Making sure. What was the light? Logan's Run. There it is. Good evening and welcome
to the April 13th meeting of the Planning Policy Commission. Tonight we're going to
go a little deeper into the Old Town plan.
First, we have two sets of minutes to approve. The first one is March 9th.
Do I have a motion to approve? Approve the minutes for March 9th. I'll make
a motion to carry the approval for the minutes for March 9th. I second. Second.
All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. The next
set of minutes to approve is our last meeting, March 23rd, and there is one
correction that I know of, and that's at the bottom of page
18 of 58, a correction that Joy did not specify
that she supported.
Is that the one? Short buildings. Oh, it's up at the top. The
second paragraph, Joy did not say that she's in favor of short buildings on Front
Street and she would like it corrected in the minutes.
So with that change, do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Make a
motion to approve the minutes for March 23rd. Second that. With the change.
With the change. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.
So I assume that our, that Dave is going to begin our
city presentation of the Sub Area Plan for Old Town. I am, thank you,
and good evening. Good evening. Dave Faber with the Development Services Department. I don't know
if I've met some of you, so hi. Let's kick this off. So we're here
for the second meeting on the Old Town Sub Area Plan. We started on March
23rd with an introduction, and we're continuing tonight with a discussion on the vision, the
goals, and the policies of each of the various chapters of the plan. Here's
a general outline of tonight's agenda. Again, the background is that this is
a sub area of the comprehensive plan of the city.
There's the map of the sub area plan, but that doesn't help. Anyway, you know
where it is and it's in your packet. The sub area plan was written in
1999 originally. A general theme we heard back then was to to
preserve the character of Old Town, the residential and the commercial areas, and the
feedback we're hearing continues almost 20 years later with that similar theme of kind of
preservation of the historic scale and character of Old Town.
We've had a significant amount of public outreach, I feel, since May, and that's shown
in your packet towards the end. In May of last year, an open
house again in November, an open house in,
let's see, two weeks ago or so, we had an open house at the Senior
Center at lunch and a second one the next night at the Brewhouse in the
evening and had some good comments and those are shown and summarized in your
packet. And finally, with regard to public outreach, there is a survey
going on right now online. As of tonight, we've had 79 responses.
And we've got it called up on the website. I can show you where it
is if you have questions. And you can check out the responses, anyone can, by
going online and looking at the responses. So that's kind of interesting. So that is
a quick project background and outreach. The meat of tonight is to look at the
five chapters of the plan. The Old Town Community, which looks at the land use
vision element, connectivity motability, which is transportation, and kind of another way of saying it,
environment, economic vitality, and housing. And we have a team of folks here to do
this. So, Kristin is the first one to work on
Old Town Community. Kurt Seaman is our transportation manager. Hello, Kurt,
who will work on connectivity mobility and I'll do the next two and Kristen will
follow up with housing. So with that, I guess Kristen's here, anything else? No. All
right, I'll go over here. Okay, and
then
we'll come home and have to ask questions. Yeah. To get situated.
I do. So after the first
two open houses that we had in May and November, we found that there was
consensus on most of the things that people talked about regarding transportation and the way
things looked and the way things felt and connectivity and that kind of thing, but
there were still four outstanding issues that were preserving residential character,
preserving the character of Front Street and Sunset, Traffic calming
and that was it. So those are just highlighted as we go through.
The way we are addressing those concerns are highlighted in red. Those policies help address
those, starting with the first ones. So
the plan is, because there is a lot of work here to go through, the
plan is to go through the vision and then look at the goals and then
hopefully you all have done your homework and read these and ask if there are
any questions about any of the policies. We'll give it a minute, give you guys
a chance to look at it. But I would assume, correct me if I'm wrong,
that you don't want to walk through every single policy. Does that work for you?
Is that enough time spent on it? Okay, jump in any time.
Okay, so the vision, the draft, these are all draft, DraftVision,
Old Town is the heart of our city. This is the way we see it
in the future. It's the heart of the city and inviting comfortable and walkable place
that inspires community engagement and interaction. The built and natural environments blend to create an
authentic sense of place for residents, employees, and visitors year-round. Authenticity and
integrity must be retained as the community continues to evolve and grow. And when we
say Old Town community, it's also It's land use, but it's how that land is
used and how it makes people feel. It's not just what buildings are on the
ground. So goal A, create an attractive and
inviting community that prioritizes pedestrian safety and comfort, enhances the quality of life, and
establishes a sense of place within Old Town. So there are seven policies here. They
focus on making a connected environment, things that are easily accessible and inviting,
And not just with the sidewalks, not just that you have wide sidewalks and trees,
but that the windows are, that you have windows and not blank walls of brick
or stucco. That they're high quality materials that things seem permanent.
That the landscape is integrated into the environment where it can be, either through
integrating Issaquah Creek, we've talked to the Dairy, gold, or mercantile building down on
front about possibly working on their property to help integrate and open up the creek
into their property so it's more easily accessible. Providing access and visibility to Issaquah Creek,
like I just said. Enhance wayfinding to make it intuitive
and you know where you're going through Old Town. Establish a sense of place by
using architectural and landscape elements so that it has an identity to it.
Provide funding for implementation of the streetscape plan, which is currently going through the process.
It goes for council action on Monday and encourage interesting, creative, and unique approaches to
design so that it makes Old Town seem unique and not generic like everything else.
Are there any questions about the first seven policies? I have a question for you.
Okay. On A1C,
of high quality materials, are we gonna have a sub policy that's going to
identify what's considered a high quality material or exclude certain types of
materials? It would not be a policy, it'll be in the design standards.
The development commission is looking into that aspect right now with a contractor
who is coming forward with designs Not so much, or one of the things is
to say what isn't acceptable. Not just, you know, we want
nice windows, but we don't want mirror windows, or something along that line
would. And the Old Town standards actually do that right now. They say what we
do want and what we don't want. So they would just be amended to include
materials as well. We're working on it. Well, you're working on it for Central, though.
Right. Same idea, right. Same idea. Yep. But the development
commission. That's the question that I have, if I can. No, go. Excuse me, interrupting.
These are all established buildings. Mm-hmm. What's the philosophy or the theory
behind changing or using the language, you know, large windows?
The owner's not going to replace what he's got now unless he's, motivated somehow. I
just don't know. True, but if somebody comes in and redevelops or someone comes in
and just wants to make improvements to that existing building or they knock a building
down or, you know, say on Sunset where the lots are a lot smaller and
they could do bigger things there and completely redevelop, that's where it applies. You can't
just go in though and make someone change their existing building. That
brings up another question. So if a homeowner wants to change the setting on their
house, are they going to need to get a permit to do that? or are
you talking about broader scale where someone's doing a full redevelopment? It's
potentially. So one of the things that we talked about last time was setting up,
we've never done it before, but setting up residential design standards for the single family
and duplex areas. And like I said, we haven't done it. We have to look
into it. We're trying to get a feel for how people feel about that right
now in the survey. But it's potential. Yes. All right, thank you. You're welcome.
Joan, did you have a question? Okay. Okay. B,
this is about continuing the green necklace. We talked about the green necklace in central
Issaquah and something that's come up in the parks open houses and the discussions that
they've had is that they want to continue that theme and that idea throughout the
city. And there you have both the East Fork and Issaquah Creek. So it would
be, the green necklace is open spaces, it's acquiring, open spaces in critical areas, it's
also making sure that you have the connections to those different destinations through safe and
inviting sidewalks, through trails, making sure the Rainier Trail is maintained
and improved where possible. So that's what this goal is about.
I think I just mentioned everything in the policies.
add and enhance the park system, and then preserve axial views of the Issaquah Alps
and hillsides from public spaces. That's something that's currently in our comprehensive plan, but we
felt it was important to emphasize that here in Old Town as well. Any
questions? Okay.
