essentially that was to ensure that what
we add is something A, we're proud of, but it makes our hometown a better
place. Before I get into some of the highlights of our project, I'd like to
just introduce the rest of our team who's also here to answer any questions you
may have at the very end of our presentation. You can just signal with a
raise of the hand. We have Brian Paladar, group architect. Jesse Clawson, who's our land
use attorney. Ed Sewell, who's our wetland specialist. Favaro Greenforest, arborist. Maher
Jodi, civil engineer. Matt Palmer, who's our traffic engineer. Roby Snow, landscape architect.
Our goal tonight is to run through this presentation fairly quickly, but in
detail, as we feel we've met the conditions that the city has asked
of us, and in order to leave you with enough time to make
a decision tonight. With that said, I'd like to introduce Vail Apartments.
As a kind of quasi-side note, my youngest sister, who happens to be a talented
graphic designer, came up with the logo and the name, and Vail means valley, which
we felt was very appropriate for where our project is located at the corner of
7th and Locust. So some of the highlights of our project that we'd
like to hit on that we're really excited about. Hey, Mike did a great job
going over it. We have 110 units, but 10% is going to be affordable. And
I'd like to point out that we're the first community in the Central District to
provide the maximum amount of affordable housing. From the very beginning, We have viewed
this site, Kyle and I, as a transit-oriented development in our eyes because
of its proximity to the Juniper Trail, its walkability to the commons, to
the retail right there, walkability to school. And as such, we have really
taken the stance that this is a multimodal community. So what does that
mean? As Mike pointed out, we have 112 vehicle parking stalls. five of
which will be for, will have electric charging stations. What he didn't mention, we also
have three motorcycle stalls, and then we are including the 11 stalls on the street
for public parking. We're very excited about the bike room that we're going to be
providing. It's double what's required, and we feel it's an integral part of this project,
and really the residents and the tenants' ability to travel extensively throughout the downtown area.
And on top of that, we're going to have an Uber waiting area in our
main lobby, and we will provide several community bikes for our tenants to utilize as
well. Some of the property amenities that I'd like to touch on: we have two
rooftop decks, and we have private decks on most of the units, and then on
the street level units, there's eight of them along Seventh there, they actually have private
patios. We have a great ground level open space in between the two stacks
of loft units on the main level. We're providing a fitness center on level two
along with a community kitchen and lounge. On that level two, we'll also have one
of our two roof decks, which will have a fire pit, seating area, barbecues, the
usual stuff. But for me, it's the rooftop on the very top that has a
special place. When I was working to purchase this site, I worked with a lady
by the name of Ireland McClish. she was a wonderful lady i believe 8 98
and the more i got to know her through the whole transaction the more i
came to understand her love of gardening and so a big portion of our rooftop
deck is going to be dedicated to her and we're going to have a great
arbor created and it's going to be named ireless's garden so we're very proud of
that fact and it's just a tip of the cap to her on the sustain
sustainability and community benefits side that's That's very important to Kyle and
I. I think one thing to note, we will be adding and/or improving
over 450 feet of the Juniper Trail in front of our building there.
We're going to be targeting salmon safe. We're working with a certified general
contractor, and we're targeting accreditation status once the building is complete. We
also have a pretty aggressive energy savings program. We're targeting 50% energy
savings and 30% water savings. I've got a laundry list of things we
can go into on how we get there. Kind of most notably is we're doing
a central heat pump water system, which will effectively reduce our heating energy by 60%
over standard systems, which are the individual tanks and units, which we think is pretty
neat. We're going to do an aggressive LED package system. as well as some
other things. On top of that, it doesn't just end with the construction of this.
We're long-term minded. We're in this for the long haul. We hold everything as a
company. And so it pertains to our management as well. And so we're going to
have a property management, sustainability, best practices moving forward. We haven't nailed down all of
the aspects yet because that's still a ways out. But I'll give you an idea.
We've batted around our composting program as well as we've even... basically decided we're going
to provide salmon-safe, eco-friendly dish soap at the front desk so if you as a
tenant can come down, get a refill. It just promotes the sustainability of our project
and we feel it's the right thing to do, especially since we're local. And paper
leases, and that's just to kind of name a few of the things that we're
thinking about. So this is what we consider really the highlights and what makes Vail
a special project, but from here I'm going to hand it over to Brian Palladar,
who's our architect, and have him take you through some of the design Thank you.
All right. Thank you, John. Thank you also, Mike and
Lucy, for your presentations as well. My name is Brian
Palladar. I'm the principal at Group Architect and just one
of several designers that have been working on this project
for a while. Starting in kind of this. We're going
to take a probably... three key section part of our presentation. I'm
going to handle the first part that deals largely with the OAP project's overall design.
We're going to take a break from that and talk specifically about landscape and the
integration of the landscape. Lastly, as Mike had alluded to, in response to staff report
comments and conditions, we've prepared some preliminary exhibits for presentation and really dialogue with
the commission to actually see if we're making progress in the direction that you
feel is appropriate. And we'll cover that last. So there's a number of exhibits
that we had included, but I think Mike really kind of covered these regarding
the site context, neighboring photographs, et cetera. the general site I know that there are
some questions earlier so as Mike indicated we with our site access coming off of
7th Avenue and be at the corner of locust maybe just some real quick highlights
the site access is taken for vehicles is taken off of the south that pedestrian
pathway that had been mentioned right here the way that this is broken up the
the city has a standard for the type of connection that's there and also for
which dictates its width overall width and the requirement for landscaping. The landscaping that provides
for the future, basically we've provided the width to make that connection to the future
properties. And so since we don't have a property to connect up to with that
connection just yet, or at least a trail to connect up to, we're simply landscaping
it now, which can be fixed. So Mike was kind of talking about that a
little bit, and the same condition is going to happen up here. here. But that's
part of the forethought that we've been collaborating with the city staff to make sure
that these details are getting picked up now, even though there isn't an obvious point
to talk about in the future or talk about right at the moment, at least.
This site plan also begins to show that our parking is wrapping around the back
of the building and that parking stalls are being provided all on the back of
the building so that the building itself screens the vast majority of the parking from
the street, which is not just a general design practice that we follow, it's also
in the code. So the tandem stalls that Mike mentioned earlier are located in this
portion of the building. And the portions that are shaded out are actually where the
building is covering overhead. As you'll see later in some of the other exhibits, we're
following both code and maximum design principles we can in order to screen as much
of this surface parking from neighboring properties as well. And...
Some of the building overall plans, really just to orient everyone to the same location.
Inside the building, we mentioned already that there's going to be covered parking stall areas.
We have our leasing and lobby are all located here at the corner at the
north end of the building. Our waste and kind of mechanical spaces are all located
in the center, so they're all screened from view from all the neighbors as well
as the general public. The ground-related loft-style units that are flanking the building are occupying
these two sections over here, and those two portions of the lofts are surrounding one
of our ground-level open spaces. The general building layout is kind of a long building,
double-loaded corridor. On level two, we have the lowest of our two roof decks. The
large lounge and fitness is mentioned directly fronting onto this roof deck. I think it's
worth noting here, oh, I want to back up one slide just briefly. So the
block length that Mike mentioned before, the reason why it's here, if you actually go
to those aerial plans, this is almost mid-block between these two streets. It just so
happens, as Mike mentioned, that 300 feet or something is like right here in the
middle, and we did investigate that. In reality, we went through probably three or four
different options reviewing that with City staff and eventually we just determined that this was
a better location. Other locations would have forced us to go underneath the building. It
just didn't make a lot of sense to do that. And in reality, this is
a better longer term strategy anyway, because you're coming in at a point of ownership
transition between two parcels, which means the opportunity to connect up to more parcels made
better sense long term. Also, along with this is the city code requirement
to break up the massing of the building. So we intentionally offset the building into
two main masses, kind of the northern portion here and the southern portion here, part
of which allowed us to create these courtyards, but it also allowed us to break
up the size of just the structure. But that's been really effective, we feel, and
visible in the perspectives that we have a little bit later. The regular level of
the building above are pretty much the same. The outline of the roof deck obviously
is up here, and we'll have some renderings later that better illustrate that. We already
looked over at the elevations as part of Mike's presentation. The material board is present
up here up front, so I encourage the commission to come up and get a
closer look, or we can certainly have somebody pass it around if you want. I
didn't get a chance earlier. Our material palette is combined. Let's see, I think it's,
yeah, with the... mixed up here in sequence. But we've got brick that's going to
be surrounding our lower structures at the ground level. portions where there is concrete present.
It's going to be an architecturally finished section. And the portions of the building above
are-- our corner elements are this gray metal siding within which is accented a-- what
is it? Phenolic wood paneling or whatever. It's like EcoClad, Parklex, that kind of high
quality material that's also very durable. And so we're using this as an accent to
help set that off. Inside of those corner boxes is-- are the gray and white
painted cement board siding, which we're using as a durable siding, but also to provide
the variety in color. And then in the body of the building, as you saw
earlier and we'll certainly see better in the perspectives that are presented later, is a
mixture of the blue and the white. And so we are going with a more
contemporary style color palette that we feel is more appropriate to the size and scale
of building. And I think that's well evidenced when we get into the images
of the structure. So just briefly going through some of these and talking about this.
This corner perspective looking from the corner of 7th Avenue is here and Locust is
here. This is our main lobby entrance, which is very visible. As Mike mentioned, we
want to have a streetscape that engages not just the public way, but also the
connectivity. And so you can see here that we've got everything from these individual loft
entries here to the main entry and other portions further down. The building corners-- boxes,
so to speak, that we talked about before are very prominent. But they break up
the mass immediately when we go to the body of the structure. You can see
how that step back and the massing really starts to recess here. Whereas if this
was just one long building, which is kind of what our site is-- it's a
very odd proportion-- it really helps to break that massing up pretty substantially. I
think also that this is definitely going to be one of the points of dialogue
with which we've investigated things a little bit further. As one of the staff conditions
that Mike mentioned, There's the issue of how we've chosen to do the articulation between
the third and the fourth levels in the code, and also the interpretation of base,
middle, and top. We feel that architecturally what we proposed is a design that's consistent
and works well in its own harmony. The portions that pertain to the third, fourth
story division drops this down to here. And in our earliest studies with the design,
it was both the design team's opinion and our client's opinion that this made a
more harmonious proportion. Generally speaking, in the design world, Odd numbers of things tend to
look better, 1, 3, and 5, as opposed to proportions of evens. So splitting it
here turned it into an even-numbered building. We just didn't think that it was terribly
successful at the time. Subsequent to that, as a result of re-evaluating what came into
the staff condition, we've reinvestigated what this is. We've presented some options, which we'll look
at a little bit later. So at least we can talk about whether or not
it's actually getting there. This is a simple view just looking further down at the
vehicular access at the south end of Locust. Again, we can see this central courtyard
and also the break in the building massing, which starts to show how this is,
again, even though it's a long building, it's still breaking it up pretty substantially. This
is one of the portions of blank wall that Mike had mentioned, as well as
the inside of this courtyard. And we've got several other images where we'll study that
in a little bit more detail. We'll have to do everything from one image. Turning
around, now we're on the west side facing the AGES property. We have the building
being visible, but really it's only the upper stories. At ground level, we're going to
have the required perimeter landscaping. It's really going to screen all of the cars and
the parking. And so we feel like this particular move in general really
mitigates any concerns that the public should have about being able to see that much
parking, which in plan is very close to the neighboring properties. And then further, this
is up at the connection of the Locust Street, this is about the theoretical edge
of where the Aegis property and buildings would end and some of that perimeter landscaping.
And then this is part of that pathway that would become a future transition upon
seeing future development in our building lobby here. Briefly just delving into some of
the details of this looking at our residential entry, some of the waiting areas that
John Shaw had mentioned about taking advantage of other modes of transportation. This is one
of those other blank walls that was previously mentioned by Mike. Again, we've already started
looking at some of how to treat some of this and that some of those
treatments would include adding some supplemental green screens and and also looking at some other
openings. We have some leasing offices and other similar kinds of uses that certainly could
benefit from some additional openings. We've also got pedestrian weather protection. That's also a requirement
in the code. And so we have substantial canopies that are down at a pedestrian
level. Obviously, portions of the building that overhang would already be doing the same thing,
but we've added them to bring down the pedestrian scale, both at the main lobby
entrance and then also at individual entrances to some of the loft units. Looking at
the individual loft units, we've tried to embrace the code to the fullest extent possible.
