policy commission. Tonight we're going to have a
public meeting in regard to some of the new amendments proposals for the central
area plan. But first we need a motion to approve the minutes for the last
meeting. And tell says. I'll second. And all those
in favor. Aye. Opposed. Okay we're going to go right into
Are you going to start or is Kristen? Our team is going to start. Kristen,
you're on. Okay. We have a big team
today. A very brilliant and large team to help you all through this. We're going
to kick it back and forth between the three of us and I'll kick it
off. Tonight we are doing round two of the central
Issaquah amendments. You did round one public hearing a few weeks ago. This is round
two, there are eight of them that we'll be talking about tonight. So first we'll
talk about the amendments and try to make sure that you understand them. Then we
will open the meeting for public comment and then PPC will discuss and ask questions
and then hopefully make a recommendation on the proposed amendments. Can I just add one
thought? Because they're Central Issaquah amendments, we were asked to invite the Development Commission
and the Central Issaquah Task Force And so there are members of the Development
Commission and the task force here tonight to help us review these since they were
so involved in that the first time around. So I just wanted to let you
know why we have such a great audience tonight. So I'm just gonna whip through
these. And not whip through the whole discussion, but just whip through the topic. So
like I said, there are eight. The first involves clarifying purpose and intent statements
throughout the document, chapters four through 17. Clarifying building height measurement and
how it relates to circulation facilities. Expanding on the building frontage definition
again and how it relates to the circulation facility. Clarifying shopping center parking ratios, actually
adding shopping center parking ratios and clarifying the definition.
Clarifying circulation facility standards for, there are some streets in there that are unclassified, so
we're clearing up how that's gonna work. secondary and primary through block
passages and clarifying when those are supposed to be used and what they're supposed to
look like. Views and vistas is another one clarifying what the views
are that we're trying to preserve and where we are to preserve those, from where
we are to preserve those. And minimum density rather than minimum FAR, adding
a minimum density requirement to the minimum FAR requirement. So I think Lucy's gonna kick
it off. All right. Oops, sorry. That's okay. Hi, I'm Lucy
Sloman. I'm land development manager, which means I am dealing with planning and engineering
permits, which means we are dealing with the Central Issaquah Standards on a daily basis.
And so I am lucky enough to get to come join the long-range planners tonight
to help understand the kind of challenges and opportunities we found with using the standards.
So the first one is the purpose and intent statements. And you'll notice that pretty
much every chapter begins with a purpose and intent statement. They were
fairly abbreviated in the original adopted document. And
there are ways that those statements are very important to ensure that the standards
are implemented correctly. That's, for instance, if someone asks for an adjustment of standards, if
someone asks for an interpretation, or if we're looking at a specific standard and
maybe what that means or what its intent is, we would go back to this
intent statement at the very beginning. And so they were just a little too general,
so we added more specifics in ways that we've done in other
parts of the city. Do you have any questions?
building height. The building height is currently
measured from either the existing or finished grade, whichever is lower.
And that in central Issaquah, the challenge that we're finding with that is that people
are putting in streets and we want those buildings to have a strong relationship to
the street, but the existing grade may not achieve that if that's the lowest
grade. And so what we want is that without allowing
excessive filling, problematic filling, we want the buildings to have
their height related to the street, not necessarily to the existing grade.
I'm seeing faces. Can you explain that a little more? I'm not sure I
understand the difference between existing grade and the street. Okay. So
we have existing grade and we may have a project in which,
well, I can give you two examples. One is you can have an existing street
that's been there forever and you know on the valley floor there are a lot
of sites where it drops from the street into the site. and
so that the finished grade is, we want the finished grade to be up at
the sidewalk, not way down below the sidewalk. So that the building, you know, you
can have plazas and direct relationship to the sidewalk. But what we've done
is they don't necessarily want to fill up because then there are height restrictions
that they're bumping up against. And that existing grade isn't necessarily getting us a
strong relation, that strong relationship to the circulation facility, like a street or a
sidewalk. And so what we want is that instead of focusing on whether it's
existing or finished grade, we're focusing on the one that would have the strongest relationship
to the sidewalk or street. Does that make more sense?
How does that play out if the street's here and it's dropping off on the
other side? So it may be one height here, but could be significantly different on
the other side of the building. Well, if for instance you did have a site
where it was, the street was higher and it was lower on both sides, that
same standard would apply to both buildings. So as those sites redevelop, this one might
come up first. And then when this site redevelops, it would come up. So they
both have that same relationship to the street. Does that answer your question? Right. Well,
yes, but also looking at the other, there's a street here, a building here, and
the other side of the building, and it's dropping off. Oh, oh. Yeah, so you're
on a slope like this, and here's the street at the very high point, actually,
and you're dropping quite a bit, and the back side of the building may have
a very different height relationship. and that is possible. We are not changing the way,
we're changing what we're measuring height from, not the way we're measuring height. So there's
still the same height limits. You would still measure around the building. Sometimes they, in
the situation you're describing, they may use the building to take up it, take up,
so you would have, you know, a high, it might be high on one side
and lower on the other, you would still have the same height restrictions on both
sides. It just may drop away along the sides.
So you're saying the building in the back, it could be lower
by, you know, a floor and the front.
