Is the pay the same for? Good evening and welcome to the
March 23rd meeting of the Planning Policy Commission. Tonight is just an
opportunity for the city to share with what has happened in the
old, the downtown area and what the future plans are. So since
we don't have a quorum this evening, please join us. We're
going to, one, two, three, four. Four people is a quorum. It is. We have
three. We have three, though. That's true, three. Three. Are you joining us full time
now? I'm counting Mel as an official member, and I guess I shouldn't do that.
Since we don't have a quorum this evening, we will not discuss the minutes. We
will not have a motion to approve the minutes. We'll say that until next week.
next two weeks from now and right now we're going to open up to Kristen
to give us an update on the Old Town where it was, where it is
and hopefully the magnificent place it will be. It will be. To quote Trish, this
is going to be really exciting. Okay, so we are we're here just to talk
to do some background on Old Town. what's happened, how we've come to this point,
and why we're doing our update now. So, like I said, we'll talk about the
background, what's gone on over the past few years, some of the feedback that we've
gotten from our initial open houses, and then get comments and Q&A from the commission
and from the public, who tonight outnumbers the commission. Thank you for coming. So here's
Old Town. It starts, the north end is at Hawley. It's the eastern edges kind
of go along the east fork of the creek in Issaquah Creek over to
the city limits and then down south front front street south just past the
high school. So quick background we adopted our comprehensive plan in 1995. In 1998
we did our first old town parking study. 1999 we adopted the old town
sub area plan. Why did we do this? We did it because Interesting. They
were about to adopt their first growth targets and there's all this discussion about growth
and what was going to come to Issaquah and where was the growth going to
go. So they decided we want to protect Old Town and enhance what's there, protect
the traditional Old Town and its residential areas. Hence, in 1999, the Old Town plan
was adopted. In 2001, shortly thereafter, we adopted the Old Town design standards, which are
still in place. 2009 we had one small amendment to the Old Town Plan which
was to remove any references to the southeast bypass because the city decided not to
do that any longer. 2012 we did a second parking study which was remarkably very
similar to the first parking study. 2012, 2013 we actually spent six years working on
Central Issaquah. Again, growth discussions. We said where do we want growth to go? We
want it all to go into Central Issaquah. So for six years we worked on
the Central Issaquah plan and the design standards which were adopted in 2012 and 2013.
And by 2014 council said okay, we've got that figured out. It's time to give
Old Town some love again. So in 2014 we received several council goals which we
used to do. regarding Old Town saying let's look at the residential areas, let's look
at vitality of Front Street, let's look at the circulation. There were several different goals
that came out. So we decided at the time let's combine them all. The mayor
appointed a task force in 2015 and they came out with recommendations and then in
2016 our process started. So our process started in May of 2016. We had our
first open house. November of 2016 was the second open house. We'll get into it
later more. This coming Tuesday, Tuesday, March 28th, there's going to be a lunch at
the Senior Center, which is actually open to the public if anyone wants to go.
There is a presentation and then discussion about Old Town. On March 29th, there will
be an open house at the Brewhouse. That'll be a fun one from 6 to
7:30. And then we're also about to get out, hopefully in the next few days,
a survey about Old Town. And Dave will get more into those later.
So the task force, they were appointed by the mayor, they had
representatives from the downtown Issaquah Association, business owners, residents, the clothing and
food bank, the library, the village theater. They met at least once
a month throughout 2015. They came out with the recommendation in 2016. They focused mostly
however on the cultural business district and part of Sunset, not so much on the
residential areas. And council said we want to see that too. So hence the broader
look. They came up with a vision that said we want a vital downtown that
attracts people and builds a sense of community and they wanted spontaneity in the area.
They came up with three key recommendations. I have to take a breath. They came
up with three key recommendations. One was to update the old town plan and design
standards to attract more development, private development, develop and implement a streetscape plan, and the
Downtown Esquire Association, or DIA, was asked to partner with other community organizations to establish
programs to showcase what would be the enhanced downtown. Little history about the
task, a little bit more about the task force. Two of the things that we
were going to work on are obviously the plan and the other one is the
front streets streetscape and some of the things that they come up with the plan
for the plan and standards are, excuse me, to increase the base height and these
are recommendations from the task force. They're not things that we've said yes or no
to but things that we're looking at. So increase base height on Front Street, adopt
the central Issaquah parking standards, Develop more parking downtown so one would reduce the standards
for individual developments but the other one would look for more parking elsewhere to make
up for it. Increase impervious surface requirements in the cultural business district which is mostly
on Front Street and then just behind it on First Avenue. Keep views and pedestrian
scale. However, consider waving right now there's a step back requirement which means that if
you go above the second floor you have to move the building back and they're
saying maybe don't make that happen as long as you protect the views. Adopt a
sidewalk use district. Adopt central Issaquah design standards but retain the character. Increase,
wrong page, allow variances to the color palette and update it every five
years. Extend Alder across the railroad tracks. It currently stops in order to
improve access to the senior center memorial park. Allow wayfinding for both the public
and private interests. Allow for more standalone commercial uses on Sunset. Right now with Sunset,
you can do commercial uses, but they have to be 4,000 square feet or less
if contained in another building. Or if they're standalone, they have to be under 4,000
square feet. So they're saying allow more than that. And then remove the E in
Old Town. That seems to bug people. So... Now I'm
going to talk a little bit about the Front Street-- it's so hard to say--
Front Street Streetscape Plan. I know. Excuse me. This just went to Council. There have
been several open houses and a few surveys that have gone out. And this just
went to Council on March 13 to the work session. It goes back to Council
on-- or Council Infrastructure Committee on April 11 and then back to Council again on
April 17. And what will happen with this-- is they'll be seeking council approval.
But what we will do is incorporate it by referral into the plan and say,
you know, perhaps make sure, you know, ensure that there is funding for the phases
recommended and, you know, make sure that Front Street is designed in accordance with the
plan. This, however, the plan itself would be incorporated into the Old Town Design Standards.
So this piece that you see right here is from Sunset Way up to about
Alder. and it would be sort of the poster child for what the rest of
Front Street would look like, but it increases landscape strips. It does put the trees
back. Those are not permanently gone. Those are proposed to go back during phase one.
What it does not do is it addresses people once they get out of their
cars. This plan is for people for the sidewalks and the buildings outside of the
cars. It doesn't do anything to address the traffic, the regional traffic, or how the
traffic is going to move through there. But it puts back the trees, it looks
for pedestrian areas, adds benches and receptacles. It actually reduces the parking size. They're currently
about 11 feet. Takes them down to 9 feet, which enables us to widen the
landscape strips and the sidewalks a little bit. So here's, I'm just
going to point out a few things. Existing crosswalk at the library is just the
right, whoops, excuse me. We're proposing an enhanced all directions crosswalk, which they have in
several other cities. I know there's also one in West Seattle, there's some down in
California, but what happens is all the traffic stops and everybody gets to cross at
one time, which would help improve traffic flow through there. Another one
would be to enhance the crosswalks, put in concrete platforms,
perhaps a little bit raised, maybe not, but make them
more visible, particularly for those that are mid-block crossings. Disguise,
decorate, enhance areas like this that are between buildings that
cars can go through with screens and benches.
focus on the pedestrian plaza that's right out there and the area, the parking lot
behind it and make it more pedestrian friendly and make people think that they're not
just walking through a parking lot in the back. Potentially in the left hand, it
doesn't look that much different, but there's a proposed parklet maybe out in front of
some of the buildings. Parklets take up one parking space. They're usually temporary facilities that
are paid for and maintained by the businesses. But we offer the public space for
temporary use and it just helps expand the business a little bit. This would be
at the fish hatchery so off of Front Street but this is the back of
the fish hatchery. It's not their official opening but you can see right now it's
rather nondescript. So dress it up and make it look like it's a part of
Sunset and Front Street. Now blend it in with everything else. Alder, they're proposing as
a proposed festival street. So Alder is a very short street. It would potentially be
closed just during special events, festivals, Sammidays, that kind of thing. They would add trees
to the sides, which would be permanent, different lighting that goes, I always call it
canary lighting, but it's canary, I believe, lighting that goes across the top. Dress it
up a little bit, make it a much more, almost like a plaza that can
be closed off. So that's the Front Street Streetscape Plan. Dave, it's your turn. Flew
through that. So hi, Dave Faber, also with the city.
I'm going to talk some about, so we've been having public outreach, open
houses. We've looked at the old plan and the next couple slides of
discussion talk about the guiding principles that we've heard from the public and
from the existing plan, as well as some of the public comments that
we've heard. So I'm going to fly through this. There's a
Anyway, there's like six or so key guiding principles that we glean from
the input. They're not in any particular order, but they're listed there. Housing,
of course, is a key element in the Old Town. The neighborhoods of
Old Town are a key amenity. So we've heard about a desire to
preserve the scale character of housing. the single family duplex and the multi-family
housing throughout the neighborhoods. And affordability is an issue throughout all of Issaquah.
And the housing stock is older for a large part of Old Town,
so perhaps some of it might be slightly more affordable based on that.
And looking forward to new housing, there would be a desire
for housing for diverse populations, family sizes, age groups. Let's plan
for housing for all populations. Mobility is a key guiding principle.
Bike and ped and transit connections, improving those and recognizing the
value that they provide to the downtown. Traffic is a big
issue. But I'll say, so let's just say, so regional traffic is a
huge issue. We all know it. This plan, we'll recognize it. It cannot solve, we're
not going to solve regional traffic through this plan. But what we are focusing on
is some of the traffic calming and the cut through traffic through neighborhoods, especially south
of Sunset Way as it cuts through Andrews Bush and heads down Second Avenue. So
that's an element we've heard feedback on and it feels like that's within the scope
of this plan that we can try and tackle. And then parking, I think Kristen
talked about parking a bit already. It's the perception or the actual reality of lack
of parking in peak times like village theater times or lunch, dinner times and other
times they're kind of empty. So how can we efficiently use parking as well as
create more parking where it's needed. And then there's the environment. That covers so
many things, but Old Town is blessed with several parks. So Memorial Field across
the street and then Confluence Park at the north corner are two different character
of parks. We have Issaquah Creek and the East Fork framing the west and
the north edges. I think we've heard some that they're there but you don't
see them so much. A person can access them at street crossings and let's try
and perhaps build the access and visibility of the creeks. And then around the, kind
of in that green, Semi-circle at the bottom there is a kind of an
existing wooded hillside so that we've heard about the character of the wooded hillside that
frames the south end of the neighborhood of Old Town is of some value to
here. And then stormwater, flooding are always issues that we need to continue working on.
