Trish, are you ready? Trish, we're on the air. I'm
ready. Are you ready? Did you open it? I'm pointing
at Joan. Joan, kick us off. Good evening, everybody. It's
nice to see so many people here. Welcome to the
March 9th, I think, meeting of the Planning Policy Commission.
Tonight we're going to obviously talk about The central area plan,
I assume where we are, where we'd like to go in it. I do want
to say that the city went all out and spent almost all of their budget
in providing candy for all of you on the counter. So please, I have to
put it back into the bags if you don't eat it. So please indulge yourself.
So first thing on the agenda normally is the approval of the minutes. Do I
have a- Motion to approve the minutes. Make a motion
to approve the minutes. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say
aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes. So with that, I'm not sure exactly how
Trish wants to handle this. Are we going to discuss it first
and then look at the... Yes. Okay. Yes. So our fearless leader
is here to... kind of tell us what our tonight's goals are and where we're
going to go on the central area plan so trish please take it away okay
i wish i could see you over there but i will later um welcome this
is so exciting um this is the first of many many, let me stress, many
times for you all to tell us how you feel about the district visions in
Central Issaquah. We're just starting out. And what we're gonna do tonight, as you see,
we have all sorts of information and candy and experts so that you can share
your comments, you can ask questions, and we're really gonna have some fun tonight and
we're gonna learn a lot, and we're gonna learn a lot from all your comments
for us. First, I'm going to give you just a short background of why we're
even here tonight. We're going to talk a tiny bit about all the districts, which
we're actually trying to call neighborhoods. So if we slip back and forth into the
neighborhood versus district, neighborhood just sounds more community and friendly and not quite so hunger
games so we're going to try and go into neighborhoods so we're going to talk
a little bit about that and then we have our parks planning expert here that's
going to tell you about this fabulous outreach that's going to start any minute now
for the parks plan update so that's really exciting and then we have our public
works engineering expert here to talk about road improvements and infrastructure improvements there's chairs over
here guys this is really exciting And he'll be here to share some information and
some exciting projects that are going on right now and things that are in the
pipeline. And then PPC, you'll get to ask staff questions and like, you know, things
that you might want for the next meeting that we talk about district visions. And
then we're all going to get up and we're going to put the boards up
on the easels because now we're not, we don't want to blind everyone back there.
And we're going to, we have sticky notes for you all to make comments on
things. And one of the comments that we're hoping to get from you all, I'm
going to jump to here, is we've met, part of our outreach has been, wait,
I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to tell you why we're here. I'm just
too excited. Last September, council decided that we needed a moratorium to sort of pause
because it seemed that the development they were getting in the central Issaquah plan wasn't
exactly how they thought it would come online. And so one of the projects they
asked us to work on was were the district visions neighborhood visions for the 10
areas and so that's what we're doing and ppc is leading the charge on that
and the first thing we did in our public outreach is we talked to the
property owners and business owners in all the districts because we thought well at least
we invited the most of them to to come and talk to us because we
thought they have a different idea of what the actual citizens and public so we
wanted to get their feedback and then we're going to get the public feedback and
the community feedback and sort of put it all together and one of the things
we found out from them which we thought was really fabulous is most of them
wish that they had a there there they you know except for the ones that
have the state park there you know no one talks about you know let's go
to west gilman and have some coffee Where is West Gilman? So they talked about
asking us, the city and the community, they said, ask people, what would be a
really cool thing in our district? So that's why one of the questions tonight is,
if you could comment or say something about the area in 10 words or less,
like you were going to brand it or market it or invite your best friend
to meet you at the... you know, under the clock tower, you know, do we
need a clock tower? So we have some ideas for placemaking kinds of things to
kind of get you thinking about things. But that was something that they asked for.
So we thought we'd throw it out to you all and start getting your ideas.
The other thing they asked for was, how do we get more people involved in
the process and I see this is a good start we're gonna do a survey
we're gonna try some other clever things to get more folks to to talk about
it we're getting the Rockstar Task Force back together again to talk about the districts
and how they saw them and how things are turning out so I'm really looking
forward to that as well that will be televised and you can also watch it
later on our YouTube channel for those of you that can't can't watch it live
With that, this is what the district visions look like in the plan. And you'll
see all the boards have that as the starting point for all 10. Underneath that,
there's sort of a line, and it says the projects that are proposed there, like
the non-motorized projects, the infrastructure projects, are the bottom part of all of the 10.