And that could happen today as well. We're not changing that because there aren't, there
isn't a specific, say, relationship from the front of the building to the back of
the building. You would be allowed to drop away and that might be good for
structured parking, for instance. There could be advantages to that. We're just trying
not to have the existing grade, which may have no relationship to any of the
pieces that are important to Central Issaquah, drive decisions. We want the,
streets and sidewalks to drive those decisions.
Okay.
This is just showing the exact language that was changed. And I, did you
hand those out already? Okay, so there are two
where we were preparing the presentation for this evening that we realized that we needed
to tweak the language slightly. So Jennifer is handing out
a handout that shows those changes that we're proposing tonight, and you can see them
up here in green. So the change
here is that instead of saying a circulation facility, which might be a trail
or a road, We're saying a designated circulation facility. And
those are shown on a specific map that already exists.
So what we want is that people have to relate to the streets that either
exist or that were already anticipated in central Issaquah.
there were three pieces that were related to this and one is in 11.3
and again it's shown in green relating it to that specific map that
identifies designated circulation facilities and then the third one
again describes in what way if you're at you
want to propose to add a street under what circumstances we would allow you to
do that
that maybe not even hits this particular thing, but we're talking about
circulation and you come in with a development and
you work on that, but is there gonna be a major plan
put together so that you have a general idea of how this all goes together,
not individual by individual development?
So this map is already in the central Issaquah plan
and it identifies existing roads and proposed roads,
what kinds of, you know, what the type is, is it a local street, is
it a parkway, is it a boulevard? So it identifies, it sets out that big
framework that I think you're talking about and what they're supposed to look like.
I know what the big roads are. we've seen this particular many times
but when you go into a new project like that apartments on
Gilman and you look at the circulation for that are
you going to make sure that it you know the rest it flows into the
rest of the city not just if it ingress and egress from that particular project
they are required so There are certain ways they have to break a block up
into smaller pieces. And they also have to build their frontage improvements. And so we
are looking at how that frontage meets these standards and then how it
transitions back to the next piece of road so that it is usable and
smooth until the next piece of road gets developed. Also, if you look at where
the gateway project is, for instance, up here, that was, you know, they
anticipated that because it was such a big piece of property that there would have
to be internal roadways. And so those are actually even anticipated
up here, for instance, there, so that we could see this is the way
that would conceptually work, and then we work with them to tie that
into their specific plan. Am I not answering your question?
So, this again relates to that map. That map is driving a lot of the
concerns that we have. The way building frontage was defined, it
focused only on things that were shown on that map. And as you are
identifying, sometimes projects will come in and they will need an additional road
or a trail or some kind of major walkway through.
and there was the requirements to have buildings up to the street
only applied to the things that were on that map that we were just looking
at. So what we're changing here is to say that anytime we have a
circulation facility, the building has to be at that circulation facility like a street or
a trail and be present and related to that and not
set off behind parking.
Um, shopping centers. Um, for some
reason it may have been an oversight. Um, the central Issaquah standards did not include,
they included a definition of shopping center, but it did not include a parking ratio
for shopping centers. The, um, municipal code has a, a parking ratio. The
urban villages like Issaquah Highlands or Raleigh's have a shopping center parking ratio.
and we found that to be very helpful it makes it easy to for us
to calculate how many parking spaces they need because you know when they're designing a
building on with many different tenants you don't often know who those tenants are and
yet we have to calculate it on is this a restaurant is this a boutique
is this a gym and if we don't know those things were not able to
help them figure out how much parking they need up front also if they change
tenants over the course of their life, they may not be able to provide the
additional parking. So we're looking at the whole center altogether. That's the way
most of the centers have been designed in Issaquah. And we've been doing
that in other parts of the city and have found it created sufficient and efficient
parking.
So clarifying the circulation facilities, the way the
standards were written, if a
road was not shown on the plan, we then went to the street
standards, which are more suburban standards, and right now we want all the streets to
be designed to the central Issaquah standards. So the change in language ensures
that we use the central is aqua standards whether it's shown on the map or
not and if we need a fallback we can use this that is it's across
street standards.
Non motorized facilities there are two major trail types that are included in the central
is aqua standards the descriptions were almost identical. And it wasn't clear when you
would use one and when you would use the other. So we made changes to
clarify that the larger one is for when you have a major building entrance off
of it, a primary building entrance, and the other one is for secondary additional walkways.
Can you explain that? Sure. So right now the descriptions for primary
and secondary through block passages are almost identical. One's 10 feet wide
with landscape on each side, the other one's five feet wide with landscape on either
side. And so we needed a better way to help applicants understand
it's this, you need to use a primary through block passage here or a
secondary through block passage there. And one of the main ways that we changed it
is Sometimes you have buildings that don't
face a street but face onto these interior
walkways and that we want those primary building entrances to be off the primary
through block passages. So be off those, so
you cannot have the primary entrance of a building facing a pedestrian trail?
No, you can. Okay. That's what these are. They just aren't called trails. Okay. So
the primary entrance can face motorized or non-motorized? Right. Okay. I wasn't sure if I
understood this right. But we just didn't want, if you had a major building entrance,
we didn't want it off the little skinny one. We wanted off the more substantial
one that feels like it's the front of a building. But motorized or
non-motorized? Exactly.
