Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to the March 25 meeting of the city of Bellevue Planning Commission. This meeting is held via hybrid format with both in person and visual option via Zoom. Tonight's meeting will provide an opportunity for public comment during the oral communication portion of the agenda. All written comments that have been submitted prior to 11AM today, Wednesday, March 25, will be summarized into the records. We have one study session item on tonight's agenda, update on the great neighborhood program Eastgate and Factorio. Now let's move forward with the roll call. Commissioner Ferris? Here. Commissioner Geppel? Here. Commissioner Valavesses?

I'm here.

Commissioner Kennedy? Present. And commissioner Neil Chun is absent. Vice chair Lu?

I am here.

Council member Bar Gava, and I'm Here. And I'm chair Han Lu. Can I get a motion to approve tonight's agenda? I'd like to

move that we approve tonight's agenda. Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor, aye? Aye. Aye. Aye. Member Bhargava, do you have any reports for us?

I can give you a quick update. One, really happy piece of news to share first that yesterday, we did some appointments to the various commissions, and, Mariah Kennedy got appointed to a full term to the planning commission all the way through the 05/31/2030. Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

And, we also had other commissioners, to the arts commission as well as to the environmental services, parks as well, but I'll not go into the details. It's a longer list. We had a couple of public hearings yesterday as well. The, the council meeting, one is around a vacation for a street. We're not well, interesting to planning maybe.

And then there was an update on the study session on the affordable housing strategy, which then, following some of the feedback from last time from stakeholders was updated, with the primary removal of the rental registration requirements, but they will be monitoring that will be put in place to see to make sure that there is no substandard or units that don't meet code in Bellevue, and that monitoring will inform next steps. But the strategy was generally, well received yesterday and and and was direction to move forward, at a future meeting for action. And then, there was also a update in the legislative session, which just got wrapped up in Olympia. So there was staff that provided an update on many things, including the millionaire stacks that, a lot of folks in Bellevue have had, a point of view on. And then, lastly, there was a study session on the RFP.

So as some of you may know, Republic has been providing solid waste services to Bellevue and its residents and businesses. And now that, that contract since 2014 is now coming up for a change. So the city had decided to do an RFP. It's not a small set of services. It's roughly $37,000,000 annually that, our rate payers and our residents and our businesses pay for solid waste management.

So there was some, structure around the RFP, everything from technology, leverage, as well as some of the community needs around affordability, reliability, and, improved user experience, and then leveraging nationally established best practices. So some of those things will be part of the RFP process, but that's sort of an update.

Thank you. Any questions? Just a

quick question. So when is that RFP gonna be released?

So it's going to get now prepared. And then I think in October is when, the RFP goes out with the final selection happening processes happening towards the end of the year. And I think the new contract is gonna go into place mid next year.

Thank you. Kate, is there any reports from board and commissions? Nope. And now we're gonna ask a staff liaison, Kate Nessie. Would you mind to provide us the update on

the meeting schedule? Sure. I updated the schedule in your packet through June. Just a note that the schedule is tentative, until the agenda is published. So those are what we think the topics will be at this point.

For the summer, we discussed having kind of a hold date, in case we need one for, an public hearing. It looks like the date that most folks can make, is August 12. So I'll put a hold on your calendars, and we'll all cross our fingers that we won't need it. I also wanted to mention some updates on the process improvements. We started a standard briefing on Tuesdays.

So every Tuesday before the meeting, we'll have a an hour that's available from what is it? Four to five. Thank you. Four to five. You can expect it to be a half an hour. We reserved an hour so that if more people need updates, we can do a first half hour and second half hour. I Mary Jo's put a a meeting on your calendars for the next three meetings, and then we can assess if that's a time that works for you or if we need to revisit it. And I'm also working on the templates. So that's it.

Any questions? What templates?

We talked about an updated template for the agenda memo that has certain standard sections and then some templates for Comments. Reporting comments and yeah. I'll make comments. I'm working on those.

I had one question. Council member Bargava's summary made me think of one thing that might be useful for the planning commission, which is, any kind of recap on legislative, initiatives or mandates that might affect the work of the planning commission. You know, it because I I continue to be depressed by the the amount of different stuff that comes out of Olympia that that that we have to incorporate or plan for. So if it's possible at a future meeting to have something like that that could give us ideas about what's coming, that would be useful to me.

Yeah. I think that's a great idea, and I can talk to our legislative our government relations office about providing that, because there has been legislation that will impact our work. It's hard to give details at this point because we wait for guidance from the state, but I can certainly talk with them about providing a recap.

Great. Thank you.

And I think for me, I accepted all of those as a maybe for the meetings, and I will attend if that's something that I need to have extra office hour for it, and I will communicate.

Yeah. If you can let me know by Tuesday morning Sure. Then I because if I don't have anybody that's coming, then I'll release it on the staff's calendar.

Exactly. Okay. Thank you. Let's move on to the order on written communication. Kit, do you have any summary of the written communication that you have received?

The planning commission hasn't received well, actually, at, like, 05:30, you received a comment, but that person is here to provide oral comment as well. So I'll let him speak for himself. But besides that, you haven't received any comments since the packet was published.

Okay. Thank you. Please do not disturb the meeting. I give you two notice. You already received the first one, and the second one, you need to leave the meeting. Understood? We have a total of thirty minutes of oral communication. Each speakers will have up to three minutes to speak. Staff liaison Kate Nessie will call in the speakers in order in which they have registered either in person or online. If anyone from the public have has missed the 6PM registration deadline Sorry.

You may still provide public comment if there is a remaining time. Please use the raise hand function in Zoom if you are attending virtually or motion to staff if you are in person to indicate that you would like to speak. There are rules adopted by the city of Bellevue limiting topics about which the public may speak during our meeting. Under Ordinance six thousand seven fifty two, the public may only speak during public comment about subject matter that are related to the city of Bellevue government and are within the power and duties of the Planning Commission. Additional information about the rules can be fined in ordinance 6,752. Kate, can you please call on the first speaker?

Sure. We have two people that have signed up to speak tonight, and the first person is Cosmos, and the second person is Alex. I will just pull up the timer.

Good evening, planning commission.

Just okay. Perfect. Go ahead.

Council member. Kate, hi. Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Cosmos. I live downtown, and I'm delighted by how much Bellevue has urbanized and become more vibrant in the decade that I've lived here, and I'd love to see that trend continue.

Specifically, I'm here tonight because I want to encourage you to really swing for the fences with this Eastgate and Factoria comprehensive plan amendments. These neighborhoods, I think, hold immense potential as future growth centers for the city. One, they have so much underutilized space that is surface parking. It is really hard to appreciate when you just look at a map how big these areas are because there's not, like, urban sized city blocks that you can use for reference. And second, they're so well situated in terms of car access today with I 90 and I 405.

