Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I think so. I want to let him afterwards.

One more minute. That one isn't... Good evening and welcome to the May 27th meeting of City of Bellevue Planning Commission. This meeting is held via hybrid format with both in-person and virtual 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 11 a.m. today, Wednesday, May 27th, will be summarized into the record. We have two study sessions on the agenda tonight, the Barrett Look Forward Land Use Code Amendment and the Downtown Livability 2.0 Land Use Code Amendment. Now let's move forward with the roll call. Watcher Lou?

I am here.

Commissioner Farris? I am also here. Commissioner Gepo?

Here.

Commissioner Velazquez?

Here.

Commissioner Nishian?

Here.

Commissioner Kennedy? Present. And I don't see Council Liaison, Bargava, and I'm Chair Handu. Can I get the motion to approve tonight's agenda? I'd like to move that we approve tonight's agenda. Is there a second?

Second.

I have been requested by staff to switch the order of agenda item. I move that we amend the agenda to make downtown livability 2.0 land use code amendment the first decision item, followed by the Barrett-Ryan-Lewis code amendment. Is there a second for the amendment? I'll second. All in favor to the amendment? Aye. And the amendment carries. All approve of the amendment agenda say aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Okay. Kate, is there any reports from the boards and commissions? Nope. Would you mind to provide any update that we have for the schedule for 2026?

Sure. I'll just note that the schedule now includes September agenda items and a reminder that all of the calendar items are tentative and subject to change. Also, I wanted to note that the bylaws state that the elections for chair and vice chair are the first meeting in June, which is your next meeting. So get your nominations ready.

Thank you. Any question from Kate? Okay. Let's move on under oral and written communication. Kate, do you have any summary of the written communication we received?

Sure. You've received many written communications. Since the packet was published, I sent the six that came in before 11 a.m. today. Since that time, there have been four additional packets. comments that have come in, and I will get those to you after the meeting. All four are related to Bell Red, and I believe most of them, at least three, are registered to speak, so you'll hear their comments.

And how many people registered for that comment?

We have 13 people registered. A few people have told me that they want to speak together. Okay.

Then we can move forward with 30 minutes. And if the commission felt that they want to extend, they can do that. Thank you, Kate. We have a total of 30 minutes for oral communication. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak. Staff liaison Kate Nessie will call on the speakers in order of in which they have registered, either in person or online. If anyone from the public has missed 6 p.m. registration deadline, 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. The rules adopted by City Council limiting the topic about which the public may speak during our meeting. Under Ordinance 6752, 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 can find online at Ordinance 6752. Kate, can you please call on the first speaker?

Sure. The first speaker is Nava Carlisle, followed by Diana Leo and Brady Nordstrom together. Nava Carlisle, are you in person? And just press the button there.

Yep. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good evening, Chair Conloo and commissioners. My name is Nava Carlisle, and I'm here on behalf of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce and our plush committee. The Chamber strongly supports the city's commitment to keeping downtown Bellevue regulatory framework current and competitive. We welcome Downtown Livability 1.0 in 2017, and we recognize that nearly a decade of dramatic growth, like the Grand Connection, intensifying housing pressure, the evolution of Old Bellevue, and updated city policy priorities through the Bellevue 2044 Comprehensive Plan and the 2026 to 2032 Affordable Housing Strategy, means the time is right to revisit these standards. That said, we want to be direct about what we believe must drive this process. First, feasibility must be the foundation. The HOMA-LUCA process that concluded in March gave us important lessons. Affordable design program, mandatory obligations, and amenity requirements must be grounded in real market conditions, not aspirational targets that look good on paper but make these projects unrealistic. We urge the Commission to build in regular feasibility checkpoints as this code develops. Second, predictability matters. Our members, the property owners and developers who actually will deliver these projects, need consistency. When programs are unpredictable or shift mid-process, investment decisions stall. Parking requirements, step-back standards, and ground floor use requirements and the amenity incentive system must reflect what the market can realistically take. Third, Old Bellevue deserves thoughtful protection. Development pressures on that corridor is formidable, but the historic main street is an asset worth preserving deliberately, not something we want to lose through an oversight in the code update. Finally, we want to be clear. The Bellevue Chamber is here as a partner, not an obstacle. We want downtown Bellevue to grow, to add housing, and to remain one of the most vibrant urban centers in the Pacific Northwest. We want this process to produce a code that actually works, one that enables and encourages projects to get built. We look forward to engaging deeply with you throughout this process. Thank you. Thanks.

Next, we have Diana Leo and Brady Nordstrom, followed by Leila Kademi and I believe possibly another person.

Or two.

Greetings, Commissioners. Good evening. Good to see you all. So I'm a little bit out of breath. I was running to get here. My name is Brady Nordstrom. I'm from HTC, and I'm speaking on behalf of the East Side Housing Roundtable. The East Side Housing Roundtable is a broad coalition of unlikely partners that unite to support the creation of more affordable housing and diverse housing types at all income levels on the East Side as a shared response to rapid growth. So I'm here with Diana from the Chamber of Commerce. Excuse me. And we're really here to show our alignment. Thank you, I appreciate that. We're here to show our alignment. And so tonight we're gonna be direct. The vision of Bell Red is possible to achieve. That vision only materializes if housing can actually get built though. So the Arts District and affordable housing are not competing priorities. They rise and fall together. So the current code draft has already made a lot of improvements. Some barriers remain. So we're here to talk a little bit about that tonight. There is an example of an imagined housing parcel that's losing a significant amount of land to some of the road requirements. And there are many private parcels experiencing the same barriers to development. So excuse me. So I will share some specific comments about the amenity incentive system. So, and then Diana's gonna talk a little bit more. So first of all, we share with staff's recommendations to remove the rigid amenity structure. This allows site-specific opportunities like stream daylighting and affordable commercial space to earn fair credit. without being blocked by a sequence. We also support an emphasis on affordable housing. This is higher cost, so it needs to be a higher prioritization. And this includes support for a deeper bonus for deeper affordable housing. And overall, we just want clear compliance to make sure that the amenity bonuses can be underwritten with confidence on day one. And thank you again for your patience.