Views and vistas the Council and long-range planning have
worked throughout the year and you guys as well on Updating the comprehensive plan there
is a new policy which is included in your handout land use policy h9
which Clarified the city's expectations for which views and vistas are
important and under what circumstances we're trying to save them retain
them and while at the same time you know adding more density getting rid of
parking lots putting buildings up near the street and so what we found is that
the rules were not very clear there was confusion around them so once the council
and you made this recommendation for this new land use policy the purpose of this
was to clarify the rules so that as people lay out streets and plazas and
parks they knew when the views should be protected
And number eight, right now in the urban core or in larger
parcels outside of the urban core, you have to meet a minimum floor area ratio,
which means a certain amount of square footage of building on the site. What we
discovered with a project is when they didn't meet the minimum, they just made all
the units larger. And our goal is to get more units, not necessarily bigger units.
So, in those areas where the minimum
FAR, floor area ratio, would apply, you would also have
a minimum density, so that if they have to increase the amount of square
footage, it's in new units, not just bigger units.
And what Jennifer just handed out is that the other piece that was in the
description of our purpose of this was a clarification that we came across to make
it clear that if a project is developed in stages, the
first stage may not meet the minimum FAR, but the last stage has to meet
the minimum FAR. And there were some applicants that were reading this and thinking it
meant, oh, we don't have to meet the minimum FAR, we can just ask you
to reduce it. And that wasn't the intent, so we wanted to clarify the language.
So I think it's open for public comment. Do people sign up?
Does anybody have any other questions? There's some things on signs or
anything else that was in there that you had a question on. So I did
have some questions about some of the sections that I looked through all of it,
not just what was highlighted here. Is this up for discussion as well? If you
had something specific, I would say yes, but after the public hearing, we will have
the opportunity to discuss anything else you want. I can wait. Okay. So we will
wait. Okay. So you want to take public comment first? Okay. What happened to the,
we did, we pulled it out. Jennifer and I pulled it out. Oh, it's over
on the chair. I was going to say, it's not on the table. Did anybody
sign up? Oh.
I'm going to open the public comment portion of this meeting at 6.55. Is there
anybody in the audience, which is huge tonight, would anybody like to make a public
comment in regard to any of the amendments that were discussed by
Lucy? Please come to the.
It's going to get colder, Connie. Not in
here it won't be. It gets warmer as it gets colder outside because they turn
off the air conditioning. Hi, my name's Connie Marsh. I have a store at 1175
Northwest Gilman Boulevard, Suite B11, and it's Halloween. I also live in town.
So there's two things that aren't on here that I wanted to pop out as
the most important things to have on here, but they aren't addressed, and that is
a requirement for mixed use with criteria because if we want
If we are aiming for what they've written down, we're going to need to have
mixed use to help combine trips. And also affordable housing. So far we're getting none
of it. The intent language, first of all, you got
an email from me that has some information on it. I'm trying not to repeat
it because it bores me too much. And probably you too. So the intent on
circulation, In watching the Gateway Project go through, when
you're talking about people walking and biking, it seems that there's two things that people
do. They recreate, and then they go someplace. And our plan does not
differentiate between the two. It's like a trail is a trail is a trail, and
that will take trips off of the road. And I don't think that that is
the case. I would suggest that we add in the circulation language that we have
to look to see what we're doing and yes, it's great to have trails to
recreate, but if we're trying to get trips off the road, we also have to
analyze how to create circulation facilities for
pedestrians and bikes that will be used to get people somewhere where they would have
actually driven their car. And that seems to be missing. Like shortcuts, a meandering trail
is one thing, but a shortcut to get you to the transit center is a
whole different thing. Right? And those are not discussed. And then
in listening to the filling for building heights conversation, it sort of exploded my
brain, so I'm gonna obsess about that for you all. Because in Issaquah Highlands, they
filled and they filled and they filled a lot, but there was nothing there and
there were no neighbors. So as I am picturing the Gateway Project again, which slopes
way down, if they had needed the development to get up to the road,
That would have been a monster amount of fill to get up to Newport Way.
And then there are areas along Gilman that drop, I don't know, 25 feet. If
you filled that area, then until the next door neighbor area developed, they would
be in a hole. And you would be going along Gilman Boulevard with here, and
then they're in a hole. And I just can't fathom that that is good.
I also started thinking, okay, if you fill the front, then does the
whole parcel then have to be filled because you have to put a road? So,
okay, I am now making bricks on the valley floor to raise the entire valley
floor up to meet the roads that have been raised in order to get it
out of the floodplain. And so I think I have some serious questions on this
issue. I don't exactly see how that would work
and I would need pictures and examples of
how that would work. Also as it compared to view, when they did the SEPA,
they didn't do a SEPA after stacking fill on the valley floor and doing the
building heights on top of that. The SEPA was at grade going up.
So you can see, I don't get it. and I don't think it would work.
But I recall stairs being talked about in the central Issaquah plan
to get people in those variations of height and not
a lot of fill. Beyond that, I would like to hear
from somebody like Mel, who is on the development commission, who has to go through
and try to figure out how to implement it, whether the language is implementable.
I can't confess to understand a lot of it. Thanks. Is there anybody else who
would like to speak at the public hearing?
My name is Mary Lynch. I reside at 2690 Northwest Oak Crest Drive, Issaquah, Washington.