So, Old Town, or goal C, maintain the character and scale and historic integrity of
Old Town while allowing the area to grow and evolve. This doesn't mean allow density,
this doesn't mean make everything bigger, but if someone does wanna come in and demolish
and rebuild a new house, that that new house fits in with the integrity of
the existing developments. So two of these policies right here in red
address some of the things we've talked about. Provide design standards that maintain and enhance
the historic authenticity of Old Town. And whether or not this means scale or
architecture is still to be determined. It's kind of a 50-50 right now in how
people feel about it. So we're just kind of waiting to see. That'll probably be,
it'll be made stronger in the future, but right now we can't say scale or,
you know, we just can't say yet. And the second one is to protect the
character along Front Street and Sunset. Then we have
Insure Quality Materials, which we just talked about. Preserve and protect
Issaquah's treasures, most of which are located in Old Town. I think all but about
four are located here. And we will include that list in the plan as well.
Promote the benefits of local landmark designation to property owners within Old Town. So I
think I mentioned that we just finished updating the historic inventory to include 51 properties
that were not included in the original historic inventory for Old Town. So that list
will be out on the 25th of April. Support maintenance and restoration of the
city's landmark buildings. We have the Depot, Hailstone Feed Store, and potentially a couple of
others that the city own. And encourage adaptive reuse of historic structures to ensure their
economic feasibility and that they just don't come down. Any questions about those?
Is there a timeframe to get the specifics
worked into this? By next week. We,
the, yes, by the, well not next week, by the public hearing, which is the
27th. And the survey ends? 21st. On the 21st. So
they'll be in there. So you're gonna have all the specifics that promote these? Well,
there are only about four policies, but yes. Okay. Yes. We're that good. You don't
mean the specifics that would be in the code. Yeah. Do you? Oh, we wouldn't
be redoing the code until next year. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, the policies, yeah, the
policies, we can do those, but no, the code is next, after this. We're not
that good. We're not that good. We're good, but not that good. Okay. Next week,
I'm going to hold you to that. Okay. Okay.
Parking, we debated about putting parking in transportation or connectivity and mobility or land use.
And because it affects land use so much, we decided to put it in the
community section. One is, so provide parking requirements geared in enhancing and
preserving the active pedestrian street front based on urban rather than suburban densities and needs.
And that doesn't mean to make it urban. That doesn't mean to make it
urban, but what it means is to preserve the street front. So what you want
to avoid is parking along the street. or if you have to have some parking
along the street, that it is screened so that you have a street wall and
not cars looking at you or just a bunch of pavement so that there's something
there to make it pedestrian friendly. Potentially establish maximum parking requirements to help
maintain the character of the area. But you'd make sure that there are sufficient amounts
out there. I should note too that it's a council directive to have a plan
to find additional parking
within or near Old Town by the end of 2018. So that is something that
we're working on so that we could do some of these things like establish maximum
parking. Support the pedestrian environment by reducing the impact of parking,
like I just said, encouraging structured parking where possible, requiring
buildings in the CBD to have a street front or street frame, like I talked
about, and then requiring screening for surface parking. and then design and locate garages so
they have, this is residential primarily, design and locate garages so they have minimal impact
on pedestrians and the character of the neighborhoods. Any questions? I've actually got
a fundamental question, more about strategy of this document than specifically the content we just
went over. These are really super high level and
they almost read like suggestions as opposed to policy. Because I would
expect there to be teeth, and these don't sound like they have any teeth. So
if we approve it, the next stop is City Council to,
with our approval? It is. If you recommend approval, then it goes to City Council
and to committee and then back to council. But this is supposed to be high
level. Okay. Because we can't have everything, all the teeth figured out. and this gives
us flexibility. So the idea is this is our intent and we're gonna try it
this way in the standards, but if it doesn't work, then that gives us the
flexibility to amend the standards to still achieve the policies and goals that are in
here. So help me understand,
if we approve this document that goes to City Council and let's just say they
approve it, A developer coming in wouldn't
have to abide by any of this because it's all suggestive or recommended and we've
learned our lesson with the CIP in the sense that we put it in as,
boy, this is our wish list. We would like it to come out this way
and we just get railroaded. They still have to abide by it. I mean, this
is the intent. This is the vision for that area. And even if the standards
aren't in place at that moment, which hopefully they will be soon, And we do
have standards in place, and a lot of them meet the requirements, meet this intent,
or would implement this intent. But even if they don't, you look at it and
you say, the intent is this, and what you're doing over here, what you're proposing
to do, doesn't meet it at all. So we need to figure out a better
way to develop this. Right, and another way to say it is the teeth is
in the code. It's in the standards. It's in the land use code, not in
the policy document. The policy document frames what's in the code. but the code is
where the teeth is. And what we found is, you said in Central, is the
code didn't completely match the policy document, and so we're working on that now. But
the code is always where the teeth are. Okay, you're right. That's the way it
should be. We should be looking at it from a high level standpoint like it
is now, but I'm not able to see the teeth, so if I can't see
the teeth for this. There's no teeth in policy. It's aspirational. Right, right. but I
mean, as far as understanding the codes that are going to enforce this, because if
we go through and say, okay, this looks great, we like the intent, and shouldn't
we also be looking at the code that's going to support that? If you had
eight more staff members, we would have the code, but we don't have eight more
staff members, we just have us, so we have to do that next year.
Okay. It would be nice, you're right, to look at the whole package, it would
be great. but we're just not able to do it all at the same time.
All right, sorry. Not the answer I was looking for, but.
It's the only answer I have. Is there anything, let's see, I think that was
the last one. Is there anything else before we move on to connectivity and mobility?
At least the city is looking towards something. I mean, instead of,
I know that we have talked three years about doing something for Old Town. And
so at least the city is trying to do something and putting it on the
burner. We are. And in a way, a lot of the comments that we get
through the open houses are actually solutions. People tend to go towards solutions. Fix it
this way. This is what I want to see. So then a lot of these
policies go up from there. So we know what a lot of the standards need
to say. We just can't get to it yet to do it. Yeah. Makes sense.
Ready? Move on. Kurt, you're up.
Good evening. I'm Kurt Seaman. I'm the transportation manager here at the city. And I'm
happy to be here to help walk us through the, as Dave mentioned, another word
for this is could be transportation. But we're calling it connectivity and mobility. And so
the vision here in Old Town is that we would be developing
an interconnected transportation system that provides choices. And I think those are, I
won't read you the whole thing, you can read it for yourself here. But I
think the key, the two key elements of this from my perspective is, is the
connectivity part, which is something we're trying very hard in all of our transportation systems
to achieve. And then the choices idea is
we know that the single occupancy vehicle is a primary way that many people use
to get around here in Issaquah, but the idea of choices is that we also
want to work towards providing many other choices for mobility, which
especially in Old Town would include non-motorized ways of getting around walking and biking.
And also you'll see here as we move on through the slides, a larger
emphasis on transit as well. So that's sort of the vision and as I
see it is establish better connectivity for all
modes of travel and providing more choices for people to get around. So the first
The first goal talks about improving the circulation system that supports the land use. So
we know that land use and transportation are interconnected. You can't really separate the two.
The transportation system and the land use have to fit together and support each other.
So here we are again on more detailed policies. And as
consistent with the vision that we just talked about, there's this idea of multimodal connectivity
and working to improve that. And so
that sort of rolls into policy number two. So talking here about sidewalk
standards that promote pedestrian safety and comfort. So it's safety for sure, we're always
very focused on safety, but the comfort and connectivity are, we don't wanna have places
where you're walking down the sidewalk and then and then there's no place to go
or the ADA ramps aren't sufficient or the comfort part is maybe
we should be looking at a landscape strip or parking to separate pedestrians from
vehicles so same idea with by this connectivity idea also
obviously applies to bicycle facilities so we want to be able to ride cycle
across through town and through Old Town and not get to a place where we
get stuck or it's difficult to get across the street or something like that. So
I mentioned transit, so we focused on looking at
improving transit opportunities in Old Town and then the kind of a cool sort of
related topic to all this is it does give us as we're making improvements in
Old Town gives us an opportunity to employ more
current modern environmentally sensitive areas of dealing with stormwater runoff that kind of thing so
and Kristen mentioned parking and so we can talk a
bit more about that yes question for A to B and C
for I'm sorry. Hey, to policy A to number B and C.