On the street grid, we appreciate your openness at the last study session to think differently, and we urge you to go further. The street grid adds cost to redevelopment, and it's not clear what most proposed street grid segments are trying to solve. traffic modeling already confirms the existing arterial network handles full build out so this grid is not a transportation necessity it is a cost burden the better approach is to shift the regulatory instrument use existing block perimeter standard as a primary tool for breaking up large sites this preserves the urban design intention appropriately scaled blocks and permeable neighborhoods while leaving the interior of those blocks free from costs and land consumption of full public streets. Allow pedestrian corridors and private streets with public access easements to satisfy connectivity. Bell Red was conceived as a transit-oriented district. Building it that way means prioritizing the pedestrian experience and the financial viability of housing over vehicular infrastructure standards. A block perimeter performance standard gets us there. More walkable, more porous, and meaningfully more affordable. Bellred is already behind on its housing targets. The good news is that this code can change that. Wilburton's flexible framework without a mandatory street grid has produced real applications and real momentum. We can replicate that here. The Chamber will follow up with some specific code updates. We also urge you to think about an appropriate approach to nonconformities in this neighborhood that allows an off-ramp for warehouse and light industrial uses. particularly where those uses are allowed in some areas of Bell Red under the current code. The Commission has a chance tonight to set Bell Red on a path to become the fastest-growing, most equitable transit-oriented neighborhood in Washington State. We are ready to build. Please give us a code that lets us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Leila Kademi.

okay i'm paulo sullo and i'm on at number 12 and we've swapped okay is that okay yeah okay um don't press this one

It's already green. One more time, please. Perfect.

Okay. Good evening. My name is Paul O'Sullivan. I work for Albertsons and we own 18 and a half acres in the Spring District. I spoke to you at the last meeting. I hope you'll all find I distributed earlier some graphics. I thought we would take... just a minute or two to show you what the difference between a grid and particularly the main street that we object to running between 120 and 124th looks like. And we've taken the liberty to show you what a master plan looks like. And it meets all the goals that I just heard. So if we could just, do we all have one?

Yes, we do. Thank you.

We do? Thank you. If you could.

Yeah, cool. I just wanted to push.

Okay. Thank you. If you'd like to follow along with me, we can flip over the first space, but the first picture is what the development would look like. That's how we envision this development. I'm going to turn to the next page. There is, our site is outlined in the black. That's our 18 acres, an ice cream plant on it at the moment, dairy. And what the city envisions is that road. I like to call it a canyon because it's a hill and it's a large slope on one side and a large slope on the other. Completely divides our beautiful piece of land with views in all directions in two. Turn to the next page. That's what a master plan looks like. I'd like us to dwell on this for just a short time. We have a simple road that loops around. The green are pathways, bikeways, meandering. That's the green lines. We have a park and a pond. That's how we see this being envisioned rather than being chopped up to the little pieces.

Currently, under the current plan, we'd have 11 parcels with limited size.

We just don't think that's the way to move forward with such a opportunity as we've got here. We haven't put any uses in here. This is completely mixed use. It could be office, could be residential, mixture of all of those. Could be other uses. Flexibility is what we're looking for. Next page. Photographs. Thousand words. Then the last page is the road that is proposed, laid over what that plan looks like. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next, we have Matt Rowe, followed by John Maresco.

good evening chair conlu and planning commissioners i'm matt rowey i'm an architect and development planner and over the last five years i've studied a lot of properties in wilberton and bell red and followed very closely the comprehensive plan changes and the subsequent land use code amendments and i've also studied locally here on in the bell red area how the implications of the street grid can work and cannot work. I love a street grid. It would be perfect if the mega blocks here were dead flat sites with one ownership without any trees, creeks, or steep slopes. And then we could fulfill this mission and get it going. Unfortunately, most of these sites, these mega blocks, have 20 or 30 different parcels. None of the parcels line up. and there's grade changes and things like that to deal with. And one of the worst things that can happen is you have to tear down a building to actually build the street. So if it takes 10 or 12 different property owners to build a street from one arterial to the other, it will take so many generations to actually do this if it's imposed as a straight line orthogonal grid. One example of this is Fire Station 6 is right in the middle of a green street. If the city is willing to tear down Fire Station 6 and be the first one to implement that and make the connection to the arterial and spend $50 million relocating Fire Station 6, then the other property owners inbound on the rest of the block will follow suit. And right on that same green street, there's T-Mobile's 5G launch pad building. They spent a fortune and proving that they have 200 engineers working. And that's a very valuable building, but it would have to be torn down to get the Green Street to work. So I'm just pointing out that the grid is very challenging. You have to look at it with a very fine grain lens and see how it's really working. But the good news is most redevelopment will need to do internal lanes, fire lanes, their own streets. And if this can happen organically, as the last person just mentioned on Albertson's site, it's going to be a much more likely outcome and be successful. And I honestly believe when there's this kind of an opportunity, that you can be creative and you can have shared use paths rather than vehicular only streets, you're gonna have a terrific outcome that's gonna include courtyards and plazas and be what an arts district really wants to be. So tonight I urge you to remove the street grid requirement Or if you really want to have something in there, make it a guideline and then let the creativity flow. Have the planners, engineers, lawyers all get in there and study it where it's going to work and where it can't. And then reward them in the bonus amenity program if they have to build these streets because they're expensive. And they're very onerous for every developer. So maybe you can find that in the once you've exceeded the base, you can be part of that program that you're talking about tonight or find another mechanism like a tax break or perhaps a other improvements that they can delay for other infrastructure. So anyway, rely on site-specific creativity to let the, and we'll achieve all the same goals of porousness, density, and connectivity. Thank you.

Yeah, it's your turn.

Please go ahead. We weren't going together. Microphone on.

Oh, I saw you were going together. Okay, no worries. It's okay. We can give you three minutes.

Thanks.

Please go ahead.

Good evening, members of the Bellevue Planning Commission. My name is John Morosco, and I represent the Albertson Companies in connection with the Bell Red Rezone affecting their property. In my role as Chief Development Officer for its security properties, I planned and developed the first multifamily housing projects in the Spring District, the Spark and Eris Apartments, which also included the Spring District's Bright Horizons Child Care Center. Bell Red is absolutely the right location for a broader mix of land uses and increased density, and I applaud the City's efforts to make this happen. Our concerns with the current plan are primarily related to the proposed grid pattern street overlay, which would substantially impact future development plan for the approximately 18 and a half acres owned by Albertsons. In addition, Albertsons needs to be assured that the pending rezone does not adversely impact the existing use and operation of the facility that they have there. We understand tonight's discussion is focused on base FAR and amenities structure required to achieve bonus FAR. However, I would encourage the Commission to keep in mind that FAR does not necessarily translate into value, particularly in today's economic environment where it's highly unlikely that a high-rise building utilizing significant bonus FAR could be economically developed. Density near transit is not a developer giveaway. It's exactly where we want to see housing built and jobs created. Bellevue is much better off where more development happens in these locations. We encourage the city to carefully consider the full range of development obligations, including significant requirements for public roads, pathways, and related infrastructure improvements that will add cost to housing production. We also encourage the City to adopt an amenity bonus structure that is straightforward and achievable, allowing future developers to realistically deliver projects at the maximum heights and floorplates contemplated under the proposed zoning. If the bonus system becomes overly complicated or fails a reasonable cost-benefit analysis, it simply will not be utilized. As a result, future development may only occur at or below the proposed base FAR, significantly reducing the density envisioned as part of the Bellevue Bell Red Rezone. Finally, the mandatory affordable housing requirements will further impact already challenging project economics and may unintentionally suppress future development activity. At a minimum, if the inclusionary housing option is selected, projects should also be allowed to participate in the city's MFTE program without lower AMI levels, similar to what was approved for the Wilmington area.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. Kate, how many more minutes do we have, 12 or 10?