The sense of place in the community I think is one of the key things
that makes Old Town a unique and vibrant and kind of welcoming, cool place
to be. Many other cities are trying to create this place and we already
have 100 years worth of community and history right here. So let's really recognize
that and keep it as a arts and cultural hub of the Issaquah area.
Some of the key words, historic, it's pedestrian oriented. And then public service recognizes
the government buildings here, the police presence, the fish hatchery, the village theater.
all these various public organizations and service amenities that are here. And
finally, economic vitality. So Front Street is a business hub. But how
can we recognize the unique blend of businesses there, but also help
it thrive? So there's a quick summary of guiding principles that we
gleaned from that. Two open houses were held in May 25 of
last year, and then November 16th, this last fall and if you can
try and summarize about 10 pages of comments in your packet into one slide here's
an attempt at that but so so one big question we this was what we
asked in May but it repeats through November what challenges do you see in Old
Town and maybe they're probably not surprising traffic congestion and the cut through traffic pedestrian
safety and how can we make it better a concern about building scale and
character that we'll talk about in a minute in kind of three areas that we've
broken it down to front street sunset way and then the single family and duplex
neighborhoods that are seeing new development and sometimes a little larger development than what was
built in the last 50 or 100 years what do you like most about old
town well that's similar to the guiding principles i think i just talked about and
then what's your vision in 10 years or so for old town maybe not
surprising also less traffic, better or more efficient parking, the bus, bike,
pedestrian orientation and access, again preserving the small town character, more shops
and again building the environment, the open space and the play fields,
the parks elements and the trail connections all through. So that was
open house summary number two. So now we're going to go through
several chapters that we're working on in the plan. You want
to do the first couple? Sure. Kristen's been working on this
more than I have. Okay. So the first day
has already gone over the first one. Um, the scale and the character of the
buildings that are here, you know, we've had some concerns, you know, some people have
said, why do you want to do to old town what you want to do?
What we did to central is to bring density in there and that is not
at all what we're trying to do. What we want to do is preserve old
town. So one of the biggest concerns is preserving what's there, keeping it like it
is and you know, letting letting change happen. But change that's consistent with the traditional
styles they're already there. So that's part of it. Another one that keeps coming up
is historic preservation and we did just finish our third historic inventory, historic resources inventory
for the city which actually will present on April 25th. But again there are some
more buildings that are worth possibly designating or just educating people about the benefits of
preservation is in there. Prioritizing pedestrian friendly small scale and safe sense of place. So
again, reinforcing the pedestrian connections. It's kind of funny, you look at our non-motorized plan
now for the entire city, there's not that much in Old Town. So retaking a
look at that and seeing what we can do to improve the connections there. Adding
wayfinding. Wayfinding has been a huge topic of discussion for the past several years. Is
it public? Is it private? Does it say how far or just say what
direction? So it's a big discussion to have. Incorporate natural amenities. There has been a
lot of talk about accessibility and visibility to the creeks, both the East Fork and
Issaquah Creek. And so working in not only having access to those, but even having
developments wherever there are natural amenities, incorporating those amenities into the natural environment. allow sidewalk
uses. Right now they're required to get special permits if they want to put, special
use permits if they want to put chairs or tables out on the sidewalks, but
there are other areas of the cities where we say I can't remember what it's
called, but where they're allowed to do it. It just makes it a little easier
so that they don't have to go out and get a special permit all the
time. And then it makes it more pedestrian friendly. And then maintaining the concentration of
public services. One of the things that came out in 1999 that was so great
is we have the police station here, city hall, council chambers, the community center, fire
station, library. There's so many services here and it's so nice to have them in
this one spot and walkable. So, you know, find a way to keep that and
make them accessible. Preserve use from public spaces, I mentioned before. Increase potential for commercial
uses on Front Street, I mean on East Sunset Way, excuse me, and then increase
the base height on Front Street North. Those are the primary things that have come
up and that we're trying to keep from the old plan and look at, re-look
at, and add this time around. So it's much shorter, but the policies are not,
there are many policies that we are drafting right now But the primary things were
perhaps, you know, incense, affordable housing, which, you know, we try and do that throughout
the city anyway, but maybe find a way to focus some things here. Preserve height
and scale of buildings and sites, which Dave has already talked about. But again, this
is in the residential areas, not just in the commercial areas. And then incorporate amenities
into multifamily sites and buildings. Make sure that people have easy access from their multifamily
buildings to transit or that kind of thing. think those are the two
that I was going to talk about. Okay. And then talking about mobility and connectivity.
So similar to what we're talking about. So improve the active circulation system which looks
at bike pads and transit safety and connections. Enhance the existing street system. In bold
there's the traffic calming we like to talk in a little bit. about techniques
that we've heard that might work and we'd like to get feedback tonight
and moving forward. Kristen's talking about the front street streetscape. I can say
that. There you go. Parking, the various elements of parking that we've already
talked about. And then the environment, I think I talked about that already
as well too, but enhancing the various green elements of the environment.
We have a stormwater, a new stormwater code that I think we're going to talk
in more detail at upcoming meetings, but it does require low impact stormwater development or
in my mind it's infiltration of the stormwater to be maintained on the property if
at all feasible. And so if we see a certain vision of development, say in
Front Street or Sunset Way or elsewhere, that the requirement to infiltrate
the water in the ground may compete with whatever vision that we're asking to see.
So if a big rain garden gobbles up land and you can't build the buildings
that the vision talks about, the plan talks about, that's an issue to work through.
The city's been working on flood hazard mitigation for years, decades.
Let's keep doing that, identify properties that flood and if you
know there's certain ones that may rise to be purchased and
restore those properties to more natural creek environment. Green building and
sustainability is a city-wide policy and goal. It's in the Com
Plan, it's in the Central Issaquah Plan, and so this is recognizing two key elements
of it here and see how much of that can wrap into this plan. That
was not addressed almost 20 years ago in the first plan, but green building sustainability
has really risen since then. And finally, I believe it's economic vitality. So again, if
you want to summarize economic into three bullets, there it is, but there's probably more.
It's the arts and cultural center of Issaquah. Let's maintain that. infrastructure needs, so
it's build the sewer, storm, water, traffic, bike, ped, you know, all
these various infrastructure. Wi-Fi is an issue we keep hearing about throughout
Old Town. And then if we do these things, whatever measures can
we do to attract the private investment to come downtown? So, okay.
So, based on all that feedback where our feeling is that the plan from
almost 18 years ago plus the feedback we've been hearing um leads to the issues
we've heard preserve the old town you know all the things we just talked about
but there seem to be kind of these series of outstanding issues that still could
use some discussion we'd like to hear if there's other issues but This seems
like ones that we'd like to have some discussion tonight. So I have slides for
each one of these to move through and we can talk about each and have
a discussion is the thought. Before I go there I'll just put a plug like
Kristen did for the online survey. It's coming soon. It might be released later this
week or next week. It kind of gets at a visual preference survey a
little of like it gets at these these issues of scale and character and
building design what does the community like to see as old town development say
for the next 20 years okay so let's launch into this so if we
start first on East Sunset Way here are some photos of So
first of all East Sunset Way has a zoning and a character that you know
about but it's it's a multi-family zoned land. It allows single family and multi-family buildings
up to 40 feet tall which could go to 65 feet under certain provisions and
also like Kristen said up to 4,000 square feet of office can happen here. The
Old Town Vitality Task Force suggested that perhaps more standalone and larger
commercial uses should happen along Sunset Way. And so to get feedback,
we thought, well, here's some examples of various types of land uses
and building types and designs. Start thinking about if you're looking in
the future. So over if this mouse works, up in the top
left, that's a single family house converted to a business.
As we know, many have been converted along Sunset Way already. We've
heard a desire for that type of use to continue, that small
character, small businesses. Multifamily is shown on the bottom. There's different designs.
So when we hear traditional, historic character, you know, which of those,
you know, obviously the one on the right, I guess, is more,
I'd say, more traditional. The one on the left, traditional. A
little more contemporary with a flat roof. So we have existing development standards,
design standards for Sunset Way. They don't get to this level of detail
of saying exactly what can happen here. But we'd like to start, I
think, work on the vision for East Sunset Way. And I guess finally
up in the top right, if the city wishes to go a little
larger, again, go into larger commercial uses, along Sunset Way. There's
an example of a four-story, probably about 40-foot building, mixed so
commercial on the ground floor and two or three floors of
residential upstairs. Is that the sort of vision or kind of
quality of development you could foresee along Sunset Way or something
else? So these are some topics that we're grappling with right
now. And if you'd like to feedback talk now, I
can fly through all this. Keep going. CHRISTIE WOOD: It's a lot to think
about and to put it all together. And so I like this. I don't
like that. So you have some more pictures. TODD BANDUCCI: OK. So these are
some-- CHRISTIE WOOD: Oh, sorry. TODD BANDUCCI: OK, yeah. TODD BANDUCCI: All well and
good. What's the plan for the street? right now that went
by the wayside with the bond issues so where do we stand on what are
they gonna do with the street yeah because one of the big issues for sunset
was gonna remove all the parking so we can put in bike lanes and curbs
and trees the businesses will die without parking because we know that was one of
the big issues against it for the bond issue because the businesses that are there
need those parking spaces so are we doing one thing on this hand
and oh peter and paul over here aren't doing anything or well and i think
that part of what the sunset design is it's more from property line to property
line and what happens in between. So you've got the right of way and how
the traffic's gonna move and where the parking's gonna be. But I think what Dave
is talking more about here is beyond those property lines. How far do the buildings
come up to the property line? How far are they set back? How big are
the buildings? Are they gonna be four stories high or are they gonna be two
stories high? So they're two different topics, but you're right, I mean. - Well, I
understand that. I mean that, yeah. - Right. - But you can't have the top
right picture. can't have three-story building with with uh retail on the bottom if
there's no parking spaces for the people to go there that's a good point they'd
have to build it and i'm just asking which what are we doing first are
we going to do this first are we going to try to fix the street
first I'm putting you on the spot. You are because I'm not
the transportation engineer. But, and Connie probably knows better than I do where that stands.