I also served on the citizens task force for the Central Area Plan. And I
really am glad that you're going through some amendment processes because having gone through it
with the Gateway Project, there's some big gaps. Things are completely rewritten in places from
what we as the Central Area Plan produced and was very disappointing. One of the
first things was views and vistas. When I was on the plan, we were talking
about it being a gateway and having the vista from I-90. What we have now
with the Gateway Project are five-story buildings that are going to block the views. and
it's going to be set back from Newport Way. We also have a parkway, which
is not conducive to circulation to the neighborhood. And as part of what got approved,
there was no mention of needing to have crosswalks from surrounding neighborhoods. When you're looking
at circulation, you need to look at circulation not only internal to, but to existing
neighborhoods to make sure that they're connecting. And as Connie mentioned, you need to make
sure that there's circulation, so if you're really going to give the developer credit for
having, or mitigation for having quote unquote taking cars off the road,
you need to look if they're really going to be able to do that. Gateway
Project is not going to be able to do that because there are no safe
sidewalks or multiple motor trails leading into the transit centers. Also would
recommend as part of the circulation, you look further at the transportation that was part
of and how you study transportation and giving credit
to the developer for doing great things with transportation when, again, all they're going to
do is create havoc in an existing neighborhood. And I don't really think the Central
Area Plan did a very good job of looking at existing impacts to the neighborhood
during construction or after. That's as far as existing, I'm
going to be coming back with more because I don't see the accountability. I don't
see that the public has a chance for hearings, or at public hearings, we're not
given enough advance notice of public meetings or of the
packages to be able to study so we can give appropriate. And you'll be seeing
a letter from me later as far as what happened with the public meeting last
week. There were some major process flaws, I think, and the public is very discouraged
with this being one of your first projects, when you looked at what happened down
on Gilman, there really weren't very many neighbors within that 300 area. that
came and participated. But in the gateway, there were a lot of us that tried
to participate and really felt like we got left out of the process. And that's
basically because I don't think the policies are clear enough on how public can give
input and give it in a timely fashion and work with the developers. So I
know there's a little bit out of what we're doing tonight, but I'm going to
be talking to all the different people that are involved with the Central Area Plan
and hope that it's rewritten with amendments that really look at the process, make sure
that we're not impacting existing development and citizens negatively when we're trying to grow the
city so fast. Thank you. Thank you. Good comments. Anybody else would
like to speak?
Good evening. My name is Cyrus Khatibi. We live in
My name is Cyrus. We live in 2050 Newport way in the Sammamish
point. We have been here about 11 years and we have been noticing a
gradual increase of traffic every year. Right now, the traffic is so heavy that
sometimes in the morning when you want to get out of the Sammamish point into
the Newport way is really challenging. Sometimes in the afternoon, the traffic light
at the 17th Avenue northeast back, I mean, it stops the cars and the line
of the car actually extends from the 17th Avenue up to the vicinity of the
Semamish Point View. So already actually traffic is very much, is really loaded, this swab
of the Newport Way. It's really frightening when you envision that 2,000
more cars would be added to this traffic. And I suppose eventually the
city would like to that means that we would be losing our backyard and the
fences would come to the windows. That would be very depressing. The developers might be
actually making good money, which I'm not quite sure because even those units that they
are going to build, when somebody would like to buy that, anybody who would realize
what kind of traffic he's going to come to live, they would realize that they
would have to lose two hours of their sleep because one hour coming out of
the Newport, one hour coming back to the Newport way. It's not very good prospect.
But anyway, it would be really depressing for our neighborhood in Siamese Point to see
that that many cars would be added to this traffic and we would be losing
our backyard. Thank you. Thank you. Would anybody
else like to speak?
It's trouble when you get called on. My name is Mel Morgan. My address is
4018-240th place southeast, Issaquah 98029. Two things, and first one would be I guess a
question is that with the building height amendment, would that allow the gateway apartments to
have sloped roofs? Which I think is then a good thing. And I agree with
Connie, it's difficult to understand exactly how it works, even in my mind, from having
seen a lot of measurements that Development Commission deals. But I think it is a
reasonable thing to do. With the Gateway Apartments, we ran into an issue where there
were competing desires. There was the minimum FAR, which
required a certain amount of building. At the same time, there was a height limit,
and it encouraged sloped roofs, which everyone thought would be a good idea, But
if they could not do the measurement like they would be doing here, they would
have to do flat roofs or make the buildings larger, which would reduce the
impervious surface on the site. Seems to me it's better to keep more pervious surface
and have a sloped roof with this kind of judgment. And I think the phrase
I like best in here is the last. Building height measurement should implement the goals
of the Central Issaquah Standard, such as providing a street wall, creating a strong public
realm, having buildings with a strong relationship to circulation facilities. I think that language is
good because then when projects come in front of the Development Commission, there's some leeway
for the decision of is that building height measurement meeting the goals of the Central
Issaquah Plan. So I'd agree with, I'd encourage you to approve that. The second
had to do with the vistas from the street.
Excuse me while I find this again.
Oops, which page? 27. Oh, perfect. So,
in doing the, in reviewing the Costco master site plan, we ran into an issue
that I didn't agree with the result of. And what it was, it had to
do with the Centra's, Quaplan's goals of having buildings coming up to the
street frontage. And with a curved street within, an existing curved street within the Costco
development that came up to, at the very south end, came up to a roundabout
that would be put in place, it created a sort of a pointed intersection corner
that interpreting the street wall desire meant the buildings had to come all the way
to that point. At the same time, the buildings doing that blocked the views of
Squawk Mountain. And I thought the views of Squawk Mountain were more important than bringing
the street wall to that corner. And I think this language, the way I read
it, would allow you to say, you can make that view of Squawk Mountain more
important than bringing a street wall to a corner like that. Do I read that
correctly then? Is that? Yeah.