And then there's a couple of boards that are just ideas for placemaking, different kinds
of statues and water features and fun places that just to get you thinking about
what might be a cool thing in each of the districts. The scope of what
council says we're allowed to fiddle with are the listing of the that are existing
there and also they wanted a new category the green necklace and parks they wanted
those to be pulled out of the vision and given its own special spot in
the vision so it calls it out for more because it's it's really a very
important part of each of the neighborhoods. This is the public
outreach that we know of so far. There'll probably be additional meetings and
gatherings and groupings that we'll figure out as we go. And with that,
I'm going to invite Jen to come up and tell us all the
fabulous things that are going on with parks. Thank you, Jen. Good evening
and welcome everybody. My name is Jennifer Fink and I'm the park planner
for the city. And as Trish just mentioned the green necklace and parks are an
integral part of not only the central Issaquah plan but of Issaquah. We're surrounded by
beautiful mountains that we tie to. We have the state park here. And last year,
council had asked that we go back out and we start a new park strategic
planning effort. And we are getting ready to launch this effort. any minute, any day,
through a series and we're going to start with a listen and learn process. And
we want to hear from you, the public, as to what you want in your
park system. We're going to be asking a series of aspirational questions that will be
posted both online and we'll be holding the same meetings and conversation groups through for
six public meetings. The meetings have not been advertised yet, but they are going to
start the week. The first meeting does take place the 21st. So, and we'll be
holding them in six areas throughout the city in hopes that people can come, voice
their thoughts and their hopes and their dreams. And we want you to think outside
the box, reinvent the the wheel. Tell us what's working, what's not, your hopes and
dreams, so we can start filtering down and starting to plan a new strategic vision
for the park system, which will also help supplement all these other planning efforts like
the Central Issaquah Plan. Like I said, if you're unable to make one of
the meetings, no worries. You can answer the questionnaire online. And if you forget something,
you can go back to the questionnaire and fill it out again. And then once
we go through the three-week period of public meetings and then for another couple weeks,
we'll have open the online resources. for the questionnaires. We'll gather up that information, repackage
it, do our work, and then we'll come back out to you later, probably closer
to the fall, and tell us this is what we heard and tell us where
we're going to help kind of frame our future as to where the park system
is going to be in our strategic planning efforts. Any day now, go to the
parks homepage. You can, we'll have information on there. You can always email me, send
me any questions as well. But the same questions will be asked both in the
public meetings or online. Please tell your friends. Please share with your neighbors. Even if
you work here and live elsewhere, we still want to hear from you. So with
that, there's... CHRISTIE WOOD: Yes. No, I can stick around. So if you have
any further questions, please ask. CHRISTIE WOOD: And as you're walking around leaving notes, feel
free to ask Joe about anything going on in any of the areas. Just thought
I'd better make sure you're going to be here. And now our public works expert,
Kurt, is going to share all that he knows about this area. KURT LANDEN: Thanks.
Thanks, Trisha. Yeah, I was asked to come and talk about-- what's going on in
transportation in this in this part of town and share with you everything i know
or five minutes worth whichever comes first so we'll we'll see uh see about that
but i i'm uh very happy to be here my name is kurt seaman i'm
the transportation manager here at the city and i would like to just touch on
in the brief time i have on a couple of areas of focus that we
that are really important to us and and we think to the community in this
area so first of all is the Gilman corridor which is sort of the heart
of this of this area and it's one of the few one of our few
main east-west connectors in town it's a major east-west connector just south of I-90
for sure and it serves a large number of businesses and more and
more residents as well. We know that the future of Gilman is going
to be very different from the current Gilman and we know that as
this area grows and redevelops, it's going to become even a more important
corridor. So I've been attending a lot of these meetings that we've been talking to
the community and getting some initial input. And I guess one of the themes I've
heard is how do we keep all that's good about Gilman and maintain that and
the cool things that are happening along Gilman while planning for a future that is
likely to be different. So, and I think the other sort of key theme is,
so vehicles are an important part of Gilman and traffic and all of that, we
know that, but looking forward, you know, start thinking about what other transportation choices we
should focus in on. So perhaps more of an emphasis on a multimodal approach with
more emphasis on making safe and comfortable places for pets and bikes as well as
um transit. I just met with Metro the other day and they're very focused and
very committed to working with communities to increase transit in in all cities. And so
here's a potentially an opportunity on Gilman for that. So that's just in a nutshell.