You have 10 more minutes or 11 more minutes. I can stop when you get close if we still have time. Okay. Thank you. Next, we have Nick Bratton, followed by Jesse Clausen.

Good evening Planning Commissioners, I'm Nick Bratton with King County's Department of Natural Resources and Parks. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening and thanks for your work on the land use code amendments in Bellred. King County submitted a comment letter last week on the code amendments and I wanted to expand on a few of the points that this contained. Back in 2009, the city and the county embarked on a partnership that launched a successful transfer of development rights program in Bell Red, where an apartment project gained bonus floor area in exchange for buying development rights from King County. This partnership resulted in the conservation of forest land on the region river that is now a park. Additionally, the county made a payment of $750,000 to the city to help pay for amenities in Bellred that supported growth in the neighborhood. Since then, King County has built on this approach in partnerships with other cities, most recently in Shoreline, in which the county shares a percentage of proceeds from all development rights sales with the city and offers a match-free conservation futures grant. The city can spend this shared revenue on parks, transit, streetscaping, infrastructure, affordable housing, among other things, while the grant supports acquisition of open space for parks in the city. We're hoping that we can renew this partnership with Bellevue and expand the approach to the benefit of city and county residents. A new agreement could result in the protection of rural lands that benefit the city, farms that serve farmers markets and restaurants, new recreational opportunities for residents, and open space that provides clean air and clean water. In return, revenue from the partnership can go towards public improvements that support growth in Bellevue. The revenue potential of this partnership could be on the scale of several million dollars. I would be grateful if the city would consider including transfer of development rights in the amenity system in a way that results in meaningful use of the program and creates positive land use outcomes in Bell Red and King County. And planning staff have my contact info if you have any further questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is Jessie Clausen followed by Charlie Bowman.

Chair Kahn, Lewin, Commissioners, I'm Jessie Klassen. First, I want to thank staff for their significant work on this update and the ongoing engagement with stakeholders. It's been really great. Thank you, Christina. But we respectfully urge you all not to move this proposal to public hearing, which you may be asked to do at the end of the meeting. There are still fundamental issues that need to be addressed. First, you've heard a few times the mandatory street grid. The grid is being treated as a requirement rather than a planning choice. This level of infrastructure is not necessary to meet transportation demand, and it is not feasible to implement. Bell Red has real constraints, which Matt... did a really good job of explaining that private parties cannot resolve. These have been challenges since the code was adopted originally in 2008, and we still have not solved them. As you saw in the timber and company letter that you received this afternoon, extending certain streets like around on Dina is simply not necessary, not possible given grade and would undermine opportunities for meaningful public spaces surrounding the arts. Bluntly, only the city has the ability to fully deliver the grid as shown, and it has chosen not to do so because of cost. Instead, those costs are pushed onto individual projects, diverting funding away from affordable housing, art space, and environmental restoration. We recommend eliminating the mandatory grid and moving to a flexible site-specific approach to connectivity, including options like Woonerfs. Utilize the block limit restriction that already exists and allow people to flexibly plan their access points. Second, the incentive structure does not reflect real project costs. The baseline requirements, streets, creek restoration, affordable housing, and ground floor uses are so costly that they may prevent development right now entirely. And if projects do move forward, those costs will crowd out the items that we really want in Bell Red to make it a cool neighborhood. We don't want Bell Red to be just another cookie cutter thing. We want it to be artsy and cool. We need to acknowledge the full cost of development and creating a framework that offsets it. One Path Forward is a targeted catalyst program. I know we hate that word, so we can rename it, where projects that deliver the priority public things that we really want, like art space or creek restoration, are relieved from some of the other costly requirements or receive meaningful offsets. Without that recalibration, the code risks missing its own goals. Thank you. Thanks.

Next, we have Charlie Bowman, followed by Ben Mikkel.

Charlie, your time is going.

There we go. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Charlie Bauman. I'm going to mix it up. Tonight, I'm going to turn our attention back to my second favorite topic, stream restoration. This commission spent considerable time the past three years helping shape the critical areas ordinance. The conversation centered on bell red streams and how they are among the most degraded in the region, many in ditches or pipes underground and stripped of habitat. The prior critical area requirements were so burdensome that they effectively prevented development on stream effective sites with the great irony that these streams will only be restored if and when development occurs. The adopted critical areas code made real progress by providing flexibility so that properties can build what works while producing real habitat improvements. Central to the critical areas code is the recognition that daylighting a pipe stream and restoring a degraded open air ditch are equally important, and the code provides the same incentives for both. The LUCA, as drafted, however, undermines this in a few key places. Several sections, which are shown before you there, grant flexibility for sites daylighting a stream, but not to stream restoration. Under the critical layer's code, daylighting has a precise meaning, bringing a pipe out of the ground, but the vast majority of restoration in Bell Red will happen on streams that are already above ground. They're just severely degraded. Consider Gough Creek. Of its roughly half mile through Bell Red, nearly 60% runs in open air ditches. Yet under the current LUCA, only the segments in a pipe would be eligible for increased flexibility. The LUCA language should match the incentive language in the critical layer's code. Another concern is whether the draft LUCA provides a realistic incentive to defray some of these massive cost burdens. As written, only the densest high-rise projects will receive offsets under the amenity system, meaning a site proposing mid-rise construction could absorb millions in stream costs while receiving nearly zero incentive. I'd urge this commission to closely evaluate whether these costs can be credited against other mandatory fees or other contributions or required project costs. Furthermore, the draft LUCA only awards bonus points for restoration that goes above and beyond what the critical areas code already requires. On our site, as an example, where we'll be restoring over 600 feet of Gulf Creek, just meeting the baseline code will cost in excess of $5 million. Yet there are no bonus points that can be earned until that massive threshold is exceeded. Restoring these streams is an unambiguous public good, but right now that cost falls entirely on a handful of properties without meaningful offset. So in closing, I respectfully ask the commission to take the time needed to thoroughly study stream restoration specifically and incentives under this code before it is finalized. The critical areas code provided to the flexibility and this LUCA can now follow through to actually incentivize it. Thank you.

Thanks. How many minutes do we have?

You have two minutes left and we have three people registered. So would you like to extend the time?

If commission wants, someone take a motion and let's see.

I like the motion that we extend time by 15 minutes. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. 15 more minutes plus that two minutes, 17 minutes. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Next, we have Ben Mickle, followed by Rex Wasserman, who is virtual.