But in the future, when light rail extends to Issaquah, there will be phenomenal transit access to those areas as well. I really do believe that part of what makes Bellevue such an exceptional place to live is that it is so well planned. And I think with these neighborhoods and with the light rail extending right through them in the future, you really have a kinda once in a decade type opportunity to put together a really bold and visionary and ambitious plan. Something that includes ideally, like, expanding the area that we treat as TOD to basically the whole corridor, trying to influence Sound Transit's station placement so that Bellevue gets all three of its stations, and, ideally, they're pulled a little bit away from the freeway so that it maximizes redevelopable area. Mixed use zoning, obviously, preferably with actual high rises, like 250 feet closest to the stations, and then, of course, some new local streets with some sidewalks for walkability.

So if you're interested, I wrote an article recently advocating for exactly this. I sent a link to it a little earlier, so hopefully, you'll have a chance to take a look. It's got some maps and some renderings and some other concepts that you may find valuable. But, again, I really just want to encourage you to be as bold and ambitious as you can with this corridor in particular because I think the potential is just staggering.

Thanks. Thanks. Our next speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Thank you.

Sorry. It's complicate for me. You. My name, Alex Zimmerman. And I don't come talk to you because you look to me like a dirty Nazi bastard. I come here only for talking to people of CEO of Bellevue. This is very important. What does I wanna speak about? Government? What is we have? Number one, for many year I talking about this, when you supposed to be show faces when you speak, it's very important because I speak from Tacoma Joe Barrett more than 5,000 time, and now they show my faces. The only one in this room, approximately five committee who are not doing this. Yeah. Complain about this for many year, nothing changed. Yeah.

Yeah. Nothing changed. It's good. No change is good. Yeah. So twelve year ago, consul consul change the rules. You know what this mean in this in camera. You can see this. Yeah. They change rules and make to eliminate in 10 people. Why? Because Alex Zimmerman bad boy and because he's a bad boy. So they decided to stop and stop.

Mister Zimmerman, can you pause the the timer? Mister Zimmerman, you need to talk about the agenda of our meeting. I don't know if you know what's the agenda, but I just read the rules and regulation. What you are talking about, it should be about the agenda. Can you continue in talking about the agenda? Whatever subject is in the agenda. Okay?

Two minute ago

Please please,

Yes. Okay. Two minute ago, you use your rules. In the rules talk, you can speak about everything what is belong to government. You're doing this for many years, these rules. So why you don't give me a chance? Use rules what is you promote here? Can you explain to me? What is this game, stupid? Yeah. So they did this, you know what this mean, for one particular reason, stopping me. But why 150,000 people right now for twelve years? You know what this mean? Because it's come from 12 year old cannot speak more than 10 times in Tory Munich. Nobody know about this, and nothing changing.

I talking about this dozen times. It's very important. You know what this mean? Freedom of speech, first amendment to government, what is absolutely for me, look like a Nazi. A Gestapo bastard. Yeah. Second time, what is the one speaking. I the city bell will prosecute me seven times. All cases dismissed. And I have trespassed from mayor Robinson and mayor Mohammed.

Moh Mohammed, do you know what this mean? For almost three years. It's a little bit confused me because mayor Mohammed, he's Iranian Muslim, anti Semite, and pure bandita. It's because I'm a Jew, I support Israel, and I support Trump. If this happened, so they give me for three year trespasses. A little bit confused about this. You know what this mean? Because I don't understand how is this possible. You know what this mean? Three year trespass? You look nice too. I love you. Viva Trump. Viva new American revolution. Stand up, slave, and happy cow. We need stopping this Nazi. You stop a bastard. Thank you very much. Thank you for don't interrupt me. I very appreciate.

Chair, we don't have anybody else in the room, but I do have somebody raise raise their hand online. Yeah. Please go ahead. Leslie, I'm going to allow you to talk. Can you hear me?

Yes. I can.

Alright. Go ahead.

Hi. This is Leslie Geller. I live in Eastgate, and I, wanna correct some things that the first speaker, thinks the NAP is about, the neighborhood area plan. It has nothing to do with the zoning. There's already been zoning changes with the comp plan and HOMA.

The NAP has everything to do with what the people of Eastgate and Factoria want to see for the future of our neighborhoods. Let me point out that he lives in downtown. He does not live here. I have lived here for thirty two years. So, I don't know why he thinks mid century neighborhood should have buildings that are 250 feet high, completely out of the character.

Just so you know, I'm working extremely closely with Justin and Brooke on Eastgate. So I just wanted to remind you that what he said is not what the neighborhood area plan is about. Thanks.

Thank you. Any other people online?

I don't see any additional hands.

We're to go move on to the study session. This study session is progress update on 2025, 2026 comprehensive plan amendment CPAs for the Eastgate and Factorio neighborhood area plans. The neighborhood area plan process is rooted in extensive community engagement and seek to equitably engage local sorry, I have an echo local communities to define specific neighborhood values and priorities that can be reflected through policies. Staff will provide an update summarizing community engagement activity during phase one discovery and phase two define. Senior planner, Justin Pungunibon oh, I'm sorry if I didn't pronounce correctly.

And senior planner, Zach Locking, will provide their presentation on the progress updating the East Calum factory on neighborhood area plans. Believe me, Justin, I even asked for pronunciation, but I'm not talented in that. I practiced it.

Appreciate that. Well, good evening, chair Khan Liu, vice chair Liu, council member Bhargava, members of the planning commission. Zach and I are looking forward to talking to you all tonight regarding our progress on the great neighborhoods program update for Eastgate and Victoria. So for today's agenda, I'll be kind of speaking through our, kind of our community engagement process for the last two phases. We last presented to planning commission back in October with an overview of the great neighborhoods program, and so we're returning tonight with a more comprehensive update and summary of the engagement outcomes that came out of phase one, which we call a discover phase, which took place from when we launched in August through December, as well as the define phase, which started in January is and is ongoing through April.

So for today's agenda, I'll provide a refresher on the overall project timeline and scope of the neighborhood area plan update and then go into a deeper dive into what we have learned, in regards to each of these different phases. So reflecting on, input we've heard from the community, lessons learned, and in particular, areas of continuous improvement, which I'll highlight in a little bit. Alright. So the primary objective of the Great Neighborhoods program is to develop neighborhood plans in our comprehensive plan that are relevant, community driven, and reflective of both citywide and local priorities. And this planning process is done by engaging community members who live, work, play, and learn in these communities so that their input shapes the plan outcomes.

These plans contain goals and policies that are consistent with the city's vision as well as their values while beginning to reflect a more unique and localized, kind of vision of these neighborhoods and what they wanna achieve, and and ultimately serves as a guide of decision making for how the city looks to partner with others in order to implement the policy direction. For a little bit of background on the overall Great Neighborhoods program, this was initiated by council back in 2018 to update all of Bellevue's 16 neighborhood area plans or what you may know also as sub area plans, many of which have not been updated for for several decades. We completed neighborhood plans for North And Northwest Bellevue in 2021, completed crossroads in Newport in 2025. I know several of you were involved in that process. Eastgate and Factorio, which you see in orange on the map here is what's in front of you tonight.