But I do know they went through the design process. And I cannot think of
where it stands right now. There is no funding for construction, obviously, because that was
part of the bond. Or was it? I saw a cross-section of the street. Right,
right. So I think they know that -- Connie, when it's public comment, will you
come up and address Carl's question, please? Okay. Okay. We'll have her answer that later.
But you do have a point, what's coming first, the chicken or the egg, and,
you know, there's you know, it's funding. You know, and on one hand you've got,
you need to determine what the street's going to look like so that when developers
come in you can say this is where you need to build your building and
this is what the requirements are. And oh, by the way, you're not going to
have any parking, so figure that out. So as long as we know what the
street is going to look like, we can then tell developers what their standards are.
The same question raised on traffic calming. Try to do traffic calming, that's just going
to bog down existing gridlock is there already yeah but this comes up all over
the place and we're going through it on with gilman right now same kind of
situation so yeah it's it's not an easy one to figure out and i i
i don't understand when i did i did the survey and i said i just
don't understand we're going to remove parking spots from Front Street. And we're
going to find them somewhere else, apparently. Well, yeah, we have been tasked with
coming up with a plan to find additional parking in Old Town. I believe
by the end of 2018 is when that is supposed to happen. Yeah. So
the plan is to fix parking so the developers can come in, private developers
can come in and build. but find parking somewhere else, whether
it be a parking garage, a surface parking lot, find a
solution somewhere else so that developers can come in and build.
OK. You want to go? Sure. So what else to talk
about East Sunset Way? So I guess today, I would think
the three buildings you see-- here's a mouse-- one, two, and
three, these could happen today. And we heard your parking issue
loud and clear. Okay, well, let's just
move on. Any other comments? Unless I'm not hearing it,
there was no parking to any of those places, whether
they're businesses or individual homes. So I don't see any
parking. If you allow the bottom section, the bottom townhomes,
is there parking in the back or is there parking
on the street? Uh-huh.
I think these two in the bottom would have parking in the rear. I know
this one up here has under building parking in a garage. You're going to have
to-- any building like that's going to have to have parking inside. I mean, that's
the only way you can do that. So if you do the survey, which will
be out soon, there are six other selections to choose from, not just these four.
And there's also a slot for other and for comments. So I'm serious. Bring it
up. Bring it up because that's something to think about. But there are other options
to choose from. We were just picking a random selection. Do you mind if I
ask how you picked these four? Because I think it's a little obvious that these
don't align with the public's conception of what we want Old Town to be and
how we currently view it. And so I'm a little confused why we have options
for things that everyone's like, "Nope, that's not what we want." I mean, where are
the clear winners? Like, now it feels like we're stacking the decks a little. I
think a lot of people will look at this and see that it doesn't embrace
all the comments that we've gotten about Old Town. I don't know that there's a
clear winner. I mean, if you look at the bottom two, um, the scale is
about the same. And a lot of the comments had to do with scale. I
talked to quite a few people who said, "I'm fine with the modern stuff as
long as it's not a whole story taller than mine." And some people said, I
really like the modern stuff, I just don't want to live next door to it.
We also had a lot of people say, we don't like the modern stuff. Right,
and that's the balance, that's the purpose of the survey. That's why this is one
of those controversial issues. They're not controversial, but one of those undecided issues that Dave
brought up and why we're putting out another survey to try and figure these things
out. But we're looking for your feedback tonight too. I see very little difference between
the bottom two. I consider them both to be very modern. When you go to
your next slide and you're seeing things that are more traditional craftsmen, they're going to
integrate elements like rock, porches, and classic elements. I don't see much of a difference
other than your peaked roofs. That doesn't actually give me the feel of Old Town
and consistently what I'm seeing from feedback is that people are looking to continue the
building structures that we already have. We want to continue the character that we have
and I don't see that in any of these buildings. And so I'm a little
confused why we're offering selections that don't really align with what we even currently have.
Well, I would say I picked the one up there to provoke some discussion. I
guess we got it here. It reminds me of West Seattle, but it doesn't remind
me of Old Town. OK. In the corner, at least. But when you go to
your next slide, then that starts to feel to me that it's more aligned with--
So we can mix them in. I categorize by these are things East Sunset Way,
and you saw the other slide. So we can move on. Let's see. This way.
Is that front? Looking more like Redmond. So this is Front Street. These
are buildings that could, again, kind of feedback on-- they really got squished,
didn't they? But can you envision-- The only one up there is the
upper left. --these type on Front Street? And I'll just kind of go
through them. So one of the top left is-- it's kind of the
traditional Main Street. I suspect most people would say yes to that. Now
we can start talking about what the current code allows up to 45 foot, for
about 50 or 60 years, up to 45 foot building heights. And again, if you
wedding cake it and do various things, you can go up to 65 feet tall,
which I've always said is like the fly tower in the back of the village
theater. If you go in the back of it, it goes really tall. That's about
60 or 65 feet. So you can visualize that. So these, so
if you know about 10 feet per story, a 40, a 45
foot building would be about a four story building. So that's the
building on the top right with you know commercial on the ground
floor and likely residential office upstairs. With zero, right pushed up to
the sidewalk so you have the pedestrian friendly element. And then on
the bottom left, we, the current design standards talk about step back stepping back
above the second floor six feet again the step back and here's the design that
shows that is that but again we haven't really seen much of that built on
front street is that if someone walked in the door and said i want to
build that would we flip out or is that acceptable and then and i like
it's interesting it's got the sidewalk activity kristen's talking about it's got the cafe seating
and all that activity that I think people would like to see up and
down Front Street. And then again, maybe to provoke you all, the bottom right,
that's, I count five stories there, which could happen today. You know, one big
drawback on Front Street, those lots are 30, 40, they're tiny lots. A lot
of them are tiny lots. So to build something like that, a person would
have to consolidate many lots, which apparently hasn't happened lately. But so...
Again, okay, and then the height up there is mentioned. So the Old Town Task
Force talked about specifically building height and recognized the fact that at 45 feet, it's
very difficult to actually fit four stories into 45 feet. If the ground floor is
a retail space with a tall ceiling, like 15 feet, and the subsequent ones are
10, 10, and 10, it's really pushing it. So in the Central Issaquah plan, right,
we said 54 feet, I recall. If you do... ground floor retail. It kind
of gave that allowance and talked about pushing just slightly higher and I believe
that's what the Old Town Task Force recommends. So that's when we're talking height
that. I guess another concept is so if the zoning that's been there for
decades allows something like the three large buildings there, is that really the vision
that we'd like to see Front Street build to over time? Or do we
want to keep it more of the old-fashioned two-story-ish Main Street look. So
those are things to think about. I guess I would encourage for your survey
to include more photographs of things that you're considering to be old-timey front street.
A lot of these pictures seem to be a little slanted towards a more
modern, cubular take. And so having more variety that fits in line with what
people have already given feedback that they want Old Town to be like. might
give you a better sampling of what people actually think if you have more of
those options. Right now they're going to pick one that's more like it because they
have ones that are so far out of the extreme. Does that make sense? I
would encourage photographs that show more small scale and ones even for businesses, not just
for housing, to be able to clearly see how people are responding.
I think it's called Old Town for a reason and people encapsulate
old, O-L-D-E, and expect that little area to not look like that
as modern, big, upscale, at least not on the front. This one?
Well, any of the three. That L3. I mean, that's what makes
Issaquah different than any other city around here, the quaint little...
that it is, and it's going to be hard for people to accept
the modern look on Front Street. So can we break it down, though?
So there's the modern look, and then there's the size, right? These are
three-, four-, five-story buildings. What if they were old-fashioned looking? Well, you have
the OLDE associated with it. You're going to stay with a smaller scale,
more, you know, 1800 kind of whatever look that that has well and we've seen
predominantly people making comments saying i like squat buildings i want it to be low
i want sight lines i mean we've had a variety of comments that we've seen
tonight that um from these meetings that were done last year of people saying hey
we like these elements none of that lines up to even a three-story building. I
mean everyone has said a lot of predominant things. I didn't see any feedback where
people were saying I really want to block the views. If anything everyone was saying
hey I want pedestrians to be able to constantly see views. That's one of the
nice things about making this a walkable city is that we enjoy walking around it.
So I I think we should try to focus back on, in the feedback we
want to get from the survey, of trying to focus on giving people the images
that they've wanted. I think we're going to be able to parcel out what people
want if we're giving them a little more of what we already know. We're already
ahead. We have a lot of public comment and feedback. So giving them images
to pick between of what we know they are less likely to want is
kind of stacking the deck a little bit. You're kind of not giving people,
I think, quite the options that we want to get a good subset within
the upcoming survey. Any other thoughts? There are more pictures. I'll say I
know there's some three and four story old ones, like hundred
year old buildings. There's one of a converted house to a
restaurant, a two story old house. So if we can get
others, we will. Awesome. I guess I want to also emphasize
the step back element that's currently required in the design standards
today. I believe the Old Town Task Force recognized that. keeping that?
Right? Like what we see in the bottom left here? Yeah. Well, they just, the
Old Town Task Force said, you know, we want to maintain the views, but the
step backs make it really hard to develop on those skinny lots because those, you
know, once you get above the second story, they start to become sort of unusable.