Hello. My name is Ben Mickle, and I'm a resident of downtown Bellevue. Tonight I'm here to talk about the Belle Red Luca, specifically about creating access points to the East Trail. The section of the East Trail within the Belle Red overlay is surprisingly isolated today, even from the buildings right next to it. Most of the east side of the trail is blocked by the light rail tracks and the light rail maintenance facility, but the west side of the trail has great potential if we create access to it. Even after the city completes a planned connection at Northeast 12th Street, There will still be about a kilometer between 12th and Northup with no West access point along the trail. The land is being up zoned to mixed use medical high rise, which will allow for laboratories, offices, retail, and housing. It's not hard to imagine a resident of that future housing wanting to take the East trail to Wilburton or downtown, and they will need new access points to do that. The latest draft of the LUCA has no provisions to require or incentivize developers to create these access points. The city is spending $200 million to create just one Eastrail access point in Wilburton, and this LUCA is an opportunity to get several more of these valuable access points, and we already have language we could adapt from the Wilburton code. I looked at the Bell Red Look Forward planning document to see if it mentions Eastrail access, and in fact, it has not one but two policies about this. SBR 43 says, integrate safe and convenient active transportation access to the Eastrail within adjacent development. And SBR 88 says, develop multiple active transportation access points to the East Trail. This was important enough to put in the subarea plan twice, but it has been left out of the LUCA. Please correct this oversight and make the East Rail easily accessible for future residents and visitors of the Bell Red neighborhood. Thank you.

Thanks. Next, we have Rex Wasserman, who is virtual, followed by Leila Kademi. Rex, if you are online, could you raise your hand? It appears that Rex is not here. So let's move to Leila Kademi, followed by Felicity Hollenbeck.

Hello. Good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Layla Kademi. I'm a land use attorney at Hillis, Clark, Martin, and Peterson, providing comment on the draft Bell Red amenity incentive system. First, a foundational point, the draft shifts from an incentive-based system to a mandatory inclusionary zoning system. That introduces a new project-wide cost, and the AIS then layers on additional obligations as well. As you calibrate the system, please ensure that bonus floor area meaningfully offsets these requirements. Otherwise, projects may become infeasible or underbilled to the base, especially in transit-oriented areas where we want more housing and jobs. Second, the AIS should be simplified. The draft allocates different point values by neighborhood district. While well intended, this adds complexity. We recommend a single uniform amenity menu across the entire overlay with one set of point values. This approach, similar to Wilberton, will be easier to administer, more predictable, and more likely to generate participation because applicants can tailor amenities to site conditions. Third, please expand the amenity menu to reflect community priorities. Add publicly accessible sporting facilities like ice rinks, courts, or pools. Establish a fee-in-lieu option to fund the Bell Red Arts District. Include on-site community serving spaces like child care, early learning in schools with incentives at least as strong as Wilberton's. add grocery stores and daily needs retail to support a walkable neighborhood, recognize amphitheaters and performance venues as outdoor plazas, broaden critical area improvements to include invasive species removal, habitat restoration, and other critical area enhancement measures, incentivize family-sized housing at one point per gross square foot consistent with Wilberton, and include access and connectivity improvements to encourage a truly walkable network. In closing, these recommendations will make the AIS simpler, more flexible, and better aligned with feasibility and community needs. For your reference, my colleague Holly Goldens' comment letter provides additional detail. We urge you to direct staff to incorporate these requests in the next draft. Thank you. Thanks.

Next, we have Felicity Hollenbeck, who is attending virtually. Felicity, can you raise your hand, please? Can you hear me?

Hi there. Can you hear me? Yes. Just give a second to adjust the volume. Oh, sorry.

Am I blasting you guys out of the room?

Sorry. You're good. Please go ahead.

Good evening, all. My name is Felicity Hollenbeck with Columbia Pacific Advisors, and we are working on the nine-acre site that's directly adjacent to the Bellred Light Rail Station with Gough Creek running through a pipe underground. Our team has reviewed the most recent draft of the LUCA that just came out, and we still have some significant pain points we are trying to work through in order to get our development off the ground. The first is about daylighting. We've talked a lot about how expensive it is to daylight a creek, and the new land use code is getting better, but unfortunately it doesn't go far enough. Due to the massive, massive costs to make daylighting Goff Creek feasible, There needs to be an appropriately sized economic incentive to offset that cost so we can partner with the city to make this dream a reality. Just because a one-size-fits-all bonus FAR incentive is provided doesn't mean that every site can make use of it. The next is vesting. Due to the size, complexity, and cost of a large project like ours, a minimum 10-year vesting period is needed. We need to be able to rely on the approvals associated with our MDP for future investment purposes. The whole reason we do MDPs is because we require a long investment horizon. And getting our required lenders and equity sources on board early means that we are dependent on having certainty, which is critically important for something of this scale. Third is phasing. When we have a large site with an extended build-out duration, it has to be phased, which also means that our amenities need to be phased as well. The language in the LUCA that says something along the lines of no phase can be dependent on a future phase from an amenity perspective is very challenging. when we are trying to do something like daylighting a creek at the south end of our overall site. And lastly, we believe the code still needs more work and time to be finessed. For instance, we see that on attachment F, the diagram of the proposed Bell Red Street network, our green street continues to be shown in the old location. We want to make sure that it gets updated to reflect the current location that has been agreed on via our MDB process. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight and for all the hard work that has gone into the LUCA to date. Thank you.

Chair, we know people can go. We have come to the end of the list. Do you still have a nine minutes?

Yeah. Do we have anyone who would like to talk? Okay. One. Okay. And you have online someone? Okay, great. When I have one online that is perfect.

Thanks.

Kevin Wallace, Wallace properties. Mike,

Look at that new tech. Kevin Wallace, Wallace Properties. The handout I emailed to you, I didn't make enough copies for everybody to have a print one, but it's in your email inbox. What I'm here to talk about is the requirement in the code that was added in the second draft that basically it reduces the base FAR for the west side of 116th if you're providing residential property as opposed to non-residential. The east side of 116th is four base. The west side is two base. And the MUM residential, which is kind of the dominant zone for residential, is six base. So what the effect of this is, is where you have six base, most projects are not going to be above a five FAR. If you're in a mid-rise building, especially on a large site, you're just not going to hit above that. So what it's kind of saying is the six FAR base doesn't have to provide anything. The four base has to provide a little. And then when you get to the two base, which is oddly on the west side of 1 16th only, We have to provide this dramatic amount. So if you look at it like you were trying to on a consistent site, 50,000 square foot lot, four and a half floor area, right across the street from each other, you'd have a situation where if you look at doing it all with public art, you'd have to provide 1.7 million in public art on the west side of the street and only a few hundred thousand on the east side. So the ask is, go back to the original draft, which just said it was a 4.0 FAR for both sides of the street. Allow housing to be built, not penalized on the west side versus the east side, and just achieve that parity. The other thing I would just note about 116th, as compared to the prior conversation in Wilberton, is all the freeway... barrier up north of like Northeast 12th or Northeast 14th is behind a sound wall. So it's not open like it is in Wilberton. And so the analysis is just different. It's quieter. It doesn't have the air issues. And so all these things about setbacks and trying to penalize residential development in that area are just not valid. And the further north you go, the less commercial development makes sense along that area. So that's The simple ask is parity, but there's a lot of good reasons for achieving that parity and continuing on with the commission and council and comprehensive plans directives to enable affordable housing in Bell Red. Thanks.