So protected protected designated and continuous bicycle facilities and then on street parking.
They don't always necessarily mix, but I realize this is also old town. Then a
for maintain and continue to develop a highly interconnected multimodal
circulation network. et cetera, et cetera, basically for cyclists.
How do you plan to do that? Are you talking about adding bicycle lanes to
Old Town, or are you gonna be posting signs and signage on the streets to
say shared roadway, like,
you know bicycle shared roadways? Sure, so I think it's I think it can be
a combination of any number of those things. So for example we were taught we've
been talking about East Sunset and making improvements to East Sunset and so some of
the thoughts there we've had a lot of a lot of input from the community
here and and so one of the ideas there is we would improve we would
improve East Sunset in a way that would support parking, on-street parking, and a more
complete, a safer sidewalk system, and then look to put cyclists on,
one of the proposals we're looking at is putting cyclists on the one block north,
and then one block south. So in that case, cyclists, would be routed onto the
streets north and south of East Sunset. So in other places, it may be more
appropriate to have a dedicated bike lane. It sort of depends on the circumstance. I
think the sort of the key element, though, here is the connectivity and the safety
and this idea that when you're a cyclist, you have a clear, safe route across
town. So it can. In some cases, if you're familiar with the
Sherrows, that kind of thing, where on lower volume streets, the cyclists and cars actually
can share the road, and it's signed and striped consistent with that. On more busy
streets, it's typically more appropriate to have a cycle lane. So I guess, I don't
know if I'm answering your question exactly, but it depends on, we need to,
there's not a one size fits all, we need to, thoughtfully look at integrating
cycle connectivity and pedestrian connectivity throughout the streets. And so we haven't always done that
in the past and that's why we have, we've been typically over time we've been
more focused probably on the automobile than on the non-motorized components. So this is an
opportunity to, and what we're saying here in our policies is that we recognize that's
important, especially in the old town and that we're gonna focus on that. No, I
totally agree. I think we definitely need to shed some light on protecting
cyclists with signage. But I also look at the sunset
proposal that was put in through the bond measure where they took out the bicycle
lanes in favor of parking. That street gets a lot of cyclists on it. And
People like myself, we're not interested in going down to the south one street, one
block over or up one street. It doesn't even come into the mind that you
would be required to do that because you're moving through town. My question is, if
we created an official bike route to one block south, one block
north, and we had a bicycle accident on sunset,
then we would have to go Would someone be able to come back and say,
well, you were not on the official bicycle path, therefore you need to share some
liability in this? I don't know if I'm qualified to speak to the liability part
of that, but I think. You hear what I'm saying? I do. Most people are
probably not going to go one block north and one block south. I do hear
what you're saying. I think part of it, so I don't know if, I'm the
one that brought a piece on that. I don't know if that's typical of all,
bicycle corridors here in old town the specifics and on that street was we were
we were constrained by a 60 foot right away and so we were trying to
fit a lot of different needs into that right away and so and that
that design is just to be act just to be clear is not
the we've not adopted a design free sense that we've we've moved down that path
quite a ways and we have some good ideas we think for East Sunset but
I don't think the the we're not ready to design and build improvements to East
Sunset so I was just giving that as an example of he sense that having
a limited a constrained right away and we were looking at ways to accommodate all
modes of of travel along with parking was a very
important part of the design for this neighborhood, so. And see, that's the other,
that's another. It's a balance, right? Right, well, yes, I agree. But it also comes
to another point that I wanna make, and that is convenience. So the bicycle path
isn't convenient for sunset. And we're talking about
making our town more walkable with more bike paths and more sidewalks. And I'm not
seeing that happen. So as we start having more development come in, I'm not
seeing the modifications to the trail system, to the park system, to make it more
inviting. Like the trail system behind Target, when you go in towards the Atlas,
it looks like a private trail. I mean, you almost feel like you're riding a
bicycle or walking down a path on private property. So... You know I look at
these policies these policies need to have more teeth in them as well because we
need to make sure that these things don't get rolled out because they're inconveniences to
our growth and where we want to go at the time when we're dealing with
a developer. And that's what I'm afraid you know when I look at this it's
the language is soft. So you're right and it's a similar same comment on a
in a in a different set of policies and I I to hear what you're
saying and I think like Kristen was in, we were talking about with code
being the teeth for the other piece we were just talking about. I think
the teeth in this part and relative to sidewalks and
bike lanes, bike ways is developing that map that very specifically shows
on any street where the, and so we have some of that already, but it's
probably not, it probably can be developed to a higher level of detail. And that
would be the teeth, I think, when a developer comes in, that would be part
of our adopted bike plan. This is what you're building across your frontage. So
again, I think, and I'm not trying to sidestep the issue on the teeth part,
but I think, the question that we're trying to, or the input we're trying to
get from you all tonight is, are these, is what we're saying here in these
policies the right direction for us to head? And your point about, I think I'm
hearing you say yes, if and, assuming that you have the regulations and the
code and the bike plan and the maps and all of that to support it,
so. Almost. Weak policy, I'm afraid that a weak policy would
create weak codes. And that's where I'm trying to get with this is, if this
is too much of a feel-good document, it becomes a marketing collateral instead of
a vision that's enforced through code. And if we don't put the strength in the
policy, then when it comes down to actually creating the code, then we have questions
and then it becomes areas of shades of gray and I think that's where things
can go through. So Ron, when you say that you'd like more teeth in this
document, can you give us an example of the kind of thing that you'd like
to see? I need to get back to you on that. Yes. I'd love it
if you did. That would be helpful. How about I go ahead and write up
a little email and send it off to the committee. Okay. And that way I
can think more about it, but and come back with a better answer for you.
Okay, and then we can address it at the public hearing too and bring that
up and talk about it. If you send it to everyone though, you can't respond
because then it's like having a meeting offline. Okay. So just be aware you can't
respond back to them. Should I send it to you? You can send it to
us and we can send it out. I'll do that. That'll be easier. Okay. Thank
you. I have a question which probably isn't maybe not appropriate at this time, but
The Press- Some of these things that are in this plan are very low cost.
And since we've had such comments about traffic problems and trying to
correct them, why haven't some of these things already been implemented? Or have they been
implemented in other areas but not Old Town? Mr. So, and- The Press- What are
we waiting for? So it's a, I wouldn't say that we're waiting. I think we
are moving forward in a variety of fronts on that.
One of the ways that we are making improvements every year is through our complete
streets program. So it's a fairly small program, it's less than a million dollars, but
it does target, it's primarily focused on non-motorized improvements for
Most recently we've been doing a lot of crossing improvements, ADA improvements throughout the city,
not only Old Town. And we'd like to do more of that. We think it's,
depending on the projects that we select, it's a good bang for the buck.
You're limited to a fairly small number of projects that you can complete with the
amount of money that we have set aside for that. Yes, we are interested in
making the sort of smaller, big return
for the money spent type improvements, and that is our Complete Streets program, and we're
working with the council to better, define
what that program is all about and how we should prioritize projects for that
and what's most important, the most important criteria on how we decide which projects
to build in that program. So that's one example. So when we look at the
TIP and look at the long list of projects, all of them are multimillion dollar
projects. Yes. These are not. I mean, have you done things like
talking to business owners to try to get a public partnership,
public-private partnership put together to do some of this? I, you know, maybe it could
be a better answer. That was a part, I know a little bit.
That was a part of the discussion or recommendation that came out of the task
force. It was a task force recommendation for Dia to work with partners and people
to help improve do simple improvements to the cultural
business district and to Sunset Way with those business owners. I know the Chamber did
it years ago with their bucket of paint that re-striping did some. Right. But is
it being formulated between the two? Are there discussions going on or is it just
something in the plans to work on? As soon as they get their new economic
development manager in place, I would imagine that that would pick up again. I don't
know if there were conversations being had, but now there's been a transition. Yeah.