So they said, I don't know, maybe, you know, just look and see what it
does to the views was their response. Maybe waive it if you can. Okay. Or
do variance. So that's Front Street and the last
one with photos here is the residential single family and duplex neighborhood. So let's
talk about that for a little bit. And there are more photos in the
survey but here was kind of two duplexes and two single families, modern and
old-fashioned, and kind of provoked some discussion here. The other thing I've realized is
that I would say that And you can, I guess, feedback on land use
too, but a single family house and a duplex can be physically the same building,
whether it has one door or two doors. So you can almost look at all
of those and put in your mind whether they're two units or one unit. But
anyway, there's-- so to run through it, so here's top left is-- 100-year-old Craftsman
E bungalow. We certainly heard that feedback at the open house. Some
people said, that is all we want. Design some standards and require
that house right there. I mean, is that so? That's what I
heard from the feedback. From reading this, I predominantly got that feeling.
And that would be for single, so duplex for sure. We heard that. And
single family. From our feedback, that all housing they wanted to have reflect those
characters. Again, this is just based on the feedback you provided us from the
meetings you guys held. It seemed unequivocal. And then, you know, up at the
top right, obviously a modern contemporary home. It's got the tuck under parking, which
is nice. So we've got but it does have so another element
we hear in in residential design is to have the parking pulled back
from the street and so the front door the porch the pedestrian friendly
elements pushed out to the street subordinate the parking to the rear that's
something to consider in the future and then down here in the bottom
left again two units side by side we've seen something kind of looking
like that built in parts of old town now
i've heard some comments about that so but the current zoning allows that
that there and then let me say there are design standards today for
front street and sunset way there are not design standards for the single-family
residential neighborhoods and then again probably i bet there'd be support for this
duplex here there's there are two doors one and a half story traditional
home so this is probably a little off the but with
the central area plan, you guys came up with a number that
you were hoping to have that many people in the central area
plan. Have you done that kind of work for Old Town? I
mean, do you know? If you only put a first picture, that
kind of architecture throughout Old Town, you're going to limit the number
of people. Does that go into your mix of
do we have enough people in the city to support mass transit?
So in Old Town we did essentially a separate buildable lands or
capacity study to see how much could go there. So the big
number, the 7,185 or the 7,750 that we came up with is
how much central is the Quah can hold. And there is Old
Town. We also are required for the state and for the county to do a
buildable lands report. We do know pretty much how much capacity is in Old Town,
how much it can hold. It's in a separate document. I don't know exactly what
it is. But we do have something like that. But are you talking about trying
to draw people in? No, I just think it's something that if you have set
that you need to have it. want to have that many people in there, you're
going to have to look at more than just that one type of development. Right.
We don't want four story buildings, but how does that fit in with the rest
of the plan for the city? Right. Yeah, you're right. And that's where the four
story buildings on Sunset and Front would come in. If we want more density there,
that's probably where those would go because we'd like to retain what's here too. So
scale and character issues are topics we've heard about. the neighborhoods around here
so i guess we're going to be working on in the plan giving
some policy direction on what we would what would we like to see
moving forward here how are you going to make a determination what what's
the standard going to be 60 40 and therefore we're going to go
with the modern style or 25 75 and we stay with the old
uh craftsman style yeah I think the same thing. Most of the
people say they want to keep it the old-looking houses. But who's going to
make the decision and what are going to be the criteria to decide that?
I don't have the answer. I don't know. I just can't see upper right
and lower left being built anywhere in Old Town and not having, and it's
hard enough, I'll tell you, we're having a hard enough time getting apartment complexes,
the apartment buildings built on East Sunset. There was enough objection to those because
the modern style are too big. They don't fit in with the neighborhood. And now
you're talking about putting in square block houses, mini atlases. And I don't think it
would go over well with the people in the community. And I don't know who's
going to make that decision. And part of it might be what Joan said is
that we have rules. We have to have so much housing and we're going to
just have to say, well, we're sorry, but we got to build three-story apartment complexes.
Because we got to have that number of people. I don't know the answer to
the question. But it sounds like you were saying that Old Town, the number, the
housing numbers that we need to meet don't expand more than single family homes. There
aren't housing numbers that we need to meet in the rest of it. I mean,
there are growth targets for the entire city. It's a floor. It's not a ceiling.
We want you to kind of grow towards this number. But that's the point of
Central Issaquah. That's where we want all the growth to go. So out here, The
point is to try and maintain what's there. And we're not saying we're going to
try and draw in modern buildings. That's not what the point of this is. Hey,
let's bring in modern buildings. It's what do you all want to see? Because right
now, the way the design, there are no design standards for the single family houses
and duplexes. So these could go in there. and the bottom left could go in
there. But if everybody comes out and says absolutely not, that is absolutely not something
that we want to see here, then maybe an option is to come up with
design standards for single family, which is something the city has never done before, but
other cities have done it. So it's something for us to consider in the feedback
that we get from the open houses and the surveys, because that could go there
right now. We're not trying to pull it in. It can go there. But if
people freak out and say no, then maybe we need to try and find a
way to say no, let's scale that back a bit. We want more of this
look right here. So that's something we're trying to figure out and how that gets
done. I don't know yet. That's part of what we need to figure out too.
Maybe it is single family standards. I don't know, but we at least want to
know what people want. Yeah. So I guess then kind of piggybacking off Carl's question,
what are you guys trying to figure out from the survey? Because we've held meetings,
we've gotten feedback, and you've already heard people say, no, we don't want this. So
now the metric says, what are we going to be gaining from this next round
of surveying that gains us what we don't already know? And right now you're still
asking people the basic question. I feel like we've moved past it. Maybe try to
introduce a new element of modern homes that are more Cabin style is something that's
been very popular on the east side where you're still using stone and wood elements,
but they aren't a craftsman. So right now you're giving these people these harsh answers,
which I don't see how we're gonna gain something from this survey as far as
this particular point, 'cause we're focusing on these pictures right now. - So the open
houses that we've had have been more broad, and there are some areas that Dave
mentioned earlier that there's a lot of consensus and there's no need to go out
and reach out to more people. But in the open houses, we had about 80
people. So you go out and you do a survey, we're hoping to reach more
people and get more input on the topics that we still feel have not been
resolved in any way in either direction. Can I add? Yeah. The open house where
we had in November we had we had photos some photos like these there about
30 people showed up to that one so we didn't have if we're trying to
get a consensus you know it's only 30. Okay so you're saying your cross-section is
too small right now and you're hoping the online survey is going to help reaffirm
or give us new information? New information and I would hope it go a little
deeper say hey we just If it's really truly picked that 100-year-old craftsman house
up there, if we heard clear consensus on that, that would be very helpful. If
it's 60/40 or just kind of all over the map, that's direction two.
And you know our primary mode of communicating with the public has been, is now
defunct with the Issaquah Press closing. How are we getting out to the community about
this survey? What's our outreach plan for trying to create this big cross-section of opinions?
Well, we've been developing an email list from the Old Town outreach we've been doing.
We have, well we don't have, we have Issaquah Reporter, we have not, the Issaquah
Press. What's the neighborhood? Next door. Next door. So the city launched next joint or
launched next door a couple of weeks ago. So we have kind of a new
electronic-- Are we working with businesses to promote it, to say hey, and try and
rally people in the community? Is there a hard marketing push? I don't know if
it's a hard marketing push, but we'll be putting-- Any marketing push. I'll be handing
out cards, publicizing the survey. I'll be out in the community. We
have these two open houses next week at the senior center and the brew
house. So we're trying to get the word out. You guys can help get
the word out. You said that you only got eight people to-- Eight. You
could put out a flyer that says, we are building this particular house on
sunset. And you will have 300 people there. If you don't come? That's
one way to provoke the folks, right? Yeah. You said eight or 80? Eight. We
had two public open houses, a total of about 80, larger in May, less in
November, about 30 in November when we showed photos of buildings and said, please put
dots next to the ones you like and don't like. So pretty small. I want
to be able to understand the scope here. Apologize for coming in late here.
We are not planning on expanding Old Town. These are because
there's no, we can't restrict what is built there in terms
of architectural style. They're zoning to in terms of the size
of the unit and if it's duplex versus single family home.
But we want to create a theme plan that will regulate
the architectural style And are we going to try and sell a
theme to the community to say, this is the type of theme that we're
going for? Because if you don't create a theme, you're going to get all
sorts of different housing styles, and they may not match. So people are going
to be looking to the city for guidance on this to say, this is
a theme that we want. Maybe coming up with a couple different themes
that we could move forward with and let the public decide what theme they
like the best and then focus your architectural elements and enforcing those to support
that theme instead of a hodgepodge of, you know, we get one of the
craftsman style, we get maybe the duplex down below. Both people could, I mean,
you could say one's modern, one's semi-modern, but they don't really work together, right?