Also want to let you all know that council provide direction to update Lake Hills and Westlake Sammamish launching in 2026, which is shown in green on the map there, and then West Bellevue and Woodridge in 2027, which is shown in purple. As I mentioned, continuous improvement is really core to how we build upon past neighborhood plans and really make these meaningful vehicles for local change. And so this presentation tonight will highlight these lessons learned and how it's evolved several of our processes, particularly around urban design and community engagement, and how I think it's informed what we feel is a stronger product in terms of types of input we have received through this process. So as a reminder of the geography of both neighborhoods, Eastgate and Factoria follow the I 90 corridor. For those who kind of drive along I 90, it has a fairly high concentration of mid and large sized employers as well as hotels outside of downtown.

The Eastgate neighborhood area includes areas both North and South of I 90, and it's a pretty large geographic area that's made up of many different uses. You have more lower density residential areas to the South. You have apartments, light industrial, retail, parks, office, and key institutions such as Bellevue College. So a very diverse mix of uses there. The last major update for Eastgate was completed in 2015 to support the implementation of a transit oriented development in the area around the Escape Park And Ride, also called the Escape TOD, in preparation for high capacity transit.

And then bordering Escape to the West is Factoria, which is bounded by I 405 and I 90. It's a predominantly commercial employment center known for places like Factoria Mall, the T Mobile headquarters, as well as a pretty high density of different types of professional services, retail, and restaurants, many of which are kind of international in in its offerings. Beyond these commercial areas, you also have pockets of residential neighborhoods to the Southwest and up the hill to the East. And similar to to Eastgate had kind of a an update as part of the comprehensive plan period update back in 2015 to also realize those land use and transportation changes back then. So the neighborhood area planning process is divided into four phases, discover, define, refine, and adopt.

And so discover, which happened late last year, was really focused on learning from the community what their values, opportunities, and challenges are to inform the plan. We are currently in our defined phase in which we are identifying and affirming the key policy, visioning, and urban design elements that should be included in the draft plan. In the upcoming refined phase, which will start in May, that's when staff will have draft plan policies for the community to review and provide feedback on, and we anticipate returning to the planning commission in June for an initial review of those full draft plans, followed by a legislative process in which planning commission and city council will review the plans in the fall. So to go over the scope, there are three kind of key areas of the neighborhood area plan. The first is a full update to the plan itself, so that includes both the neighborhood area boundaries as well as policies in order to be consistent with and supplement volume one of the comprehensive plan, which has those citywide policies around topics such as land use, transportation, the environment.

The second element is urban design, which refers to strategies to improve the design and function of neighborhood public spaces to make them safe and welcoming and lively to be in. And then the third is land use, which sets direction for future growth as reflected in the comprehensive plan future land use map. Property owners had an opportunity to apply for land use map changes to better support the redevelopment of their properties as third places for the community. I'll note for that this round, no land use changes were initiated by property owners before the, September 15, cutoff and therefore not included for the work program for for East Skating Factorio. And then to go over the different sections of the plan, they're organized into five sections.

Each of those sections have an overarching goal and set of policies to support the overall vision for the neighborhood. Neighborhood identity policies seek to identify strengthen the physical and cultural elements that anchor the neighborhood and make it unique. Mixed use and neighborhood center policies support the evolution of mixed use areas in both these neighborhoods so that they're convenient to get to, attractive to be in, and have unique offerings for the community to enjoy. Community gathering space policies identify partnerships and opportunities for developing, enhancing, and connecting people to indoor and outdoor gathering spaces within the neighborhood. Mobility and access policies focus on how to inform capital improvements around things like streets, sidewalks, bike facilities, trails, and transit infrastructure, and kind of how we also collaborate with different transit providers on how we, plan for, provide, and operate those systems.

And then finally, environmental policies, which really support how we enhance the natural environment to promote community resilience and habitat health. And with that, I'll turn it over to Zach to talk more about our community engagement.

Thanks, Justin. Good evening, commissioners, council member Bargava. So community engagement is at the heart of neighborhood planning, as Justin has mentioned, and is one that undergoes our continuous improvement. Eastgate and Victoria are unique in their diversity of residents, businesses, human services, faith communities, and educational institutions, and voices are pivotal in creating plans that represent these communities. Staff approach has focused on equitable, consistent, and inclusive engagement and is a means for proactively connecting with communities that typically are not engaged through traditional forms of outreach.

Staff offer both in person and online engagement opportunities that prioritize meeting the community where they are at by attending community events, attending meetings, and tabling across the neighborhood. And the project team has been working closely with our cultural outreach assistance as part of our community engagement team as well as community leaders to identify opportunities to connect with the voices that we don't hear from as much in the process and seek ways to adapt our engagements materials in a manner that resonates more with these groups. And finally, staff aim for interactive, accessible, and fun ways to participate. The images highlighted here use tactile activities and make engagement approach approachable regardless of age and ability. We strive for engagements to be something that families, friends, and neighbors do together so they are in conversation about what matters to them.

So during the discover phase, the team engaged community through a wide range of events and platforms. We had our in person kickoff meeting at South Bellevue Community Center. We had a questionnaire that was sent to every household, online engagement through engaging Bellevue, our online hub, tabling at community events. We had a student workshop at Newport High School, and we met with every business in both neighborhoods and door to door visits as well as a business listening session. And then we did two neighborhood scans where we took walk with with the communities to identify various opportunities and challenges that they experience.

So lessons that we learned in Factoria. Our engagement here yielded some really important lessons about what the community values and what they see as the assets in their community. These values are an expression of what is most important to the community and what they take pride in and what they aspire to be. And in turn, these values illustrate the vision for what the community wants to achieve in the future. In Factoria, people value safety, diversity and inclusion, accessibility and connectivity, and affordability.

They identified their neighborhood assets as diverse and international retail offerings, the convenience of meeting their daily needs close to home, and easy highway access. So we also asked the community what they see as opportunities for improvement in the neighborhood. We understand that today's challenges can often put a strain on communities' values when thinking about the future, and these plans are an opportunity to help address those challenges. In Factoria, people identified a number of opportunities for improvement, including a need for more pedestrian friendly public spaces, stronger recognition of the neighborhood's international identity, more dedicated parks and flexible community gathering spaces, more communal use of Factoria Mall, better walkability and bus access, and natural elements integrated into the neighborhood. And now back to Justin to talk about what we learned in Eastgate.

Thanks, Zach. And I'll quickly highlight that on our slides, we use a lot of photos that we've collected through engaging Bellevue, and those are photos that we have crowdsourced from community members who participate in in our activities. So I think it helps us also kind of connect the dots as to kind of where we are hearing and seeing those challenges, which I think was a really nifty tool for for a number of our activities. So yeah. So I'll pivot over to Eastgate, and, I'll note that kind of Zach, touched upon a number of, I think, similar values.