We've got a great opportunity for a bike trail. We've pulled the building back basically
to the maximum of the build-to line so that we're code compliant for that distance,
but that distance allows us to landscape and provide some private defensible space in addition
to each one of these units so that it's actually a place you'd want to
live. Too many times these units, and you'll see them all over Seattle where the
live-work nomenclature is used to basically put a unit right on the back of the
sidewalk. And it's just so urban and hard. And we didn't feel that was appropriate
here. We felt like you needed this space. And so it gives you a place
to landscape. It gives you a place to call your own. And it also gave
us a chance to create these distinct units that we feel will be really well
received and desirable. And these are also two-story lofts. So they kind of pop up.
And they've got a little bit of overlook in there, along with a ground floor
space as well. Just in between the losses we mentioned, this is kind of
that courtyard. So what we've done here is The courtyard comes back. This is actually
one of the blank walls as well that Mike mentioned that's actually going to be
screened or is in the process of screening the parking beyond. And so there's a
lot of landscaping in this area with some pedestrian paths. I'll let Roby with LA
Studio explain that in more detail. And this is obviously the Juniper Trail here just
to visualize everything. But we've really done our best to green this whole thing up.
and really make it an enjoyable spot and more of a place of respite as
opposed to doing something that's not going to be as engaging. We've also got-- this
is that secondary entry that we mentioned that our bike room is right behind here.
So this is really a key point where you'll be able to come in or
out with your bike, take care of all of that, and also have immediate access
beyond. With that, I'm actually gonna take a break and
let Roby talk about the landscape and design. - Good evening, I'm
Roby Snow with the LA Studio, senior associate with the landscape architecture
firm that worked on this project. And I think that we've really
developed a project and a site that, through a collaborative effort with
the owners and the consultant team, that really is gonna have a
nice look and feel to it. We have, as you can see,
a fairly thick and multi kind of layered landscape buffer envelope all the way
around the project. Most of this has been kind of touched on, so I'm
just gonna kind of recap. But the Juniper Trail corridor with the street trees,
the species that's there now is the columnar hornbeam. And I think that's to
be determined with the city, with the street street program that we'll put in
there. But we have an evergreen understory and a
mix of evergreen and perennial accents, some of the
iconic corner parking entry areas. As Brian said, we have a
nice landscape buffer around the private patios that will give a semi-private feel to
it, but also creates a nice street scene along that whole walk. I can
see people walking along there, riding their bike and greeting their neighbors that might
be sitting on the patio having coffee, and a nice overstory of the tree
canopy. The central amenity space is very residential. It's
understated, but it's still lushly planted with some nice accent
trees and a generous path to this secondary entry. We
have some pedestrian benches out there. People can exercise their
dog. people from other areas in the neighborhood could greet their neighbors that live here
in that space. There's a more private patio there. At the entry to the parking
areas, we have a landscape buffer to help screen some of the parking.
The perimeter is completely in a multi-layered landscape buffer
that meets the code requirement as far as the
size of it and the density. It has an
arborvitae. complete you know solid hedge to block views into the parking lot and you
know for headlights that are shining out when people pulling in to give you know
ages and other surrounding properties uh privacy in that regard uh the cat sewer trees
is a beautiful tree has a wonderful shape and fall color that'll give some nice
buffering to the upper stories of this building um As Brian said, we have
these upper second story and roof terrace amenities that are nicely appointed with furniture and
fireplaces. And we're going to try to work in some additional trees. We'll have to
work with structural on location of some raised pots to get some additional trees in
these locations. And then there's the kind of memorial pea patch to
the previous land owner located there on the roof terrace as well.
The whole entry area is kind of a nice general generous hardscape space
with some pedestrian seating and again some raised pots with the accent planting
to really kind of accentuate the corner and the sense of arrival as
you approach the building from this direction. The stream area has been
discussed prior by Mike and others that it's pretty choked up right now
with invasives and we really want to clean that up and bring in
some vine maples and some rushes and some other riparian plant material to
make that more of a naturalistic water course, also as an amenity to
the Juniper Trail. For the most part, I think that really covers it.
I have a second sheet here that kind of has some of the plant
material I talked about, the Katsura and the Hornbeam and some of the accent
plants along Juniper Trail. This is the type of screening that you can expect
along the perimeter on the west and south boundaries. In the courtyard, I've got
these really wonderful shaped Hollywood junipers to help screen some of those blank
walls. As Brian mentioned, we're looking at doing some trellis green screen type
treatments on some of these blank walls. I know that's been a concern
with the city. and that could easily solve that problem with a nice evergreen vine
on it, soften those surfaces and make it feel like it's part of the landscape.
I think that really kind of covers it. I'm going to take the next section.
Okay, great. Thank you so much, Ruben. Thank you. So our last section as part
of the presentation was just briefly, as Mike mentioned, that once we got the staff
conditions in the report, we wanted to be proactive and try to bring some potential
solutions to the table just to help the commission understand where we think we want
to go with this and why we think it's a good idea and also not
talk vaguely as often is done in these meetings. So with
that, and also i i think i thought it would also be a little bit
helpful to talk about the conditions because i'm not sure that everybody in the public
in particular has actually gone through and read all 17 of them in all fairness
to everything so um the first condition just briefly was that no building permit shall
be issued prior to the submittal approval of a lot light adjustment we've already begun
preparations it's a technical procedure but it is something that's already in preparation to be
submitted um Condition number two was replying to the mitigation measures for the, at the
class, at the class four stream. And those measures have already been discussed in great
detail and already going to be included on the future documents. Condition three was simply
requiring that prior to the temporary certificate of occupancy, the applicant shall record the affordable
housing covenants Obviously, we've already talked about that. It's a key part of what their
project is and all of those documents are gonna be submitted. And for anyone not
familiar with this process, it's pretty standard amongst most of the jurisdictions and is easy
to work through. Condition number four was talking about also about the temporary certificate of
occupation prior to the contemporary certificate. The actual dedication along Juniper Street, or excuse me,
not Juniper, the Juniper Trail, the additional right-of-way frontage along 7th Avenue would need to
be recorded as well. And again, that's a typical document that we're used to providing
and will be done so. Condition 5 was talking about how the driveway crossing is
actually going to work here. This is delving a little bit into the civil engineering
versus the design standards, but in order to provide emergency vehicle access to kind of
get into the site as required by east side fire and rescue we obviously have
radii we've got other considerations with the transitions however if we follow the standard detail
it means that we've got as i recall a curb cut or a taper down
to keep this flat for the standard city standards but we've got this uh pedestrian
and bike trail obviously the juniper trail and so the design condition as i recall
was requesting that we raise this up and simply grade so that that's a flat
transition but Is that accurate? So I'll make sure I've got it all together. So
that's easy enough for us to do in preliminary discussions with our civil engineer. They
have no concerns about that. not working. So I think that's that is important to
know. Sometimes these things turn into big technicalities. Condition number six was talking about the
the public and pedestrian access easements being granted at the northern and southern ends of
the parcel as Mike talked about. And again, those are standard documents that will simply
have to be recorded in order for us to get a building permit. So and
move forward. Condition seven was talking about the shared use route of Juniper Trail and
making sure that it's improved. The existing pavement pattern, which is decorative in nature, is
what we're anticipating would be repeated on in the trail. And then the additional requirements
from the condition that talk about supplemental benches and other access points, those details are
already anticipated to be worked out between us, the civil engineers and landscape architect in
collaboration with the city. So obviously we have four 430 450 feet of frontage there's
a lot of trail to work with and we want to be respectful to what
those requirements are and where they best work Condition 8 was talking about as allowable,
that there's an allowable park impact fee credit to be given for improvements to this
route. I guess I'll let our owners speak to that about how much they even
want to get into that forum, but I know that there's provisions that allow for
that to happen. But there's no real action, I think, at this point that's required
as part of the design process. Condition nine is getting back
to the portions of the-- oops, sorry, next page-- how
we deal with the differential between the 43 trees that are required to be new
and the amount that's been, I believe it's 29 that have been provided at grade.
There will be a portion of those that definitely will be provided up on the
roof deck. We've got an exhibit here in a second that'll better explain what that
looks like and how it's gonna come together. So we've taken in mind how that
happens. For anyone that's not familiar with multifamily development, You just locate the planters differently.
You pick a tree that will prosper in that particular location for weather exposure, and
you build the planters differently, and you locate it structurally so that it's not a
problem. This stuff is done pretty commonly now. It used to be a bigger deal,
and people would say, I don't want to do it, but it's commonly done over
wood frame structures all the time. Condition 10 specifically was referring to the fact that
there's a requirement to have 10% of the parking lot area landscaped per the city
standards and just saying that we would have to deal with edge treatments differently if
we cannot meet that 10%. And that level of detail is something that we're going
to be refining at once we get into that next level of the building permit
application. just so everybody knows like that the size of the site where it is
and because the site's constrained we're right at that threshold and i think that comment
was basically noting us that any change is pretty much going to put us in
a condition that we have to respect upon that change so Condition 11 was simply
talking about an existing chain link fence that's on the property that the
quality of it, I think, was not appreciated, is my recollection. So obviously
that will be updated and relocated as need be. Condition 12 was talking
about the electrical service transformer. We originally proposed it in the north.
west quarter of the property, but that location actually interferes with one of the future
public access easements that's going to be a requirement of the property. It's going to
be condition four, I believe, or condition three. So we have to relocate it to
another location elsewhere on the site, which also gets back, I think, to the required
parking lot landscaping. So you can see how some of these things are simply tied
together and it becomes a little bit of a math game to balance out our
impacts on the site design. in that sense. I don't have a specific exhibit of
that location, but I can show it to you in one of the site plans
later if you'd like. Condition 13 is what Mike was beginning to talk about, that
the breakdown or breakup of the facades with different designs in order to meet the
base middle top requirement and the massing alternates. So we've looked at two different studies,
which we'll look at in more detail in a second, that simply investigate how do
we get closer to strict compliance with the code And then enter in a discussion,
hopefully, about which one's really going to be more successful. Condition 14 was talking about
the requirement for that actual building entry that's on the southern middle portion facing east
on the trail, that that actually is covered with weather protection, which is a requirement
in the code. I mentioned before earlier that we had that along the entry lofts.
And we just didn't have it at that one entry. And so we've got an
exhibit that proves that we can incorporate that very, very easily. Condition 15 was talking
about the blank wall treatments. As Mike mentioned, in those four locations, we've got some
exhibits for that. And then Conditions 16 and 17 were really technical requirements regarding fire
flow conformance and fire hydrant locations, both of which At a technical engineering level, they'll
obviously be designed to be appropriate per code. And then locations of hydrants have already
been discussed with Eastside Fire and Rescue that due to the long nature of the
property, some additional hydrants had to be added to the back of the parking in
order to ensure proper fire hose reach. And I think that the condition is really
just ensuring that the final design still is going to be approved. And if we
have to move something a little bit, it's still going to be satisfactory. But those
are the 17 conditions, as I recall, were in the staff report. And with that,
I'd just briefly like to talk through a few other quick examples that more graphically
explain things. So I apologize in the past. This probably would have been a better
exhibit to have in the original packet, but this was our roof deck. So this
better illustrates kind of the nature of the space. We're looking towards the north. So
this is the north end of the building south end down here There's a portion
of the roof deck as as discussed By Roby that's like we're gonna have some
outdoor spaces with seating groups and barbecues and things like that and then moving into
kind of the the the pea patch at the northern end and And we really
wanted to make sure that this space was going to be usable. So hence, we
wanted to actually move this up to the roof, particularly the P patch. We discussed
at one point having the P patch even at grade, and our concern was, It's
hard enough to grow stuff in Seattle as it is for most of us with
the brown thumb, but it's even worse when you only have access and light on
one side of the building. And putting the P-Patch and these outdoor uses up on
the roof where they're going to get really full days sunlight we felt was really
important and worth any of the trade-offs in that sense. Oh, excuse me, just real
quick. So I mentioned before about the buildup of planters. So obviously supplemental trees will
be added to meet our tree count. And yeah, the planters just get built up
bigger and to accommodate the root balls. So then for the building articulation, the two
studies that we looked at kind of were coming from two different angles. We looked
at this study, alternate number one, which really kept the corner box the same as
the prior study. because we felt like that was pretty successful. But with the body,
we understand that a more strict conformance with the break between level three and four
so that we get a one, two, three story division would better represent a strict
conformance with the code. Our architectural concern with that was just, as I mentioned before,
that the proportions of this were getting to be pretty equal. Like this is about
the same height as this, which is about the same height as this. Our eye
just didn't like it as much. To be honest, every designer's got a different opinion.