Okay, thank you. So
yeah, I don't want to rush you through this. I do want to be sensitive
of everyone's time, and I know that we've got a few more. It's not just
connectivity and mobility that we need to share with you tonight. So I'm happy to
spend as much time as you like, but I did want to just at least
the high level go through the rest of the policy. So I think we've
talked about most everything here. There is a policy A5 which talks about this
gateway idea and something around the I-90 Sunset Way.
And so this is probably a crossover between transportation and just community character for
Old Town, but should we focus on making
it a special emphasis on when you're coming into the Old Town and
establishing some kind of improvements as you come into Old Town, like a gateway type
feature. So that's that. COMMISSIONER SACKVILLE, FORGIVEN ME, BUT COULD
YOU SPEAK JUST A LITTLE LOUDER? I'M SORRY? COMMISSIONER SACKVILLE, FORGIVEN ME, BUT COULD YOU
SPEAK JUST A LITTLE LOUDER? I'M SORRY? COMMISSIONER SACKVILLE, FORGIVEN ME, I CAN. I will
certainly try. I'll just start, I'll speak up for you, I'm sorry.
So that's that, and then this last policy, A6, talks to the streetscape
plan, which is something that is currently underway, and to look
at implementing that streetscape plan as a, that sort of has some
kind of pretty interesting innovative improvements for Old Town
in the vicinity of Front Street and just in the theater right around in that
area. So those are the, those are the,
the circulation mobility goals. And then, so mobility
goal B, which is, which is I know of very high
importance and very interest, very high level of concern to many people that live in,
especially in this East Sunset neighborhood, to look at improvements that would moderate or reduce
cut through traffic, both volumes and speeds, and that would better support
the residential nature of this area, as well as the businesses. So this is, so,
And we're talking about the teeth and the implementation of these
policies. So this is something that we have committed to, the state's committed to this
year is looking at traffic calming features in this East Sunset neighborhood. It's part of
our survey that Dave mentioned that's out there now. We'll be quite soon
putting out some hoses on the street that will register volumes and speeds so we
have better data. And it really depends on what we need
from the community is a lot of input and a good turnout so that we
can understand which potential traffic calming features would be
willing, what people would be willing to accept and people feel that would have the
most impact. So we have a lot of ideas on what that, of what those,
traffic calming features could look like and we need the input from the community as
well. So that's an effort that we're just getting started on the data part with
both the survey and the traffic counters and speed counters that we're putting out. And
so our intent here is in the second half of the year to work with
the community to come up with a plan to implement traffic calming measures in this
neighborhood. That is currently underway and moving forward.
And then the flip side of this conversation, of course, is we know that
a big part of our transportation issues in Issaquah is not coming from people that
live and work in Issaquah, but it's coming from people that live in other places
and are trying to work in other places. So this second policy here, and we're
working on a lot of different fronts with PSRC and Metro and King County and
Sound Transit, WASHEDOT, all the agencies and more that we list here on a lot
of different levels to address regional traffic issues. That was a big
emphasis that the mayor had last fall. He kicked off this
conversation and there are now currently follow up meetings on that on looking at ways
to get regional trips onto regional transportation
facilities and not onto our local streets. So that's
that. And then this is sort of
related to some of our discussion already and it's all tied in but
it's looking at ways not only, so the other policy was more let's construct the
facilities, but this policy is look at ways to increase, actually increase the mode share,
increase the number of trips made by pets and bikes in the Old Town. So
part of that is what you all have mentioned just a few minutes
ago is looking at a connected system and you mentioned the
low cost techniques, looking at that, expanding that program so that we can
quickly and easily provide for more bike lanes, for example. So
to your point, the policy's fine. Let's see what the next step is, is a
good one. So we hear you on that, I think. And then,
so these are, these are
policies that are And this is sort of more detail
on things that we could do to make it safer and easier and more comfortable
to walk and cycle. So there's a bunch of ideas
here that we think all of these are valuable efforts to move forward
with to improve cycling and walking in Old Town.
And I won't read those all to you because you have them there.
And then the partnerships are really important. And it's interesting to
see as Metro, for example, as Metro Connects is an initiative
by King County Metro, and they're really, I feel like they're working hard to work
with the cities and they're interested in improving transit service in Issaquah and all
communities. And so I think we have an opportunity to create stronger partnerships with Metro,
for example, on how to provide better transit service. I think that's a worthwhile use
of our time here because it goes back to that providing folks with
choices other than the single occupancy car. The bike share program does not have
anything like the Pronto program in Seattle, does it? I am not the bike share
expert here, but maybe Kristen. So, You know, the city,
there were four cities that the state gave money to. It was Redmond,
Kirkland, Bellevue, and Issaquah to create a bike share system that would
work in all four cities. I think we received $5 million to implement that.
And it's been moving a little slowly, and in part because of the Seattle Pronto
program and wanting to separate ourselves from that. So no.
It's not the same thing. You learn from Seattle and the mistakes that they made.
So no, it won't be exactly like that one. The problem with implementing buses and
a bicycle bike share program is that we're in hills.
You're limited to the number of people that are going to be using them. And
we have talked electric bikes, and that's something that the group is open to. We
are not the only ones with hills. Kirkland has them. Resmond has them. And Bellevue.
But we have talked electric bikes, and we're just getting started. In fact, we're about
to kick it off again later. Actually, at the beginning of 2018, we'll kick it
off again. But those are things that we're looking at. Are there other last mile
programs worth opening this policy up to rather than just
targeting bike share alone? There are. So we... just applied for a
program and was accepted through Metro to do an
alternate, they have an alternative services program. They've just changed the name, I can't remember
what it is, but we were one of seven cities that were accepted. And the
point is, and our application was to look at, initially, Squawk
Mountain and Talis, who for years and years have asked for some kind of transit
to help them get up and down those hills. And it's not money, you don't
automatically get money for it. And they don't say, you don't say, here's our solution,
let's implement it. So we're working with them to figure out what those solutions are.
But they're hoping that this will grow and expand and could come here too. But
we're always looking at alternative services programs out there. I guess my comment then on
this policy would be maybe to strike the bike share language maybe, and kind of
open it up to just focusing on that last mile, whether it's bike share or
some alternative method. or add them
both. So it's more all-encompassing? Yeah, I guess rather than, you know, I guess if
we're just trying to look into bike share and say hypothetically it doesn't work out
for one reason or the other, not having it in our policy might limit
us. Okay. I like the idea of having both. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean. I've also got something else I'd like to add. You
mentioned requiring weather protection over sidewalks along pedestrian-oriented streets.
How about weather protection over bike facilities? Because no one wants a wet bicycle.
They could be part of the program. That'd be a nice little caveat. Stephen King.
Yeah.
I'm gonna keep moving along here. Got a couple more goals. And so goal
D has to do with reducing single occupancy. Again, it's providing better
choices and reducing the, this is referred to this as mode share,
but shifting the mode share away from single occupancy vehicles
to other modes of travel, which we've talked about. And so ways to do that
would be to expand the employer neighborhood programs that would provide alternatives
to driving your car. And then specifically we've
identified Isquah School District as a, they're
a big user of our roads and account for a lot of congestion during school
hours. And so working with them to look at for reducing single
occupancy vehicle trips. So it's not,
these policies, these won't single handedly change things, but I think together with everything else
we're talking about, they can make a difference. And then this
sort of following along with that is looking at what can we do to
increase transit trips and how can we make it easier and better and more simple
to use transit. And there's a lot of ways to do that, which we've talked
about in these policies. And we're certainly open to your ideas on anything that we
can do to provide a more transit supportive transportation system. But these policies,
E1, 2, and 3, are some starting points and some ideas that we have on
that. And that's
what I have for connectivity and transportation. So
I'll be here, so I'm happy to answer any other questions or I can do
that now as well. So. I've got one more question here for you. And I
didn't see this anywhere in the document. I may have just missed it, but
for the Metro piece, public transportation, Do we have anything that
would, that asks for covered
plus facilities? That would be city-wide, wouldn't it? Kristen's
been working most closely, I think, with Metro. I'm learning bits and pieces, but that's
come up before. And you can ask for that on a case-by-case basis, but Metro
will only give it to those stops that have a certain number of users that
go there. So we kind of, when things come up, we've brought it up before
to them. Okay. Yeah, but it's not something, I mean, you can always aspire to
have more, but it is on a case by case basis. So Metro's the one
that determines whether that's built or not? Correct. Okay. Well, the city
working with Metro, Metro is the, Metro is the bus shelter provider.