That is Gilman. The exciting thing is Council just this week, was it? It
was this week. Can't keep track here. Just approved a $175,000 work effort for
us to start looking at Gilman, and that's going to be a two-year process,
and we're going to start We're going to do a lot of listening first and
to hear from what you all think is really important for Gilman. We're not going
to come in with ideas and cross sections and plans before we get a really
good idea of what the, you know, what a, a, the right character for Gilman
should be moving forward. So that's just briefly about Gilman. And then just one other
project I wanted to highlight that is not a city-led project. It's actually led by
the state. It's called an Interchange Justification Report, IJR for short. And what that is,
the state is going to start beginning the middle of this year looking at the
Front Street I-90 interchange and seeing looking at ways to improve that. So that's sort
of the the basis for the work that it's an interchange justification report focused on
Front Street and I-90. But as part of that they're also required and we're encouraging
them to look at potential other crossings of I-90. So the city's had on its
plans for a long time and a second crossing of I-90 in the vicinity of
10th or 12th somewhere in that area. So we don't know exactly where that is
or what it would look like. Would it connect to the freeway or would just
be a connection connecting the north and south house of Issaquah in that area. So
that's pretty exciting. We think that there's a lot of opportunity there to get another
north south connection that's really lacking here in the city and getting that right and
tying that into the into this whole central Issaquah community is going to be really
important. And again, it's it's back to this multimodal approach so it's not that's not
a connection only for cars i think there's a real opportunity um for to have
better transit if you have another connection there across the freeway and of course we
know that sound transit's coming to issaquah it's a little ways off but it's it's
not really too soon to start planning for that and where that station might be
and how that might tie into this whole community as well so that's i don't
know if that was more than About five minutes. So that's-- I'm here this evening
to answer any questions you have. But that's the brief overview. That's
sort of the highlights. CHRISTIE WOOD: I'm going to turn it over
to PPC first to see if you all have any questions before
we turn everybody loose writing comments. Any questions for me, for Kurt,
for Jen? Seeing none. KURT PIEKARSKI: Well, I've got a question. Transportation
talked about just two areas. What's the status on all
those that didn't make it in the last bond? Are we
doing anything with those things? Good question. Sunset, the Providence Point
interchange. That's it. i'd be happy to talk about that i thought i was
running out of time here but i'd be happy to talk about those projects as
well so there were four projects on the on the uh ballot um last fall
and so those were two newport projects province point and east sunset and so um
the only project that we're not currently moving forward with right at the moment is
east sunset But the other three, the good news is on all three of those
other projects we're making progress. So we're planning to come back to council soon in
the next several months with an agenda bill to move forward to finalize the design
and construct Providence Point intersection signal there. So that's on the agenda, that's in the
works. on Newport on the Newport portion from that's our 900 to 54th we
just started a scoping meeting with it we've sucked a consultant to help with
a preliminary design work for that corridor so we're getting that consultant under contract
very soon here we just selected them and so we're going to plan start design
work and public outreach on that on that project here again the just to just
for everyone's information that project is a it's a design project it's a road project
it's an engineering project but we know how important that road is to to the
community especially folks that live along there and are going to be living along there
and so we know it's important to get that right and we're have a and
I would say an equal amount of public outreach effort in that project as we
do engineering effort in that project. So that's that one. And then the other Newport
project from Maple to Sunset is we have grant money to begin design on that.
That money got shifted around a little bit by PSRC. So we unfortunately don't have
that money to begin the design on that project this year, but we're hopeful that
They had more projects awarded than they had money to, they have enough money
for the projects but not all in this year. So we're hopeful that we'll
start, or to be able to start design work on that Newport project next
year in 2018. - Thank you. - So just for clarification for me, you
talked about three that are gonna go. and going into the design field,
design stage, do we have money to actually finish them or is this just the
beginning process? - So it's the beginning of the process to get us started. So
we're continually looking for opportunities for grant opportunities and other funding sources for all those
projects. We don't have, so that was the sort of one of the main reasons
for the bond was to ensure that we would have money for design and construction
for all of those projects get that money set aside through bonding. So we don't,
that was our mechanism to make sure that we would be able to design and
construct all four of those projects. So we have money to get started on them
and to do what I just mentioned and so the next phases of that We're
hoping there's some opportunities for additional grant money and especially if the city can provide
matching funds, but we don't have those all figured out just at this time. So
on the list of transportation things that needs to be done, there's probably a list
of 30 things, and every year they kind of go do this. So how did
those three get to the top? Because I know that the Providence Point was not
on the top. So... Yeah, so I don't know. I've been here about a
year, so I'm not sure if I know exactly how all those things got prioritized.
A lot of them have been moved forward. I know that the four projects, the
four ballot measure projects, went through a very extensive community process to get them to
where they are. So those are, I think, the main reason why we continue to
move forward with those. Is there any... talk in the city about going forward
with another bond initiative? Well, I not that I haven't been, I haven't heard of
those conversations, but I know we're always, we're always interested in looking. I mean, we've
got a lot of transportation needs here in Issaquah and we're always looking, we're always
talking about ways on how to do more, how to do more, how to get
more of our projects completed sooner. So a couple years ago when I was more
involved with the Chamber, we had in our transportation meetings,
what we called was the bucket of paint list, which
meant what can we do to just restripe things that
are not major construction. Are there anything in the pipeline
to leave transportation clog anywhere by just adding taking away so so we have
i don't know if this is exactly what you're referring to but we in addition
to the projects i mentioned we also have a complete streets program and so those
typically and there's about i don't i think there's about six or eight projects on
that list that we have committed to designing and building this this year so uh
and those are smaller projects they're they're um i don't know I don't know if
I'd characterize them as congestion relief projects as much as safety improvements and filling gaps
where there's pieces of, there's not a good crossing, there's not a safe crossing, there's
sidewalk links that are missing. Those types of projects are what are on the list.
We're looking, we're still continuing under that program to look at a solution for the
Trader Joe's Target project. intersection there that was also talked about, has been talked about
quite a bit. So that's another project we're moving forward. So there's a series of
smaller projects that I think will make some important differences in the transportation system that
are much smaller scale that we can do. And so we have a Complete Streets
program that's funded by council every year. And so it's our goal to continue to
make sure continue to implement that program and in fact we're working on ways to
better prioritize that list so that we're sure that the projects that are on that
list are the projects that really give us the biggest bang for the buck and
are the most important ones for the community thank you anybody else have a question
I see millions of people out there in the audience and I know you all
came because you want to know what's going on in the city, especially in the
central area and you want to have your input into that city which you should
because you're citizens of Issaquah. So what we're going to do is give you opportunity
right now to check out the various districts. There's papers over here and pens if
you have any comments to make that, yeah, hey, this is really good. Hey, do
you think that maybe you could put this here and that? Whatever you want to
put on those comments would really appreciate it. So we're going to spend probably 20
minutes or so, half an hour in getting your comments on where you want the
city to go. So with that, I know it's gonna take a lot of energy
to do that. So remember that all the candy is over here for your enjoyment.