This is where ours saw it. It's not that this isn't viable, and this is
certainly one of the things we want to welcome your feedback on in that sense.
The next option that we looked at was kind of doing something similar, obviously, on
this side, because we felt like that was probably the most reasonable place for us
to go with what to do in this area, working within the prior scheme. But
also to take a different tack of saying, well, what if the corner just wasn't
successful enough and we had to really break it up again, even at the corner,
into this area? division between the third and the fourth levels. This scheme simply looks
at using again the same white cement board, but now we're switching to the synthetic
wood paneling and really bringing out the accent on this lower section. It's a lot
more vibrant, a lot more rich, a lot more impactful at that point. Since
we're trying to consider the building as four-sided design, and not only is it in
the code, but it's generally a good practice, and obviously we have a lot of
residents that live to the west of us, so it's that much more important. We
looked at also then being able to follow the similar design standard and bring down
that siding transition to better replicate that transition on the west. So just for everybody's
reference, this is the three schemes side by side. The original proposal over here, the
alternate study, the first one that just really worked on the main body, and then
the alternate study two that included the corner. The quick examples of how we treat
these pedestrian connections, this is the... east facing mid building pedestrian connection. So we added
in a pedestrian canopy that will connect up again, our bike rooms right behind here.
So this is that main point of connection. And then also this is the one
of the concrete walls that's enclosing the garage and we'd be able to do some
green screens and dress this up in addition to just the ground level landscaping of
which we are still going to have trees. So there's going to be multi layering
of what is going to be screening the project at that point. And then lastly
is really just looking at some of these other blank walls. I mentioned at the
north lobby, one of the areas where we would add a window and dealing with
some of the screening elements. And then at the south end next to that pedestrian
walk, this wall again we would have in that walkway space adjacent, there's plenty of
room for some additional landscaping that will help buffer that wall as well and further
screen all of this wall back. Because since this portion of the building is visible
from the sidewalk. And I believe that's it. We have some other reference materials
for that if we need it. But otherwise, that concludes, I think, our presentation. So
thank you for your time. So I think I'll open it for public. At this
point, we would like to open the public input portion of the meeting. If you'd
like to make a comment, we want to make sure that you sign in first.
And when you get up to the microphone, please state your
name and address and make your comment. We'll, depending on how
many people want to speak, we'll try and go for three
minutes. It looks like I'll just call the names off in
order if people are okay with that. John Falstrum, is that
correct? Good evening. My name is John Falstrum and I live
at 885 Seventh Avenue Northwest. I've been a resident of Issaquah
for over 50 years. And I appreciate the opportunity and the time
to stand before you tonight and outline some of the concerns I have related to
this project. I'm not anti-growth. I think growth is necessary, but it must be managed
with quality in mind and the infrastructure in place. My first concern with this project
is with the parking generated both during construction and after it is occupied. Like it
or not, Issaquah is a car-centric town. One has to only drive through here at
rush hour. This proposal only provides parking average of
one car space for each unit. This is based on
an urban design, not suburban for these calculations. Issaquah is
not yet an urban environment with well-developed bus routes and
other transportation methods. As is already the case with only
one of the three Atlas apartment buildings occupied, on-street parking and off-site parking
in the Safeway parking lot is already happening. On page 89 of the
document that was online that we all had opportunity to read, it was
identified that King County Metro bus routes are available on Gilman Boulevard. Partially
true. There are only six If I read the Metro Transit
online route guide, six Route 214 bus stops in the morning rush
hour only. Route 271 does not stop there. All other Metro routes
and sound transit routes have to be accessed at the park and
ride over a mile away. I don't
know if there's any discussions with King County and Metro to
increase that number of bus routes, but I think that's important.
For this project, I'm concerned about where the parking for the
construction workers will be. Atlas construction project parking spilled over into
our neighborhood at times. My next concern is with the traffic
generated by this project. An estimated 253 additional residents on top of
the 8 to 900 estimated for the Atlas Apartments results in over 1,000 new
residents in a three-block section of 7th Avenue NW. All of these new residents
and their guests will be utilizing 7th Avenue as they come and go. As
we all experience on a daily basis, Gilman Blvd. is often gridlocked, especially during
evening commute hours. This will result in a huge increase in traffic
on residential, non-standard streets such as 7th Avenue between Juniper and Hawley and
other routes as alternatives to Gilman are sought. These streets are not designed
to carry this extra traffic. Thirdly, I have several questions and concerns regarding
the actual construction of the project. How will truck traffic be routed?
Double dump trucks were utilized 7th Avenue NW to Juniper and
then west to Newport Way during the construction of the Atlas
project. This created an often hazardous situation as these intersections did
not always have flaggers. I heard tonight about the relocation of
the Juniper Trail as an aside. There's not a sidewalk on
the east side of 7th Avenue currently in front of the at
work location. Where will the pedestrian and bicycle traffic be routed when
that trail is closed for demolition and reconstruction? There is a huge
number of pedestrians already use that sidewalk. In the document that was
submitted, the developers discussed starting construction at 7 a.m.
There are several residents close by that would be adversely impacted by
that, especially during trucking operations and pile driving operations, as were identified
in the document. On page 82 of that document, there was a
discussion about the possible hazards with that location on those lots.
I have a concern that 100-year-old building that was Eyreless' house perhaps may have asbestos
in it. Is there an asbestos mitigation plan in place if that is found? Also,
considering there were two residences on that property that I'm aware of, one of which
has been torn down several years ago, were any home heating oil tanks abated? They
may still be on site. And the last thing
I'll mention tonight is Agenda Bill 7183 outlines several issues with respect to
the city's water supply. Staff identified that maximum demand on the water system
will be exceeded by the mid-2020s. If that projection is correct, why would
the city put the current residents at risk of no water by allowing
such projects that only tax the current system? I urge you
to consider delaying the approval of this project until the impacts of the
Atlas Apartments is seen and the necessary infrastructure is in place to handle
the additional traffic generated in the water system that is capable of handling
the long-term demands. Thank you. All right. Michael Boyle or Michelle Boyle. Michael
Boyle. Good evening, members of the Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to
speak to you tonight. My name is Michael Boyle. I live at 323
Northwest Dogwood. Since I have submitted my concerns in writing to Mike, I'll try
to be really brief. Mine are basically kind of in line with John's, and
it's traffic and parking. First off, traffic. In the mitigation plan, it talks about
a projected trip ratio of about 460 per day. with 33 of those in the
morning and 43 of those in the peak evening hours. Personally, given the number of
apartments and the possible price point of renting the apartments, it seems that that number
is kind of speculative since It's conceivable that both parties who live in the larger
units are going to have to work in order to meet the outcome. And while
I had a discussion with Mike about that concern, I do believe that number is
a little bit low. And even if the occupants do use other modes of public
transportation, you're still going to have an increased number of trips. And while the signal
that's been placed there at 7th and Gilman will probably help alleviate some of that
strain, in the end, that's been pointed out already, you still end up in Issaquah
here with two choke points, and those are both at I-90 and Front Street and
SR-900 and Front Street. So where are all those cars going to go? And my
second concern is the parking. While not really identified as an issue, I do believe
that the one-to-one parking ratio is a little low. I understand from talking to Mike
that these designs were done based on the current standards. However, if you look at
Governing.com based on the 2013 census in our area, the vehicle ownership ratio for occupants
who live in this area is 1.7 vehicles per family. So that 1.1 ratio is
short for those cars. I think it's a noble effort of the project to be
a pilot or to have the desire to be a pilot project to encourage public
transportation to use car sharing rides and bicycles and so forth. But again, as has
been pointed out, we're not downtown Seattle. We're not downtown San Francisco. While we do
have access, we have a large public transportation center, we don't have the large and
the close access that a lot of people do desire to utilize public transportation. So
we are kind of still a car-centric city. So what happens when this doesn't work
and where are all these cars going to go? And while I express my concern
about this individual project, I think since I don't live in the immediate area, my
biggest concern is this project combined in totality with the Atlas project, this project, and
then another proposed project, the Ennis project, I believe it is, on Newport Way. All
three of these are high density apartment projects and they all fall within the parameters
of and the border of the Central Issaquah Planning District. So it's just I am
not, like the previous speaker, I too am not opposed to growth. I just want
to see us grow responsibly. And it seems like this is a little bit too
much growth in a little too small of an area. um so i have concerns
about the totality of all three of these projects in such a small area i
too would also like to encourage the commission to take its time although i do
and it's been stated tonight that there's a desire upon the developer for you to
make a decision tonight and i certainly understand if i was in their shoes the
desire to do that but i would encourage the commission to take its time consider
all the facts and consider all the comments thank you thank you
Curtis Kregor. I apologize if I'm missing names. No, that sounds right. Curtis Kregor. I
live at 684 Northwest Holly, just down the street from John. I've lived in the
city for 15 years. Kind of fell in love with this place in 2002, just
right about the time I got married to my wife. I live right across the
street from Esquire Valley Elementary School, and I've seen that grow like crazy in
terms of transient. There's a lot of transient families that move into the area. So
the student growth is outrageous in the city of Issaquah. I've seen and I stopped
counting multiple times with developments going on in the city, just kind of egregious contractors
coming in and really not governing what's going on with their crews. There's a project
right now, they're doing a water retention area right on Newport and Juniper. Those double
trailer trucks run stop signs, idle in my neighborhood, idle in a school zone, and
do lots of things that just based on the laws aren't supposed to do. And
I've called the city, and matter of fact, the city told me to call the
police to make sure a construction company was following their rules. I think it's the
city's job to make sure that those companies are doing what they're supposed to do.
I second both John and I apologize for our name all of a sudden. Their
sediment in terms of traffic and other issues, we haven't even seen the totality of
Atlas. Haven't, haven't yet at all. And we're not going to for about a year.
And I would really, really, really, really encourage this commission to take the time and
do a real traffic study, take a look at what's going on with the residents
who are moving into that area and how they're using that neighborhood. You're going to
increase the traffic flow in three or four block area by 1,000 plus cars. There
are already more people driving through our neighborhood that don't live there that are just
trying to go from Gilman to Newport because both of those roads aren't managed properly.
So maybe there's something that should be done in a bigger traffic study on Holly
and Juniper and Seventh and Fifth and maybe Locust. But Locust is a street that's
a block and a half long. I think it sees like 25 cars in a
day if you're lucky. I bicycle on these streets, I walk on these streets, I've
almost been hit by cars not stopping at stop signs on these streets. We're gonna
increase that traffic flow terribly. And so again, I just wish that you guys would
do something a little bit more. And if I was a developer, I'd want to
push this through. I respect your guys and what you're doing. I work in an
industry where I ask people to do something profound for their customers. I'm asking you
guys to do something profound for your residents in this neighborhood. I'm asking that you
take the time and really look at the impact of all this development. I ask
you guys if you want to leave a legacy do something profound for your city.
I disagree with the building. It's not a legacy. Something else
should be done if you want to leave a legacy. I
love the fact that you're a longtime resident, longer than I've
been. I've lived in the state for 30 years. I am
deeply connected to the school district. I take 17 to 18
kids a year to trips around the world and do amazing
things. I'm leaving a legacy. Thank you very much for your
time. Ray Miller. Good evening council. My name is Raymond Miller. I
reside at 685 Northwest Juniper Street and actually My wife and I live
right on the corner of 7th and Juniper I'm a Practicing civil engineer
been doing it for over 30 years That's going to end in 21
days. So I'm looking forward to that not that I'm counting but
So I have typically represented these projects on behalf of the developer, but tonight
I'm in a hearing as a concerned citizen. My comments don't really have to
do with the project. I think it's a great project. I respect whatever you've
done tonight, and it looks like you've done a lot of work on this
project. My comments have to do more about what happens after the project.
Concerning traffic, we do live on the corner and we've lived there for
about 10 years now. I would say probably once, twice, maybe three times
a week. My wife and I have watched cars go right through the
four-way stop, not even touch the brakes for a variety of reasons. A,
they don't see the stop sign. B, they're new to the area.
I see they're in a hurry, they're taking a shortcut because they don't want to
get on Gilman. So along with that, and I'm also here, we have some neighbors
that we live with in the association and I live right across the street from
John, so a lot of what he has said, I echo those thoughts. But what
I'm concerned about is not only just the increase of traffic, but it's the pedestrian
traffic. And we've witnessed over the last 10 years a lot of more people walking
along the sidewalks, either to Gilman Square or Gilman Village or to Safeway, to the
Bellas. But they all seem to come through our area and through that four-way stop.