So, Mel and I were talking about this before because we went through this together,
and our goal was to try A, to be clear so that we all had
more predictability, and B, that generally curved streets are not a big issue in Issaquah,
but they were with the Costco development agreement, and they would be with redevelopment in
Pickering Place. and the goal was to upfront with curved streets identify which are the
most important views, document that through an adjustment of standards, and then develop
the project around those views that have been identified. So that if that view of
Squawk Mountain was one of those that was identified, then we decide that upfront and
then they would develop their plan around it. Great, so I agree with that too.
Recommend you approve it, thank you. Before you go, I have a question for you.
I have an excuse. The dog ate my homework. Sorry. That's not an excuse anymore.
Being on the Development Commission, are these rules,
these amendments, and the rest of the plan, does it give you enough
understanding and basis to judge developments coming in?
Is there something that's missing in here that or is it very difficult for you
to, well, one developer wants this and we'll give him this, but this one wants
somebody else? Do you have something to base good enough
judgment on? I think they
work pretty well. I think we're still working through it. And as I mentioned, I
think in both Costco and with the Gateway Apartments, there were some issues that came
up. where there seemed to be some conflicts in what purposes were. I think both
of these fixes would help those items. I'm sure there are gonna be other things
that might come up down the road with some of the new standards that we
have that we haven't been able to foresee how it might actually work out in
a specific development. But so far, I think it's pretty good. Thank you.
Anybody else wish to make a comment tonight? Does anybody else wanna make a comment?
Hearing none, I'm gonna close the public hearing at 713.
And with that, I'm gonna open it up for discussion among the members of this
committee. I do have a couple little things I wanna go over, but please,
do any of you have any additional questions? Yeah, I do. Under Chapter 5.0,
the density bonus program, as Ms. Marsh pointed out,
Affordable housing is becoming a greater and greater issue within the city as housing inventories
are plummeting in the area I would love to see 5.1 a
Split off into two separate goals and the current 5.1 e
Being eviscerated. I mean, I know I don't know that I necessarily consider them equal
priorities at all times for instance right now I would say affordable housing is a
much greater need than open space goals at present. So
I'm a little bit leery of blanket saying that they're equal priorities and that each
one will progress over time and not necessarily at the same pace. I mean, if
affordable housing is a huge issue right now, we need to address it right now.
Right, and I can speak to that, Justin. When the council adopted this in 2013,
both of them are the bonus density benefits and they were going back and forth
on that same issue is do you say that the first five years you do
affordable housing in the second five years you do open space or do you just
attempt to get them all even by the time you're getting there depending on what's
most important at the time and can you regulate what's most important at the time
or is that just something that you're aware that both of them are very important
and they're equally important and we're going to try to get to both of them
in in the 20-year plan, and so they struggled with that. And that's how they
ended up with saying is that they're equal, and yet we know that we can't
actually work on them at the same time with the same velocity because our resources
aren't such that we can. Okay, so that was a council discussion in this session.
So it was a huge, yeah, it was a huge, because they had little metrics
for a while, and then that's when we had the monitoring report, is they wanted
us to monitor the affordable housing and how much we were getting every year, so
that if they needed to make a course correction, let's say in year seven, that
said, wow, we haven't gotten any affordable housing, we need to completely change how we're
thinking we should get it. Or maybe all of a sudden in year five, we
just get a bonanza. Then maybe they'll figure out, well, maybe we need to work
on the open space. But they kind of built that into the monitoring report that
they'd see it every year, and then they would be able to make a course
correction if they realized that in the 20 years they weren't gonna get the equal
amounts of both. And when the city, one of the options is to,
for a builder to just give us cash. They have to build some affordable housing,
but then The second piece could be cash. And when that happens, the council has
the ability to decide between affordable housing and open space which one they're going to
spend that money on. And I think that's important because in making that decision, that's
going to be a public discussion. And so that when you feel passionately about that,
you know, this money should go to affordable housing and not open space right now,
you'll have the ability to say that to the council and communicate that you think
right now that's the stronger need. and have a community conversation about it. Good
point. I would really like to see, I mean, if they're getting the monitor report,
I would like to see some tie to that, to those goals being tied into
the monitoring and the actual metrics as opposed to just the council winging it
based on the reports but not necessarily meeting the needs of affordable housing, you know,
versus open space and just using it as a whim. I think it really should
be something that's measured and tied to measurement. I don't know
what that would look like, but. Right, and we've only had the two monitoring reports
that I think I sent you a few weeks ago, and I think next year
is because it's the three year, the third year, that there's more pieces that we
have to do for the third year, and I think council wants to have a
bigger discussion on a third year one, versus this year they sort of, Fiddled with
the formatting and because not a lot happened last year for development. So they worked
on sort of how we do the metrics, what they wanted to see. I think
next year there's going to be a lot more discussion on are we meeting our
goals? Certainly it's only three years of the 20 year plan, but how are we
seeing things? You know, is there are there pieces we want to tweak? And as
Connie mentioned, one of the things they want to look at is the mixed use.
You know, do you require it now or do you do you require it in
some places or how do you deal with that mixed use want that we have
that we're not getting? yet, so I think that'll come out next year with a
lot of discussion. Is there more
requirements in the standard to answer his question? This is more of a general
thing, so there are more requirements that are specifically stated in the standard. Yes. Right,
that's the whole chapter. Talks about the required pieces you have to do, and there's
a requirement for affordable housing if you go over the minimum height. And then there's
the, what's the other word, required and? Elective. Elective.