So please get up, walk around and help us design the city. Right, and if
you can do the future, the neighborhood in ten words or less. and the placemaking
options, that would really be great. And tonight's not the end. If you drive home
and you think of these great ideas, email them to us. We're here all the
time. I'm going to pass around an email sheet. If you want to keep getting
invited to these kind of exciting events, just write your email really clear so it
won't bounce back. And whoever is the last, we'll just put it up by the
candy so that we'll make sure everybody can sign up. Should I start with you?
You can have a smile so that's a good thing. Okay, so
you figured half hour, Joan?
And then you guys can
do public comment if you
want at the end of
that. Thank you. Go. I
didn't like the ads. Are you going to add
comments? I've got nothing. I know nothing. You said
everything. I just heard it. All right. Oh, there
were two of them. Yeah, we actually had two.
All right. You know what? This is great. Thank
you.
That's
a
good
choice.
Take our seats, have some candy and take our seats and we'll open it up
for public comment. Going twice. If you happen to see everything, you can stay after
the meeting and continue. I didn't want to be rude and take them down. I
thought I'd be behind the veil here. Oh, see, Troy is just saying it. We're
just putting them down. There you go. Thank you, sir. I'll take them away. Right,
perfect. Reminder, too, if you want us to email you, there's a sign-up sheet going
around. Please sign that and we'll make sure that you get invited to all these
exciting gatherings. And since we don't have a sign-up sheet for public comment, if you
could come to the podium and give your name so our recording secretary can make
it official that you were here. Do you want to just... Before we actually
go into the public comments, I see a few people that were on
the original plan, original committee to, and they spent three years putting this
plan together. Do any of them have any comments specifically about history, anything
that you think would be beneficial for other people in the community to
know about? Joe, do you have anything that you'd like
to bring forward? You don't have to. Not to stick you out,
Joe. Well, I just know him. I would like to. OK. So
it's kind of public comment, but it's kind of not. My name
is Joe Forkner, and I was the chair of the original Central
Issaquah Plan Task Force. And these comments are probably biased pretty badly. And
I want you to remember that they're biased by me. They're not a reflection
on the task force itself necessarily. One of the biggest problems that I think
have brought us to this point was the public participation through the original task
force or the original CIP presentation. Excuse me. When when we took
those three years and brought it to the council the council looked
at it for like four months and and I can still remember
in November of what was it 2009 the council would review it.
They would change each of the districts some way they reprinted out
and in two weeks they were hearing testimony on the new changes.
And there were only a few of us that were willing to sit down and
go through 150 pages of the whole thing to find what had changed and then
be able to comment at a public meeting. So the one thing that I think
is most important through this is what has happened in Issaquah is not contrary to
the Central Issaquah Plan. It just surprised a lot of people, I think. So
as public as you can make this process, as much as we can get out
to the public that this is a process we're going through, come and be part
of it. In my opinion, that is the strongest message that needs to be put
out to the public. Because we spent an awful lot of time as a community
putting this original plan together. And to have the community come back a year later
and say, whoa, you guys missed the mark. It's kind of it's kind of depressing
to those of us that put so much time into it So if you're interested
if you know neighbors who are interested if you know people that have complained to
you About the things that have been going on have them come and be part
of this because that's the only thing that's going to make this process better is
to get input from all the people that have opinions about it and that's I
think that's the most important thing of this. Thank you for the opportunity. I think
One comment I would like to make is to thank the original task
force. I mean, they did spend a lot of time working on this,
and I think they got the overall plan and the concept right. I
think it's now the putting it together and actually making it so that everybody
in the community understands it. Because I remember the three years that we worked on
it in planning policy, I mean, it sounds great, but you don't know the details.
And so now I think what this is all put together is to get the
details and make sure that this is exactly what we want. I don't think it's
going to be too much different than what Joe and the task force put
together, but I think we just need some of the intricacies to make sure that
everybody's happy. Because I've heard a lot of comments, "Well, I don't like this. I
don't understand that." Well, unless you read it, you're not going to get the full
concept. You know, it's nice to say, "Oh, there's going to be a four-story building
there," but when it's built, it's like, I didn't want a four-story building there.
You know, you can't perceive what it's going to be. So with that and
my droning on here. Well, actually what I was going to do is say
I'm going to open up to public comment. So my name is Mel Morgan
and I served on the task force with our boss, Joe, who was a
great boss for us all. And I serve on the Development Commission, so I've gotten
a chance to see the projects that have been approved or up for approval through
the central area plan come through to see what we've gotten. And I think there
are some things that we've seen in the Development Commission that we wished would have
come in differently but I think one of the things that I think about is
like outdoor decks and the importance of having decks and residential units to get some
connection between the residents and the units and the street side. But it hasn't been
perfect but things never are and as to quote somebody who knew how complicated this
could all be. But what I would say is the best part is we're getting
some residential development downtown. We're getting a lot more people that are living in downtown
Issaquah now, which is really what we wanted to do, and that momentum is continuing.