So what about creating a theme and then asking the public what theme do you
like the best and then how would you enforce that? I guess those are good
questions. I'd step back and say that we're at the plan level now. I'd say
there's the plan level which sets goals and policies and then to implement the plan
is then step two would be maybe where you're getting at is design and development
regulations or standards. So we're at the plan level where we're saying, here's
the vision and the direction we'd like to go. We're asking you now, should
we even consider themes or not? Today in the residential neighborhood, there is no
theme. So we're saying, we've heard some feedback about a desire for theme. Should
we go forward and set a policy that, yes, the city does want to
establish a certain theme here? and i would see if we go there
that would end up as a policy in the plan it's adopted by the
council and then step two would be okay go go forth and design hire
professionals or staff and design architectural standards to require people who build buildings to
design to whatever theme the community lands on so it's like a two-step decision
process okay and what What's wrong with some
of the styles that we have now? The reason why I'm bringing it
up is because I'm seeing a lot of redevelopment in Old Town and
across the street over here near 2nd Street is all getting redeveloped. And
when those houses get redeveloped, they're going very modern, not really supporting that
old style theme that people want or people say they want. So is
there plans to also... allow people or to incentivize people to redevelop styles
within what the house was already like mid-century modern stay with mid-century modern or put
in some sort of protections to say you cannot create a different style house from
what you have right now if you have a craftsman you are stuck with a
craftsman style and that's it I think that's kind of that's what we're having these
meetings about is to discuss this and and together ask these questions and say
do we want to go to that place. We don't currently have that. So when
we were discussing the Holly Street Bridge, it was Holly Street, no the Third Avenue
Bridge, I was talking to some people who were very adamant about not having that
on their street. And so I was talking to people about protecting their property so
that other people can't go in and redevelop the property into something that looks very
different from the neighborhood. And the overall feeling I got was that, no, I don't
want to be told what I can and can't do with my property. That's the
other side of the coin. So, you know, we're trying to talk about keeping an
old town theme, but some of the people, when it comes to push the shelf,
if they can actually sell their lot and put in What I see down here,
the duplex, the two-story duplex, that's what they're going to build because that's going to
give them the most profit when they go to sell their house. When they sell
their house, they don't care what happens to the neighborhood. So... I think
you're asking these questions very well. That's kind of what we're asking you. I think
you're going to have some opposition when push comes to shove and you're telling people
that, hey, you can't do that. But right now they can do that. And so
someone who comes in and buys a lot with the intention of doing that, now
you're telling them that they can't. Or you can, but you have to do something
like, to the right there, an old town or a bungalow, a craftsman style,
You're going to have to be really careful about how you-- and I think the
policy needs to be kind of worked out at the same time we're talking about
these themes to see if legally we can even require people to do-- because that
would be different from what the left there is. You can't get the square footage
in a bungalow craftsman style house like that that you can from a three-story duplex.
It's very true. Which I believe three-story is currently the code. It's 30 feet.
So if you can get three-story, yes. It's kind of tough, but yes,
three stories. You're going to have a three-story bungalow. Yep. And there have
been some three-story housing units. I won't even, you know, built in this
neighborhood recently. There's been some comments against, negative comments about them. But you
raised a good point. So is that raising to the level of concern
that the city is willing to go to the place of regulation or
As far as doing an outreach, have we thought about actually sending a letter to
the owners of the property? The reason why I say letters to the owners of
the property as opposed to maybe doing or even a door knocking to ask, because
I think a lot of those units are rentals. So doing a door knocking probably
isn't going to do much good. And the people who live there, if they're renters,
are probably not going to show up debate like this. I also
like this idea. We have this requirement of when we have a land use proposition
that we have to notify people within a certain number of feet that we're having
a meeting. So right now we're trying to collect information about Old Town And I
don't know that it's fair to say that all residents who live in Old Town
necessarily are regularly online or may easily be able to navigate an online survey. So
being able to paper mail people so that while it may require them to put
a stamp back to the city and allowing people to actually submit their comments to
the city in a non-tech way may be very applicable for this district or neighborhood.
Okay. And if they don't show up, we make the decision for them. But you
communicate that to them, that this is their opportunity to provide feedback. And if they
don't provide the feedback, then we're moving forward with whatever theme we choose, and it
may not be to their liking, so we definitely need their feedback. You have to
let people know the urgency of them. If you just say, well,
we would like to do this. They don't get the urgency, but if you let
people know that we are changing themes for Old Town, then I think you might
get a lot more, put people under pressure and people will turn out. Like, you
know, what Joan said. Tell them that we're putting this in because this, and technically,
there's nothing wrong with that because it's not lying that could go in yeah let
people do worst case scenario and say this is what could be coming into your
neighborhood and then you'll get the people because they'll say oh my gosh wait a
minute i didn't realize it would be that ugly Well, the point is that we
want to get the best feedback that we can. So let's be successful in using
this opportunity to reach out into the neighborhood rather than saying, hey, we tried to
survey, we've held these meetings, we've already done that. So if there's a way, I
know you guys want to roll this survey out now, which is no reason not
to roll it out. But maybe there can be more implementation of getting the word
out to people and having a better variety of catching a cross section rather than
just We've emailed the people who have already attended a
meeting. It would be great to get really the optimal
amount of feedback to really be able to move forward
on this issue, because we obviously want to make a
plan. So the more information we can really gain from
a cross-section, the better we're going to be in a
position to make that. Can we do door to door?
We don't have-- we don't have-- Sorry. No, we don't
have the time and resources right now. I think you
have to start-- the city-- has to have
some basis to start. Not necessarily the style, but what you're
doing for the street and how far back it has to
be. And when you have the basic plan, then you can
go back and say, if you put a house on it,
it has to meet these requirements, not height or style, but
size-wise because the street is there and the sidewalks are there and I mean
that's something that's going to be there forever. What you're looking for is the
styles that you want to see in there and that's great but I think
people would it would be nice to have the requirements down before you go
and say Let's do this. And in the single family neighborhoods, there's been no discussion
about changing the front setbacks. So that's never come up. Yeah, so those would stay.
But if you had it, you know, not just... pick out what style you want.
This is why it has to be this way because our city is like this
and most people don't understand how big the sidewalks are, what the requirements are, how
big the street's going to be, what you're going to do for parking. And so
if you put that in an example to explain to people, I think it would
be a lot easier for them to understand how big, how much. Conceptualize. Conceptualize it.
Another thought that also occurred to me in terms of dressing up
Old Town is what about an incentive program to allow people to
remodel their homes to fit towards a certain style and get a
discount on permit fees? Not redevelop, but remodel. Incentivize them or motivate
them and say, hey, you know what? We want you to dress
your house up. So here's our solution. So you're walking into standards
right now. Yeah, you're getting down into the nitty-gritty and way down into standards. Yeah,
but you know, there are programs out there that let people, you know, that help
people with maintenance on their homes and stuff like that, but you know, I don't
know how far you can go with that. So you can have this money if,
you know, that kind of thing. I would turn a lot of people up though.
Did you have more of your presentation? I think I jumped on you with these
survey points. of giving this example. - Wanna move on? - Did you have, yeah,
did you have? - We got a couple more issues to talk about. - Okay.
I have a question that I guess goes back to something we've already done, so
that's why I wasn't sure if I should move backwards. And that was in regards
to the city's skate plan. We'd gone over that, what was recommended by the Old
Town Vitality Commission. Are we, Are you looking for feedback on that? Are you, what
is the next steps with that? Is that set in stone? Is that, what's the?
No, so the task force recommendations are done and we are taking a look at
those now and what might work, what wouldn't work, things that we like or don't
like. So, no, the recommendations are done, but we are taking those definitely into consideration
while we're doing the planning standards. They made recommendations related directly to those things, so
we're definitely looking at those. And then the streetscape plan, we can still do some
feedback. It goes to City Council Infrastructure Committee on April 11th. So that isn't included
at all in this upcoming survey? No, it's not, because that's gone through its own
process. So like the issue of allowing extra building height is something that's out of
the public hands right now? That's just being decided by city staff? No, that's not,
that wasn't part of the streetscape discussion. The streetscape discussion went from property line through
sidewalks, the pavement, and then to the property line. The height discussion has to do
with those, with everything beyond the property line, within the property lines. And the streetscape,
front street streetscape is just the street itself. Sidewalks and landscaping and parking lanes. So
for instance, taking parking offline to be able to enable bump outs for businesses, that's
something that you're not asking for feedback on from the community? Not as part of
the front street streetscape, no. I think we're talking two different projects. Yeah,
so the task force stuff, that'll come up. That will come up
again. That will come up as part of a discussion when we
do both the policies and the old town standards. That will come
up again. Yeah. Yes, they're open for discussion. It's the streetscape plan
itself that's moving on. Okay. Speaking of moving on, yeah? Yes, please
do. Okay. Traffic calming. So... So we've heard about cut through
traffic through Sunset and I maybe it's north but south of East
Sunset through 6th, 5th, 3rd, whatever down Bush and Andrews and heading
south down 2nd Avenue that that's a concern so we have turn
restrictions today left no left turn from certain hours and we'd like
to hear feedback of what other measures should there be other measures
first And if so, here are some examples of what other places
have done to calm traffic, to slow it down, to make it less
desirable to cut through a residential neighborhood. So I can try and describe
these pictures if you like, if you can't. So in the bottom left,
there's the traffic circle. This one here is intending
to show that was a street that went through, a through street, and that's up
in Seattle. There's a landscape. It's just a barrier. You cannot drive through that street
anymore. You have to turn. You cannot go through on that street, so it's a
barrier. It's a nice planted barrier, but it's still a barrier. This is a one-lane
road that winds a chicane or it winds through, so you have to wait for
the oncoming car to come and go. And then to calm traffic,
we've learned that as streets get narrower, such as a one-lane street, that
cars will usually slow down. And it's less efficient to zip through that
neighborhood to avoid, say, Sunset Way. So that's another way to do things.
Have the homeowners really complained that cars go too fast through the neighborhood?
They have. And I think part of what we're trying to figure out,
too, is And we've heard both, but is the bigger
issue the number of cars or is the bigger issue the speed of
the cars? You know, we've heard both. But yes. Like Seattle. It's so
much like Seattle, it is Seattle. A quick question. Have we thought about
putting a mobile traffic camera out? We haven't, but that's a good something
to think about. That would be a lot less expensive than any one
of those options, and you can move it around. And what would that
camera do, though? Take pictures of people going on speeders and send them a
ticket. I see. Good suggestion. And it wouldn't be so intrusive to the neighborhood.
I guess I would ask the traffic folks, how effective is that? I was
going to say, Kurt Seaman will be here at the next meeting. He's our
transportation manager, and you should bring that up. He will know better than we
would. I would expect that most of that traffic has to do with the
high school. Well, there's different parts of the day, I guess. I
hear, you know, when they release around what, 2:30 to 3:30 or so,
that's the school traffic, 3:30 to 5:00 school traffic, and then the commuter
traffic coming off the East Sunset Way interchange. And it goes north on
all 30 feet. I wondered about that. I've... Very much. They'll sit there,
ding, ding, ding, when they're coming. So another quick question. Have we asked
the neighborhood what they think would work? That is the purpose right here.