That's the funding. Yeah. Would it be a,
conflict of interest if the city paid for covered plus if
Metro decided they would not? I mean, I think to, I did,
I've just started to get involved in the Metro Connects conversations and I do get
the sense from them that they're very interested in working with the cities to promote
transit. So I don't know what, that's not a direct answer to your question, but
I think that they're looking for stronger partnerships with the cities. what does a partnership
look like in terms of who does what. Typically
Metro is the agency that provides the bus shelters and maintains them and all that
kind of thing. I mean that's traditionally how it's been.
It'd be nice to have something in our document that asks for it. And the
reason why I'm saying that is because we're trying to motivate more people to use
it. And if we leave it up to Metro, we may not get the answer
we want. And I think there would be a lot of people in the city
that would like to use public transportation, but don't wanna stand in the rain and
may be willing to pay for facilities.
And since this is particular to Old Town, there's probably some architectural characteristics that
we'd wanna somehow encourage not just plot a downtown Seattle bus
shelter in Old Town Issaquah. Sure, totally agree with that. You can see that happening
too. Good thought.
Okay, thank you. I'll turn this back over to Dave.
I'm
ready to move on to the environment chapter. All right. the
environment and here's the vision statement for the environment. I think you've heard some from
Kristen already about the green necklace is what I think of. But the environment
weaves its way not through all of Issaquah but through Old Town also.
Creeks and trails, hillsides and there's the green necklace weaving its way through Old Town
The forested wooded hillsides are a key element we've heard in the current plan and
we're continuing to hear comments about that in the proposed plan. And then
finally, the East Fork and the main fork of the creek kind of frame parts
of Old Town and they weave their way through. So minimizing
flooding and also working to improve water quality from this old development that
built decades ago before there were many environmental or stormwater quality
codes. I think that's all a vision of how can we weave the environment into
Old Town. Any comments on the vision? All right,
so let's move on to goal A, which
first gets at stormwater, improving stormwater management
Over the current conditions, like I said, this is the older part of town. So
the city is, many of the developments down in Old Town
were developed without any stormwater management facilities. So as redevelopment occurs,
we are required and want to work with owners to improve stormwater management throughout Old
Town. A new element of stormwater
codes this year requires this low impact development. So if possible on the site and
if the soils can accommodate it to infiltrate the soils on the properties
that are under development. We
recognize that there are many small lots downtown. So that goes to policy A2.
So if it's possible to combine several small lots in a cooperative way,
either several private developments or perhaps partner with the public, a
public development. If there's a way to partner that and get that same
LID element, that's what policy A2 is working towards.
And then A3 looks at streets, the canopy of trees are important throughout to
control storm water. And finally, A4 looks at the flood mitigation
work that has been going on for decades and I think is still planned to
continue. Any comments on that?
Okay, I'll move on to B. So speaking of the creeks that
frame Old Town, again, development did occur long
before there were any regulations along the creeks, and so there are Many developments
are, I'd say, nonconforming or grandfathered. And today, if development were to
occur, we would ask to improve the environmental quality of the
creek environment, the buffers along the creek banks.
And so I guess B1 just gets that, again, to acknowledge that the views of
the creek and the access to the amenities of the creek is a vital element
we want to promote. That occurs at the street crossings primarily today in
the fish hatchery. B2 and B3, let me explain this. We had a good
comment today from Connie, thank you Connie, noticing that
this is two policies in the central plan
Since then, the council has updated our non-conforming codes to be a little stricter than
that, and they apply citywide. So in the comprehensive plan today, there are policies
that address what does the city do and what do the codes say in non-conforming
situations when redevelopment occurs. So the proposal here is to strike these two and
just revert or default to the current policy statements that are in the broader comprehensive
plan that give direction there versus be specific to Old
Town. So you follow that? All right.
Moving on, let's see. Any questions on four, five, and six?
We want to continuing purchase the creekside properties as the city has been doing and
restoring those to better flood mitigation and creek enhancement.
So move on to goal C, talks about sustainability. So like we said last
time when we met, sustainability is an important element throughout the city. It's
policies that are and goals provided in the comprehensive plan I looked at the comp
plan and pulled out just a couple that appear to be unique to Old Town.
So right now, there's a parallel plan or strategy, the sustainable building action
strategy that's going to Council right now, looking at a host of
strategies or actions to take when new development of public and
private developments occur to really promote green building or sustainability
in new development. And so this recognizes the work that's going on in that action
reflected in C1.
C2 looks at, again, many
different elements in sustainability and again, it applies citywide, but it's kind of worth maybe
just emphasizing that. That also applies in Old Town. You'll see some overlap
here. C3, emphasizing non-motorized and transit-oriented mobility,
again, promotes the goals also of sustainability.
C5 looks at energy retrofits, so the
building stock in Old Town is older than most of the rest of the city,
so one focus of some of these sustainability goals to look at existing
buildings rather than new construction. And then
sustainability, green building goes back to the environment and working with what we have and
talks about retaining existing trees and working with the back to the environment.
And partnering again, C7, a whole list of different groups we can work with
get the best bang for our buck. Goal D, protect and contribute to the enhancement
of connections to the wooded hillsides. So around the east end of, you
know, East Sunset Way coming in a crescent down south of Crosstown and Clark
Street is kind of a wooded hillside there. Those are privately, largely privately owned parcels
that have not been developed for years. And so the current policy in the plan
talks about preserving this wooded hillside and this continues that
discussion to preserve the wooded hillside. There's different ways to do that and so that
would be the implementation would be the next step of how a person would actually
preserve those wooded hillsides. And that's a
A quick run through of the environmental policies. Any comments, questions?
A couple questions here.
This would probably be a combination of policy and code, so I don't want to
get into the code part of it, but have set forth the emphasis on
pervious surfaces within this area so that we can preserve the
green. Such an example is there's a property
that's now for sale on third place, 0.33
acres, and they want to split it into five lots of 2,300 square feet apiece.
If you put a building on that, you lose a significant amount of and create
a lot of impervious surfaces. So when you're talking about storm water and the environmental
aspects of that, but also there's a visual environmental aspect as well. And
we haven't really focused on that part.
So maybe creating policy around that would help or enhance
impervious surface and kind of a, and bring some more emphasis on it
so that people use materials that would allow drainage
and creative ways to do that and then maybe go after lot restriction
sizes so that you don't have five, you don't have 2,300 square foot lots
with houses on them because you lose a lot of, you create a lot of
pervious surface. So these are good comments and I'll just, give you some comments back
and see where this goes. So the current discussion we've been having and we heard
recommendations from the downtown task force about considering increases in impervious
service for just two parts of the Old Town area and that was Front Street
and Sunset Way right out here to accommodate more economic growth in the commercial area.
I've not heard any comment to change or increase the impervious of any of the
residential areas. The current limit of impervious for most of the
area is 50%. So today, no more than 50% can be covered with the hard
surface of rooftop and asphalt and concrete and gravel and decks.