Thank you. I have one person with their hand raised online. I will allow you to speak. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you.

Okay, great. Go ahead.

Yeah, I just want... Similar to Kevin's concern, this is Ming Zhang. I'm a long-time... architect working and office in Bayview over 27 years. And I'm also one of the owner on the 116th Avenue, one of the parcel. And we sent a letter, email to the planning commission about 10 days ago, together with five other landlords. First, we really strongly support the city's vision to establish corridor as a high density mixed use district, you know, by medical life science and the residential uses. This really is a forward looking. However, like Kevin said, you know, initially in December draft, it's a residential FI both fall on both side of 116. But in the April strike draft, it changed west side of 116 to FL2 for the residential. We understand the city's intention, you know, one really promoting the medical side, but there's no, we really believe By lowering the residential FAR, it doesn't really serve the purpose, because we know medical and life science will take much longer time to mature. But the residential components often enable the project's financing, support phased implementation, and activate the public realism. And again, create a critical mass needed for a successful urban mixtures district. So, but FAR2 for residential will really reduce the economic feasibilities. You know, it's great intention to have more medical, but you don't need to punish the residential side. Only on return, you basically punish the whole development. you can picture eventually the east side of 116 will have much bigger tower projects, but west side still stay in the one story small buildings. So this is a very unbalanced 116 urban design thing. And that's gonna be a lot good for the cities to achieve city's intention. And so we really hope um to raise the west side base residential fr24 to keep that balance and also to create more economic opportunities for the city and the tax returns thank you thanks we have one more person if you anyone in person or online right are we good okay thank you everybody um

Downtown Livability 2.0 built up in the current code to address implementation gaps between challenging from 2017 land use code updates and current downtown and citywide needs. The land use code amendments focus on reinforcing the current vision for downtown and improving the land use code to ensure it continues success. Senior Planner Matthew Maynard and Code and Policy Director Nick Whipple will provide the presentation. Hello.

Hello, good evening. Chair Conloo, Vice Chair Liu, members of the Commission, Council Member Barkova, happy to be here tonight. We are presenting just the scope on the Council recently initiated this project. We know you have a heavy agenda tonight. This is information only. We're going to go dark for a bit. So since Council initiated, we wanted to run by the scope with you all so you're aware of what we're going to be working on. And we really have outreach planned over the summer. And then we'll be coming back to you in the fall, likely with the first draft, and then we can really engage on some of these topics more deeply. So for our agenda tonight, we want to talk about the background and context behind Downtown Livability 2.0, the intent and scope. We'll also touch on that council meeting that we had on May 5th. our outreach approach, and then the schedule. So again, information only. We'll start first with Downtown Livability 1.0. This was the code and policy changes that happened in 2017. This was a pretty major update to the downtown code, one of the first major updates since 1980. This was where we were having a larger focus on were successful in attracting a lot of employment into our downtown but it wasn't necessarily the most livable place for folks so we wanted to bring that focus to the forefront for downtown livability and have our amenity incentive system really look at how do we expand our public realm so that's where we basically rebuilt the amenity incentive program had a bias towards the public realm open space largely Also started looking at stationary planning, knowing that light rail was on the horizon, and then made some major changes around building design and scale. That's where we introduced 600-foot towers, and we've got two of those built now since 2017, which is really exciting. So Matthew's going to walk us through some more context since 2017, and then some of the scope pieces.