For Eastgate, we've heard that, community members value a safe, naturally beautiful, diverse, and economically prosperous neighborhood. Neighborhood assets that we hear often a lot about are things like mature trees, which largely define Eastgate's residential areas, its streams, and open spaces. Another assets are are the parks. There are community parks that border Eastgate, such as, Robbinswood and Eastgate Park, which can be directly accessed from Eastgate and often draws people from across the city to come enjoy their offerings. And you also have those smaller neighborhood parks in Eastgate as well, such as Latterwood or Sunset Mini Park, which people also enjoy walking to and spending time in.

People also enjoy the convenience, of being able to access transit, grocery stores, restaurants, and coffee shops in the neighborhood while also being able to close to all those different wilderness features that you can kind of just get to, some of them just by walking and biking, to nearby nature trails and streams. Others, they just need to hop onto a car, and you're accessing other types of hiking and recreational opportunities to the South and to the East. So people really, kind of, care about that. People also resonate with their neighbors, and they enjoy seeing and connecting with their neighbors while going on walks during the evenings and the mornings. So I think a sense of neighborliness is also very prominent in Eastgate as well.

So to kind of touch upon some of the challenges and opportunities for improvement, some things we hear about are better maintenance, vegetation and sidewalks. Eastgate is an established neighborhood with mature vegetation infrastructure, and that, can impact communities' experience of public safety and pride when they see those things in a in a state of maybe disrepair or or less than ideal. There's also a desire to enhance tree canopy as community members respond to seeing kind of loss of trees on private property as well as wanting to see perhaps more tree canopy in areas that are more heavily paved or impervious. People wanna see more, local stores, gathering spaces, parks, trails that are easily accessible from where they live, which I think goes hand in hand with a desire for more safe and walkable access to getting around the neighborhood. And so people point to things like missing sidewalks and bike infrastructure, which can be a challenge with steep topography in this neighborhood, as well as noting challenges with transit service and seeing bus cuts and how that might impact the way of how they get around the neighborhood.

And then finally, public safety has also been a key re reoccurring theme along, kind of key corridors such as Newport Way and East Gateway with concerns regarding things like poor lighting, overgrown vegetation, crime, and lack of safe walking infrastructure contributing to that sense of or lack of safety. So we take those values, those opportunities and excitements, those challenges, and really begin to start thinking about how we start to build the building blocks of the plan. And so when we started the find phase back in January, what we did was we shared a draft vision statement instead of policy moves that incorporated the input that we heard from the discover phase. The draft vision statement is a first pass at incorporating those values and opportunities into a aspirational forward thinking statement that expresses what the community looks and feels like five, ten, fifteen years into the future, while policy moves are broad statements that communicate, ideas and priorities that should be reflected in the plan and is a key kind of step before we start to draft the actual policy language. We hosted both in person and online opportunities to get feedback on whether this draft vision statement instead of policy moves were meaningful to the community also trying to understand what types of improvements may come out of these priorities.

And so that information on the draft vision statement and key policies, were provided in your agenda packet. And in the next few slides, we'll highlight some of the things, in terms of information and activities that we did to, solicit that feedback. So, one area of continuous improvement that I think we really want to highlight is how we report back on engagement outcomes. We have written reports like the ones in front of you as one particular tool. In previous iterations, we often did a virtual information session, which I think in past experiences have not had as high of a turnout.

So this year, we tried something different. We partnered with Bellevue TV to produce brief videos for eSkate and Factorio that describe our program goals, our process, and feedback we've heard to date. And some of the benefits we saw to these videos is that they stay relevant throughout the entire process. So whether you're engaged from the beginning or just learning about the process now, everything you need to know about our process is contained within those videos. It's something that is easily shareable.

We include it in our emails, our social media, our city web pages so that it's really accessible for people to see and watch. And we hope it's something that community sees themselves in. We use the photos we collected from engaging Bellevue. We take footage from the neighborhood, and we provide closed captioning in languages so that people can engage with these videos in the language they most feel comfortable in. So we hope that kind of this tool is something that makes this a more kind of evergreen process and does help support engagement throughout the entire process. So I'll turn it over to Zach to talk more about what we've done.

Right. So the flagship event of the defined phase was our urban design community workshop that we had at Hyatt House Hotel in Eastgate on February 28. We had a range of hands on activities that provided community members of all ages the opportunity to identify urban design opportunities and provide feedback on our draft vision statement and policy moves. The highlight of the workshop was by far our mapping activity where participants placed dot stickers on a large map to indicate the type and location of the improvements they'd like to see throughout the neighborhood. And we also had a station for kids where they could draw and collage so they could try to envision the type of future that they'd like to see in the neighborhood.

So for the mapping activity that I was just mentioning, we provided two categories of improvements for the community to consider. The symbols on the slides next to each of these improvements correlate with the stickers that participants would place on the map. Though these indicate various types of improvements, this exercise isn't meant to is meant to inform concept maps and high level policy and is not, by any means site specific improvements or projects. So this slide shows our neighborhood connectivity category, which covers, you know, the ways that you access the community and how you move around within it. This includes things like active transportation infrastructure, transit stop amenities, and signage and wayfinding.

So the next category we had was what we call neighborhood experience, which covers the things you do and the places you go. So improvements in this category covers things like, parks and gathering spaces, public art and placemaking, as well as pedestrian lighting and safety. And here's just some of the examples of what the the maps looked like that were completed after working with folks across various workshops. And we also had some some sticky notes that people could put on for more open ended feedback, and that's also an opportunity to continue to talk about challenges or other opportunities that they might wanna highlight for us. So to supplement our large urban design workshop, we were intentional about engaging our hard to reach communities, as we have mentioned, through more targeted on-site events.

These events relied on relationship building that we had conducted in earlier planning phases, to allow us to have more sustained and in-depth engagement. These workshops or these events took two forms. The first was workshops, and these are more facilitated, required dedicated space, and relied on close collaboration with our project partners to invite us into their space and engage with their community more in-depth. So then workshops were held at the Vassa Creek Woods Apartments, senior housing, Newport Way Library, Saint Margaret's Episcopal Church, Plymouth Crossing, and Porchlight, Eastside Men's Shelter. And then the second type of engagement we did was tabling, across the neighborhood.

So these events leverage foot traffic at various locations and were more informal yet had some very high impact conversations, and we tabled at Bellevue College, South Bellevue Community Center, Polaris at Eastgate, T Mobile just yesterday, as well as Factoria Mall. And here again is some photos of what these engagement opportunities had looked like. Right. So we're now working to review these inputs and identify the key themes, some of which are shown on the slide here, and we're gonna be putting together engagement summaries that we'll be publishing later in the spring that go over all of these things. And just a couple anecdotes from some of our recent engagements so you can get kind of the sense of what our different stakeholders have and the considerations and opportunities that they've been thinking about.