So I think I'm aware of that one at Third and Dogwood that might be
up. So even if that was split to 2,300 square foot lots, they'd still be
limited, each one, to only half of it being covered with
Sure, there will probably be more impervious than there is today, because there's one house
and a lot of green around it. I guess my point is there are current
restrictions in the code lot by lot that in my experience have been, I've heard
are quite limiting to what a person can do on their property. And I guess
that's the balance where we've arrived at for many years of keeping enough green and
allowing development at about half and half. that is 50
per well and I don't know the answer to this is 50% significant
amount of impervious or is that about average for
what we should expect well average I mean is that an acceptable
limit I don't know the answer to that so in the residential areas
the whole city, the residential areas of Old Town and going up Squawk Mountain and
all the single family residential areas, the ratio is somewhere between 40 and 50%. That's
the typical limit. So 50 to 60% has to remain green. And then when we
go to the commercial and the multifamily areas, it starts inching up.
Front Street today, the CBD zone is 85% impervious, so 15% green.
Sunset Way out here is 50% today, but that's our multifamily high
density zone. So we've had this conflict for years of we zone it for high
density multifamily on one hand and then on the other hand say good luck getting
there because you can only cover half the property with any development. So that's been
a real challenge, a limiting factor for that. I know so you were talking about
increasing the impervious surface for like Front Street and Sunset. we're going to increase the
impervious surface there, shouldn't we be increasing the pervious surface in the other regions to
counterbalance that? Because that runoff would run into those neighborhoods and then
you would have good drainage then. Well I think you could do that. Another way
is the new stormwater code requires, I think it's become stricter with each code amendment
so that development on each lot, redevelopment lot in Street or
Sunset Way would have to address its storm water on its property and so that's
becoming more and more challenging to redevelop on those properties not
necessarily pushing the water off to someone else's property that shouldn't be the
the intent of that code that's not the intent of that code low
impact development I mean, that's where that feeds into it and that whole, all that
language and that movement is trying to manage stormwater for those properties. Absolutely.
Yes.
Go for it. Huh? Done. Okay. Let's move on. I was waiting for you. Looked
like he was pondering. So keep thinking about that. And this impervious element,
It's discussing environments also touched on in the community chapter
that Kristin was talking about so that the impervious
limit, we've only been discussing it as well as the Old Town Task Force for
the CBD zone and considering it not taking a position yet in Sunset Way.
So not changing it for the residential areas. I've heard yet
ready to move on yes okay economic vitality
so sure make downtown economically vital
so it is the cultural civic and historic center it's not just the business center
and that's emphasized in the vision to sustain it it is has been the heart
of of the cultural and arts area of Issaquah, and this plan continues
that vision to sustain it and maintain the cultural and business
district of Issaquah. We recognize that there are daily services that
residents, employees downtown do benefit in this neighborhood. What a unique neighborhood you can live
and shop in this neighborhood without leaving for most of your needs. And
maintaining the historic integrity, and all the gathering activities that make
Old Town a cool place to be. So what are the goals? Continuing investing in
Old Town to maintain the arts and cultural center I was talking about.
Here are some policies. DIA, Downtown Iskua Association, is a key
player in maintaining that vibe for downtown, as well as the other
organizations listed here. Outdoor recreation and the trailhead
access to the Isquah Alps is a cool, great thing
for the economic activity of downtown.
Dining, shopping, entertainment, the Village Theater, all those things are big.
The streetscape plan shows up again here. Working with businesses,
Again, history and the fish hatchery. Goal B.
So looking more towards the public sector to build the infrastructure that is needed to
support a vital, vibrant downtown. And
there's the streetscape plan again. Conduit or fiber,
and to enhance our broadband, Capabilities as
well as Wi-Fi can be another element to help businesses and small businesses locate and
work out of their homes and support business downtown. Is this kind of a future
proofing type of language? Is that what this is intended to be? Are you
saying put in the infrastructure now for something that might happen in the future or
is this actually bring fiber everywhere that you can? I think it's both.
Any ideas? I think it's when projects come in, we wanna be sure that we're
doing the highest and best of whatever's available so that we're ready when something new
comes in. Thank
you. Update the capital facilities plan.
So sewer, water, and stormwater infrastructure throughout Old Town to support the development, the character
we'd like to see, the infill and redevelopment. Parking,
we repeatedly hear is a key need to support the businesses downtown. And Kurt
talked about the transportation mobility solutions already, so this is reflecting that
importance. Goal C, to
leverage private investment. So how can we attract private development downtown? And this starts to
bring back to the discussion we're having about impervious surface as well as development and
design standards, which is C3 and C4
to amend the development and design standards to reflect what is the vision that we'd
like to see for commercial and residential development as it redevelops downtown.
And then C5 talks about
having flexibility in those standards, like we build into all our codes with good approval
criteria to guide us when a better idea comes in the door that our code
might prevent but still meets the vision. So design flexibility.
And that is the economic vitality chapter. So if you went back to, to,
First part, Goal A. Goal A. Policy A1.
Is it assumed that the Arts Commission is going to be part of this? Is
it not the stakeholder part of it? I'm sure it
is. Is that assumed or do you, should you? It's assumed, I think if we
want to emphasize that. I think it would give the Arts Commission a little bit
more power or, you know,
if you would add that in there. Okay. To goal A.
Goal A. I know they work
hard and they're really interested in getting involved, so. Any other
comments? Yeah, I do have. Going back to
goal B, where we're talking about investments in Wi-Fi and
fiber and so on, what about incorporating incentives
to developers of taller buildings for cellular
communications? For instance, when we go to 5G
as a nation, a lot of the direct connects to residentials may disappear.
We'll have more reliance on wireless. So you'll have fiber to
the cell towers, but you'll have a lot of mini cell towers. So if we
start thinking about that and maybe partnering with Verizon Wireless and AT&T
and T-Mobile and partners like that to understand key aspects of that,
we could bake that into our economic vitality plan.
Are you talking about the small cell deployment? Yes. We're working on that as a
state right now. Okay. Because we're, as a,
but that would be citywide. That wouldn't just be in one area. Correct,
I just wanted to make sure that we were covering our basis, because we had
talked, you know, we're talking about communications here, and I didn't see any of that
mentioned. Right, and as a city, we are working with them to try and make
sure that we're partners with them and
not being forced to put their facilities on our,
and on utility poles that are ours or the states or the counties. We're trying
to work with them on how that would all work. Because it's in the legislature
right now. I wasn't aware of that. Yeah. So just one other piece of that.
We are back. So I know that we're part of a
consortium of about 20, I want to say 20 cities, mostly on the east
side. And so we're meeting, So, and we've got our, actually our
Issaquah City Attorney is representing a large group of cities here that are
wrestling with the regulations and what we want and where we want large towers and
where we want small towers and how they should be mounted and where they should
go and all those kinds of issues for all the carriers. It's a complicated thing
because the carriers are, They all have different ideas about how they want to supply
cellular service. But in general, you're absolutely right. They're moving towards a
deployment, sort of a web of smaller towers that are connected. I
don't know very much about it, just from a few meetings I've been to. But
they're working on figuring out what their system, the carriers are working on figuring out
what their systems are. And we're working with this group of cities to figure out
our side of things and how we should regulate that and what we want. So
that's an ongoing process that Issaquah is a part of that along with a
bunch of other cities. Okay. I was just thinking of that. I didn't see it
here and I thought it might be an important point to bring up. So thank
you. It's a developing, it's a work in progress. Is it
fair to say that we're kind of balancing for Old Town specifically that we want
to bring the best connectivity to the businesses to allow them to thrive.