And what I'm afraid of is with the increase with the Atlas project, with this
project, with more pedestrian traffic and people walking, somebody's going to get hurt someday. And
I don't think it's a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Because people
just, they don't, a lot of them don't even slow down. They just go right
through the intersection. I think... I mean what I would see, what I'd like
to see there is possibly a four-way stoplight, not necessarily a stoplight but a
blinking light. Maybe some advanced warning that there is a four-way intersection and you're
supposed to stop. So I would hate to see something happen there. So I'd
just like the city to review that and see what we could do to
improve that intersection from a stopping and from a safety standpoint. Being an engineer,
I went through the packet and I looked at the SEPA. I looked at the
earthwork section and under earthwork there was no quantities given. They asked for given fill
and cut quantities and I think the statement said that there was, the quantities would
be given at a later date. The only reason I bring that up again is
because the site is low. The soils there are organic, they're loose, there's some peat.
So I would assume that there's going to be a lot of dirt excavation taking
place and there's going to be a lot of fill being brought in. I don't
know that for sure because I haven't seen a grading plan, but along with that
then there would be a lot of truck traffic and as was alluded to before,
the trucks that were coming from Atlas came right through this four-way stop. Most of
them stopped, but what happens is they make a wide turn and there's already cars
stacked up there. I mean, basically it would become gridlock until somebody backed up, somebody
moved out of the way. So it just created kind of a minor traffic jam
at the time. After a while, they finally brought a flag man over to, a
flagger over to that intersection to flag cars to stay back while the truck made
the turn. So I'm anticipating that that is going to happen again. So I would
hope that there would be some traffic control while those trucks are making those
turns. And again, increased wear and tear on the roads from this increased truck
traffic. So again, I'm just assuming that there's going to be a lot of
material both hauled off the site and onto the site. From a stormwater standpoint,
again, I don't have the luxury of looking at the plans, but the
The 2009 King County surface water manual is what's been adopted by the city. I
do know that in April of 2016, King County adopted the new manual. The only
reason I bring this up is because, again, I'm not sure what kind of runoff
control they have. I'm assuming it's going to be an underground stormwater vault. I'm
assuming that water quality is going to be either a wet vault, could be rain
gardens, it could be storm filters, some kind of an engineered system. But over the
years we've witnessed the ditch along the north side there fills up with water quite
a bit during heavy runoff, so we have a high water table. So
given the fact that the new manual may have stringent controls or
more standards about runoff control and storage that it might be advisable
to have additional storage on the site for those extreme events. And
I echo the discussion on parking. We've witnessed, I mean, we
have a two-car garage, but we also have friends and visitors that come
to our place and park on the street. Sometimes there's no parking, so
they end up parking somewhere else where other people should have been parking.
So it just kind of, you know, it's like a domino effect. So
I think that's it. Again, thank you. Appreciate it. Emily Freit.
Good evening. My name is Emily Freit. I live at 205 Newport Way Northwest. I've
been a resident of Issaquah since 2001. I thank everybody for their time today and
all of you. I'm so glad that the community is here and listening and paying
attention to what's going on around us. I echo very deeply all of the comments
that we've heard from the other residents today and I thank those gentlemen for taking
the time to prepare those remarks and share them with everybody in this room. I
was impressed with the time and energy by the city, the commission, and
the developers put into the planning of this community. I don't fear change
any more than every other human. We all fear change. I'm actually a
supporter of urban infill and growing in density. I'm not a supporter of
what's happening in our community right now at the speed of which it's
happening. We have several problems that need to be mitigated and I think
that we have a community that with forethought and planning can eventually accommodate something very
much like the Vail property. I want us to think about why we aren't ready.
And we're not ready for everything we've heard today but I'm going to repeat them
because it's important. We're not ready because we don't have the infrastructure in place. I
appreciate that there was a traffic study and 7th Avenue. Those of us familiar
with the area know that that's not where the impact is. The impact is going
to bleed over towards Newport, towards Gilman, and into our schools. So we're not ready
from an infrastructure perspective. And I have several questions, and one I want to make
sure that is on the record is that where did the approximately $459,000
estimate in traffic mitigation fees come from and what exactly do they
pay for? Additionally, we have to think about how this impacts the
community. One of the gentlemen before me talked about Issaquah Valley Elementary
School. Issaquah Valley Elementary School grew by eight classrooms just two years
ago and is already overcrowded. we're not ready to properly place more
residents with more kids in the school without impacting the rest of the
community. We're just not ready. So as you consider what to do about
the growth and the development in totality, this is just one part, but
I want us to please think about strict compliance versus what the spirit
of those governing, you know, strict compliance with, you know, with all of the, sorry,
I haven't lost for words right at the moment, but there is what is legal
and what is within compliance, and then there's also what's right to do and the
right timing. And that is where we have to look to you to think about
what the spirit of what we're trying to achieve is and whether making sure that
we're ticking all the boxes is really what we're looking for. So
again, thank you for the time, and please consider
the longer-term implications and how with a little bit
more patience and more intentional planning, we'll be able
to accommodate things like this in the future. Thank
you. One last, Steve Peruria? Sorry, might have that
wrong. If that sounds even close to your name.
There you go. CHRIS JERRAM: Mary? Would
you just put that over there? Hi, members of the committee and to the public.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak. I had several thoughts. I would reiterate folks have
talked about parking and they're not being-- I'm sorry. I always forget that part. My
name's Steve Pereira. I live on 170 Northeast Dogwood Street for about nine years. Thank
you. So I want to mitigate or repeat those concerns about parking,
cumulative impacts of Atlas and this place are some concerns. I guess I've
already forgotten another thing. I want to commend the apartment complex for several
features. One is the biking, having more than adequate bike parking is a
good thing and the parking the energy and the water consumption reduction efforts. I think
those are good features as well. So I wanted to take a minute to say
thank you for those. On the negative side though, again, the parking doesn't seem to
be adequate. There doesn't seem to be cumulative effects of parking. I don't see, I
think I saw the feature of $492,000 approximately in traffic mitigation fees that will be
generated by this. A concern I have though is that, as I understand it, and
I'll let other people correct me, There's no requirement that that mitigation fees get used
for any particular project. They can be used anywhere in the city for any particular
project. So there's no necessary link between building this complex and mitigating the impacts at
the area that they're located. That's a concern for me and it should be a
concern for residents as a whole. I know that in
my own neighborhood on Northeast Dogwood and throughout the city, I see people speeding and
there's more and more requirements for the police to have to find people to get
people to follow the behaviors that they should be doing. And I look at the
capital plan that we've talked about I don't know that I see the
resources for the police department to do that because we're not following the
laws and people are already in a condition where they're passing through neighborhoods,
residential neighborhoods without an impact. So the thought I had was the tree
mitigations not being met or the tree restrictions not being met. One of
my concerns is that we're taking mature trees of a larger size and we're
replacing them with smaller trees that fit into a stand. It's not the same level
of tree, it's not the same growth density. I know that I've seen planning documents
where the city is trying to maintain a 50% or greater tree canopy area in
the area and we're taking large, full growth, mature trees. agree that they
may have some concerns with those picket trees, but they
should be able to require to replace trees of the
same density, of the same growth, of the same carbon
offset that being removed, not with smaller trees that are
landscaping size. So I would also agree with not having
a requirement to reduce the requirements for the number of
trees and for replacing the trees with number of trees.
I guess that's my concerns. Thank you.
My name is Mary Lynch and
I reside at 2690 Northwest Oak
Crest Drive, Issaquah, Washington. I just
want to reinforce that I support
what the others have said here
tonight. Also, just mentioned with the
CIP, I do agree that this
is a nice building. I think
it's way ahead of what we've
seen with Atlas and Gateway and
what the developer is trying to
attempt in the way of green
building and low energy. That being said, one of the things
that we've continued to ask for with the city and part of the CIP was
supposed to be mixed use. This building easily could have had mixed use and it
doesn't, which it also would reduce some of the impact, I think, on the neighborhood
and create it more of a community asset. History of the area. I remember Earlis'
piece of land being flooded many times. I've also walked along the trail that
you talk of. It was landscaped once, but the city and the existing property
owners have not maintained it. But it does flood routinely also. So I just
second the comments on stormwater. retention. What Mike just said about the mature, or Steve,
about the mature trees, I also second that. I think there's actually a sequoia tree
right now on that property. There's also, give you a view, this is from the
back area. There's any number of cedar and evergreens, which if you'll do not only
carbon offset, but storm water and the amount of water they retain. I don't see
anything in the landscape area that has any evergreens. uh... the emerald greens they talk
about are shrubs not trees i also am concerned about ages and what it's going
to do to those citizens during construction and uh... afterwards as far as with senior
citizens especially with uh... uh... type that they have uh... noise anything that changes is
going to upset that community tremendously and i just have concerns for that this is
from the north uh... East corner looking south again you'll see you can't even see
Aegis right now. You won't be able to see it again with the because the
building will be there. But I have concerns about the trees. I also had just
got a brief look and I want to thank Mike for sending me the traffic
report. It wasn't online but here is conditions, I was talking about only five pedestrians
during peak hours. I think that's totally unrealistic for future growth. We have atlases going
in there and residents are going to be moving in. With this apartment, I can
see more than five people during peak times that are going to be walking along
there. With Emily, I know she's involved with some of the getting the kids to
Issaquah Valley. This is a major street that we're talking about that kids are going
to be leaving Atlas, leaving this complex and walking down Issaquah Valley. As someone identified,
there's no sidewalks on the other side of the street. So during construction, where are
these children going to be walking? How are they going to safely get to Issaquah
Valley? I see nothing mentioned in the traffic study about the school buses that routinely
loop through there and take kids to Issaquah High and Issaquah Middle. Their bus stop
is on that corner down at 7th and Juniper. Nothing about buses going through this
area at all. give you an idea of the street, that's looking up the street
towards the new one. You'll notice it's right on a curve. Right here is where
the trail comes out. But if you know, anybody that rides bikes normally doesn't go
down the sidewalk. They go right on past and over to Locust. It's where they
ride their bikes. and I see nothing talking about improving any traffic calming or improving
the mobility at all. I don't even see that this overall project has gotten a
mobility study. And one of the things that a lot of us are continuing to
say is how are the connections going to be made for mobility? Just because you
put a bicycle path in front doesn't mean anything if you can't get from one
place to another place or across the street safely. Here's another picture in looking south,
just to give you an idea. All these existing trees which the city spent a
lot of money to put this sidewalk in and trees are going to be torn
up. And where is the true mitigation of that? Because that was our tax dollars
that not too long ago was spent to get this. So yes, there's some mitigation
fees, but that's our tax dollars going down the drain one more time. And so
let's not build something else that maybe in five years we're going to do something
else with this street and come tear it up again and use our taxpayers again.
So please slow the process down. Look at what we're doing. Look at the overall
access for mobility for this and how it fits in. And especially with construction, it's
already been brought up. If you remember, Gateway didn't mention at the time
of the approval that there was going to be 13,000 dual-haul trucks for peat alone.
This is an area that I'm living here 30 years ago. I know what went
in at Safeway. This is going to require peat removal. How many trucks is it
going to take? to get it, how many pile drivings, what's the impact on the
community, what's the impact on the local businesses. During Atlas, the locust being almost went
out of business because no one even knew that they were opening. funding. So with
part of your mitigation, you have to figure out what is
happening to the businesses around there and the residents. We pay
the taxes right now. They will eventually, but we are the
ones that pay now. And please take care of us. Slow
the process down. Make sure it is the right fit for
the area. And please put our quality of life first when
you make your decisions. Thank you. Good evening. David Kappler, 255
SE Andrews Street. The commission is pretty, it's got limited to some degree because
of the near compliance with the Central Issaquah Plan with this project. And that's a
problem with the Central Issaquah Plan, which is hopefully going to be revised. And the
council has got a lot of concern about it. Now, it was adopted by the
council after I was off the council, so I can not have to take credit
for that one anyway. Did other mistakes. There are some things that commission at least
can take on. Excavation traffic. Are we going to put all of this on the
residential, much more residential area to the south, or are we going to get it
used Gilman? There's going to be truckloads of material going offsite, it sounds like, material
coming on, plus the other construction traffic. The city can have an impact on that.