So this is a question with these photos on the upcoming survey. Where's your standard
speed bumps? Thank you. That is one that I didn't put up because it's out
of room and we all know what a speed bump looks like. So yes, speed
bumps is another option. And I've heard it's not a speed bump, it's a speed
table, a long one. Yeah, like on First Avenue over here. That's another option. Speed
bumps are real speed bumps where you really have to put in curves. So they've
got to go over and virtually stop to get over them. So I've heard the
fire department and others don't. Fire trucks can make it without any problem. Well, if
they have to, they will. Yeah, but if I lived on a street that had
a bunch of speed bumps, I had to go over it every single day, I
would be annoyed. Not everyone. You have your choice.
Yeah. If you're sitting there and you watch people going 80 miles an hour down
your street and you have little kids, I think you would prefer the speed bumps
than seeing them go 80 miles an hour. So it's all relative. I don't want
to go over the speed bumps. I don't either. But sometimes they're important. So to
provoke you all, I'll just be devil's advocate and say, so You know, in planning
and engineering land, we all talk about grid streets, a street of grids, so you
have many optional choices to get from here to there. So this is one of
the parts of, one of the few parts of town that actually has a grid
of streets. So it gives people more choices to get from here to there. So
in the bigger picture, is it... You raised the issue of the fire department and
speed bumps. What does the fire department say about snaky roads and... Little roundabouts
that they got to navigate. I would suspect the fire trucks don't think highly of
those either. But there are standards. There are certain dimensions in RAEI that they need
to meet. Okay. So you're going to talk about planting the seed on the bigger
picture of how much traffic calming should there be? These are public streets for all
people to use, or are they just for the neighbors to use? Okay. The
other option is if you do a roundabout and it has to meet code for
the fire trucks, if you got a little WRX or a little Honda Civic, you
can zip right around that thing like it's not even there. And that little windy
road, that looks kind of fun. Okay. Well, thanks for your feedback. So maybe not
then, huh? Kind of like the speed bump. Okay. so that's traffic calming i
anything else i think we're running towards the end of in a city that
always complains about traffic to actually talk about traffic calming doesn't seem reasonable and
that's all we wanted to move through the city we don't want it to
slow down and and you know it's just traffic calming on the side streets
is just going to make the traffic through traffic even worse probably yeah which
would be a detriment to the businesses trying to establish stuff on
front street so we're ready to move on to i think the final final
issue we've brought up is is to start thinking about possibly some boundary changes
to this old town and there's two that two that i've heard discussion about
and we're we're not landing anywhere yet at the north and the south end
so at the north end The Staples building up on
Front Street is at the north, up here in the red
right there. And that little bit is, I think, the edge
of Gilman Boulevard. And so we've heard that the character up
here is more Gilman Boulevard-like, more new development, less historic. And
so there's some consideration to maybe drop it. Okay, and then
there's Confluence Park over here. It's kind of its own thing.
So would it make some sense to, for example, pull the boundary down towards
basically down to the east fork of the creek up along Crescent and maybe
kind of across like that, right? Something like that. So think about that. And
then at the south end of town, so we're focusing tonight about the historic
core of Old Town. And then if you head down Front Street,
If you visualize that, so the middle school, which is now
turning into the other schools, is here and there's the pool.
You head down Front Street and you've got old houses, older
houses, some converting to offices along here, which can happen. And
then it turns into the 80s and 90s apartment complexes. So
how appropriate is kind of this area compared to all of
that? There you go. Are we done? Anybody
else want to comment? Or interloper? Yeah, if you don't mind,
I did have a couple questions, I guess. When Kristen, on
one of your very first slides, if you can pull it
up, Dave, but there was a mention of, it said increase
the required impervious, or would that mean increase maximum impervious? Increase
maximum, that would be a typo. Okay. Yeah. Was that on
East Sunset Way, I think? Oh, are you talking about the -- CBD. There's increased
impervious surface requirements. Here, I'll go there. I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's worded
funny, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Revisit and see if you could increase them. Yeah,
but the idea is you would increase the maximum impervious you could do on a
site. Correct. I think it's 85% right now on Front Street. and less than that
on Sunset. So look at those. It's 50% on Sunset and that's a
real development constraint today. That's probably the, that and parking on East Sunset
Way. Yeah. Then talking about the under building parking, is the, can you
do any below grade parking or is the water table too high? I
think the water table is too high, even here. I think it's fairly high
but the library parking garage does make it that low. They do have a sign
up saying that it does flood so you have to be careful and I think
there was one other one that went a little bit underground perhaps on Sunset. No?
A little bit? No? Okay I'm wrong but if you go you can't go very
deep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And with these small lots, with the small lots it's hard
to get down. Right. Right. Elevator. And then the projects, the apartments or
condos on East Sunset that Carl brought up, are those, because those are three over
one, if I remember, right? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. They're 40 feet. Yeah. Are
they three floors over one parking? Yeah. Yeah. And so those fit the current, would
that be within the 45? Yeah. We think or a I don't remember maybe
the truth that exists today. You mean those height? Yeah, you had to do
something with the with the roof slope. Yeah. Yeah. Certain amounts. Okay. Right. That
was. Yeah. Again, thinking of an idea of an example of something that's been
built and you know, within the code itself. And then also, wasn't there a
few years ago, didn't somebody propose to do a, I think it was a three
or four story apartment or condo on Sunset? Something came up within the past couple
of years. Sunset 7 or something it was? Yeah. And maybe for whatever. It'd be
interesting to bring that plan up as to say, here's somebody that working within the
code was coming up with a proposal for something that it's actually
planned on sunset i assume that plan is no longer moving forward i haven't
seen anything on that it's been a few years i think so yeah i
don't know it just went quiet um the other question it looked like on
your the all walk scenario and the sunset and front street cityscape oh the
okay The Alder Street, the Festival Street? No, not the Festival, but the crosswalk
where everybody goes at one time. Oh, yeah. All directions. Yes. Kind of like downtown
at First Avenue and Pike. Was the idea that I would have a different material
for what it looked like on the plans, a different material for the, yeah. Yes,
and here it shows brick or a stamped pavement. I don't know exactly what it
would be, but it would definitely be differentiated. Okay. Some way. Yes. Yeah, so that
lower right there, that idea. And then I guess the question, would there be any
thought of using that same kind of material for all the other crosswalks in Old
Town as a way to create some wayfinding that you would always kind of know
that every time you cross the crosswalk that had that material, you're still in Old
Town. I like that. I'll bring that up. Okay. Yeah. Your mind is headed
towards the development part of it. Yeah, exactly. Back to the policy level. Well, and
then the other thing I think is the question, I didn't hear much about the
bikes were mentioned, but I think one of the critical things is the East Lakes-Mamish
bike trail that will soon be paved all the way and the ability to draw
bikes from Gilman where it really stops down into Old Town. And that sort of
connection and how to make that connection a more visible, obvious one to get the
people on bikes down there. So what a great place to come and stop and
sit out on the sidewalk on a hot day. I know. Sure. An adult beverage.
You need a breakfast place, Saturday breakfast place downtown. Okay. Put that in the plan.
Yeah. So I think that's pretty. Yeah, I just I wanted to
mention to you know, everything that we've done on Old Town so far, the streetscape,
the Old Town Task Force, the discussions that we've had here. If you go to
our main website, your government major projects, you'll see Old Town and it has their
places where you can click on each of these and read about it and learn
about it. One sorry, one last thing here. Are we done? Well, the next slide
says public comment. So I got one more thing I'd like to interject.
Going through city plans that are no longer moving forward like maybe that
one project on sunset of the four-story building putting something like that out
in a visual document to tell people this is what has been proposed
in the past may not be going forward today but that's okay this
is what's being proposed might be a wake up call for
people to say, I don't want that. And then they'll get on the bandwagon
to actually support an outreach or your outreach to understand what they want. Otherwise,
you don't give them an incentive. They won't think they'll buy. Considering that the
city worked on the central area plan for six years and there were still
people that came to one of the planning policy mission meetings and said, I
had no idea that you were doing this. I want to applaud
the city for actually starting the planning. To me, Old Town, we've
talked about Old Town on this commission for a long time that
we needed to do something. We needed to make it vibrant so
the Highlands doesn't take over and there is no heart and soul
of our city. I'm glad that you're doing it. I think it's, you
know, it's commendable that you have started to do this, but it also brings up
the fact that you have a lot to do. And unfortunately, it has to be
done rather quickly because there are no standards. People can do whatever they want. And
once a building is built, it's not going to go away. The storage facility next
to the school is not going to go away. And so, I
hope you have enough time and energy to get something
done and hopefully it will be done correctly. So, thank
you. Anything else for the good of the -- yeah,
I know. This really isn't billed as a public open, but
there are people here, which is really nice to see people on
the other side of the fence here. Would anybody like to make
a public comment? Just give us your name and where you live.
My name is Ella Moore and I live at 290 Northeast Alder,
which is right in the heart of Old Town over here.
I have a couple of points. The first one is that about
Front Street and the height of the buildings. My fear is that
if you allow three or four story buildings, what you're going to
create is a canyon. And I agree and I'm glad to hear
the Commission saying the good things they've said because
I think it just takes away totally from the feeling
of an old town. And I've heard historic and I've
heard preservation and I've heard development and I wonder how
all three of those things can fit together and which
is the most important. To me, it is historic and
preservation. Because like you said, if we start changing the character here
of downtown, it's gone. We're going to have a Redmond. We're going
to have a Bellevue. And what kind of a strolling town is
this? You're trying to create a town that has a lot of
culture, restaurants, theaters. And when you start building up People don't like
to walk between real high buildings and like Joy said it it it destroys
your view the whole feeling we wouldn't be able to see the mountains you
know that's my two cents on that. I have a couple of questions does
the whole central area plan cover all of this? Okay it stops. Right so
the southern boundary of the central area plan is Holly Street. Okay. And
then it goes north from there, pretty far north, but it does not touch, it
doesn't touch Old Town at all. Okay. So the standards that are there do not
apply here. Okay. And we address the traffic and I was glad to see that
because we don't have any no right turn signs for north of Sunset on Alder
and every morning Zoom, zoom, zoom. Those are high school kids. In
the afternoon, it's commuters coming down off the highlands, and there's a stop sign
right at the corner where my house is. There's another stop sign at the
end of the block, one block. Do you think they can slow down? They
can't. going off that stop sign and they screech down there
to come to another stop. And there's a two block section ahead of me
where they can really pick up speed. And there's a lot of little kids
in our neighborhood. You know, it's not all us old folks. And I worry.