But we also don't want to allow some massive cell tower, some
ugly infrastructure. Would something like that be worth covering in this
setting? Or is there language that could be added to kind of prevent that from
happening? It's actually not a bad idea. Right, because one of the pieces of it,
and Kirk could speak to this more than I, but some of the providers want
to put their little basket-y things on the light poles, and since Old Town has
the decorative that would be very hard to, hello, it would be very hard to
disguise that there's something hanging from an old, that might actually be a good policy
to put in there. Because it is unique to Old Town, because it's the only
place in town that has those kind of light standards. we could think about that
unless kurt you think it would um presuppose where all of us are going to
end up i would i would leave that too i think that i don't think
it would be at this point from what i'm seeing i don't think it would
be a bad thing for the city to be clear about the
guidelines of what they would want to see sort of on a high level i
mean we need to figure out how I think we want to provide connectivity
for our residents and for our city, and we also want to balance that with
the aesthetic part of it. So I think to have some language in there about
guidance for what would be acceptable or what wouldn't or the kinds of things we
would be open to seeing would be helpful when we're dealing, when we're
influencing the direction of this group of cities and then working with the various
carriers. So I don't see a conflict there with us being more clear or as
clear as we can be about the kinds of things we want to see and
the kinds of things we don't want to see. Okay, good point. Should we be
baking into this document here of what we wouldn't want to see? I think that's
what John's suggesting, to say that we would not be happy with big cell towers
and things hanging from, that aren't in character with the infrastructure that we have. And
Sightly Utilities Services. Something like that. We can draft that for the public
hearing, have that as a new something. But yeah, that's a really good idea. I
heard John had a nice policy statement you just read, you just mentioned there. So
if you remember that, email it to us. I don't even remember what I just
said. Right off the top of his head. Yeah. It's on the tape. Right, it's
on the tape. So we're ready, I think, we're ready to move on to the
last chapter, housing. And here's Kristen. And there's housing.
So there have been a lot of words, but we're almost done. Housing.
It's one of the reasons that we're looking at the Old Town plan again. and
aside that it needs to be updated since it hasn't been touched since 1999. But
when they finished the task force recommendations, realized housing was not included in the discussion.
So it's being included now. The biggest piece of it,
Old Town has a significant amount of market rate affordable housing. So
part of the vision is to try and keep that housing here, which hopefully would
help people to age in place there. It would invite all sorts of cultures and
incomes. They would blend seamlessly for each other. And again, don't know
yet if that's scale or architecture or what, but they would blend seamlessly with each
other. And they're able to live near daily needs and service providers and entertainment,
community events, and things that want to get them outside. Just so that it's a
self-contained community. Housing goal A
is to, I won't say it again, housing goal A is to preserve the scale
and character of single family and duplex neighborhoods and establish standards that help ensure that
that compatibility is maintained within the residential neighborhoods. And when we say residential, we mean,
well, the single family and duplex neighborhoods primarily. And
allow and encourage cottage housing within Old Town. What's the definition of cottage
housing? Cottage housing, you know they're getting bigger. But they are
several houses on one parcel, maybe up to six, ten houses on one parcel that
have a shared open space in the middle. They used to be much smaller houses,
like 1,200 square feet, 800 square feet, but there are some that are bigger now
that'll actually go up to 2,000 square feet. But the idea is that they all
share a common space in the middle and they all sit on one parcel. And
they share, they typically share like a garage type of facility as well, right? They
do. It's either a parking facility that's behind the houses. They try not to have
anything up front. But yes, either a garage or just parking spaces that are located
in the back. So there are no garages attached to these houses, typically. Are they
attached? Is this like townhouses? No, they're detached. They're like small single family houses.
So you're talking about a common area? Yes, in the middle. So how are they
different than condos? Because they're not attached. Condos don't need to be attached. True.
They don't need to be attached. Do we have any in town now? We've had
some proposed here. We don't have any here. Kirkland has a lot. I think Bellevue
has some. Seattle has some. Redmond has some. Kirkland also has some that just sold
for like a million dollars. So how do we... that from being the norm, I
guess. Well, I guess I don't know. Maybe that's just going to happen. Maybe we
say small-scale cottage housing so they're not their big ones. Right, if you can avoid
the 2,000 square foot. Or variety, you know, just make sure that for every 2,000
square foot one there's a 750 or, you know, 1,000 square foot
one. Still sells for a million.
Yeah. Okay. I really like cottage housing in general, just when I see it and
when I think about it, I feel like it fits really well with this neighborhood.
So if we could keep this ball rolling, I'd encourage that. Okay. So there's an
area similar to cottage housing up in the Highlands on the backside.
They're not situated around a common area, but they look like the cottage
housing that they have some of the same features. Is it Berksburg
proposing something? Okay. I think there are others being proposed in the city as well,
but I'm not 100% positive. But they generally look really good. And
one of the reasons that they're being proposed here is because they do tend to
be smaller scale. You're not going to get three-story cottage houses, and they are going
to be smaller in footprint. And they have front porches that allow you to go
out. Yes. have that's their only space is that front porch
besides the common area
right so another
one is to incentive for a goal goal be incent affordable housing for persons of
low and moderate income like I said this is just
a good place to try and help people maintain their housing you know be able
to incent them so that they can age in place,
so that they can afford to live here and everything's walkable, then you don't have
maybe the burden of having to have a car. And, you know, because everything's here,
you can walk everywhere maybe but your job. So you take a bus, that kind
of thing. But encourage detached or accessory units such as carriage houses or mother-in-law
units, ADUs, as a means to support homeowner maintenance and affordability.
adopt regulations perhaps requiring affordable housing and developments that have more than four units.
B, three through four, they're all, three
through five, they're all very similar, but it involves helping
people to maintain, preserve their houses. establishing a fund that's a maintenance
fund or a tool library, which a lot of other cities have, where you can
go and rent out tools to help fix up your house. Or there are programs
out there through the Housing Consortium and educate people about the different programs that are
out there. And then six is to work with housing developers and businesses to create
transportation management programs. so
that a multifamily developer comes in and you say, you know what, you need to
establish or educate them about a van pool and how to get to work or
come up with alternative services or educate people about where buses are and that kind
of thing, or even work with neighborhoods, single family neighborhoods. Are there any questions about
those six? I got a
suggestion I'd like to see maybe added. Okay. And I don't know if we can
do this as a city illegally or not, discourage rental and encourage owner
occupancy? For Old Town
specifically? Yes. I don't know that the city that would be a legal question. I
don't know that the city can do that. I know that you know homeowners associations
can do that. Right and because my homeowners association has done it but I don't
know that the city can do that. It's a legal question we can look into.
Yeah the reason why I bring that up is pride of ownership And we're talking
about affordable housing and what's a better way to get people on their feet than
to get them in something that they own and start building equity. And then people
have more participation in the city and I think it creates a
stronger relationship and a stronger connection to the city as well. I don't think you
can limit the homeowner's ownership of a house if they want to rent it out.
I don't think that that would be. that the city would want to
do. Or legal. Right. Yeah, that would be my bigger
concern. We can always ask and find out what the answer is and then have
a discussion about it. Yeah. Okay.
We good? There can always be incentives, but you could not say that you cannot
rent in this area. Yeah, I don't think you can actually state you can't, but
incentivize. Mm-hm. Well, in our ADUs, if people did
ADUs or mother-in-law units, right now you are required, a member of the family is
required, a member of the owner's family is required to live in the house if
you do an ADU and then somebody else rents the ADU.
Does that allow the owner to live in the ADU and someone else to? Yes.
They just have to live on site. They just have to live on one of
them, right? Okay.
Goal C, incorporate amenities into both site and building design for livable and identifiable neighborhoods.
Just makes people feel more at home. Require ground for cultural and retail uses in
mixed use buildings. So the idea is that if someone wants to come in and
build, you know, well now I've gone blank. But the
idea is to try and keep the civic and cultural user-friendly
things on the ground floor there. Acquiring new developing properties, redeveloping
properties to use pedestrian-friendly details that make it inviteable, identifiable, I
mean. Excuse me. Link residential and mixed-use developments to open space parks and
recreational facilities through a variety of pedestrian and bicycle, I should say, options.
That's all we have for housing. Do you have any questions about those or
comments? Questions on the whole anything or everything before you might want to take public
comments? I think all of the things in there
are of value. I just hope that you get at least half of
them incorporated into the city. Because there's no way that you can do every one
of those things in the area that we call the old town. But at least
it's a goal. It's an aspirational document. Yeah. That we do hope to implement. We
don't want to just put it out there and let it sit for 20 years.