Where the construction parking will occur. they can have some impact on how parking
by the people working at the site will be dealt with. It's going to be
much harder in two years to regulate or whenever where residents who have two cars
are parking those cars somewhere on some side street to the south or whatever, but
at least the city has some way of managing construction parking. John and now Mary
both mentioned that there's no sidewalk on the east side of 7th. What is
going to happen during the time of construction of this building very close to
that trail and the time when the trail is changed, redone, moved? How are
the pedestrians and bicycles going to get safely through that corridor? It's a major
safety issue. It's going to be happening after a significant number of people live
in Atlas, including children that need to get to the elementary school straight
south of Atlas. There was one mention about the redo of the Juniper
Trail and talked about pavers, which would be totally inappropriate, especially with Aegis,
and I would think people would be out taken for walks in their
wheelchairs and those kinds of things. We want a reasonably flat surface. It can be
textured concrete or something, but we don't want to see pavers on a major trail
that will be taking bikes, wheelchairs, and the rest. Kind of a...
The Central Issaquah Plan is going to go through this process of revision. Hopefully the
commission takes a strong position on being involved in that redo. You've worked with it
more than any other civilians in the city, much more so than the city council,
really, in seeing what the strengths and weaknesses are of the existing plan. You need
to be involved. Of course, citizens will need to be involved as well.
Please do what you can to improve this project. Thank you. Are there
any other members of the public that wish to be heard? No, I'm
not going to speak again, but I failed to do this. I just
wanted to publicly thank Mike Martin for just how responsive he's been, transparent
and helpful, just communicative during. I know there are a lot of people
who have sent him things, and I know personally for me, he's been
really quick. So I just want to publicly acknowledge the job he's done.
Thank you.
So my name is Connie
Marsh and I have a
store at 1175 Northwest Gilman
Boulevard and also live in
Issaquah. And I've been doing this for about 20 years and this is
the first time I've ever gotten an email the day of a DC meeting saying
that the proponent was hoping that y'all would vote for it that night. And I
gotta say, I thought that was appalling. We're trying to create a town thoughtfully with
public consideration and public input and to be asked that i think shows that something
is wrong within the system i don't even think that that should have been
forwarded out the answer is just this is the process and you have to
do it so that that sort of has made me crankier in my comments
than i might be for this particular project tonight because Most of it,
the rules say that they can do it. The building to me is mad. It
looks just like the hotel that's going in down the street, except for they're putting
sort of a housing overlay on the top of it. It's nothing special, nothing signature
for Issaquah. It's right next to Atlas. And so you have these two large buildings
right next to each other. And then just down the street, you're going to have
the Spock property going in. And this is a heavy duty building. cumulative impact in
one area of town that I don't think is adequately considered by the studies that
were provided. The transportation study basically said they were only looking at 7th and Locust
and the entrance at Locust. And as many have said, that that is an
inappropriate amount of impact on traffic and that is not the way traffic flows
anymore within Issaquah. And I think that their impacts are vastly understated for what
we will see happening. The tree retention, you know,
we are Tree City USA. We have a tree canopy requirement in our
comprehensive plan. So when you're doing administrative minor modifications to remove trees in
our Tree City USA that we take great pride in, I think that
is, again, inappropriate. So we are changing our trees instead of changing the
development itself. So what do we want to do? Do
we just want more of these high dense apartment buildings and
at the loss of our tree canopy? Me, I vote no.
I echo Mary, no evergreen trees. We're getting canick-a-nick and deciduous
trees all through town. That does not give us a stereotypic
Northwest experience. The geotechnical report, was fascinating talking about very wet soils lots of peat
i do know that the end of the land shows that it does flood though
it is not shown on the flood maps i don't believe that anyone has told
them about the sand boils that were popping out just across the street from them
when they were excavating because the geotech report did not seem to indicate that that
that was a concern. So I don't think that right now it's based on
appropriate information. They say it's going to be peer reviewed, but I think that
some new conditions should come out from a review of the geotech report. Also,
I would like to start seeing a condition for a commitment to a communication
plan for the neighborhoods during construction. And I, And I think that you do have
the purview for that, but it comes up over and over and over again. And
you aren't telling them what to do. You're just saying that they need to consistently
communicate with the neighborhood so that people don't go out of business. They can get
out of their houses and they can live their lives as construction is going out
around them. So if I was going to ask for one new condition, it would
be that condition. And I'm sort of apathetic about the whole thing. It feels
like I can do nothing about it. And that's disappointing because I come
to a meeting, you sit and you talk and you hope for making
the town better. And it feels like we're losing. So thanks. Other members
of the public choose to speak? All right, I will close the public
portion, public input portion of this meeting. And now I'll turn some time
over to the commissioners and find out what questions or issues they might
have to voice. - Mr. Chair, I'd just like to ask Mike if
he has any responses that he can give right now to some of the issues
that were raised by the members of the public. If not, then we'll have to
do it at the next meeting. But if you can answer some of the questions
concerns or if you believe that there was some inaccurate information or something else you'd
like to provide. I'd like to hear. I guess the first question would be to
ask if the commission wishes to entertain making a decision tonight because if they do,
I think we need to discuss all of these issues and hash them out. Otherwise,
the typical protocol, and I'm happy to answer the ones that I can, a lot
of these are going to require research. And those responses are typically provided in
the briefing response memo. So do you have a sense on if you want to
try to make a decision tonight? Well, since I asked the question, I'll just be
the first one to answer. There are too many issues to go on tonight as
far as I'm concerned. I would just ask, why do you want it approved tonight?
So I want to be clear that staff is neutral on this request.
This is not coming from city staff. This is a request on behalf
of the applicant. So I would turn it over to the applicant to
answer that question. Yeah, we had asked to have it approved tonight. We've
spent over 14 months diligently working with city staff and our entire third
party consultant teams to put forward a thoughtful project. and we feel that
we've addressed all the conditions that the city has brought up and we felt it
appropriate that we've done the work necessary to get it approved since we have a
code compliant project. - So a comment on the question. So I appreciate that Mr.
Shaw and appreciate the time and effort that's been put into this. and working with
the city, but we also have an obligation to work with our community as well.
And we heard a lot tonight of concerns that obviously we're not going to be
able to respond to tonight. So an answer to the question for me is there
are too many kind of pieces of information that I would like to know a
little bit more about. And obviously the public has interests that they would like to
hear responses to as well. So I think the additional time, and I think we
have a meeting scheduled like two or three weeks out, so it's not too far
out, that we could come back and finish the conversation on this and see if
we're at a place of approval. But for me, this evening, I think there's too
much on the table to be resolved between now and the time we get out
of here. So with that, so what I'm hearing is that we will proceed to
a second meeting as scheduled. That meeting is scheduled for October 19. That's a Wednesday
at 7:00 PM in this room. Did everybody get that? So we've
heard two commissioners. Any other comments on the issue of making a
decision tonight? I sort of feel it's a moot point if you
have one commissioner. It's probably-- Right. So how about other questions or
issues that were raised that you would like further deliberation on or
further information? - Maybe a couple of just technical questions.
I guess, what's the level of affordability being provided? - I can
look that up. - While Mike's checking on that, it's a code
requirement. I believe it's low income, which is 80% and below, but
we can confirm. It's specified, it's not a discretion. - Right, and
I wonder if it's affordable, like 80% or 50 or 60 or,
you know. So I actually don't have that information in the staff report,
but we'll be sure to get that in the briefing response. Is
that a local or is it a state or county? Who sets
the, decides what's affordable? It is, it's a specific percentage based on
the King County median income. So again, it is established metrics and
not discretionary decisions. Maybe another quick question. We didn't see any signage
as part of this. I didn't see any even an indication of possible location of
monument sign or anything like that or where it might fit in the building. So
you're talking about like signage to market the building or the building sign? Identifying. They
didn't provide any with the application. Typically we don't review signage at this level. It's
a separate sign permit. Certainly the applicants they can kind of show you what they
might be proposing with the briefing response, but that information wasn't provided with the original
submittal. - I guess that's one of my disappointments is that we used to see
signs as part of packages like this, so we would know where a monument's gonna
be, how it's gonna fit with the project itself, and have that separated and not
know that I think is not helpful. - So, Just a couple of
points. Monument signs aren't allowed anymore, so it would be more likely
a building sign. I'm not saying it's not part of the overall
understanding of the package. The-- Like the Atlas sign would not be
allowed now? One that's out by the street? So, okay. So, you
of course are making me be specific. And I like that.
So in some cases, so monument signs are not allowed outright. They are
allowed under certain circumstances. For instance, building sites that haven't redeveloped, a monument
sign may still be appropriate because they are still in a suburban configuration.
The same would be true with Atlas because of the floodway. They couldn't
be located at the corner so that building signage would not have communicated that, so
they were allowed to put a sign in that location due to that site requirement.
- Lucy, I think some of the folks in the back are having trouble hearing
you there. - Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you for letting me know. And then
the other piece is we can certainly ask the applicant for more information
in Central Issaquah. The signage is not part of the required part of
the package that comes with the site development permit to the Development Commission,
but we can certainly request that information in the briefing response memo. Great.
Thank you. Go ahead. Just a couple
more on the kind of the procedural front here. So there were administrative adjustments of
standards that were proposed. It wasn't clear to me whether those have been approved yet
or they're still under consideration based on what I read in the staff report. These
were included as part of this package. Okay. So this is, you are the decision
maker. Okay, so these weren't the purview of the director then? These were
commissioned? So they can be administrative at this point, or they can be consolidated, and
at this point they're consolidated. Okay, consolidated. Great, thank you for that clarification, so we'll
think about those. Also, the SEPA review is still underway according to the staff report,
and there were some concerns raised this evening about some technical issues in the SEPA
review, like the cut and fill and the amount of earth movement that's going to
be required. related to the project, how that could impact transportation
system with trucks entering and leaving the site, et cetera. So what's the
status of the SEPA review and is that specific issue being dealt with
more directly in that review because the comment about that information wasn't provided
and the SEPA checklist was accurate, it wasn't noticed in the checklist, it
was not? So I think the big question that I'm hearing is how much import
export of materials is proposed and that's a big part of it. Um, we requested
that information from the applicant and it's on the order of four to 500 trucks.
based on the initial analysis. Given that relatively low amount in comparison to
some other recent projects, we did not feel it warranted a SEPA mitigation
condition because the existing code criteria that we have with construction hours and
haul routes, one, and I'll talk about that in a moment, that would
be covered under our existing criteria. As far as construction traffic, construction parking,
hall routes. All of those things are required components during the construction permit review. We
require a construction management plan. I hear the folks tonight that that's an impact and
that is certainly something that we are going to really drill down on to make
sure that this is not creating adverse impacts to the community. We're going to make
them show us how they're going to park their vehicles, their construction vehicles, how it
is they're going to get their trucks in and out of the site so that
they're not creating huge impacts to the community. Now we recognize that there are some
impacts. You can't build a building of this structure and this size without having some
impacts, but there are things we can do to try to address that and we
will do that through a robust construction management plan and parking plan. - Mike, I
also, I heard along that exact same line. That's great and I think I would
encourage that. I know we're not in the comment section yet, but there was a
suggestion tonight that I had not heard before, but it seems to me to be
an opportunity to significantly address the neighborhood concerns. And that was the suggestion that there
be a neighborhood communications plan that is on the web that gives all of
the information that you just said the city is going to be developing anyways
and gives the, citizens around there the ability to know what is legal and
what isn't according to the city and the applicant and then to be able to
take action for correction if you will whenever they see that if there's if that's
available i think i don't think that's been available in the past something like that
that's just a compilation of what you and the applicant work out in in terms
of truck routes and hours and parking and things like that to make it available
on the website. Would, do you think that's possible? Absolutely. I think we're doing some
of those things now with pushing out information through our website. I think we have
an opportunity to be even better and be more transparent with that. I know in
talking with the applicant team that they are proposing their own strategies to inform the
neighbors during construction. And if you wish to talk about that, certainly there's an opportunity.
But yes, I hear your point loud and clear. We need to be transparent with
the community and we need to let them know the impacts that are coming and
how they can integrate that into their daily lives so that it's not creating a
huge burden. - I just don't think you can over communicate. - So there, A
former journalist would say that. There are two things I
would add to what Mike said. One, Gateway has done
an email, monthly email communication with the neighborhood and we've
learned some things through that process that I think would
help facilitate this. There's also new construction hour extended
construction hour requirements, including noticing of that. And so I think that
begins to address some of the concerns that we heard as well
as your request. And we can put together a clear description of
what's possible in our briefing response memo so it's clear.