I think it's great that the city is, the council is stepping back to make
some tweaks to it, but we do have more people moving in downtown, and I
think that's a great trend for us. So thank you. Okay, now I'm going to
open it up to public comment. Is there anybody that would like to... input,
give us some information. Please, if you haven't, it's okay if you haven't signed
up, if you just go and tell us your name and where you're from.
Yeah, my name is Lindsay Walsh. I live in the Highlands. Sorry. I think
the community comment period is really great and rather than commenting on each of
these, I want to focus on the the development of comment and I would
really like to see I think you had mentioned was that just related to parks
as far as going to different areas of the city to bring in comment I'd
like to see that for this I mean I think you could easily go up
to Blakely Hall have a meeting at Pickering Place invite people to Gilman Village and
have those types of meetings there that develop each of these and kind of
bring in the community aspect and I think that would get you a
broader range of opinions than just the people who are willing to come
out on a weeknight down to City Hall. So those are my thoughts.
Would anybody else like to make a comment? My name is Barry Lynch
and I also was one of the ones on the task force and
what I'd like to say is I think As a member of the task
force I tried to carry forward the vision of what I heard the community saying.
What I saw one of the things that happened is after we turned it over
then code was developed and one of the things where Joe said you need to
stay involved in the process is don't make just make sure the words right we
have to really make sure the code that the Development Commission is ruling towards meets
what the vision says and that's what happened in the process as far as I'm
concerned especially for gateway we had a vision there but the code was written so
that it matched all of the whole central area plan and in some of these
areas we need to have codes that are specific towards those areas in order
to get the vision to work. We're going to have to have incentives in those
areas in order to get some of these visions to work. And we don't and
shouldn't give away everything. One of the things is to slow down development is not
to make it all that easy to do something, but work together and embrace it
and that's what I would hope that the citizens stay involved in this all the
way through the process and if you don't understand the code ask or attend a
development commission meeting so you better understand how code is implemented and how you get
the final product from what the vision statement is because that's where I think our
process broke down was the vision was not carried over in the code to then
allow us to do what we needed to do to get where we are. And
the other thing is I don't think we need to grow as fast as we're
growing because the infrastructure isn't here. Thank you. Anybody else?
I haven't seen some of these people for a long time. This is cool.
You're lucky. The council sees me almost every meeting. David Kappler, 255 Southeast Andrews
Street. Big picture, I guess, is where I'm concerned in the long term. What
are we going to do about sound transit in order to whatever, sell
our soul or get the honor or whatever how you want to getting Sound Transit
coming here and being at the end of the line of a major line. We
have to have a lot more units here. I'm not so worried about development. I
don't like the looks of some of what's happened and that kind of thing. But
you know we get a lot of quite a bit of money from the development
that happens within the city. And they, in a sense, mitigate quite a bit of
their impact. What the impact on transportation is killing us is all the people around
us, many of which are not in the Regional Transit Authority, are not paying for
Sound Transit. And if we decide we're going to be, we're at the end of
the line, and are we going to just be a city of parking structures for
all these people driving into our city from all those 300 degrees practically, to
come here, that would be a disaster. We need to be working on
having Sound Transit being very much focused right on I-90 and many of
those trains being serviced by buses coming in from the region. And if
we start just plugging up the whole city with cars that park to be gone
for 10 hours into Seattle or Bellevue, Redmond or whatever, it's going to be a
disaster for us. So think that way about the long term and what we want
to be and how we can handle being at the end of a major light
rail station. Thank you. A lot of questions. Anybody else?
Hi, my name is Steve Pereira, 170 Northeast Dogwood Street, about nine years. So first
of all, thanks to the first few speakers. One of the things that Simpsons-Isaquah has
is institutional knowledge, and I don't often hear that and a way to feed that
back into the community as a whole. So I think there needs to be more
of a process to pick their brain to see how we're doing and let those
of us who haven't been here or don't have as much history, it would be
great for the city to see how we're growing and a benchmark for how we're
doing that. Next thought is as we look at these ten different neighborhoods one of
the things I don't what I hear and see is we have to grow and
develop and Maybe one thing we should consider is that maybe we don't want to
grow and develop and an option should be Not necessarily to do something but to
do nothing We don't need an enhance it. We don't need to grow it. We
didn't need to become something different that needs to be part of the conversation the
second was that And I think Mary Lynch talked about this, where there needs to
be a connection between the vision and city code. I know I've gone to a
lot of the development commission meetings. And the sense I've gotten from those who are
voting members is that we have to approve this because the code says we have
to do this. It's not really a decision-making process. There's no way to say, this
building looks ugly. Can you change it? So there needs to be more teeth into
making that happen. So thank you. Thank you. I think
everybody up here and anybody who was on this commission during this
process would agree with you because that was one of the big
things that we all asked for was that the codes be written
to make sure the things that were supposed to be done were
done. Anybody else? Connie? So, Connie Marsh. We knew the codes weren't
written to get what we wanted then, but we were in a
hurry. But we were told that it would be easy to change things if
it didn't work. So this is the easy to change part. Aha, I know. So...