The first I'll go over is from T Mobile just yesterday. So we had some great conversations with employees there that yielded some really important insights about the need for active transportation and transit connections. So with the upcoming opening of the Cross Lake Light Rail Connection, employees highlighted a lack of transit between Factoria and South Bellevue Station as well as a lack of formal and easily navigable active transportation connections. The lack of signage, and there's a a piecemeal network of boardwalks, dirt trails, as well as some paved trails doesn't really make for easy or comfortable walking, and especially biking. Employees also noted a desire for more amenities within walking distance of the office, highlighting a lack of green space and areas to sit and have lunch.

And most employees said that they drive straight home after work in part because there just really isn't anything for them to do in Factoria after hours. And I'll hand it over to Justin for the Eastgate campus.

Yeah. So, yeah, another kind of community we want to highlight was the Eastgate housing campus, which consists of Polaris at Eastgate, Plymouth Crossing, and the Portia East Eastside Men's Shelter. And so I think we were really fortunate to be able to be invited to their spaces, and we had a chance to talk with staff, residents, and folks that are accessing services in these different places. And I think what struck many of us was a number of folks who are, have, and have been rooted in Eastgate. Many of them kind of grew up in Eastgate, and have found themselves back after a variety of different circumstances.

And so they really care about making, this neighborhood and the area around them a really welcoming and inviting place for, for families and individuals in the area. And so for folks who are, like, reliant on walking or taking transit to get to places, they echoed sentiments from others regarding things like litter, of sidewalks, poor lightings as as elements that make area around their community feel less welcoming. And so they were excited to share opportunities regarding how to improve that, but also were looking to how they can foster more sense of community. So things like communal spaces, gardens, dog parks, of run the gamut, things that they feel could really help bolster and build community in their place. And so I think for me, it really highlighted highlighted the kind of the shared values that we often see in Eastgate that are shared amongst many members of the community around kind of the future of that area.

And so as we kind of continue to process these inputs, I wanna kind of give a kind of a look ahead to how we will use this input. With our engagement on defined phase wrapping up, we are now incorporating these inputs as building blocks for the draft plan. And so this includes drafting draft policies, which will provide guidance to the city on decision making around new programs, facilities, partnerships, and regulations in a manner that helps achieve the community's goals and vision for the future. This input will also be reflected in urban design concept maps, which identifies high level design strategies for improving neighborhood connectivity and gathering spaces. And as Zach had mentioned, these maps don't necessarily act as a project list or lead to any specific designs, but they provide guidance on where and how the city may collaborate with others to improve the look, feel, and function of public spaces.

As kind of another area of continuous improvement, we are making sure we're building in sufficient time within the schedule for community feedback. And so I mentioned we'll be returning with you all, in June for initial review of those draft plans. But before that, we'll be, doing a open house, in early May to get, feedback on these draft policies. We're still in the process of scheduling that. We're also gonna be touching with a couple different boards and commissions as well and having their feedback also inform what comes to you in June.

And then I'll conclude with just the kind of the overall planning commission review process. The review of the draft plans follow the annual comprehensive plan amendment process, and I understand there are other CPAs that the commission will be reviewing in addition to the neighborhood area plans. Planning commission's role will be to review these updates against the final review criteria in the land use code and make a recommendation to city council. And so this initial review will begin in the summer, and staff anticipates getting direction from planning commission to set public hearings for early September after the August recess. And that concludes our presentation. Thank you so much. I'll turn it over to you, chair Conley, for

the Thank you. Thanks, Zach. Thanks, Justin. Can we go around and just ask one question? Maybe the another commissioner will ask you a second question. Commissioner Ferris? Sorry. They've written down for me.

I just read it. Quite alright. Quite alright. It's me. Quick comment. Doesn't count as a question. Just I love the fact that you reached out to the folks in the Plymouth Crossing area. Just that's so terrific. They are part of our community, and being able to get their input, I think, is really, really important. And love hearing that many of them actually came from there and are actively engaged with the their community.

Also, kind of a plus one on the Newport High School. Okay. Question. So in Eastgate, in particular, it's it's to me, it's it's really different than most neighborhoods because it's bisected by I 90. And I'm my question is around it would be easy for me to see that they're really not connected as a community, and I'm wondering whether, a, you occurred and saw that, and b, whether it'd be something that we might want to consider, like, two separate approaches to those areas just because I'm assuming that there's some potential differences between the two? Mhmm.

Yeah. I'm happy to answer that question. And, yes, I think I 90 as a barrier is definitely something that that comes up because I think there are a number of services amenities that folks from Eastgate use that kind of cite that as a as an issue. And then one example I could think of is one of the very few grocery stores in Eastgate is the Safeway in Eastgate Plaza. And so the challenges of being able to cross I-ninety or really anywhere in the neighborhood is kind of one of the biggest challenges that people think about when they think about walkability, transit access, even driving.

So, that definitely is a challenge. I think one of the opportunities that we do in the neighborhood area plan is even though we are looking at the neighborhood holistically and identifying kind of an overall shared vision and values for the place, There's also an opportunity in policy to kind of target some of our our policies around those kinds of areas that need a little bit more attention or might need a little bit more direction in how they develop. So places like neighborhood centers, for example, are areas where we can we can develop additional policy direction around to figure out how those fit better into the community as places to be more walkable, get better access. Another area is like North Of I 90. We know that there is a significant office vacancy to the Northeast, and we're working closely with colleagues in the economic development team, and they recently adopted an economic development plan.

So we're also closely coordinating about what might be a set of policies or direction to help that area. So I would say even in an overall plan, there are ways to look at targeted approaches for different areas of the neighborhood.

The bottom line is you don't think it would be a benefit to look at those areas separately. There you'd still wanna consider them one neighborhood.

Yes.

K. Thank you. Commissioner Kennedy?

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and echoing the thanks for all of the outreach. Just is fantastic to see the effort that went into ensuring that that was diverse, robust, that we were hearing from people that it's hard to hear from often. And so just wanna say thank you for making that effort.

I also read it in the materials, and I think it was really present in reading some of the recommendations and the vision to consider not only all of the outreach and information that was received, but also the potential for bias within that, and I really appreciated the thought that went into that. So thank you for doing that. Walkability came out loud and clearer in the materials. I think just even looking at the page 14 of the of the packets you put to put together, which are fantastic, there was twice as many people saying that they needed crosswalks to any of the other information around how how residents would wanna get around. And I have to say that though I don't live in either of those neighborhoods, that's my lived experience when I go there as well.

And so was really curious to better understand implementation of the policies and visions. If if you could talk a little bit more about I think a question was raised at the beginning as well that kind of led to how how does this plan translate into more sidewalks at the end of the day? We'll we'll be walking through this with you a couple more times before it goes to council, but then what happens, and what can residents expect for a timeline?