I just want to add one thing about these kind of preliminary plans we developed
to mitigate the impacts of construction. Another thing I heard tonight was pedestrian impacts as
we do not have a sidewalk on the east side. Certainly that gets integrated into
the plan and our expectation is that they will maintain safe pet access through the
duration of construction. So they'll need to demonstrate that and come up with a plan,
whether that's scaffolding. You've seen that on some higher density developments or whatever that might
be. But that will certainly be a requirement. Can we drill down on that a
little more, too? Because to me, it's a big concern. This is one of the
few sort of north-south pedestrian access in that area. And as far as I know,
there's no sidewalk on the other side and just parking. I mean, I'd like to
know more when they come back about how that's actually planned out instead of just
assuming it'll be, they'll come up with a good plan. I'm sure they've got to
be thinking about that already anyway, so. - Right, and I think, These are some
of the challenges with a tight site and and in some of these neighborhoods. And
I agree that at least at a high level, we need to be able to
you know, it's good to set those expectations as part of this approval. And I
think we should be able to describe what the options are because it might be
one, you know, I think the point that was made was, you know, it's one
thing when the Juniper Trail is under construction, it may be another after that is
reconstructed. And so the staging and sort of strategic plan about which pieces are done
when to say minimize the impacts to pedestrians and bicyclists, it would be helpful to
figure some of those things out sooner than later at a sort of high level
of what our options are. Yeah. Great. Other issues? I guess
I have a question. Can we pull up an
overhead? You want an aerial photo? Aerial photo, if
you could, of the extended 7th Avenue. I actually
included one of those in my presentation, just in
case. So the site is located in the red
box, obviously. I can zoom in a little more.
If you can zoom in, it'd be helpful. I
guess my question is, crosswalks, across 7th Avenue, where
would something be located? I'm partly thinking of people from the Atlas Apartments going
to the Juniper Trail or the Vail Apartments trying to cross over. So the
initial proposal for this project was to have two vehicle access points, one at
the north and one at the south. Through analysis, it was determined
that that cannot be done safely given the conflicts of pedestrians and vehicles
because there's that awkward curve in the road that that's been a real
challenge in designing this. I think there is going to be a crossing
there, and we're still working with our Public Works Engineering Department to determine
where that can be located so that there aren't safety issues. Is
it a requirement of this project to put in a crosswalk then? On
7th? So Atlas put in crosswalks and because there are changes being made
to that emergency access route, we have to evaluate if adjustments have to
be made to the curb ramps that were put in by Atlas. But
there is a, there are curb ramps in now. And again, they
may have to be adjusted during this project. So the answer is
there will be a crossing. I think the final location isn't quite
nailed down yet. It'll be near where it is now, but it
might shift to the north. Mr. Chairman, so might the... -
The elephant in the room is always traffic. The report that we
got that was cited by some of the folks that had already
seen it is that 460 average daily trips and on page 88
of 162, it says the project indicates the average weekday will generate
460 trips per day, two parentheses, 230 entering, 230 leaving, parentheses, peak
volume is at 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. And then on page 95
or 162, it says the proposal would generate approximately 460 average daily
trips, same number, with 33 trips during the a.m. peak hour and
43 trips during the p.m. peak hour. So two questions. One is
the 33 and 43, The difference between those two added together in 460 is
the traffic in the rest of the day, the trips that will be generated during
the rest of the day? - So you're asking some technical questions about traffic and
we have the traffic engineer here. So I think it's appropriate to have him address
these if that's okay. - Okay, 'cause I've got a follow up to that too.
- Yeah. - And I'd ask you to please introduce yourself. - Yeah, definitely. My
name is Matt Palmer. I work for Gibson Traffic Consultants. I'm a principal with Gibson
Traffic Consultants and I've been an engineer in the state of Washington since 2006. So
traffic, daily traffic is the traffic that's generated by the project over a 24-hour period.
The 33 trips that are generated during the peak hour, the a.m. peak hour, is
the peak hour between 7 and 9 a.m., the a.m. peak. and the 43 trips
generated during the PM peak are generated between the 4 and 6 peak hour.
So it's only a single hour. The AM and the PM is just one
hour. So basically those are only representing two hours out of the day. The
remaining trips are generated throughout the other 22 hours. Okay. And it was also
indicated that the 7th is at - Let me just for the record
for the public folks that are here that haven't been to these meetings before.
The standards that Issaquah is adhering to when it comes to capacity of the
traffic infrastructure are national standards, is that correct? - That is correct. - And
deviation from those standards, we understand in previous Development Commission meetings, there is a
reluctance by municipalities to deviate from the national standards because that could open municipalities to
liability issues if there are accidents that occur and it turns out that the city,
the municipality in question did not adhere to the national standards. Is that correct? National
standards are what we typically derive everything off of. Right. For instance, the trip generation,
it was based on a manual that's been published for decades now and it's been
added to over time, additional studies get added to it. It's by the Institute of
Transportation Engineers, it's called the Trip Generation Manual. And for a mid-rise department,
so there's probably 100 different land uses within there. And for residential developments, there's apartments,
there's single-family homes. In this case, there's mid-rise apartments. And it simply states that if
you're a three-story building or taller, you fall within this nomenclature of land use. So
the trip generation for this site is, Although it sounds like a couple of the
people, a couple of the neighbors identified that there were going to be 253 additional
residents being added to this site and I'm not sure where they came up with
those but in the end the amount of trips being generated during the peak hour,
the daily and the a.m. is based on trip generation rates over multiple studies over
average rates throughout the entire country. Okay, so the study on this particular
project looked just at seventh or did it, can you tell us
the purview or the range, when you looked at this to develop
those numbers, did it consider, did your study consider the impact of
these residents on not just on Juniper and Seventh, but on Newport and Gilman, where
these people are going to be going out. - Okay, so we scoped the study
with Fay Schaffee, who's with the city. She went ahead and the city runs, we
presented a scoping memo early on in the process where we identified the trip generation
for the site, how many units it was going to be, and basically where the
access points were going to be. They then ran that information through the city's model
that identified where those trips were going to likely go to and from. Based on
that model, which was similar to what Atlas Apartments had, we took our trips and
we placed them on the road system. Then we contacted Fay and identified which intersections
were most what they were interested in us to study. In the end, because 7th
and Gilman was getting a brand new signal, which I believe is up already but
hasn't been turned on yet, We weren't asked to analyze that because we were initially
going to have a northern access point. We were asked to analyze the intersection of
7th and Northwest Locust and just our southern access point. So I don't have a
pointer. Use the mouse, yeah. So right, 7th and Locust and then just our southern
access point here. We weren't asked, excuse me, we weren't asked to study Juniper and
7th or any other off-site intersections. because the trip generation for the site is
actually relatively low when considered to, again, the city standards for doing analysis for
studies. - So let me add something. A couple of years ago, the city
went to simplified concurrency, and part of that is, Prior to that, they
ran the traffic model for the entire city and intersections that experienced a
certain amount of change or locations that experienced a certain amount of change.
required improvements, those could be on the other side of town. That
was a very hard thing for developers to do. Like many other
cities in the area, we went to the simplified concurrency model, which
the traffic study is intended to examine safety and functionality generally
specifically associated with the project. So the drives, the frontages, the
immediate intersections. The purpose of the significantly higher impact fees is
then it is the city's responsibility to use those fees to
fix the overall system to keep it functioning and not the
developer who may not have the ability to make enough change
or significant change in those other locations. And if I may add on just
one piece because there was a question about the traffic impact fees and where
that comes from. So that's a codified amount that was based on the simplified
concurrency that was adopted in 2015. Sorry. That amount is on the order of
I think $4,600 per unit. That's not the exact number. $4,898.32. So 4,800 per
unit times all of the units in the development comes out to just shy of
half a million. So and actually I do want to address the neighbors did bring
up the fact about or the question about cumulative impact. So we did as part
of the traffic study we were required to look at adding Atlas's impact into the
intersections of our access point and the adjacent intersection as well. And in the end,
the amount of trips on 7th at the intersection of 7th and Locust in
the future was approximately 357 total trips through that intersection during the PM peak
hour. Additional trips? No, no. Total trips including Atlas and our development. And that
works out to about less than a vehicle every 10 seconds actually going through
that intersection. Sorry, is that Locust 7th? Locust and 7th, correct. So... -
Mike and Lucy, my last question, I know it's on that subject. I
think it's accurate to say that there are a lot of folks that
are concerned about the time lag between the assessment of the fees, the
construction of the project in question, and the actual benefit of the application
of the traffic impact fees for all and/or a given project. So
I don't even know how to really address the question or phrase the question,
but is it, I guess it would be accurate, is it accurate to say
that there is in fact a significant, as in a couple of years or
more, delay between the assessment of the impact, traffic impact fee and the actual
application of the money that's received from the developer to improve traffic? So we
get into this, I think what has people concerned is this kind of do loop
that yes, they pay, which I understand Seattle doesn't pay, or Seattle doesn't require traffic
impact fees from developers. That was in the Seattle Times. - They do in the
Northgate overlay area and in the South Lake Union overlay area. - That's what I
read. The rest of the town, they don't do that. So we're ahead of the
game in that respect. Is that accurate to say that is the
reality of it? They're paying impact fees, but the actual, this
$500,000 that are almost that Vail is paying will go into
a pot to fix problem areas and it may be years
before there's actual expenditure of the money. So state law
allows those fees to be spent within six years.
Okay. Ten, sorry. Ten? Ten years. Well, that, okay.
That's an explanation for the phenomena. Okay, thank you,
Mr. Chair. Are there other questions or concerns that
we would like to, the commissioners would like to
address? Mike, I've got a question on the, sorry,
I gotta go back to the page. on
the tree retention language. So this is on page
22 of the report under 10.18, the administrative adjustment
of standards. As I understand it, we're going from
a required 25% to 0% retainage. The language there
says reductions to the tree retention greater than zero,
less than 25% are allowed. I guess I don't
understand that because it's... We're going from 25 to 0,
and this is greater than 0, less than 25. So the code
allows the Development Services Department administration to approve a reduction in the
tree retention. However, so theoretically, that could go down to one. Administratively,
if we decided, the Development Services Department could say you could keep
one tree. And if we agreed with the criteria and there's criteria
set forth to do that, if they had done that, we could have
approved that. They elected to go to zero. And we weren't feeling like
that was something that was allowed within the criteria for a reduction. Hence,
it's being brought forth as an AAS. I will add that there are
four trees, I believe they're all conifers, located along the east property line,
or the west property line, rather, that their arborist, and I think he's here still,
felt like there's a good chance to retain. I asked them to show those as
not being retained, not because we want to see them cut down, but because we've
seen other projects where developers have said they can keep a tree and then when
they start digging they can't. I wanted to err on the side of caution and
say hey look if you're not 100 sure we just need to assume that they
can't be kept but they are going to make an effort to keep those trees
if they can work them in they're right near the property line so if if
they can do their work without causing damage i think hopefully we can retain some
of those okay so the if i understand right you're saying that if they've gone
from 25 to 1 you could have administratively approve that? - Yes. - Production, but
since they went to zero, it becomes administrative adjustment of standards. But in this
case, we're approving. - Yes. - Would it be possible, I guess, to have
the landscaper come up and landscape architect? Well, I was thinking actually the landscape
architect to talk about the questions that came up about no evergreen trees being
included in the landscaping.
Again, I'm Roby Snow with the LA Studio. And we actually, I don't have a
map up, but we actually do have evergreens. And I pointed them out on the
plan. We have the Hollywood juniper in the community amenity, ground level amenity space. -
I guess the question came up, it was evergreen trees versus evergreen bushes. - Yeah,
this is a tree. I mean, a Hollywood juniper is a tree. And
then we also have camasipirous, you know, the cedar
in the riparian zone listed to be placed in
that riparian zone. The other areas, yeah, that's fine.
So yeah, we have the Hollywood juniper in this
area to help screen those blank walls. And then
we have some evergreens in this area to help to provide that native riparian
feel. And then other than that, no, we do not have any other larger,
the trees that Mike mentioned are I think generally in this area right along
the boundary. And if we can work with civil engineering to look at grades
and stuff, Those trees may be able to be retained there. So you would
see those trees there instead of the Katsura and the Arborvitae. The rest of these
trees, this hedge, some people call them shrubs, some people call them trees. If you
let them go, they'll get 20, 30 feet tall. So that, to me, is a
tree. Some people keep them small and hedge them off and keep them six feet
tall. Maybe that's a shrub. we have like a hundred of them
lining this you know shoulder to shoulder to provide a dense evergreen a
multi-layered uh buffer to the neighboring property so um I'm sure
we could look at areas. It's just that these trees, we are providing the
code required space for the landscape buffer. And you put an evergreen tree in
there and it starts to affect the parking. So that's why we have more
of a standard trunk canopy tree that can provide shade to the parking but
still allow access for vehicles. Is there a possibility at the southwest corner?