Although it doesn't mean that you don't have to do it. It means you can
elect three different ways to do it. Right, but there's a mandatory affordable housing component
to going over the minimum height. Right, and then aside from the bonus density or
density bonus, if you build residential housing in the urban core, you're required to make
10% of that affordable housing. as well, so that's an additional
requirement. Thank you. It was hard to
remember that this is the general overall and the specifics come in in the other
document. Talking about mixed use, I was
looking at the definition of a shopping center and I understand that
that kind of current situation, but I find that definition to be very
not in line with the central area plan. Group of
stores or restaurants, businesses, common ownership and whatnot, as
opposed to the type of mixed-use type of development that the central area is
is or should be trying to promote. So can you explain why we have that
kind of definition? Part of it is because we have so many shopping centers that
are there now. we don't want to make them all non-conforming because there's a whole
other set of issues that come with non-conforming uses. So we wanted to recognize that
we have them there, but not to say that we don't want the newer urban
walkable ones in the future, but when businesses come and go from our existing shopping
centers, we want to be able to allow that and provide for the flexibility that
they don't all have to come in with their own parking and create bigger surface
lots than we might already have. So I don't think we're saying we want a
lot more of those in the future. I think it's a recognition of that's what
we have now that we don't want to make them non-conforming, but we want to
help them be viable and maybe enough that they might start building on
their surface parking, use those as building pads, and then become more urban. I'm just
not seeing how there is an incentive here by defining that way to make that
happen and to push toward mixed use and structured parkings and
things like that. Right, and I think part of that is, as Lucy described, it's
the lower parking ratio than the five per thousand. It's actually the three per thousand
to try to get them to be able to go over the hump, if you
will, to be more urban. And I'm not sure, and
maybe I'm missing your point, but My thought is that this is just
the definition. This isn't the incentive. And as
Trish was saying, one of the things the council has asked us to look at
next year is how to either put more of a requirement or more of an
incentive in place for the mixed use to ensure that
this, I think what we're trying to look at is do we want to continue
to allow this to be market driven versus
stronger tools? I'm not sure that this definition of shopping center, while I agree it
doesn't do that, I don't think that's the intent of it. It's simply defining it.
And I think that we're gonna have to develop other tools that will implement that
piece of it. I understand that part. If it's listed as
one of the potential use, it gives the impression that it is
one of the... It's not necessarily zoned for that, but it opens the door for
it. Well, so let me try this and see if this helps. For
instance, at Star Point, up at Issaquah Highlands, the...
both of the retail pieces on either side of the road were
this definition, not this definition, but a definition of shopping center and a consolidated parking
ratio was used for the ground floor. The upstairs was residential and
that was, their parking was calculated at a residential rate. So by
writing this definition, it is not making a single use
piece of property that is for nothing other than shopping centers. And I think that's
your concern that that could be the implication. Another Grand Ridge, for example. Right. And
I think what we would say is if you had a mixed-use property and you
had this mixture of uses on the ground floor, this would be the way you
would calculate the parking for the ground floor, but the offices or residential above would
have its own parking rate, depending on what kind of office or residential it was.
So that's an important clarification. I see your concern. I look forward to those incentives.
Is there maybe something coming in the wings of actually creating a mixed use definition
and parking ratio formula specific to those mixed use as opposed to having to piecemeal
it based on the configuration of the buildings? Well, usually the upstairs uses are
either office or residential, which are less complicated to calculate. I think that the
right now the residential market is so hot that it is very easy to avoid
doing mixed use because it's a more complicated building to build, to finance, etc. And
that's, I think, where the interest from the council is, and obviously everyone else, is
coming from because that is letting the market make the decision on what's the
hottest and most popular. And I think the challenge staff has faced is
we're not economic real estate strategists, and so we wanted to make sure that we're
not putting something in place that becomes a disincentive for redevelopment. So that's kind of
one of our big work programs is to try and figure out resources and or
existing regulations from other communities that we can use if
appropriate here to try and get to that because I think we all agree that
is the goal of central Issaquah. Thank you. Anybody
else? I just have a comment. When I
read the report and several times it says
that biking and pedestrian should be paramount to vehicular traffic.
I know that in the next 30 years, we're all going to be driving cars
or something similar to that. And so it concerned me that it wasn't,
I know that that's the goal, but we're still going to have traffic. And I'm
hoping that when developments come in, it's not looked at as,
well, gee, I can put in 12 trails and a couple sidewalks, and that'll take
care of the traffic impact that my building is going to have. And I hope
that doesn't happen. I mean, traffic is terrible.
It's terrible everywhere. And the reason I asked about circulation earlier was because
it needs to move. No matter what you have in there, you have to have
a circulation within the city. And I just hope that
Commission, the Development Commission, the City and the future planning takes that
into account. No, and now I understand your question. I realize I didn't answer it
very well before because I was answering a different question. I think what we're trying
to do is instead of, I think the way our cities have been designed is
for the car first and then just kind of letting the bikes and peds fit
in wherever they're left over. The way we're doing it now is trying to make
it comfortable for bikes and pedestrians, but we are still doing all the traffic impact
analysis and traffic studies that we've always done to determine do
roads need to be added, do turn lanes need to be added, do signals need
to be added. All that kind of evaluation is still occurring because the city absolutely
has to function for cars. I said it was a comment.