Yeah. Certainly. Maybe I could start with Eastgate, and you can cover Factorio. So in terms of kind of how what the through line is, for one, we are actively engaged with our colleagues in transportation. They are part of our core team.

Many of them show up at our engagement events to connect with community members about transportation issues that they're seeing in their community. And so, yeah, so the plan does provide a a broad framework for identifying, as you mentioned, those those gaps in the transportation network, particularly around sidewalks and crossings. And so the urban design workshops were a really good opportunity to start to kind of pinpoint where exactly kind of those pinpoints are in terms of sidewalks, in terms of crossings. One benefit that we see with the urban design concept maps is to start to kind of ground those policies in place and working closely with our transportation department to figure out kind of how areas and neighborhood that could benefit from more sidewalks or crossings align with their work program or can help support future work as they're developing projects. I think one part of this work is really beginning to build the collateral to start to how how we prioritize and understand where those projects are.

So even if it's a a building block towards implementing a project, it does provide tools for us and for transportation, for example, to begin to think about where they're targeting those improvements. Yeah.

I mean, that was a good overview of, you know, generally the the process. You know? But when you think about something like the mixed use center in Factoria, I think a lot of these things are gonna, you know, hinge upon the timeline of whenever redevelopment occurs with that. So we're providing this guidance not only for our staff, but also for developers in the area. So, you know, whenever it is right for them to redevelop these areas, they can look and say, okay. We've articulated and identified community priorities. This is kind of, you know, what we need to support growth in these areas, and we really hope that we look to them. And those are you know, there are partners in implementing this. So I don't think there's a a hard and fast timeline on this, but, there's there's a number of factors to consider when we look at, you know, when these things will get implemented.

Thank you. Commissioner Melovisis.

Thank you. Thank you guys for the presentation. I really like the sticker photos. I think it looks like it was a a success about engagement. I'd like to talk about what commissioner Farris mentioned and about the two neighborhoods or the one neighborhood divided by, like, the largest highway we have here.

I don't think it fits the definition of a neighborhood. Usually, neighborhood is delimited on all sides by a very tangible limit and not crossed by a huge highway. I think it would be helpful for everybody and for the exercise and for the outcome to actually name this correctly and maybe say Eastgate North and Eastgate South or maybe Eastgate South becomes part of Victoria because they are connected. And I think this would just the the acknowledgment of the situation would probably just yield and elicit different responses and approaches to the exercise. I think it would be, I don't know if you've ever walked across.

I used to walk my dog from Somerset to Rollinswood, and the whole part from the Safeway to Rollinswood is just, like, as long as forever, which leads to my second point. The I think we need to read between the line between the lines where we talk about better sidewalks. Right? I don't think necessarily that means that there's not enough sidewalks. I think there's just not enough places to walk. This this, neighborhood, especially Eastgate, it's just like this big distances. There's really not nowhere to walk. These are designed for cars. And there's there's an opportunity there, but Factoria is a whole different scale. It's very urban.

There's a huge opportunity there for density, for mixed use, vibrant district. There's topography changes. So, if you were to extend the the the the plane of the of the, main road over the parking, you can have parking underneath. You can have park on top. You can have retail. You so Victoria is the perfect scale for a walking district, and it deserves a different approach than Eastgate. So those are my my two comments.

Yeah. I appreciate that, commissioner, Villavessas. And maybe one clarification I'd like to make is, when we say neighborhood area, I think, yes, a lot of these neighborhood areas are quite big. And, really, neighborhood areas are groups of neighborhoods. So I'll kind of think of, like, for Factoria, for example, there are smaller sub neighborhoods like Mockingbird Hill.

And when you look at Eastgate, you have, like, different clusters of of neighborhoods. And even when you look North Of I 90 Gourd, it seems a little less defined. There are still these very defined clusters like where the Boeing campus is or where Bellevue College is. So I think there is, as you mentioned, the challenge of reconciling kind of different priorities for different neighborhoods within a neighborhood area. But the neighborhood area boundary is our kind of our our bounding box, and we figure out kind of how we look at those different parts and create a cohesive whole while recognizing, as you mentioned, those unique challenges for for each of the smaller areas.

Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Geppa?

Yeah. I I wanna talk about I 90 as well and pick up on what, commissioner Ferris and commissioner Valvesus were saying. I mean, to me, it's almost like, you know, I 90, which cuts through there, is it's almost like the Berlin Wall for, for purposes of, you know, either pedestrians or for, people on bikes. I mean, it's if you've ever been on a bike, when there's any amount of traffic in that area, it's really quite, quite scary. I I would really love to see one of the priorities for this, if you are gonna treat them as a single neighborhood, to try and improve that that connection, especially across that space because it's it's really not good or safe right now.

And in my mind, there's also something of an equity issue, you know, because for downtown and Wilburton, you know, we have this grand plan to put a grand connection between the two of them. Why are we not thinking about trying to join neighborhoods that have been riffed by this kind of, you know, this kind of, thing like I 90 in Eastgate? And I I would really like for the city to think about how we could I mean, I I don't know that we'll get to parity there, but I would like to see if we could do more because otherwise, I I worry about a future in which we might have, you know, two cities of Bellevue, you know, one that's, you know, on the on the West Side and one, like, Eastgate, you know, which has been left behind. You know? When when I look at some of the comments about, you know, some of the characteristics of the neighborhood, you know, neighborhoods out there, You know?

There's some good characteristics like, you know, diversity and convenience, but one that came up for both neighborhoods was neglected and congested. And I I think that should be kind of a wake up call for us to try and make sure that we work harder to, you know, help those neighborhoods get some of the things that will, attract people, attract more investment, so that they have a brighter future.

Justin, do you want to talk about, how light rail is impacting, the these plans?

Yeah. Certainly. So, yeah, that that's, I think, a perfect thing to know because, as Eastgate and Factorio are both our mixed use centers and county wide centers, so there are areas that we expect to have investment in high capacity transit in the future. Certainly, kind of the light rail is kind of within kind of the scope of neighborhood area planning in terms of thinking about how does access to connections to Light Rail factor into the part of the conversation. I would say just based on the scope and timing of neighborhood area planning with where Sound Transit is with their process for planning that line, it isn't completely lined up.

So the scope of this work isn't really focused on, like, helping out station sighting or alignment, but we can build a framework for how we collaborate with Sound Transit as they begin to to build that line out by expressing what the community priorities are around access and potential development opportunities that might come with partnering with Sound Transit. So it's couched in there, not quickly a direct tie in in terms of informing some light rail decisions, but definitely part of how we think about the future of those neighborhoods.

Commissioner, the vice chair, Lou.

Thank you. And I really appreciate the the feedback sessions there. I think some of those sticky notes were mine. I attended the the Hyatt House, and I think one of the pictures was on my back.

As a resident. Right?