Thanks, Nick. Excuse me. So as Nick mentioned, we've had strong growth since 2017, enabled by that new code that we adopted. Increases in height limits and building sizes have really spurred high rise development in downtown, the fruits of which you can see today with the amount of high rise development there is in downtown. It's also solidified downtown Bellevue as sort of the major employment and retail center of the east side. And one of the larger ones in the region as well. Very recently, the new light rail line is open, which has spurred more growth and more visitors to downtown as well. So as we move through this process, taking that to account, as we try to tweak the code to make it. easier to implement, essentially. We continue to plan for the Grand Connection, which is our large pedestrian path through the center of downtown, which continues into Wilberton, as you all heard with the Wilberton land use code amendments. That implementation continues to this day. So making sure as we update the code, we work with our Grand Connection team to ensure that the code works with the Grand Connection to make sure that that is completed. And there has been a great increase in the quality and quantity of public plaza since twenty seventeen. So some of the numbers since twenty seventeen we have about thirty five hundred new residents that are in our downtown in about twenty two hundred new homes there's about six million square feet of new office space many of which are in those high rise buildings that I mentioned earlier with that about twelve and a half million square feet of new commercial space 6,000 new jobs and about 100 new businesses. We'll talk a little bit about why those numbers are sort of different than you would expect on the next slide. We do have about 50,000 more visitors annually, most of which are going to stay in our downtown area. So as I mentioned, 100 new businesses, the economic development context, maybe not quite as rosy for small businesses as some of the other growth numbers. We've had a trend of small business loss since COVID. This is something we are going to look to reverse through these land use code amendments. What we found from the 2017 code is that we are requiring a lot of active uses on the ground floor, as we call them. Many of those spaces that are being created through that program are too large for most small businesses. And we are requiring so many of those spaces, we're having difficulty leasing those spaces as well. Downtown Bellevue, as you all know, is very desirable, which means it commands high rents. So some of those high rents and those startup costs may be too high for small businesses. We are commanding high rents for both office and retail. So we are looking to improve that through downtown mobility 2.0 as well. And we have heard from our academic development department, there's also more of an opportunity to program some of those public plazas. So things like events, food trucks, other ways we can get people in and out of those plazas. So for our planning context, we are continuing to shift downtown towards residential. So towards that mixed use, we have a lot of office right now. We'd like to see more units being created in our downtown. We are planning for about 14 and a half thousand new units in the planning horizon, which is 2044. And about 37 and a half thousand new jobs. There has been a gap. We've heard this from sort of all sectors, a gap in our vibrancy goals. So trying to make downtown more active, especially outside of our normal working hours. So getting people downtown after 5 p.m. and on the weekends is something we'll look at doing with downtown livability 2.0. The public realm and connectivity are improving. We've seen, even since I've been here in the last five years, great improvements on sidewalks and bike lanes, but that connectivity is still evolving and still improving. So making sure we continue that improvement and to support that improvement through these land use code amendments. We have heard a lot about downtown Old Bellevue, especially recently. As you heard from some of the public comment, there is development pressure down there. We do want to make sure that we maintain the historic nature of that area with the smaller business spaces and the availability of small businesses in downtown Old Bellevue. So there will be some focus on specifically Main Street through this, Luca. So the intent of the LUCA is to reinforce the existing policy guidance. So we have an adopted comprehensive plan and an adopted plan for downtown. We are not planning on updating either of those with this land use code amendment. We are building on what that policy is telling us to do. We're essentially looking to improve the existing code to make sure it continues to meet that guidance or better meet that guidance. uh we have gotten a lot of input which you all heard that input as well through the homo luca if you may remember we had a set of comments especially from the development community asking for specific things in the downtown code many of which we said we would at least look at addressing through this code amendment so we will continue to work with them and continue to look at addressing some of those through this code amendment as well open space will be continued to be prioritized we know it's a feature of downtown that is well loved so you maintaining and ensuring that future development also provides that open space we are not planning any sort of large scale changes to building scale and form here so don't expect really any height changes to buildings at all through downtown livability 2.0 especially not large scale changes there may be some smaller changes to things like floor plates step backs building build two lines sort of small tweaks to make the code easier to use for the development community or tweaks where the building form isn't quite meeting the goals that we're trying to meet And we will be coordinating very strongly with our internal stakeholders of other city departments, such as our development review team, transportation departments, Office of Grand Connection, Office of Housing as well. So the scope of this project specifically is to enhance evening vitality after 5 p.m. We'll also look at enhancing vitality on the weekends. If there are code provisions that remain after HOMA that are negatively impacting housing, we will look at cleaning those up. We continue to try to promote housing and affordable housing throughout the city, including downtown. preserving historic development patterns on Old Main or on Main Street and Old Bellevue, as I mentioned. We will continue to support the implementation of the Grand Connection. I don't expect too many land use code changes around that, but making sure there's nothing conflicting between the code and us implementing the final steps of the Grand Connection through downtown. As I mentioned, refining some building design standards and refining the active use requirements. We know we are requiring too much ground floor active use right now. So how can we tweak that to either be more flexible or require less limiting number of departures? So in our land use code, we have what are called departures, which allows for an applicant to ask for something other than what's strictly in the code. We saw one that got changed through HOMA, which was around compact parking. So to provide a certain amount of compact parking, you had to ask for what's called a departure. There's an administrative process that the department would approve through your permitting process. Some of those are being applied for through most development projects and are being approved pretty much every time. When that happens, it's essentially a paperwork exercise, and there's no real reason to do that. So we will try to clean those up and limit the number of those departures that applicants have to apply for. And we'll look at streamlining the land use tables, likely heading in a route similar to Wilberton where we say what is not allowed rather than what is allowed. It seems to have gone over quite well in Wilberton. So looking at the same process here. Strengthening and improving the amenity incentive program. You've heard a lot from Bell Red. Some of the incentives may not quite be calibrated correctly at this point to quite achieve the goals we're looking for. So just making sure all of those are calibrated correctly to provide the incentive we are trying to provide through that program. There may be a couple of tweaks and additions to that program. One will likely be for affordable commercial space. As I mentioned, we are trying to promote small business in downtown. So the addition of some sort of incentive for affordable commercial space will likely be included, as was included with Wilberton. There may be some other small tweaks for pedestrian environment and other business tweaks as well in that amenity incentive program. I will note with this, we are not going to propose any sort of affordable housing tweaks after we just changed the program with homeowners. We do have engagement planned. The first engagement that is planned is coming up in a couple of weeks with a virtual and in-person kickoff. Those are planned for the second week in June. We'll basically have an in-person open house at City Hall and then an online kickoff. We will basically give this similar presentation and answer questions with the community. After that, anyone that asks us, we will certainly meet with them as we did through the HOMA process. We'll also go out to the community and meet with our stakeholders, both from the development and community side of things. We will be attending as many city events as we can in the summer, take advantage of some of the nice weather. We can also table throughout downtown. So that essentially means putting up a table at a high traffic area and asking people what they're thinking. So likely light rail, Old Main, downtown park, areas like that where we can get input just by being outside and having informal conversations. We're doing this process, so we always have our council and planning commission processes. As Nick mentioned, the meat of that will be in the fall and early spring of next year. And as always, we have a website that we will be placing information on how to reach us, and we will be doing a digital survey as well, which is almost ready to go. So we did go to council a few weeks ago to launch this project and get council's blessing to kick this off. What we heard from council was general support for the scope of the project. As we always hear the importance of small business and small business outreach, we want to make sure that downtown is a place that small businesses want to be and can be. We've heard a lot of comments from council on maintaining the existing building heights. They were very well thought through in 2017, and there was not a lot of appetite to change those. And as we discussed with HOMA, wedding cake remains important to council and the community. We don't have any plans to change the wedding cake either through this process. So for the schedule, we are in phase one. We are at the very end of phase one with this kickoff. We will move into phase two with outreach and engagement over the summer, as I mentioned, and then action and adoption in the fall moving into spring of 2027. This is a relatively short timeframe LUCA ending in about a year. So we're not expecting major, major changes to downtown. This is not like downtown livability one, which was a complete overhaul of the code. This is a tweak and improve type LUCA. And with that chair, I'm happy to hand it back and answer any questions anyone may have.

Thank you. This was only information. Feel free to ask questions or not ask questions. I will call Commissioner Kennedy.

I appreciate the information. I don't have any questions. Thanks for all the outreach you're doing.

Thank you. Wow.

Thank you for the presentation.

If you're trying to make downtown more livable, I would suggest to consider pedestrianizing Main Street, bring people to walk and spend time out there. There's an opportunity to make it pedestrian between Main Bower Bay and Bellevue Way, and then also the T that crosses and connects to Bellevue Downtown Park. There's many examples in cities around the world that use an intervention of that scale, which is very simple. It's simply blocking cars out. There's no economic deployment there unless you want to make it, what's the, a cobblestone or something like that. But there's a immediate impact. And this is also something that can be tested easily, can be tested for a couple nights a week for the summer or something like that and see how people react. It's usually good for business and it gives people a reason to come. There's really no reason to walk around downtown right now or to have people come over from Seattle, for example, on the train. The other thing is I appreciate the focus on small businesses. As a small business owner, I tried to look downtown Bellevue for space. No spaces below 20,000 square feet that are kind of set aside for big software and tech companies. There's no spaces for somebody like me. So I might be taking a space in Seattle and taking the train. So it would be great to see the opportunity to be able to get an office space downtown. That's it.

Thank you. Commissioner Nielscher.

Thank you. My only question, you touched on this in your presentation, was when we were discussing HOMA, there were a number of items that we pushed off towards this update. It'd be great if you have it to have a list of what those were. Otherwise, I'm planning on going back and taking a look. But if you have it, that'd be great to look at.