No, and I just. Every time I try to go anywhere, so. Right. And I
know that in the Issaquah Press last, yesterday, there were two
really nice letters that, not letters, comments of the problems that we're having with traffic.
Okay. Everybody feels this. And we've gone through the central area plan
and there's what, 7,500 units are supposed to be in the city.
and the new traffic that was just approved.
That all has to be worked in and it's going to be very difficult to
do that and people have approved the Central Area Plan. I don't think we could
have had any more people and more comments and more meetings to discuss what it
is and you know when you PROVE THAT MANY HOUSES IS ONE THING, BUT WHEN
YOU ACTUALLY SEE IT GOING UP IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, IT MAKES PEOPLE CONCERNED. AND SO
WE HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL. AND I THINK CONNIE SAID,
YOU KNOW, WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO INFORM PEOPLE. AND I
DON'T KNOW HOW THAT ANYTHING YOU COULD DO MORE THAN WHAT YOU'RE DOING NOW TO
GET PEOPLE INVOLVED. BUT I THINK THAT ONCE THEY SEE or three developments
that are really impacting the city. I think you're going to have this room is
going to be full and every one of these meetings. So anyway, that's just my
thoughts. So the that goes to
the same chapter you were talking about the six so but with a different perspective.
So. non-motorized, go pedestrians, go bicycles.
Actually, so the way this is written, it
prioritizes non-motorized and then prioritize local vehicle traffic over
regional vehicle traffic. And I'm wondering where transit fits into that, being neither
or the other. And in my ideal prioritization, I would say non-motorized first,
transit second and you know, the regional vehicular
next. We do need to get our buses to move through the city.
It's all chalked up. I mean the traffic that people complain when you have 50
people on a bus standing, it makes it even worse.
You know, absolutely the streets have to serve all these different users. And I don't
think the intent is to ignore transit. It's just because
we have so little control over the routes and the bus stops and all of
those pieces. I think that's why it's not overtly called out because that is often
a negotiation with Metro or Sound Transit or whichever.
Agency is providing the bus service in the end we didn't see the limits the
city is responsible for the enhancements to Help with transit flow rate
Well I'm not so I don't think this is what you mean, but this is
what comes to mind for instance a bus if a bus stop is going in
Sound Transit or Metro would install that right, but if there was a need to
have a or close a road to make its
bus priority or whatever, a traffic light to prioritize the bus moving
first, that would be the city's responsibility. It would probably depend on which road it
is, because SR 900 and East Lake Sammamish are
state routes. So again, we have very little control over those roadways.
And those are probably some of the key places where we might want those kinds
of prioritization to take place. So
I want to think about that relative to these goals, because I don't think we're
intending to ignore it. It's just because we have so much less control over how
those things actually get implemented. But it is a purpose and intent. But
you still have the ability as a city to go to sound transit or go
to whoever. Absolutely. So with that in mind, and
don't you think it could be included in? That's why I wanted to think about,
I want to take a minute while you're asking other questions and look at the
language and see if we should propose adding something to it. I'm not sure. Does
anybody else have any other comments? I would know Second that of
including transit was just because we don't have it here now the point is that's
what we want our city to have Yeah, so for designing some narrow
streets and some things that aren't conducive to that then that's definitely not gonna be
Adding to that so I think that's part of it and I think we do
have more control than we have taken in the past and if we want people
to walk and ride and it's pouring rain, no one's going to walk and ride
a half mile to the transit center in the pouring rain. They're either going to
grab a bus or they're going to drive. And if there's no bus, they're going
to drive. So I think it's definitely worth stating that as something that we
care about. What we were just discussing was under 6.1 B, whether we
would want to say prioritizes non-motorized users and transit over motorized users.
There you go. Yep. That'll work. Okay. Thank you.
I'm with Joan. I'm with Joan on one of her recent comments on vehicle traffic.
I just want to make a comment quickly. Focusing on bicycles
and walking is certainly fine, and I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense.
But when you're planning on increasing density of homeowners and
housing and restaurants and Shopping centers
cars are inevitable. They are not going away
and To lower the priority on Maximizing the
efficiency of vehicle traffic over bicycle traffic or walking
to me doesn't make a lot of sense. But with that said, I
respect that you commented that you have a focus on that as well.
I would hate to see, especially when at one side you're trying to
increase density, on the other side you're trying to maybe
have less traffic, it ain't gonna happen, folks.
I can add to that though that I don't know if you've been reading all
the new studies, young people don't want to drive anymore. So the next generation, they
are looking for places where they can have their house, they can hop on a
bus or ideally walk or bike to their work
and then walk around to their restaurants and bars and clubs and all of that.