This area? Yeah. Well, actually this is an older map. We have a
utility cabinet there now. So, would have been a good spot for one.
Well, there is the community space. On the roof? No, I'm saying down
on the one that's kind of just off the center down at the
ground level. The indentation? Yes. So I think what the
landscape architect is identifying is that there are some conifers. Now
we can talk about whether the species that they're providing is
appropriate and there may be locations on either side of the
parking lot depending on impacts to sight lines. Yeah, okay. so
i'm not an arborist or tree expert by any means so either of my eyes
yeah ground around certain green circles a couple of related is there um to staff
is there a frontage standard for the trees along um the frontage in this building
has that been determined or is it whatever the developer wants to do. Are
you referring to the trees in the planter, the street trees? Yeah. So we're currently
looking at that internally to look at, because certain trees have certain advantages and certain
trees create certain maintenance issues. So the tree that's been selected for that planter strip
has not been identified yet. We're still kind of working through that. And just another
code question is that, that are the tree preservation standards the 25% rule?
Is that throughout the city or there are variations between central Issaquah plan
areas and others? So every area of the city is a little bit different.
This one closely resembles what's in the Issaquah Municipal Code. I think it's 30% off
the top of my head. I can verify. It's 25% for multifamily, 30% for single
family. Okay. Of course, in the urban villages, it's a totally different methodology there. They
don't really look at it in this sense. But I think it's pretty consistent with
the Issaquah Municipal Code regulated areas of the city. Yeah, the reason I ask the
question is just when you're trying to create an urban center or urban environment and
you've got existing trees on a piece of property, it's pretty difficult to preserve them
when you're trying to maximize building area and density. So it's just a tension that
exists. So, but this is an area just based on the standard. where you've got
a requirement for, I believe it was 43 trees and 29, roughly 29 trees are
going to be provided that need to speak more specifically to how mitigation for that
is going to happen. 'Cause part of the deal here is, well, we're taking a
lot of that greenscape away, but how do we blend this project in with
that kind of an environment that we're trying to maintain in the city. And so
the more discussion and maybe a little more work around, you know, what are the
varieties, what's the strategy to try to really green up this project as much as
we can realistically accomplish that without creating other conflicts with maintenance or parking meeting parking
demand etc. But it's it is part of the kind of the design standards for
the city is to try to create that as a as an outcome. So given
how far off we are on the mark on this one it seems like we
need to kind of give that a boost and I mean there was a lot
of discussion about the roof gardens etc. Well that most of that some of that
up on the roof isn't going to be visible to the people who are down
on the ground. as part of the mitigation that you're proposing. So it just seems
like maybe more worker thinking. I think there is some opportunity to maybe really talk
more about what's happening up near the stream, you know, with the native vegetation that's
going on there. Maybe there's a place to put a signature tree someplace on this
property that's a larger Northwest evergreen. I don't know, but I think some more thinking
around that might help us. - So just to add two points for
your consideration, and we will absolutely address the points that you're bringing
up. One is that trees within the critical area buffers cannot count
towards that because those are required separately. Street trees can't count towards
that 'cause those are required separately. It's only on-site trees that can
count. And just for context, And I appreciate the commissioner's
comments about urban development. One of the challenges we're finding is
even with projects that are potentially less dense, they are still
having a gateway had a challenge. Clark Elementary had had a
challenge. So this is not unique to this project. We are
consistently finding achieving the full density, because there's both retention and tree density, and to
meet both of those, it's very difficult to get that many trees on site. -
I think that's a good point, and we've struggled with this issue on other projects,
and it's probably something that needs more consideration in the code, I suppose. Because from
an application standpoint, it is hard for the design team to figure it out. -
Just one thing I would add, just, You know, we could look for a place
for a signature conifer tree, but it is designated in the city that the Eddie's
White Wonder Dogwood is a signature tree for the city. And we have several of
those located that I didn't point out earlier, kind of key access points and kind
of focal elements, you know, to entries and in this space as well. So we
did try to pick up on that. Yeah. Well, maybe just... It was limited discussion
tonight, but just maybe a little bit more explanation might do it. But
I just, you know, again, it's an area that I think is important
to the overall image that this project will portray long into the future
to what you do with the landscaping. Okay. Thank you. I had some
follow-up questions for the architect. With respect to the tripartite design, I was
confused on which version was your preferred version.
if you could just speak a little more to that our um our preferred version
is the original proposal okay um of the alternate studies we see them as you
know largely equal we were we tried to investigate a variety of what was there
we felt that the original design met the best balance of design criteria we felt
as an overall building and we try to use that as a backstop regardless of
any jurisdiction. With all deference to this commission as well as every other one that
we work in, we try to start with what we think the best design is
and look at the standards simultaneously of where we're practicing and if we feel that
there is a challenge or something to try and resolve, we try to resolve it
as best we think within that system But if there's an area that we think
is open to that interpretation, we propose what we think has worked best, which is
why we think the original balance of that tripart we think better achieves it in
a more rational design, even though it's not technically level by level in conformance. So
then I see three methods that utilize changes in siding did you explore massing at
all yes there's actually is a change in massing um and i apologize if i
didn't better explain that in the original proposal the ground level is is set back
to the build 2 line the the front projects out slightly for the main body
and then it recesses i want to say three feet something like that at this
upper level In these other studies, we've actually taken this upper level step back and
actually brought it down a level completely. So the actual cornice line or what you
would see of that transition definitely is dropping a floor. I see. So it isn't
just a change in color, it's a physical change. In response to that, we actually
did investigate. There is amenity space in the white portion that sets back. These are
all units in this case. The actual amenity space is down at the end of
the structure here. I'm sorry. - Yeah, the lower deck. - Yeah,
okay. That was actually, let's find that view for you real quick. Is there a
better one? I'll have to go back through part of it. The actual amenity spaces
are back down here. Okay, all right. - Thank you. - Can I throw, I
guess maybe, we use this time to maybe discuss this a little bit, because I'll
throw out my opinion about this, if you don't mind, is that I actually would
prefer a hybrid, and I agree with you, I think, in terms of the,
the tripartite idea of bottom, middle, top. I don't think the top and the middle
need to be the same. I do like the idea, I think, of the 131.
However, I do like the bottom right, what you've done to the end portion. -
This component, yeah. - Yeah, to break that component up from being a fairly large
standout just all as it is right in the original proposal, there's no break of
wall between So my preference would be to take the center portion with that part
and combine it with that on the corner. - Okay. - Second. - I was
thinking the same thing. - Second. - I wanted to see what that would look
like. - So, yeah, we need to hear what you're saying. - So I was
having a similar thought, thinking about what would that look like with the single story
wrapped around that end piece so that that treatment I can visualize it, but it'd
be interesting just to see. And obviously, you could probably simply do that. So we
could take a look at that. - With the single story being wrapped around? -
The top. So bringing, so my, what I was suggesting is the lower right, but
take it back to the-- - This component, correct? - Yeah, take that element and
add it over here to the original proposal. But you're only doing it with the
single story across the top. On the end cap, on the end piece. So in
the end cap having that brown part three levels. Yeah, to break it up. So
the brown would be three stories of the corner? Let's see what that would look
like. And I guess my preference was the... It was different? Well, I was thinking
the way he has it there with that end cap being two portions equally. And
then the center portion, the blue and the white... being as they planned it, three
blue and the white at the top. We can show it to you both ways.
Luckily these days with computers it's easy to show those options. Can we talk blue
for a second? But that way instead of just having one continual white band all
the way across the top, it would then create a little more separate elements. So
I very much appreciate the Commission weighing in so that we -- because I know
it's important to you to have a good sense of what's being approved. so that
we can bring back alternatives. I just want to draw your attention to the fact
that this would be another adjustment of standards. I don't have a problem with that.
We have done it in some other locations. - The tripartite? As
you're aware, before the moratorium, we initiated some revisions to the
architectural design, which we've held off on because of the moratorium
and the desire to look at architectural review and design was
one of the elements of the moratorium. But there are four
or five different factors that we are asked to comply with in
the Central ISQA standards. So one is a corner element, one is a tripartite base,
middle and top. Another is a setback or change of materials after three stories. So
what you would be proposing, and again, I am not criticizing or disagreeing, but that
would be a change at four stories, which would be an adjustment of standards. It's
very specific. We have considered and approved those in other locations. but we
wanted to bring a more compliant building forward and we can
certainly, as I said, we've written those adjustments previously. And then
the fourth one is the breaking it into smaller buildings. So that is not
only the corner elements, but that sort of central element that's similar to the
corner elements. So we have many different horizontal and vertical factors that we are
asked to comply with simultaneously. - So Lucy, would study number two, the lower
right, Would that -- that would not require an AAS, would
it? It would not. Would not. So it's a balance between
close compliance or based on the design that you're looking at,
an adjustment that you think is a more appropriate design. I
would suggest we leave it at the discretion of the designer
if it meets the guidelines and to live within that.
So the only one that complies is the lower right hand corner. So there wouldn't
be a, there wouldn't, the other two would not be discretionary. They would require an
adjustment of standards. And again, I'm not, I'm not criticizing or saying that we shouldn't
do that. I'm just identifying which ones comply with the code versus which ones would
require an adjustment. - Since we're not talking about dramatic change to the building, we're
talking mostly about materials changes. There's one of the offset changes in the second one
up in the upper right. - I would actually like to look at some
different alternatives here. To be honest with you, I think the one that
complies is the elevation that I like the least. This is all personal
and obviously everybody has different opinions, almost like art when you're looking at
your architectural preferences. But I think that one, it's too even, I think
was the term you used earlier. Well, I think this is very, very helpful in
that what we need to do is go away and work with the applicant and
bring back something based on the feedback that we've gotten this
evening. - So Mr. Chair, can I suggest that we, frankly, I'm confused about
what we're saying now, what guidance we're giving to the applicant. So could we
just have a little discussion here? I'm not clear. I mean, I know what
I like, but I want to avoid, I'd like to give the applicant as
much specific recommendation as we can. And I'm not clear on what the consensus
of the Commission is. It seemed to me like what was being said was that
there was some interest in looking at the 131 but modifying the corner and to
the south to the picture on the bottom right. Right. On the on the end
part and to see how to see how that might look. Okay, I
would agree with that. And then that would take an adjustment of standards. Right. Right.
The 131. Right. And we can draft that as part of the briefing response memo.
Is that right? Is that correct? Yeah. I agree. Can I say something? You have
to go to the microphone.
Kyle Weeks, I'm with the developer. So we actually looked at that exact scenario that
you're describing right now and you know in our work with the city we've actually
looked at a number of those options focusing on that keeping that one three one
in that middle section as it is, and then looking at the step at the
third level on the corner units. And our feedback and what we agreed with was
there's another part of the code that says that you need to have corner elements
and then also break the building up into smaller sections. And the feedback that we
got and that we agreed with is that the corner as it
is has a feel of a separate building and it breaks
that module up. So, and Brian you can elaborate too, but
by trying to almost force that third floor change kind of
departs from that code requirement. And we have plenty of options
that we've looked at that show that, and we'd be happy to present them to
you next meeting. But that's kind of how we arrived at these, I guess. Do
you have anything else? I guess the only thing I would say with that is
I think everything that's been discussed is actually all part of this process, which is
why this has been kind of a challenge. I think Lucy really elucidated that there's
five things. I was rereading the code this morning just to revisit the language and
I believe that they're all equally quoted. I don't know if I'm wrong in the
language, but I believe we're supposed to address all of them. It's not like one
of those things is more important. Three part versus the corner element versus the building
mass, they're all equal. There's nothing that says that if you meet two out of
three, you're five, you're good. We don't get to choose that. that's part of that
subjective challenge, right? To make all these things work. And I think our interpretation of
it was that the original design was compliant, for example, on the corners, which I
think is part of what Kyle's describing, because we feel like we've treated it as
a corner element and we've interpreted it as a celebrated part of the building. And
that element is going into part of a larger composition. but clearly it's also part
of a discretionary interpretation as well. And I think Lucy's comments, particularly about this one
being we're closer to more things coming together in one gesture, as that's totally valid.