I don't have it on me right now. But you have gotten in a previous packet through HOMA. So I think it was probably the meeting after the public hearing, if I remember correctly. And we can certainly have Kate follow up with an email link for you as well.

Thank you. Commissioner Ferris.

Quick question. I didn't hear anything about improving modality of transportation. And I'm not talking about cars, specifically bicycles. I know we've got some dead ends in terms of the bike lanes that exist. Is that going to be on the scope of this meeting?

Generally not in the scope of the land use code amendment. That's going to be a transportation item. Many of the bike lanes at Dead End are likely because they are being put in when development goes in. So not something we are likely to change through this land use code amendment. We will look at... Mostly pedestrian realm, I would say, and probably things like improvements of the pedestrian realm, so seats, street trees, things like that, where we can make tweaks to make it better if we hear input specifically that that's an issue. But I wouldn't expect large-scale changes or too many changes at all, just the sort of adopted transportation code or the adopted transportation standards for downtown.

I understand that it's difficult, but it's too bad. Thank you. Commissioner Geppel?

Yeah, just a couple of observations. Good presentation, Matthew and Nick. First, I think the focus on affordable commercial space is really important, so applaud that. Second, I wanted to just mention grocery stores. I mean, especially with the increase of population in the downtown space, it'd be really nice if basic amenities like that are within walking distance and you know, people can access those. I think that's important not to create food deserts in the middle of the city. So that's important. And then one final thing, you know, I appreciate the interest in maintaining the wedding cake for downtown, but I'm consistently struck by the fact that that seems to be a concept that is only for downtown. And when we talk about wedding cake and other areas, you know, and about development, that doesn't seem to be much of a priority, you know, to ensure that, you know, less intense uses are not impacted by higher development. So just kind of curious why wedding cake for downtown and not for other places in the city when we're looking at more intensive development?

I mean, I think if you look at other higher density areas of the city, there is a wedding cake generally. You look at Wilberton, it steps down from the urban core, which is by the freeway down towards the residential neighborhood to the east. So and if you look at the proposal for Bell Red, it does the same thing. So I think we have been pretty consistent on stepping down. Stepping higher buildings down towards lower density residential neighborhoods, you know, what we're calling our middle housing zoning now, which is the formal single family neighborhoods. I think it's been pretty consistent. There are some areas in the city where, you know, as we saw through Homa with that sort of five to seven story one parcel, there's not really that opportunity, though there was a transition standard that stepped those buildings back. So I think, you know, we talk about the wedding cake a lot downtown and it's been a sort of a planning and design policy for downtown. For a long time, it's not been so called out in other plans, but it's not something that we haven't done in other places. I think we've done it throughout the city where we have these taller buildings that are abutting the middle housing neighborhoods.

Yeah, I was just mostly struck when we were having that discussion on HOMA. So, yeah, thank you.

Thank you. I think I don't have any comments and thank you. I can't wait for, oh my gosh, why is Chair Liu? I'm sorry. This is my second time I'm doing this. I'm sorry. You know, you'll be coming, Chair. You're going to go correct me.

You're good. I just have one quick question. Thank you for the presentation. It was super informative. I wanted to double click on what you mentioned about the amenity incentive program. You said, you know, there's a little bit of miscalibration there right now, sounds like. ground level uh active transport is a little bit too aggressive but uh could you what are some that you've seen are uh that we don't have enough of like what could use more of an incentive

Well, there's a few examples that we just haven't seen built at all. In Northwest Village, the northwest part of downtown, alleys with addresses was kind of the emphasis there that we really wanted to see more of that type of amenity built. And we have not seen uptake into that. So that at least signals to us that it might not be a strong enough incentive. So we want to take a closer look at that one in particular. And then we've also seen amenities built that maybe didn't work as well or work out to be what we were hoping. Performing Art Space is an example where we've had a couple that have been developed with best intentions and then unfortunately haven't been able to tenant those spaces and then have been locked in or we've had to get really creative on how to let them off the hook of that amenity. This also gives us an opportunity to look at how might we repurpose space that may be best intentions, but didn't get quite tenanted in the way that we were hoping. As a couple examples, I don't know if you had.

Yeah, I think we're pretty early in the process, so it gives us that opportunity to have that discussion with the development community on what's working, what's not working, where they're seeing high costs, and have that discussion with the broader community as well to ask sort of what are we seeing too much of, what are we not seeing enough of, what would you like to see downtown, how can we improve vibrancy? You'll hear me say vibrancy a lot. How can we improve vibrancy? So what can we do on that front? So beginning those discussions, hopefully by the time we come back to you next time, we'll have some tweaks to show you. Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it.

You can go second if you want. Just kidding. Should we go for a second round or are we good for the first round? We're good. Thank you so much. I think I don't have any comments. Are you sending a mail to the residents of the downtown? Is this part of the...

Yes, we will have some digital outreach materials probably coming out shortly to let people know about that kickoff. So it'll be through our email listserv, essentially. You saw it through home, it goes to about 17,000 people. So for those people who are listening, you may not be signed up, shameless plug, sign up for our email lists. Code and Policy and Community Development also have our own email list now. So it'll go specifically to that. Those are going to be people that are more interested in those planning projects. And then we have a list, sort of a group of people that have told us they're interested in the project that we will also notify.

Can you add me to that list? Thank you. I just live in Delta, as you know. Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you.

Can we go for the next study and then for the question, we go for a small break? Is that good? We go for the next study? Are we good to not take a break for like next 30 minutes? Is it good? Okay. The Bellred Look Forward Lookout will implement the change to the Bellred sub-area plan as it was updated in 2024 to strengthen... implementation, clarify guidance, and increase development capacity through 2044 to 7,900 housing units. Tonight, the staff will summarize community engagement to date and introduce the first set of proposed local components. Code and Policy Planning Manager Christina Gullet and Code and Policy Director Nick Whipple will provide the presentation. Hello, Matt. Hello, Nick, again. Hi, Christina.

All right, good evening again. So joined here with Christina Gallant, the project manager for the Bell Red Land Use Code Amendment. This is our second installation of the code. Our first one was brought to you on April 22nd. Heard a lot of feedback from you all. We'll be reporting back on just some of the adjustments that we are looking at, but we're also wanting to make sure you understand we're collecting these issues as we go. We are hopeful we can schedule the public hearing as a milestone in the process. And that does still give you opportunity post public hearing to still deliberate on the code amendment through other study sessions. But we are gathering these issues so then we can discuss them all together at that public hearing, open it up. It sends out a notice to community. We can get a broader audience here to also provide input. New information usually shows up at public hearings too. So really an important milestone that we are looking for direction on tonight. So this evening, looking for feedback on some of the components that we're presenting to you, and then hopefully we can get direction from you all to schedule that public hearing, which would then be scheduled for sometime in July. And then for our agenda, we had that follow-up from our April 22nd meeting on the street network. And then we want to dive into that next topic area, which is really about the amenity incentive program. So with that, we'll talk about the base FAR. We're also going to go over the mandatory affordable housing approach that's being proposed here. and then talk about the amenity incentive system we are looking at a brand new structure for the incentive system here which includes kind of following a downtown approach dividing up the 900 acre tod area into multiple neighborhoods and then figuring out what are the priorities within each of those neighborhoods and then calibrating accordingly very similar approach to downtown And it's been working well for downtown. And then we also have some items that we do need to do a bit more outreach and review on internally. So we'll be reporting on those at the public hearing and then we'll cover the schedule. So with that, I'll have Christina dive into the discussion.