I read, I've read this so many times and I always come back to the
overarching idea that we're trying to make a great town, right? We want a town
where you love to live here, you love to work here, when you stand up
and look around there's component parts to this town where you say, you know, I
love that. I love looking at that line of trees. I love looking at the
mountainous views and And it feels like what has happened with the
Central Iskwa plan so far is we are just sort of loading buildings onto the
land and we are sort of losing that soul in this special component parts. And
I think that is part of why we're stopping and Trish is asking for a
vision for each neighborhood because the Central Iskwa plan is enormous. and 10 neighborhoods is
a lot to even think about and you go brain dead even thinking about it.
And I think that it needs to go neighborhood by neighborhood and you need to
talk to those neighborhoods because they know how they work. and they will be able
to tell you those valuable pieces of where they live and what they do to
preserve and to create the attitude for that neighborhood. To have people who don't live
or use those areas try to tell you what the vision should be, maybe in
a general way would work. but I don't think is a successful pathway. I said
this many times before they started this process so they've heard it before it's
nothing not a surprise to them. So the concept of the central Issaquah plan
and traffic right the idea is that we are supposed to be able to
live within our neighborhoods and not have to get in the car. In the end,
we're supposed to be able to do everything we need to do by walking around
or maybe doing a little bike ride. And that is playing, that is going to
the grocery store, to the pharmacy, whatever. And one of the big things that was
missing in what happened with our initial development is Gateway area. We built a bunch
of houses and the only way to get to any services is to get in
your car. And that is a thing that oddly seems to me should have
been in code and and is not and it won't be satisfied
by looking at the visions so how do we get the proper
overarching vision with implementation language because we have learned that you cannot implement a vision
and we were told when the central is quite plan went in we are going
to be able to implement division and that is a failure that is probably the
biggest failure so I'm well I think this is great and I think we'll learn
a lot more about what will bring the community along in a process of reaching
out to them I still think we're missing the mark on how to solve
the Issaquah plan's largest problem. Anybody else? I need to
talk to you because your head keeps going like this
and I don't even know what you're thinking. My name
is Joanna Buehler and I live at 4129 185th Place,
Southeast Issaquah, which is the South Cove area.
um i have a long perspective on this area because back in 1989
i was a co-founder of save lake sammamish and i've been working on
these issues particularly vis-a-vis protecting the lake and i'm very disappointed that the
central isco plan does not seem to take into account all of
the runoffs that's going to go into that lake and how it's going to be
transported there because it will certainly overwhelm a lot of the streams and the creeks.
Another bit of perspective is that back when Rowan Hines was still mayor, which is
a long, long time ago, I think in the 90s, Issaquah formed, we were still
just a few thousand people, had a community get together in meeting where
they asked what were the treasures of Issaquah and in fact I
think Milenko Matanovich over at Pomegranate facilitated these and it came up
that the treasures of Issaquah were the small town feel, the wooded
hillsides, the lake, the creeks and the sense that it was different,
it wasn't Bellevue East. and it wasn't trying to be Bellevue and
it wasn't trying to be something else and it was to maintain that
infrastructure those beautiful views and I'm very concerned that what I'm seeing have
seen of late is the development of some buildings as Connie said just
dumped on a particular plot without actually a view to view
corridors or I also worked on the talus development for
about six years and we had very strict agreements written
into that development agreement to protect the water quality and
that included no view clearing, no big retaining walls, you
know, we encouraged the greater density and we supported the greater density
but the price of that was to keep the developer from going across West Tibbets
Creek and some of those other smaller creeks it worked out very well for at
that time I think it was oh gosh I'm forgetting which was the developer but
it worked well for them because they didn't have to pay nearly as much for
infrastructure and we supported the high-rise building for the seniors and the townhouses with underground
parking and everything. So they got a lot more density, and they actually made a
much greater profit than they would have done had they gone all across the hillside.
But it seems to me that despite that development agreement, we're seeing an awful lot
of nibbling away. Now, I know that's peripheral, but it still comes back to the
issue of there's a vision, there's an agreement, and then somehow things get nibbled away.
The trees go, there's view clearing, there's landslides. Those are the things. And then
we, the taxpayers, inevitably, almost inevitably, get left to pick up the pieces and
pay for it. As with, we still don't know who's going to pay for
that talus slide, and yet we're considering the Bergsma-Winward project, which would probably cause
more slides and be more of a problem. So the first thing I wanted
to emphasize was to save the treasures of Issaquah. I've seen a
lot of other places such as Vancouver, BC, their central
areas, Coal Creek and English Town. Those areas have view
corridors. They have stepped buildings. They have great density, but
they don't have these ugly blocked buildings that really, they
take away any character, any human scale because they're just
big clunks. And that then leads to architectural standards. And this city
is desperately in need of architectural standards. What we're seeing going in at
Gateway Apartments is, looks like a gulag. They're ugly, rectangular buildings, and the
only thing I could say is that they go very nicely with that
Marriott Hotel in Rowley's property, because that is also incredibly ugly. And that
is what we see when we come from Seattle. So I think we
definitely need those architectural standards. I mean, even up at Lake Hills, you look
at that little King County Library, that little square, the smaller houses around, that's
pedestrian friendly. What we're getting here is not pedestrian friendly. I mean, we can't
in South Cove do anything without getting into our car. We can't, you know,
you go from Gateway or anywhere on Newport Way, again, it's got to be a
car ride. And I look at this whole 900 acres of the valley and I
don't see how we are going to be pedestrian friendly and we're going to have
all these vibrant mixed-use areas. But, you know, the economics are that people are putting
in big box stores, not little, you know, mom and pop places and little restaurants.