It's just a different way of looking at this. And so again, we presented these
alternatives so that we could have a dialogue about it. But we asked the earlier
question, which one do we actually like? And we still like the original, because we
think it represents the best balance of that. I will say one thing in response
to that, and I appreciate Lucy's comment and clarification about the process, right? If one
of these requires an AAS just because technically the city feels like it's past that
discretionary line, I mean, I can't remember exactly which project it was recently. I believe
it was a city of Seattle design review board that literally told us we like
what you're doing. I don't care. Write it up as a departure. We'll approve it.
Cause doing it the way you, you know, the code is telling us we should
tell you to do it is clearly gonna look bad. So I think we, I'm
not saying that about this presenting, but I am saying that to you as a
commission, it's like, I appreciate Lucy's comment that like, if you think it should just
look a certain way, we'll come up with the paperwork to do that. And I
think that's what this process should be doing. That's, that's what I think we ought
to, we ought to do. And I, I would suggest to you, sir, that the
applicant that, you know, the commission has been looking now at, uh, a
series of projects in the CIP, multifamily projects. So I don't
presume to speak for the whole commission, but we know what
we've seen and we have had discussions about what we would
have done differently if we had the experience and the detail
that we needed. I think this is what we're seeing here. We've got
other things that if we could do differently, we would have done differently. So we're
kind of arriving at a consensus here that we're gonna try to convey to you
about what we think would be the better modulation on this building.
I'm just glad nobody's commented about the blue color. I actually brought that up,
but it went right out the window. What was your comment? Well, let me
think. I understand that you are going to use blue as an accent color,
and I understand how really difficult it is to get into color, but if
it's going to be flat blue like that, subdued blue, I
think we've had some experience with bright blue that has
been, you know, has drawn significant comment. - Sure. -
So, that little piece right there looks fine to me. I wouldn't
presume to speak for the poor. Sure. But we get into color. Yeah, it is
extreme. It's subjective, but I would just echo that I think there's some bad precedent
been set and there's strong reaction. So keeping that in mind and keeping those tones
as natural as possible and as subdued as possible fit with the context of Issaquah,
I think, would be... I can't comment. I think I would
leave that to your discretion to satisfy those goals. It
shouldn't look like a theme park or a food court.
I think we agree with you on that. It should look like a residence. And
you're happy with these colors? Well, you know, again, that's subjective. I don't like the
blue. I would turn it down a little bit if I was -- but that's
a tough conversation, you know. So the one thing I would add is that
given the development commission's experience, as Mr. Harrison says, I
think it's important that the public and the commission see
the colors that will be used. So I think that
if if there are adjustments that are going to be
made to colors, that those need to be presented in a materials
board. And there's not specific requirements in the Central Esquire standards on
colors at this time. And so, But I do think it's important that the
approval include the materials and colors so that there is not uncertainty about what
that is going to end up being. - And as far as the blue,
the last thing I'll say is that that was approved by the Development Commission,
the one in question. But there is another building under construction that I went
back and reread the entire packet and the recommendations that the DC made to
the applicant on the colors used and the facade were absolutely not, are not
present in the final project. So that's kind of the basis for our concern
on this. Well, one brief note of clarity on that. For anyone that is interested,
the actual -- we always do this in our construction documents, which are part of
the building permit application, which ultimately is the approved set of documents. But our materials
board does include the specific references. All of our page tips that we show you
are matched to a specific manufacturer. So not just so we can replicate it, which
is one of the primary reasons, but also just to declare it. We're not showing
you just the first blush of what's here. We'll come up with something that looks
better when we get out there. One more specific question just to follow up. Is
the black the window color? It's the railings, I believe. Okay. Then what is the
window color? White? Yeah, white, typical white vinyl. Even at the podium level, the
lower level? Those are black. Apologies. We're going with a bronze or black, I can't
remember which one, for this project, level storefront at the main lobby, and we'll be
transitioning to a matching color at the actual lofts themselves. Sorry, we didn't talk about
that at that granular level, but that's what we're doing. Okay. And the black, the
brick that we saw in the plans as being a reddish brick would actually be
the black brick shown here? Is that what this is? These ones obviously are a
little more difficult, but that's the actual sample, yeah, from Mutual Materials. Okay. I guess
one of the thoughts I had about the blank walls, we do hear a lot
about just putting on a vegetated screen on it as a way to break it
up, and it seems to me that you certainly have an opportunity to use some
different color changes in the brick itself to in case all the vegetation dies
or something like that fairly simply in the wall itself instead of just having one
large black wall okay can i comment on that real quick because i had a
similar thought about the blank walls and there was a discussion in your presentation about,
you know, we might do this or that. I think when you come back, we
would like to, I'd like to see specifics on what exactly your treatment will be,
whether it's changing the color of the materials, putting a window in, as you suggested,
down in the lobby. You had one example, I think it was on the south
side, that you just showed some vegetation planted in front of it, which wouldn't meet
the requirements. So I think More specifics, I think, when we come back on this
about how those particular blank walls will be treated would be helpful. So maybe I
can follow up on that briefly. So this wall, those comments make some sense. And
we can look with the team at what we're doing there. This particular location, I
think we were limited. And adding fenestration here made some sense. The back portion of
this wall was actually screening parking. So we felt like adding a window so you
could look at the parking was not desirable. and that a green screen and giving
some, you know, giving a way to kind of dress up that, that portion of
the building, particularly because there's gonna be a pedestrian, that's where the portion of the
building with the pedestrian easement goes past it. So something that'll grow into a vegetarian
area over time would be a nicer touch in that case. I guess, do you,
does the board have comments on this being successful or not as successful at least
just so that we're not changing something that you liked in the first. - I
like the window. I like that. I'll just break that up. Yeah. - Okay. -
I think I'm the most concerned about the south one. - Sure, yeah. - It's
coming up seventh, that could end up being very visible. - Okay. - And there
were also, and I'm not asking, we'll also be addressing the blank walls around the
community spaces. So there was kind of a weather protection and other elements that were
being carried out from the middle entry door along that wall. Thank you. The concrete
wall, To the left is to the parking structure and it has some
additional design requirements in the standards. So I completely agree that we really
wanted to get the, It wasn't that we hadn't been working with the applicant, but
we really wanted to hear a bit more from you before we took it further
to ensure that we folded that and any public comments into the response before trying
to finalize that. - I do have a question. On the board there, does it
show what the band would be like across the top of the building, what that
material is? that wraps around the corner element. - This part? - Yeah. - Yeah,
that's the metal siding. - Which one is? - It's specifically done with subtler patterns
and then it blends a little more monolectrically. - Oh, it's that large piece then.
Oh, okay. - Yeah, this is the exact profile so it's the wider point. -
I'm sorry, they want you to. - Do you have to go back to the
microphone? - Okay. - Flashing light over there. - Apologies. - Okay, so the, actually
I'll go back to the material board for a second. I don't
have the profile up, there it is. So it's specifically the gray
sheet metal panel there with the interlocking. - Great, thank you. Different
kind of question. Would it be possible to the, I like Mr.
Kapler's comment about the stone pavers and in condition seven it says
such as decorative colored concrete or stone pavers. or the shared use route.
Could we say, actually change that to say, but not stone pavers? - I think
we would just take out pavers. - Yeah. - So pavers are one of, I
think the condition was based on the options that the code identifies. - Yeah, yeah,
exactly. - And I-- - That'd be great, thank you. - Further comments? - I
have one question, I guess, in mind for the, I guess the architect perhaps. Is
there ability to add more electric charging stations, car charging stations if needed, if there's
enough demand down the road. It looked like there's more stalls there, is it? -
There's, I think there's two ways to address that. - And let me back up.
I'm not saying I think that we would tell you you have to. - Sure.
- I'm just asking for down the road. - Yeah. There's kind of two main
ways that we've approached that in the past. I mean, at this point, just so
everybody knows, we're up against the maximum that we get credit for as far as
parking. So there is no benefit to us from a zoning code compliance standpoint to
pursue that, in case anybody's wondering. So the... The most expensive and I think infrastructure
component path would be to provide the high capacity chargers, which are the higher voltage,
the 220 volt. Those require a lot more planning and infrastructure. And so that would
be probably a more substantial upcharge to the project because they have to increase the
size of your service gear in order to do that. More often than not, especially
under the current Washington State Energy Code, we're required to plan for that future infrastructure,
but that can be line voltage, just a standard plug jack, which can be mounted
and easily routed and it operates at the lower voltage, which is obviously a lesser
charge time. but it still can accommodate it. So I think the short answer is
we would probably, if the owners are willing to add in the additional gear now,
they certainly could and then balance that cost against the service capacity left in the
gear or just plan for it as plug valves and it's going to be a
Chevy Volt plugging in there instead of a Tesla. Thank you. I had one more
question about the building. I'm sorry. Well, it's sort of a related question. What is
the... the the corner on the lower level what is that space is that a
unit or is that the lobby that's um this is the the main lobby itself
that's the main lobby and then there's another entrance a residential entrance about halfway down
the building correct okay and then there was some commentary about is that clearly marked
and differentiated from the other residential units and I think, could you just speak a
little more to that? Sure, yeah, I think it's actually, it's a good point because
I think from an operation standpoint, we see in plan, this is the size of
that northern lobby. And you can see that even a portion of it's going to
be apportioned to leasing. It's primarily main reception lobby. This is definitely the front door
to the project. Everything from, you know, the pizza guy to your friends coming over,
everything like this is the point of the address. We see this as more of
a secondary convenience entry. Like if I have a call box, where do my friends
go to buzz me? They're going here. I don't think we're going to necessarily put
up an access control point that allows people to be ambiguously directed. That's one of
the challenges we find designing these buttons. I know it's there. I live here. Or
I have my bike. Exactly. It's definitely a convenience access. Okay. And then... How do
garbage and recycling then leave the building? Thank you. Yeah, we talked about that earlier.
We've dedicated both access points. Obviously, it's coming in off the side. The service vehicles
will park here. The code requires that we have two dedicated load zones. I think
it's 10 by 30 or 10 by 25, I think, each. Those are both planned
here. There's a service area for unloading your vehicles. That includes the garbage trucks. Our
waste facility is located here and it's serviced by chutes within the building. Okay. So
basically the garbage truck can come in out of the way of everybody, do your
business and pull out. And the structure has already been sized to accommodate those vehicles
passing underneath it. All right. Thank you. So are there other comments, other questions, other
issues that you would like addressed at the next meeting?
I guess I want to comment. I guess one comment is I see a lot
of great things in this project. And I appreciate the work the staff and the
applicant have done in it in terms of getting some ground floor, loft units right
at the street. We're getting some common area at the street. We're getting two different
rooftop decks, a lower and an upper one. We're getting a lot more balconies than
we saw in the Atlas project. There's a lot of positives we're seeing in this
project in terms of what we've seen in the past. - I agree with that
too. We heard a number of speakers this evening expressing concern about the rate of
growth in the city and the nature of the development that was happening. They were
asking the commission to stop this project, wait until Atlas filled up, et cetera. That's
not something that's within our authority to do. We have an obligation to review projects
as they're coming forward. The council though has heard that voice pretty loudly and they
have a moratorium in place that stopped many projects that hadn't made it into the
formal application process yet. So there is a conversation, a community-wide conversation that will be
held through the City Council to talk about growth in the city and how that
happens and whether modifications to the Central Issaquah Plan are appropriate. They've already signaled an
interest in making some adjustments to that. So I think we just, I just want
to be clear with the people who are still here and may be still watching
that we don't have the authority just to say stop a project that has essentially
a legal right to proceed. So this project is one of those that has a
right to proceed. So we have to go through the processes, was explained by staff
at the beginning, to do the review, ensure it complies with the city and apply
our discretion where it's allowed and then make a decision. Obviously we weren't there tonight,
but it will be coming back to us within a month if the work can
be completed by then for further consideration. So I thought just to be clear about
the process as we move forward and what is within our authority and those things
that are not within our purview. - One thing I would add is
if you're not already a party of record and you're interested in
getting the responses to the comments this evening, please add your contact
information to the sign-in sheet so we can email answers to these
questions to you. - So it sounds like we've exhausted all our
questions. I want to thank the public. There was a lot of interest, and I
think that's really awesome. I think it was really great for the public to come
out and to voice their concerns and their opinions. They were heard, their notes taken,
and it's just going to make it a better project, so I appreciate that your
efforts and your willingness to apologize for not having chairs. Hopefully next time we'll be
able to have a key to the door and get some chairs for people. So
I do apologize for that. Thanks for the city. You did a great job. That
was really good. And the applicant, great job in explaining what was going on. So
at this point, I think I will call the meeting concluded.