Yeah. As a resident. Absolutely. I you know, I've lived in or around Factoria for over twenty years now, like, as a middle schooler. I worked at that Red Robin in Factoria before. So, like, this is basically my favorite topic. I'm gonna double down on all the comments on, I think, the the improvements that can be made. I also wanna acknowledge that it's really improved since I was a kid here. Before, I there's no way I would have been able to bike to South Bellevue Community Center or to Factoria. I do that now.

It's not the safest thing, so there definitely is room for improvement. So a 100% agree with everything that was listed on page 14 here of needing better sidewalks and connections. And But it has improved a lot, and I've you know, I as an adult, I now feel safe ish biking to the South Public Community Center, where I would do it maybe once a week. So, you know, I really appreciate where we've come, and I still think there's a long way to go. So I I really like how we've collected all this resident feedback.

I agree with a lot of what the commissioners have already said, so I guess I'll go in a slightly different direction here. When you were getting feedback from the local businesses, I have a bit of concern with Factoria because it's really anchored by, I think, T Mobile and then a couple of large grocery stores. The a lot of the small businesses there are really reliant on local, you know, like, or on T Mobile and other kind of corporate offices there for their livelihood. And just given the struggles of suburban office in recent years, where do you see kind of potential disruptions coming from? Since know, looking at Eastgate also, I don't a lot of those businesses have cycled so quickly over the years because I think since Boeing left, there's been nobody really in those offices.

So I'd like to see us prevent that from happening in Factorio where you see corporate turnover then followed by a lot of small business turnover. So I guess could you help me with do you see any risks with the current environment? And then what are some mitigation plans that we can do as a part of this to to help with that? Mhmm.

Yeah. So, I mean, when we were talking, you know, with T Mobile, it's interesting that they started offering free in person lunch four days a week. And that was a couple years ago now, and that we've seen just from my conversations. Again, I talked to every local business, and that was a that was a huge hit to them. So I know they're kind of already struggling. There's probably, you know, seen a few closures already as as a result of that. I think part of it is, you know, bringing in more people and really, like, providing that sticking power, that quality in the neighborhood. So it's like you don't just go and you immediately leave. There's a reason to hang out there. So I think providing those supporting amenities, you know, you feel more comfortable walking down the street.

There's a park. There's a place to sit and do something. So if we can get more people there and get them to stay for longer, I think that'll really benefit the local businesses there. I haven't heard anything about, you know, there being a threat of T Mobile relocating or anything. I mean, we've been talking a lot about, you know, potential ways to offset or mitigate business displacement, especially when we look ahead to, you know, the future of this as a mixed use center and, you know, massive redevelopment.

So certainly working closely with our economic development staff. We've got, you know, various, you know, business supports dis displacement initiatives. So maybe that's something where we can collaborate around providing some alternative space in the meantime or, you know, more more business networking, a business district. So I think there's a numbers of tools that we can try to look at, you know, when redevelopment happens and just kinda throughout that process to mitigate some of that. But I think both now and in the future, we really just wanna, you know, give more people a reason to come and then give them a reason to stay and then engage more with that area. And I I think really with an increase in population over the years, we're gonna we're gonna see that supporting the businesses too, obviously.

Thank you. I think I have one question. Did you know what's the maybe you don't know, but what's the ratio of the response back we're getting from different method that we are using to outreach? Because I'm so curious about, for example, what's the respond back from mailer that you guys are sending? Or what's the response about in person events? Because I want to know which one is more effective and more attractive for our neighborhoods and community. Do you know?

Yeah. And I could start by saying, like, different tools for different people, you know, that, like, the same type of outreach activity doesn't work for every every person. And so, like, for example, the mailed questionnaire was the way that we could get the most direct feedback from residents who live in the neighborhood because, essentially, a mailed questionnaire was sent out to every household and were given a window of time to return back. I think in terms of response rates, I think they're generally on par with what we typically see. It's about a, like, three to 4% response rate, which does seem low.

But, again, that is kind of, like, one stream of feedback that we consider. Kind of one thing that we're trying to figure out as a process improvement is trying to get a little bit more, like, precise in terms of, like, where are we hearing from different areas of these neighborhoods so that we can figure out is there more multifamily, more single family, households that are responding back to the questionnaires. But as far as things, as you mentioned, like, we we do things like neighborhood scans. We do workshops and kind of these different activities because kind of the reach and the interest level does vary from from group to group.

Yeah. And thank you. I love all the kind of events that you all have at. Should we go second round or we are good? Should we do second round? Okay. Commissioner Ferris.

Quick question. And, Justin, you teed up my question perfectly in your last comment, and it has to do with the work that you're doing in looking at the light rail that's coming. And I was thinking because it's gonna no doubt have a big impact on probably these two neighborhoods more than most because it's in their backyard, it seems like we might want to schedule a revisit of these neighborhood plans on a quicker timeline than we might otherwise because we may see some pretty drastic changes in terms of how people experience their neighborhoods because of light rail. So I guess I'd throw it out there to say maybe it's not the full blown thing, but maybe get another follow-up in in two to three years just to see what's what's happening, and are there things that we might wanna modify in terms of our plans because of that. Yeah.

Commissioner Kennedy, any questions? Nope. Commissioner Malasis?

I guess one one item that I didn't mention and hasn't been mentioned is the impact of Bellevue College on on this, exercise. It seems like it should be a pretty important presence on the North point of and how we connect that to and even how we connect that to all the way to Victoria. There's not much around it, and they're relatively close even though walking might be difficult. We talked about bicycling and or bicycles and and moving in a bicycle from W College to Robbinswood all the way to Victoria is not difficult, or it shouldn't be. It's not a not everybody moves on a bike, but there's a big amount of people that do.

So considering that connection should be important, I'd like to ask you, like, what is the, position of your team, with respect to Bellevue College as part of this plan?

Yeah. Great question. So we've been engaged with two staff members. I think have been pretty kind of key to helping us connect to different opportunities to connect with both students and faculty. So we've connected with their head of student services as well as their head of governmental relation affairs.

So I think from the kind of the student perspective side, they've been really great at helping us try to get in front of students. We've had, I think, two tabling opportunities, one during the discover phase and one during the find phase. And I think some of the things that I think were interesting out of that engagement is that there is a desire to kind of be able to kind of walk and access kind of retail kind of student serving amenities nearby. One of the challenges is that it is a commuter campus, so I think for a lot of students and faculty, they're kind of there for their classes and then leave. So I think there is really an opportunity to think about kind of the future of Bellevue College as it relates to how the area around it develops, especially since we have a TOD nearby in order to create more of that community where people, both students and faculty, can kind of walk, bike, get access to services to.

And then from the kind of the kind of the the strategic planning framework, I think part of it is making sure that our work is aligned with how they're doing their strategic planning, on the horizon. Code and Policy will be launching an institutional, land use district, Luca, I believe, this year. And so that's really thinking about future growth within Bellevue College, and I think that provides an opportunity to think about kind of what kind of growth is compatible with the surrounding community. And I think the neighborhood area plan is an opportunity to help support that partnership and work. So yeah. So I would say that that that Bellevue College has been a key partner with kind of thinking through the the skatekeeper plan for sure.