And so I'm not sure how you're going to do this. And you do need
more connectivity. Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a more of a
there there, you know, one more central area. But then again, everybody's got to get
into their cars. So it's a conundrum. I do echo what David said about light
rail coming out here. I think it's going to just fuel more people driving to
Iskwam parking. And I also don't think that we should be going helter-skelter
into this development process and approving anymore. And I appreciate the moratorium.
without getting the infrastructure in place. The infrastructure is a mess. And if you really
want to solve the problem of Front Street, I would advocate putting a toll on
Front Street for anybody who doesn't live in Issaquah. And that would be like good
to go. If you're just passing through from I-90 to the Issaquah Hobart Road for
a shortcut to get to 18, well, then you're going to have to pay a
toll. and you can just have a little thing on your car
like we do with good to go so those are my comments thank you
very much thank you always nice to think out of the box hello my
name is john fisher uh 2122 newport way i i live in the gateway
district uh half for about nine and a half years so uh
Those on the Development Commission will know me from the comments that
I've given. I'd like to thank the Development Commission for their time
and attention and also to the PPC. Thank you. So having looked
at the Central Esquire Plan and having watched the developments come up
around Sammamish Point Complex where I live, I do feel there
are some troubling contradictions in how the Central Issaquah plan has unfolded
so far. There's no mixed use, new mixed use in what is
being built, so anyone who wants, who lives in the Gateway District
and wants to do anything that doesn't involve getting into a car
has quite a walk on their hands. And that'll change somewhat with
the connection up here, which is quite far north. But the real contradiction
there is that you have Tibbets Creek running up through here in a
ditch. How do you preserve it, restore it, but also provide that east-west
connectivity that without it, You have built a lot of
new housing. It may be parking deficient. It's definitely transit
deficient. It's not a functional walking community, unfortunately. Aside from
that, I would also echo the comment that the plan
is currently implemented. I believe the development commission did
the best they could and still follow that code. So I'm looking forward
to any opportunity that I would have as a citizen to participate in
the process of reexamining or revising that code. And I do agree that
the different districts or neighborhoods do have differing and specific needs. Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Rich Johnson. I live up on Squawk Mountain. I've been here for about
20 years. We moved out here from Chicago and immediately fell in love with the
mountains and the hills, and we looked around for places to live. And as soon
as we drove east on I-90, it became apparent that this is where we wanted
to be. I mean, the view was, you know, the view of Tiger Mountain was
beautiful. It was a beautiful blue sky day when we came out here, and it
was just obvious to us that And I feel like we're losing a little bit
of that with some of the structures that are going up. Just to talk about
these boards a little bit and the vision matching the reality of what's on some
of these boards, for example, at D'Arce Park or the Hyla neighborhood, some of the
things that have already been built there. are kind of at odds with what
they want to do with these areas. Like the Hyla area, you've got car
dealerships that are already fronting that, and there's a Burger King, and there's, like
you said, some ugly hotels. Really disappointing quality of architecture. And the vision for
that, for the Hyla area, is really, it talks about some residential areas, and
it's really what would you want to live back there actually if there was residential
behind some car dealerships and i'm not sure if that's a good you the highest
and best use for that area and i wonder uh like in terms of tibbets
valley how much of that area there that land already has been agreed is there
some agreement already with that with those parcels with a developer that we're locked into
already and i don't know the history of that or what what is actually in
the works but um And the other thing I'd like to say is
the Atlas Apartments, I think just reading the Issaquah Press, which is unfortunately no
longer with us, but just some of the reaction from people around the town
to that development, I think it's really a reaction to scale of that building.
They were just absolutely shocked at having the number of stories fronting right on
Gilman Boulevard and just weren't expecting it. And I don't know if the better
way, I don't know what's been done in the past at public meetings. Unfortunately didn't
attend many of those in the past, but I think models really help people to
understand that kind of thing. If you have a model of the central core and
you show people the scale of these buildings, what they might look like compared to
what's already existing there, I think they get a really good idea of what's coming.