We do want to implement it. But I hope that, as you said, you're gonna
come back and put some teeth into this document. This is definitely a
wish list that is more than, You know, this big, it's this big,
so. Anybody have any comments?
No? Thank you. You're welcome. I guess I should do this really quickly before
we do public comment. Just the, we come back on the 27th for a public
hearing and we'll address things that have been discussed here. May 8th would be the
council work session, the 15th it would go to land and shore, and this is
all, you know, it may change, but this is the plan. And then June
1st. 19th. First is a Saturday. That was a typo. Oh, the last
one was a typo. Yeah, June 1st Landon Shore for the recommendation. Again, if we
need to go back and then June 19th would be council action on the plan.
Okay. So hearing nobody that wants to make a comment, I will open it up
to our huge audience tonight to see if anybody would like to
come to the microphone and give us some
input.
So I'm Connie Marsh and I don't live in Old Town, but I live on
Squawk. I think it was the first
of policies Dave could you pop those up there for me because that was a
lot of stuff to have to comment on from memory yeah I'm gonna go through
every page again thank you you want to be here a
long time don't you till next year oh my gosh
Okay, so, it isn't quite there, but.
In the, yeah. The policy where you
want to increase impervious surface, potentially increase
impervious surface and height. When I was reading all the
comments online, I didn't see people supporting that. I think that may have
come out of the economic, the group that you had, but I think you have
a contradiction there from what I've heard and saw people say and what you put
up as a policy, yet I did not see that reflected in one of the
points of concern. For example, I know that the Flintoffs family
is not interested in higher buildings, they would prefer lower buildings
along Sunset Way. And if there was a modest,
very modest increase in impervious surface, maybe, but
not like the 80 or 90%. So I see a conflict.
Then I have a problem in the, homogeneity of
just saying Old Town. Because to me it's
split into areas and the policies cannot apply to that broadly.
It's the same problem we had with the central Issaquah plan, right? We tried to
apply the policies broadly over a large area. And this has our Old
Town neighborhoods and then it has our downtown and then it has that odd southern
which I don't even know which rules you expect to apply to that area. And
so I am having a hard time commenting because I don't think that the
same rules and even policy should be applying on all the different areas. In the
old plan, you actually had a map and
differentiated by that map as to what the
rules would apply, but the policies were overarching, as far as I recall. I think
that needs to change. And I think there's an incredible
amount of redundance, and the redundance in the
language is gonna make it more confusing rather than more clear. So
perhaps the number of policies could be reduced,
Because I don't know that we need six policies saying we want an easy way
to get around town. It needs to be safe, it needs to be convenient, it
needs to be pleasant, right? I don't think you need six policies to say that.
So I don't even want to get into the details. So overarching, thanks.
Good evening, David Kepler, 255 Southeast Andrews Street. I guess the survey,
the online survey, I don't think any of the housing options are
as ugly as the stuff that's happening on the 500 block of Andrews Street. And
if we have the whole downtown, those huge boxes like that, it's not gonna be
much of a place. It's pretty bad. I guess. making sure we keep some kind
of design and we can have some modern designs and a huge variety, but just
big huge boxes is not appropriate. Thank you. You said that's 500 Andrews? 500 block.
500 block. Andrews, okay,
thanks. Dave, what exactly is going in
there? Is it, could you give us a little more input since I haven't driven
by there lately?
It's a block, it's three giant box duplexes
in a row, and to get to the most, the third one in, you drive
through the tunnel through the first two. Fortunately,
when people started deciding that you could do perpendicular parking there and were sticking
out into the street, they finally started enforcing that because people did not want to
drive through the tunnel to get to the third unit.
I think you covered most of it. They are duplexes and I think they're repeating
what's already existing on just east of them, just to the east
on Andrews and it goes through to Bush Street.
So those are the developments and everything you said. They were approved by the city.
They were approved by the city and they met the codes in place right now.
And yeah. So if this is two years from
now and you've redone all the codes, how would you change the code
to make that any different? What would your gut feeling be on how to change
that?
I THINK YOU'D FOLLOW UP ON POLICIES WE'RE DISCUSSING TONIGHT AND GO TO STEP TWO,
WHICH IS PROVIDE TEETH IN THE CODE WE TALKED EARLIER. SO ADOPT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
STANDARDS THAT APPLY TO THE SINGLE FAMILY DUPLEX ZONE,
WHICH IS NORTH AND SOUTH OF SUNSET WAY. AND THEN YOU CAN GET SPECIFIC, YOU
KNOW, DEPENDING ON WHAT VISION THE CITY CHOOSES, OF What is that specific either
shape or architectural style that the community wishes to see down there? Or height.
Or height. The height could be adjusted as well. Height is a comment we've been
hearing of is two stories enough or three? I know that there's a building
moratorium, but did it look like there were going
to be new requests to build other things
in on Andrews or any of the other places down there? Do you know of
any that are in the pipeline to eventually come in? I'm aware of a couple
properties that are for sale and we've had inquiries for additional duplexes north and
south of Sunset. Not a lot, but there are some. And the current moratorium has
a list of exceptions that can go forward. So four units or less can go
forward today. So the moratorium does not stop duplex of two units so no new
code changes will affect any of the ones that are in the pipeline now
so likely to address his concern
there is nothing in there that would restrict additional boxes coming in to
those areas today right now correct
Seeing nobody else wants to make a public
comment, is there anything else that you guys want to talk about? I've got a
clarification question here about the document itself. These goals that we're going over,
these visions, statements, is there more to it? than what we're
seeing, because these are all underlined and colored. So these
all are additions to the original document or is this a brand new document?
Because everything is underlined. Brand new. Brand new? We revised a lot of what was
in there, but the plan is 20 years old, so we kept the pieces that
we've heard that people like, that they're still comfortable with, but there was such a
huge track change mess that it just was easier to pull
out what was left when we redid it. And what is new is the housing
element. There's not a housing element in the existing document. But truly you will have
in the existing document there would be 33 pages of just background information
and three and a half pages of policies. So to try and show you that
was kind of a mess. So a lot of what's in those first 33 pages
go into the discussion when we come back next week. But the policies were either
incorporated or irrelevant now because they're 17 years old or 18 years old. So there's
33 pages that we're getting rid of. No. Well, that's why in the first
packet we gave you the links to the actual Old Town plan so you'd be
able to look to see what's the information that's there now that's years old
and then you'd be able to compare it with the new because to do track
changes we've always heard that that's really confusing to figure out what you're really supposed
to be looking at because the cross outs are so distracting. True yes okay. So
that's why we've been presenting it that way. Got it okay because I was just
thinking this all brand new and it looks light. Housing is.
Yep. Excellent all right thanks for the clarification.
I THINK IT? YOU'RE HAPPY? OKAY. DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE UPDATES? WE'VE ALREADY GONE
OVER THE NEXT STEP. SO IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU STAFF NEEDS TO ADD?
NO. JUST THE THOUGHT OF ELECTIONS WOULD BE RIGHT BEFORE THE PUBLIC HEARING OR AFTER,
I SUPPOSE, IF YOU WANTED TO DO ELECTIONS OF THE CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR. SO
BE THINKING WHO YOU MIGHT WANT TO PUT THEIR NAME FORWARD OR IF YOU'RE HAPPY
WITH STATUS CLORE OR WHATEVER. AND THEN THE NEW MEMBERS WOULD START IN MAY. SO
THOSE ARE THE ONLY TWO announcements for up and coming. Ms. We will have a
chair next time, since I won't be here. You will be. Ms.
Ah. Ms. The, uh, your co-chair. Ms. Guess who gets elected.
Ms. I will be out of town. So, at any rate, with that, I'll call
the meeting to end at 8, 820. If there's nothing else. And so if
you're gone, that means we really need all the other four for a quorum for
the public hearing.