You know, they I've had people pass me an alder when I've been going
the speed limit. You know, so I I heard historic
survey and inventory taken. Was that just of downtown? No, it was, it covered the
entire city. It covered the un-annexed areas that hadn't been inventoried yet. And it completed,
there were some, so initially 150 properties were identified in Old Town, but only like
65 were actually inventoried. So it covered the remainder of those and then the annexed
areas and it only went to 1964. So we still need to do the
entire city from 1964 to 1977. Okay. Because I've been involved in an inventory in
Sammamish from 1941 below. And I didn't see anybody walking around our neighborhood. Did they
go to the houses? Well, I mean, a lot of it had already been done
because we have our first inventory. But they did. They walked around. They took pictures
of everyone. Okay. Yeah. And we even had a flyer in case people asked, but
nobody asked. So... Yeah, okay, that brings me to another thing. And I thought
it was a good idea that you suggested putting questionnaires on people's homes. You
said you didn't have staff. Maybe you need to ask for volunteers to do
that. If you do the printing, print up the paperwork, ask for volunteers.
ask for volunteers from those particular neighborhoods right then you
will get more reactions oh yeah yeah old town reacts
when anything happens that affects us um have our first
volunteer it's not we can find volunteers in our neighborhood
yeah um and uh i think that Was it it'll
come to me later that I missed something but I think there will be
more opportunities for you to Express your opinions. Yeah, and I thank you for
the way your thoughts are going. I really appreciated that. Thank you Thank you.
Please you're next you're closer and Connie you always do such a great mop
great job mopping up after me make sure I've covered everything so thank you
so several thoughts You are? I'm sorry, thank you. The part I always forget, Steve
Pereira, 170 Northeast Dogwood Street here in Old Town for about nine and a half
years. So the first topic while it's up here and I remember the adjustment of
the Old Town neighborhood, I think this is the Staples lot that got identified. I
have some concern with that in that, so this is Crescent Drive, comes down here
to Northeast Dogwood and Dead Ends. A whole bunch of cars come
down here, turn around and go back out. If we increase this to not be
old town standards, that traffic cross through is only going to increase because it's going
to drive more development to the area. So I have concerns with that. I also
have concerns that Front Street is already pretty bogged down and tight now and we're
driving more traffic into this area by having increasing density standards. We haven't talked about
how roads or traffic is going to work with that happening and that needs to
be out of this larger discussion that I'm not hearing is happening. So I'm going
to jump around back forth as the thoughts occur to me. So thanks for that
patience in advance. Okay I'm one of those old town should be spelled with an
E. It's not just a geographical area. It's something about the culture and the classical
part of the neighborhood. So I've looked in this presentation and we have half of
it is spelled with an E and half is spelled without an E. And there
needs to be some consistency. If there's a standard that says it's Old Town, that
needs to be standard throughout the presentation. So if you're saying you put the E
in there, thank you. I'll give you a heads up. Can I explain? Yes, please.
So the Old Town Vitality Task Force recommended remove the E and therefore their report
does not have the E. and we recognize that in the slideshow tonight. Then the
rest of it has the E still in there because it still has an E.
But that is a question if we all, we could have added in the slide
today, should the E stay or go? So you say keep it. - I look
at it as, and this is just feedback on that point, it looks to me
as a marketing standard to just mark it as old and downgraded and not as
important and valid and part of the marketing scheme on this and that concerns me
from a city perspective to be, denigrating i think this historic neighborhood so another point
is we talk about wanting to incentivize people to do things i think we need
to put in things like zoning that says old town is this type of structure
we're not going to incentivize you to keep it until you put in a development
plan to change it you don't have those historic rights that go with it to
put in a good two or three story structure you're stuck with what you get
we don't have that in place today people can go to and then tear down
their their current house and put in this two or
three story unit that is both out of character and that the infrastructure isn't
in place to maintain as far as traffic and as far as parking.
So I think we need I'm getting back to the part when you have code
and when you have structure I mean have zoning that enforces these things I would
also have concern that people are going to start taking individual Lots and they're going
to combine them into building even bigger houses then there are allowed and that needs
to be part of the zoning structure that gets looked at in this not just
from an old town preservation or historic area, but code that says because code says
we allow whatever the code says, there's not ability to say no, we don't want
this, we have to allow it or permit it because the code says it must
be in place. So I think that needs to be defined. So does a limit
for allowing large destructions when we don't have, and driving density into an area where
we don't have the density for the roads or the schools to allow that to
happen. So that needs to be a consideration to say no, we don't want this
to happen.
I'm on on surveys. I've I've no I've been to any number of City inputs
and I give an input and I've heard lots of people give it input that
says we like this classic structure that is old town and Yet we keep coming
back with more surveys like we don't like the answer we get so we're gonna
keep coming back and surveying people again and again until we get what we want
and which is to increase density. I'm one of those that had the perspective that
if we allowed increased density in the central Issaquah plan, one of the takeaways was
that we get Old Town. You can have the central Issaquah plan, we get to
keep Old Town as historic and preserved and now we're coming back and saying can
we change it just a little bit to accommodate or compromise. We already maybe compromised
by saying you can't have the Central Isle of Gall plan, what we get is
Old Town, leave us alone, quit surveying us, we've provided our input, you obviously don't
like it so you keep coming back again and again and again. So please stop
coming back again and again and again until you get what you want. I'm just
trying to remember, oh, the traffic calming measures so I'm yes I'm glad to see
the residents are are involved in this I guess I'm looking more from the city
to come back and stay if we put speed bumps this has this kind of
x effect x number of effect if we put in winding curvy roads it has
this cost or this effect I'm not hearing those feedback from the city we're just
trying to get input and if we don't really know what we get from those
different options or what the costs are those and then i'm also looking for something
that comes back and says after we've done these traffic measure calming features what's the
result of that are we getting the effect that we want i know as was
pointed out this is one of the few areas of the town that has a
grid system and I get the sense that the city wants to increase that
grid system so it can allow more, I think, east-west traffic through areas. One of
those that came up was aligning northeast Dogwood and northwest Dogwood as a kind of
a bypass area or zoning. That same concern I have if that happens is the
same thing I'm gonna see that's happening in the current neighborhoods and I'm pointing at
the map here the the kind of the the tannish and the brown areas the
the southeast Clark the bush the Andrews the older People gonna start doing cross through
traffic of that So we're just expanding one problem area to other problem areas by
allowing this grid system where the structure doesn't allow for that and I too don't
know that I have a solution, but I think that needs to be part of
the consideration. So when we discuss transportation, you certainly can come back and give us
an additional feedback from being in the Old Town area, well, both of you. So
come back at that time. I will, and yes, I'll be completing the survey as
well. So thank you. That's a good rein in point for me, so thank you.
Is there anybody else that wants to make a comment? Short comment.
Hi, I'm Connie Marsh and I live on Squawk.
So I have a few things. I think that
because we have the central Issaquah plan and we
did not have that at the time that this
original plan was done, this is the opportunity to
preserve Old Town. And I think that that is
what the city is providing the opportunity to do. And
they, I think they want to preserve Old Town as
a sacred thing. They just were not able to do
that before because that was needed to accommodate growth. So
the support of this process and ensuring that the voices
are put into place to allow that to happen because you can't
basically down zone without some political backsplash and they want to
be able to point at someone besides themselves to allow it to
happen right and that is us if we want it to happen
then we have to clearly say that we don't want this tall
of building we we want to preserve the non pass-through traffic concept
of the neighborhoods and and all so I would probably be
positive toward the city for doing this at this point in time.
Now policy. Policy is super hard because it is way up here
and the tendency is to get way down here. So Dave can
you put up the slides talking about the controversial areas that you're
pointing out? Controversial? The areas that need more refinement. Undecided. Yeah. Sure.
Thank you. Outstanding issues. I'm so sorry. Outstanding
issues. So Sunset Way, and I'm going to contradict
everyone a little bit. Retail is a component that
is missing on Sunset Way. You can do commercial,
retail, It's pretty well missing. And so I would add retail as
an outstanding issue on this because what good is Sunset Wave if you can't have
retail? I mean, you can have offices, woohoo. So picture you drive into Issaquah and
this is your gateway. And you're thinking, what a charming little dental office. No. I
want to stop. Maybe I'll go visit. Get a filling. No. Right? You want to
say, look at this. I want to play here. I want to get out.
I want to eat here. I want to do things in your town because it
is so cute and charming and this is obviously old. Right now, sunset can be
65 feet. It is just being limited because you have a 50% impervious surface, right?
So if in your brain for policy, because remember we're at policy, you're saying, We
want to not only preserve the Old Town character, we want to
enhance it by allowing all of the opportunities to augment the look
and feel of Front Street. and not to just talk about
being pedestrian friendly, but to actually prioritize pedestrians so that we can
reclaim our town from the incessant pass through traffic. Because right now
on a spectrum of, wow, cars have priority to pedestrians have priority,
cars have priority. in Old Town and we keep saying you saw it
over and over and over pedestrians, pedestrians, pedestrians and then bicycles yet we
prioritize cars. So we need some policy language to ensure that we are
actually prioritizing the pedestrians and the regional traffic you know they can stop
and eat too but it's for us. and the character for ourselves
and every time we walk through town we can be proud of
what we see. Now what I hear for the residential architectural character
is more about livability within those neighborhoods. People don't like to live
looking at blank walls. Maybe the architectural style isn't quite as important to them,
but there are certain things that are just darned annoying, and that is looming, right?