And if those can just be, you know, just an example of what's in the
zoning code, what is this zoned for, would really help people. And the quality of
architecture in Issaquah, I would have to agree. In my view, the last good building
that was built in Issaquah was the library, and that was well done. And when
we first moved here, the Issaquah Commons was going in, and there was a bad
reaction to that project. And things really haven't changed a whole lot since then. There's
been a lot of stuff that's been built that's disappointing. And really, for me, it's
all about the views around Issaquah and view corridors, like you said. I think it
makes a huge difference to be able to look around and see the mountains. And
unfortunately, you can see the mountains from the Issaquah Commons because there's a huge parking
lot, and you can stand out in the middle of the parking lot and see
the mountains easy enough. But if there's enough development like Atlas in the Tibbets Valley
area development I think that's it's going to become like more like a downtown
Kirkland than Issaquah and I also agree with comments that that said that we don't
necessarily have to develop this place to the max and we can pull back a
little bit I think we're gonna have some development and it's a good thing but
I think we can pull back from maybe a little bit from what we're what
we're seeing thank you thank you anybody else anybody else
With that, I'm going to close the public comment and open
it up for discussion and comments from the Commission. Would anybody
like to, while you're thinking, I want to thank the people
that made comments. They were all good. I really appreciate the
fact of whoever suggested going into the neighborhood and getting a
core group of people in that neighborhood to to discuss
things with the city. Obviously they're not going to get everything they want, but
that input would make planning a lot easier. So I hope that the city
does that. I like the fact that going out and having the meetings in
various areas, and I think that they were planning to do that anyway, so
that's really cool. I know that some of you have been involved in
the city for a long time and if you've gone to the any of the
PPC meetings that we had during this process the one thing that we asked for
every meeting was a scale model of what it would look like. I hope the
city realizes that they really need to do something like that. I can't imagine that
I know it would be expensive, but developers put things together and show you where
things are gonna be so that people can get an idea of how big, how,
you know, you can look at a picture, but it's not the same as seeing
what it's actually gonna look like. And I hope that the city takes the time
and finds the money to do that. I think that would be really cool. My
only other comment is, We've been talking about codes and getting it all
up to date to where developers know what they can and cannot do. And I
think it helps them to know what they can and can't do, so they can
plan for where it is. But I know that parks are an extremely important part
of our city. And all of you love the parks and the trees.
I would like to see planning that incorporates some distance between the end of
the park and the development so that it can incorporate the park. You know,
okay, there's a street here and then the park starts. Well, you want to
be back a little bit so that you can really enjoy the park and
it becomes part of the community. So I hope that things like that
are put into the plan. I think the city has a lot of stuff they
have to do. Is there any other comments since I've talked so much? I would
just, nothing original, you stole all my thunder, so thanks, John. No, I just, I
like the idea of the neighborhood specific meetings. A good way to get people who
live there out and gain some knowledge from them. And other ways to visualize sort
of worst case scenario, what the code would allow in that situation. lots of ways
to do that now i don't know how to do any of it i'm sure
somebody does um and and the final thing i one or two people maybe mention
this but i do think that as part of this process now you know even
going back um to the middle of last year we we were operating under some
um uncertainty around whether or not st3 would pass And now we know it did,
right? And so the comments about planning for, I mean it's a ways in the
future but it takes a long time to do this stuff, right? So it'll be,
there'll be a station down around here somewhere before we know it. So it's probably
our opportunity now to think about that and how this plan will influence that or
be influenced by that in the future. And I wish we could figure out a
way to do the regional bus idea and really force that issue. I know it's
beyond the scope of this process probably, but I would love to set it up
in a way that we somehow force that conversation. As somebody who comes from south
of town every day. So yeah, that's all. So I really like hearing people's comments.
I know there's a lot of negative comments towards what is happening. I'd like to
hear what people like about what's happening.
I want to understand the full story. So there's always two sides of an argument.
There's a side that people don't like and there's a side that people do like.
The problem is you have multiple opinions within our community. So I want to understand
both sides of the argument fully so that I can make the best judgment and
help my commissioners come to the same come to the best conclusion i want to
know all the facts so if you have comments that you haven't brought to meetings
in the past that are both negative or supporting i would like to hear them
and in fact this message tell your neighbors because i don't see enough people making
comments this is our community not just the people sitting in this room And I
feel that there's a lot of people who are on the sidelines, who are passive,
who have great ideas to share. And we need to capture those opinions somehow. So
I would like to recruit all of you to help get people in these meetings
so that we can understand what their perspectives are, what their values are, what's important
to our communities that we are a community, we're a family.
I want to represent the community, not just the people that show up to these
meetings. So if we pass something and all of a sudden people don't like what
they see, they can't blame us because they weren't here. They can. Yeah, they will.
But I thank you for coming tonight, and I hope that I see you continually
coming and supporting what your viewpoints are so that we can continue hearing them.
So following up on that, since you are now designated as part
of the city group that is going to go out to your
neighborhoods, I hereby appoint you. I second that motion. With all her
power. Anybody else? I think I'm the only one left. i
want to say pretty much i think we all hit the same points that we
really like the community outreach we have a lot to think about with sound transit
3 coming here i really appreciated joanna's highlighting of our treasures of issaquah and those
are the exact same points that we've been hearing talked about in just our recent
housing strategy discussions so So those continue to be points of this quad
that we really need to hold on to the greatest extent that
we can. And I think everyone on this commission is dedicated to
do that. And we sure appreciate you continuing to bring those up.
So that'd be my comment. - So thank you for all being
here. Keep your eyes open for future comments, meetings. So hopefully you
join the, future meetings if you have any other ideas or comments and I
know that the city is going to take those little colored pieces of paper and
take them very seriously so keep up the good work and keep plugging. So thanks
for being here I'm going to close the meeting at 8:10. Thank you.