Thank you.

Yeah. K. Commissioner Geppel, any questions?

Yeah. I had one follow-up question. It's kind of in the same vein as, commissioner, has to do with some of the improvements that might come in relation to future expected, you know, light rail that would go along the I 90 Corridor. I mean, I guess one one of the things I'm wondering about because, you know, we we have to plan not only for what's certain, but also what's uncertain. And we don't know exactly when, you know, when and whether that will all take place, you know, because it's depending on so many other factors like funding and and, you know, and and the like.

So one of the things I'm wondering about is, have have you given much thought to the possibility of trying to figure out how we could make at least some incremental improvements that would fit with that, with that possibility of, you know, of mass transit, coming along, you know, I 90. But at the same time, you know, it could be used also by people in the meantime, you know, in order to improve a lot of the access issues across I 90 and the like so that you'd be able to give people a a present benefit, but also build towards, you know, a future vision at the same time. You know? I I think that that kind of planning, you know, over time, you know, that has that temporal component to it is gonna be really important not only for what maybe the ultimate vision of what that area is gonna look like, but also to give people benefit today, from changes that should be happening.

Yeah. I appreciate that that comment, commissioner Keppel. And I think what is I think interesting is the kind of the proposed or planned alignment for the four line does locate a potential station at the Park And Ride, which, I mean, fortuitously, is already a regional transit hub that people are accessing today to get to other parts of Bellevue and and and the region. So I think, as you mentioned, improvements to transit access that we can think about today to better serve that park and ride does also extend to potential future improvements on the road that also supports station access kind of regardless of kind of how high capacity transit in the form of Light Rail plays out in these two neighborhoods.

I think it also helps to support, you know, that future use case for sound transit around why this is a good idea. Because if you can increase that, you know, ridership, if you can increase that access and use, it shows that there's a need and a demand, and it'll help decision makers in the future be able to do the right thing. So I think it's a it's a virtuous circle that you could be creating.

And, apparently, the planning for that, based on my search, is planning for those two station, it's happening between 2035 to 02/2000 Mhmm. '29 to 2034, and the construction after that. I mean, it's, like, kind of ten years ish from now. Just, you know, hopefully, we do more neighborhood. That's what I sorry. I cannot interact with the public. I apologize. Vice Chair Lou.

As I say, that that's fine. I'll be here, so I I want to UVL to

be honest. And

thank you, commissioner VioVesis, for asking my second question, so I can ask my third now. There's also been a recent, I think, program underway for traffic calming all around Bellevue. A lot of this a lot of this feedback has to do with basically safety of pedestrians and bikers around the neighborhoods. Is there an opportunity for you to interface with the traffic calming program? Because I think there's specific pockets within that that could probably go even maybe beyond what's been proposed.

Like, I'm just thinking of that one intersection between Factorial Boulevard and Coal Creek where it is a nightmare to try to cross. I, like, run into thorn bushes on the way there, and then I try and cross over, and there's always somebody trying to, like, curl right super fast. So just wondering if you've had an opportunity to kind of work together with the traffic calming program and if there's anything that, you know, this can do to help inform that.

Yeah. I mean, we've been working closely with transportation staff, especially those who do, like, our Vision Zero programs. Traffic calming was one of the improvements that we had folks identify. There's already been a speed reduction in the the one the road behind Factory Mall, and that's a pilot program. So I think that can certainly be something that's expanded. We've heard you know, there's a couple of pain points throughout the neighborhood. So I think this is really helpful, like, by identifying those problem areas within the neighborhood. Those will be translated into our concept maps, relayed again to our subject matter experts in various departments. But we've been working closely with staff. They've been at our workshops. So, like, they have I mean, they already knew, but we're kind of reiterating, prioritizing, elevating those specific areas again so we can try to implement some of those fixes.

Yeah. And maybe to add on some other traffic calming things that we've talked about. The transportation is opportunities for complete streets. So looking at traffic calming from the standpoint of, like, how are we kind of creating a kind of a like, essentially, a street network that provides that actual calming traffic calming through other elements like like landscaping and stuff like that. And we're also very closely partnering with transportation folks who, like, are working with safe process school programs as well. So when we think about kind of youth kind of getting around these neighborhoods, I think that's very prominent with, like, Newport High School, with Taiyi, and eventually big picture school moving into Eastgate in a couple of years. So I think those are some other lenses we could think about traffic calming as well as part of this effort.

Yeah. But, also, just add the landscaping thing that you mentioned is really important. I think gets neglected a little bit and sometimes on the on the bike pads. Like, I I go to Mercer Slough, and I bring shears with me now to just, like, cut down some of the stuff that's in the way. And I do the same thing in Factorio sometimes where I'm like, I don't wanna run into this again, I'll just clip it. So We'll

run into you on a bike.

I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of an aggressive landscaper when I'm biking. So I just say, like, that's a great point. I think, you know, if we can incorporate a policy around that see him. Would love that. Thank you.

I think I have one comment that we often hear about the time that we are giving to the public to read the packet. It's not enough for them to provide the feedback. I saw you added May to August for sharing that. Did did I see that correctly on your timeline? I just wanna know how long we're gonna go get public to read the packet, and I just wanna show we have enough time specifically during the summertime.

Yeah. So the timeline that we have proposed is so we will have a draft public review or, yeah, public review draft of the policies in early May. So we are targeting a an open house to kind of kick off that, and we anticipate having other opportunities for folks to be able to weigh in on those policies through the month of May. So we are looking at ways of doing that through engaging Bellevue as we've done with the past. We're also kind of exploring other ways of expanding their reach of of of those policies.

We are also planning on going to various boards and commissions as well through May and June, so that also provides another opportunity for us to have folks provide comment there, to also hear feedback from those board members and commissioners. We do intend to, come back with the full draft plan in in June for your review. So we anticipate, yeah, about a month and a half of time for community review. And, obviously, they also have an opportunity to provide public comment through this forum as well. But I would say, like, the like, May is, I think, a good opportunity for us to continue engaging directly with community because I think once we go to the planning commission process, that is kind of also the funnel in which public comment is kind of most impactful in terms of setting direction for staff.

Yeah. Thank you. And I I know you guys are gonna go do the traceability of the comments, the communication that's gonna go work on the table or something. That's really helpful for us to know that the communication is happening. I know it's happening, but what was the response? It's really easy when it's in the table when you guys are providing those. Thank you. Any other rounds if we are good? Thank you so much, Justin. Thanks, Zach. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Good luck with the rest of process. Can I have a motion to approve February 11 and February 25 meeting minutes?

I would like to make the motion that we approve both the meeting of February 11 and February 25 meeting minutes.

Any second? Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye.

I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn our meeting. Second?

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye. Thirty

five. Our recording is 07:35. Sorry.