Nobody wants looming things. You want to be in your backyard with your neighbor looking
at you sunbathing? No. So, and it is that same looming sensibility that we keep
hearing about Old Town. So is there a policy about the scale? of the
houses and the decorations of the architecture to ensure that the views that
you have architecturally and naturally are pleasant and fitting, right? Because remember it's
that darn policy language. One thing that would help is to actually provide
some of the policy language that we have that is applicable to Old
Town So we could see if maybe we just want to
juggle a little bit of the language in order to make it
better, right? And traffic calming, well that's a whole different thing. Boundary
changes. That north end of Front Street is a gateway from the
freeway. And Skippers basically is a pavement and there's not much there.
So I don't know what to do about Crescent. That's interesting. So I agree with
that. The southern boundary, I think, is super awkward. I don't think you have the
same standards necessary to the south as you do to the north. I think it
is more applicable to fit into, but I don't know the area that it would
fit with. So that's only half of the information is what would it do to
that area, right? And that, oh no, parks in town. I
realize there is yet another process for parks, but I want
to say that now is the time to start thinking about,
okay, what would make Memorial Field like hot spit, right? Not
just a field. but a place to go and do things and
enjoy and be proud of, right? Same with the new parks that we have across
from Front Street Market. Okay, what do you want them to be? Can we create
policy language for what the texture of the parks system should be in Old Town
as compared to other areas of town? Okay, there you go. Thank you. And that's
it? so may i make a statement on connie applaud on connie's last one
is there is the other process going on right now for parks and definitely get
involved because i think that's that's part of what it could be is what do
you want old town versus this area versus this area and and part of what
we'll focus on here i don't know how much say we have over what the
actual parks can be certainly worth a discussion but but you know we'll also focus
on the connections to those parks from destination point to destination point which would be
those parks so but yeah get involved in the parks as well. I forgot to
answer that question which oh yeah thank you and yeah I think it was in
the notes from the last meeting because Carl asked us. Second Avenue light is going
in yeah but basically the sunset is just on hold yeah because there's nothing we
have sort of a concept going on but that's yeah So we're not going to
have real input on what goes into the park, but we can have input on
what goes around the park to give it access to that. Right, and there can
still be input through the parks process as well. I mean, sure. Yeah, but here,
correct. Yeah. Yeah. But I would assume that... When you're adding codes and permitting
processes and stuff that you want to be able to highlight and integrate those parks
into the community. I haven't seen too much of that and I think that we
need to start looking at, oh gee, there's a park, but what's around it? How
do we access it? What do we do in that park? I have a question.
Is there the Old Town Vitality Task Force, is that just business? It was.
It was the DIA, the Downtown Esquire Association. They had various representatives, but most
of them were businesses. Business owners, they did have the clothing and food bank,
but the village theater. Two of the business owners were residents.
Correct. And that's what it was. That's what I said in the
beginning. When I was talking about it at the beginning, their primary
focus was on Front Street and parts of Sunset. They want you
to go to the microphone because they can't hear the powers that
be. Yeah, I've raised that question before about how
much of what happens downtown does affect those of us
that live here. And it seems to be more of
an exclusive group just for businesses. So that's my input.
And they're now, they've disbanded. Oh, they have? They have. They disbanded. They made
their recommendations. Okay. And then the group, that was at the end of 2015, and
the group no longer meets. But we're taking some of what they recommended and looking
at some of those things and considering that for our updates. And there is a
downtown association. There is still the downtown Esquire Association. That has meetings that I'm sure
people would be welcome to go to those meetings. Yeah. Okay. So, yes, I should
clarify the task force has disbanded. DIA is still in place. Yes. Thank you, Eleanor.
- One other thing came to mind, I guess I'm gonna get to, and I'll
still make it short. One was the tables that get set out on Front Street
and whether or not there should be separate requirements for that to happen. It seems
like since they expanded the sidewalks in Front Street, the table spaces have increased to
include more and more of the sidewalks, so there's even less pedestrian space than there
was. So I'm a little bit more concerned with opening that up even more when
sidewalks are supposed to be for pedestrians. - That's one thought. The
second thought was one of the things listed was signage. And I kind of
like the signage that's kept in stock or in tone with what Old Town
is, not having wide signage that's out of scope for the character. So I
want that to be kept in mind as well. Thank you. - That's one
of the things that the Arts Commission would like to get involved in, creating
different signs and way waypoints and everything else in the city so um hopefully that
all comes together too um with that do you mind if i if i say
something awesome i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead we have one more slide that talks
about the next steps in this in this process and crystal do it quickly right
yes i'm good go ahead ask your question right there um So we've already talked
about the things coming up on the 28th and the 29th. The seniors that are
in the brew house will be back here on the 13th with our transportation engineer.
And on the 27th when we have the public hearing, we'll have to discuss policies.
We'll discuss policies at both of those. Not the standards, the higher level policies for
the plan. Then in May, there's a council work session. May 15th, June 1st, we'll
go to Landon Shore, and then June 9th, and this is alternative, we'll see how
it goes, but would be council action. Thank you. You're welcome. Just ask the Blue
House is, I don't know if it's in this direction. It's right there, across the
street. Okay. Oh, I wanted to make a comment about the Front Street
streetscape plan. You mentioned that the Old Town Vitality Commission is disbanded and you're looking
at their recommendations. And while this may be a comment that's more of a private
citizen, less as a commissioner, I'd really like you guys to try to see the
forest for the trees. The idea of timing all the stoplights is one that's worth
a discussion, but the idea of the resources that it would take to make all
that a homogenized... crosswalk area seems really ridiculous to me. The idea of tearing up
a sunset in Front Street and the traffic and what that's going to cause into
the community to be able to make it look I think it's a whole divorced
issue. We talk about bumping up against resources all the time. How about we leave
the asphalt like it is and we just time the lights? You talked and showed
a picture of actually changing that intersection and I'm failing to see how that promotes
our ideals. Moving the traffic along does, but actually tearing up the street and replacing
it seems a little crazy to me. And that brings me to my next point
of something that I some suggestions of narrowing the spaces by a few feet so
we can gain, I don't know, a place to put a tree in what's already
an asphalt covered area. And we didn't get to mention that we were handed an
email from from a citizen from Mary and she specifically mentions in it that she's
concerned about the idea of limiting a space where people are able to freely get
out. Maybe you have a walker when you get out of your vehicle and limiting
that space for a parking is something that really should be taken into account and
we never mentioned those comments. And so I wanted to bring that up that that
was something that she mentioned along with other things to say that There are repercussions
to our actions and so in some of these recommendations that you showed on the
front street street street scape plan. You know some things I love like the idea
of turning alder into a more pedestrian friendly festival scape. But the idea of tearing
things up for a look seems a little a little silly to me. Well, okay.
All right. We will and that hopefully she will send these to city council as
well. But maybe we can direct her that way to go to city council as
well so that the committee can talk about it. Well, can I just say thank
you for the reminder. I really, yeah, Mary Lynch emailed me comments this afternoon. Okay.
And I've handed them out. She has to make them part of the record. I
don't know if you want me to read them into the record. I've been sitting
here looking at it, but I've been so involved in you guys, I haven't read
it. I'll just briefly say the city
needs to set some clearly stated policies codes for the following infrastructure. What
streets need to have sidewalks? Who's responsible for paying for sidewalks? Maintaining sidewalks.
We need to review the current codes and policies for safe parking space
along city streets. And
then I'm going to skip over that generally. And then number two, there needs
to be clear policy plan about streetscapes, preserving the existing and planting more trees
in the valley. So to absorb CO2 and give more pet friendly walking paths
and visual enjoyment. That was my summary of the comments. Thank you
for the reminder. Thank you, Mary. As always, they're good comments. I'm assuming
that if you change anything in the way of sidewalks or access, you're
going to look at people with disabilities or wheelchairs so that they have
the access among it. Yes, that is a requirement when you do. Yeah.
So, I mean, I just assumed that that would be a top requirement.
priority of the city, so cool. - I mean, on one hand, when we have
people coming into our city and using the retail spaces, they don't have enough parking,
but then we're proposing that to increase that business, we wanna give them the parking
stalls to be able to expand their business, because sometimes those sit empty, but they
sit empty when people aren't there to use the business. So when you have, you're
wanting to attract someone, like a good example is how the brew house has tables
outside. We saw examples of the city saying, hey, we could increase our economic vitality
by being able to bump out. We take a stall and then we're able to
have tables so that business is able to attract more business by using that space.
That's when we need the parking to be able to support the business. So the
theory of saying, Well, sometimes that sits empty, but that sits empty when no one's
there to use it. I mean, there's a contradiction that's happening that I heard, or
for instance, you mentioned that we need to come up with more parking, so we
need to make them build it underground. But we have issues with flooding, and so
there's really nowhere to build underground in Old Town. Right, well, as a correction, I
said either under building a parking garage or surface parking, but yes, additional parking. So
I'm hearing some contradictions that were specifically related to the Front Street Streetscape Plan that
I hope that when looking at some of implementing some of these things, we do
broad strokes that help to advance us rather than just focusing on something that's aesthetically
more pleasing than necessarily a good use of resources. And some of those things are
things that came up at the council meeting when the Streetscape Plan was presented to
them last Monday and may come up again at the infrastructure meeting. So those comments
would be good there too. You've been tasked with finding parking somewhere besides that
area. So hopefully you find that parking before you start changing the -- making
up parking spaces that are there now. Well, you know, the -- I just
-- the parklet, if that happens, it's the business' choice to help make that
happen because they have to actually pay to have it set up. pay for
its maintenance, but it's also a temporary thing. So it's something that may happen for,
you know, two months during a season, but again, it's the business's choice and it's
their parking that they'd be, that would be suffering. So, you know, it's, it's a
give and take and something that has to be a partnership and a decision, a
conscious decision. It's our parking. It's a public street. Right. You're right. It's a partnership.
We'd have to agree to it and they'd have to want to do it. We
want the businesses to be there. Right. We need the businesses to be there.
And so we have to provide them the facility to be able to support
their business. Anything else? Now that we know that our next meeting is April
13th, I will see you there. Thank you for great comments and I will
close the meeting at 20 to 9. Thank you.