Let's hope they can find a job within walking distance. Well, even if they have
to take a bus. But that is, I mean, that's the trend. That's the next
generation. So if we want to be attractive to that generation, we do
need to build a city that makes it attractive to the young people. I'm two
for two in the younger generation in my family. They drive cars. So you're the
young one? No. Oh, sorry. No, no. I wish I would. I have a daughter
and a son that are in that generation. I have two children who do not
drive. They don't ride bikes, they don't walk, they drive cars. I have two children,
neither one of them want to drive. Well, okay. So they match each other. We're
talking about something that's in the process 30 years from now. So I think all
of those things are gonna be taken care of. And I know that a lot,
if we get more transit here and more opportunities and there's buses going up to
Squawk Mountain, then you're gonna get more people that are gonna ride because they're just
gonna be, of waiting in traffic. The trouble is those same young people
are going to grow up and say, I've got to go to Costco. And I
can't go on a bus. I've got to use a car. So there will always
be a need for cars. But one of the things with the bikes,
it needs to be safe. And there's a lot of places around town that are
not safe. And I think that has to come before
a lot of other things. I'll sit in traffic, but I don't wanna have somebody
get hurt on a bike. It all has to come together. It has to be
a, you know, all. All or nothing. It's comprehensive and a plan.
It may be true that the younger generation are into different modes of transportation, but
there is no predictability. And I spent almost 40 years in the staffing industry,
There is no predictability of where they're gonna find a job. And if you want
them to work, and they're gonna have a job, and they're gonna pay for their
life going forward, they're not necessarily gonna be in walking and biking or bus
range. It's just not gonna happen. So you've gotta have that
flexibility or that ability to have both. And just,
Just a comment. Adding that many people into the city is not going to add
that many jobs in all the different price ranges in order to keep them here.
You know, that was a grand idea of having Microsoft up in the Highlands. Part
of the condos right there were supposed to be for people who worked at Microsoft.
Well, that didn't happen. Anyway, we could. Just a comment, just a thought.
Are there any really objections to any of this? Okay, so
I'm assuming that we have to propose
that this goes forward to council with our agreement. But before you do this, there
was one change that came from the public that was a clarifying statement that I'd
like to throw out there. Oh, here it is. Still lost my page. Hang
on one second. It happens to be, where'd it go? Did you write it down?
Thank you. So it's on page 29 of 35
or 17 of 18, depending on which page number you're looking at. Under chapter four,
zoning districts uses and standard summary. And it's just a clarifying statement.
Under minimum FAR intent, Currently it says the intent of the sites which
require a residential minimum FAR, and the clarification is simply the intent of the standards
for sites which require a minimum FAR. So if you agree with it, then that
would be a change in what goes to City Council for their discussion. And that
would need to be included in your recommendation. So just the two
words, standards for? Standards for. cleaning up the
document there was a place where same statement appeared twice I can find it but
I think that was
the
6.1 F and J where this other same statement do you have a page yeah
page 16
very important, so let's repeat it twice. 16,
top of the page, the bullets D, E, F, And it's the 16
of 35? I know we have 17 kinds of page numbers. Yeah, it's the one
that looks like this. No, 16 of 35. My yellow. Oh, I think I'm there.
And what was the double? F and J.
Wow, good eyes. I still don't see it, Trishka. The
other one was the one that Mary Lou had pointed out in 13,
which was, it says, this chapter creates, provides. I
flagged that one. Okay, you already got that one. Yeah. Great. But, yeah, that one
got by me, too. So are we going to add transit? Yes.
Did you get that edit, Trish? Yes. Okay. Transit users, right? Yes.
we adding transit to I missed the 6.1 the intent of
circulation facilities did you just change that to transit users versus transit and it's I
would say yeah over motorized users so it says the final version is
prioritizes non motorized users and transit users over motorized users
yeah does that work is that what you were thinking you want to try
You want to prioritize the vehicle, I guess, more than the user. I don't know
how you prioritize the user. The bus has to go.
Right. I think if you turn to using the page numbers at the very bottom,
15 of 35, it would be adding to language that's
already existing. If you wanted to change to further
work on that, And the words you're adding is and
transit. The user's word is already there. Prioritize non-motorized and transit users.
Oh, I see where you're putting transit. Okay. Is that grammatical?
Does that pass your grammar? She's the grammar police. Did I just put it in
the wrong place when I put it in? We're in line B there, right? Right.
And how did you say it, Trish? I made it more wordy, of course. I
said prioritizes non-motorized users and transit users over non-motorized. That's what I had as well.
And I think that the commission was suggesting prioritizing
non-motorized and transit users. So we're only adding one word then, right?
As long as it's understandable when you are talking to applicants that it is not
non-motorized routes. I mean, there's... It's a finite, it's a very slight difference, but there
is a difference between non-motorized system and routes and those users. So you need to
be clear. I just want to be sure that when you are talking to applicants,
that that is clear. I think we're good because everybody in that first phrase is
users. Because it's also motorized users. So I think we're okay. I appreciate that.
I love it that you wanted an extra word too. Someone like me. Let that
be noted. But thanks, that
was a good catch.
Any others? Are anyone ready to make a motion? I'll make a motion to adopt
the findings of fact 2015 Central's Quad Development Design Standard Amendments, Round 2.
With those changes. With those changes. Second. All those in favor?
Aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. If there's nothing else
to... Chris, do you want to add anything else? Oh.
Do you want to just say... Oh, go for it. You're closer. So you've
just made your recommendation to council. On October 19th,
there will be an agenda bill that refers this to the Land and Shore Council
Committee. It'll go to Land and Shore Committee on November 12th and possibly November
19th, depending how long their conversation goes. The Development Commission and the Central Issaquah Task
Force have been invited to those meetings as well. Of course, you all are welcome
to come too. And on December 7th, Hopefully there will be council
action on and a decision made on these recommendations. Great.
Thank you so much. Questions on the remaining process? So with that,
I'll close the meeting at 745.
Really good. Thank you all.