Thanks, Nick. So a lot of content to cover. I'll dive right in. First up, we have one significant item for follow up from April that we have a proposed option to consider in the revised draft. So just to start by getting us oriented with a reminder of that discussion, at our last study session in looking at the street network concept and options as a whole, comments we heard from the Commission during that meeting really affirming the value of public access and walkability, with that also need to note, you know, reinforcing the importance of providing high quality public infrastructure in areas that are accommodating really significant increases in density and neighborhood change, as is the case in Bell Red. We also heard at the same time, you know, a lot of openness to considering different alternatives in how that grid happens, how we implement those local streets, provided we can see that lasting public benefit preserved, thinking about things like better accommodations for site-specific challenges, better supporting development feasibility. We also received comments supporting flexibility for on-street parking requirements as one of those areas where we feel like we can pretty easily grant some more flexibility. So tonight we're talking about the first option there. We're going to be proposing an option to provide for replacing public streets under certain scenarios. And then at that July meeting, we're going to be coming back with more specific language on the on-street parking flexibility. We've added some tweaks to say, you know, we can accommodate flexibility for the quantity and location, but we want a little more to get a little more certainty in that language. So on to the option itself. This is, again, new option in the draft LUCA and the language in the packet today. This would provide a pathway for projects that have a defined public local street on their property to propose an alternative scenario that can include replacing those local streets with private access corridors. The conditions based on, I think, both our internal review and our assessment of the conversation from last time, the circumstances where we feel that this is a scenario that could be reviewed would be first up that service corridors, we would say, are not an appropriate option to replace public streets. Those are basically alleys. They don't have pedestrian facilities. Further, the proposal would need to meet all emergency vehicle access requirements. It would need to avoid creating adverse impacts to neighboring sites or the circulation system as a whole. And that language does provide for resolving those issues through legal agreements such as easements. So there's some additional flexibility there. The proposal would need to meet all ADA requirements to help. And then we have a couple provisions we're suggesting to help boost that certainty in the public realm and acknowledge the benefit that's being provided here. We would recommend boosting for those private street types that include sidewalks, saying the sidewalk should be at least 10 feet wide instead of eight under the baseline requirements. And additionally, that the project would need to provide active uses along at least 75% of the facades fronting those replacement corridors. Though we do recommend making that optional for projects daylighting streams. So we feel this is a really solid kind of compromise just to kind of back out to get the lay of the land of where the local street framework stands today. You know, we've got this reduced defined grid, which again has been reduced to just those really critical green street, local street connections. We've increased the flexibility language in the code to say if you have a street defined on your site through the project review process, the exact location of where that is, even the location of the intersection. can be reviewed can be shifted during that process. If that's not feasible, we are now introducing this new option to allow that segment to be replaced with a private street entirely. So with all those things together, we think this really helps kind of build out the options available. But before we move on to the LUCA, we did want to touch on a piece of comment that was received last night. So last night, the Chamber shared a June 2025 analysis of the street grid by a consultant, really noting that this report would be imperative for this body in considering next steps. I did want to provide some really critical context to consider on that specific report that was not provided with that message. So as noted, I think, and not shown in any kind of a misleading way, that study is from 2025, predating both drafts of this LUCA, predating the update to the critical areas ordinance. So that analysis doesn't reflect the changes we're recommending to the street grid, which removed overly impactful segments, adjusted segments to better align with property lines, and introduced additional language providing flexibility to adjust the location of defined streets and intersections through the development review process. We did review the report at the time that it was developed, really appreciated the Chamber sharing that with us. It was a helpful input for us to consider as we were looking at this updated grid. As noted as well, since that report was released, we have also, of course, updated some really significant changes to the critical areas ordinance. Many of the examples regarding the impact of the CAO that are referenced are no longer relevant. We're really proud of the work that we did on the CAO in close coordination with our stakeholders in developing some really great solutions to a lot of those problems that are noted. ultimately you know by presenting this report again without adequate context um is a short really short changing the process that those changes went through the core finding of the report though is that local streets are not required for system-wide capacity we agree i've said this in multiple occasions publicly on the record i'll do it again i'll do it next time i'll keep doing it all day But the fundamental take from our perspective on the public grid is that this public grid provides significant benefits for local access, local traffic needs, ongoing unburdened public utility access, unburdened emergency access, loading and refuse access, unburdened public pedestrian access, consistent maintenance, and more. So while it's true that private streets can serve these functions, there's an inherent level of risk. that these needs will not be maintained by private owners over time, particularly as properties change hands in the future, which, as a reminder, these projects will be developed. The typical model, most of these developers will be moving on in five to seven years. That's not an indictment. It's just the truth. So perhaps this first wave will be really mindful, but it's just a question of risk over time. uh if those issues arise uh the city may need to pursue legal action to force compliance with those property owners at our expense potentially take on private streets um and uh you know while those potential issues can uh be more isolated as our if our reliance on private streets at a system scale uh increases there are questions about how those potential risk areas ramp up um which could be the case with a Bell Red without any kind of key public grid. But, you know, getting back to what the report actually analyzed, there's a good analogy is on our own circulatory system. So this kind of traffic analysis is only looking at your arteries, right? So this study and this kind of modeling says, yes, we have enough blood flow through our arterioles, through those major blood systems. It's not getting into those finer-grained arteries I'm not a doctor, you know, the rest of the circulation system. Do we have blood flow to our fingers, et cetera? And that's really what the grid here is about. Finally, this study was not contracted by the city, so we didn't have any input or insight into how the scope was developed or what role the chamber may or may not have had in developing the narrative of the report. There are a number of assertions that I have heard Concerns are, I think, out of the scope of the analysis, including, you know, one quote, with only a few exceptions, the results of the proposed local street grid requirements have led to relatively little development activity occurring in Bell Red over the last 15 years. While we don't argue that the grid definitely could be a significant factor, I would say this study did not consider any other factors limiting development, such as permitted FAR, building height, amenities, or critical areas requirements to assert this kind of a direct causal link. So just want to really emphasize some caution there. Just an additional note, don't want to spend all night, but this is a screenshot in the report. This is from page seven. I do want to say this is not to call out the property owner. I don't know if they knew anything about this report getting presented again. We've had a lot of great discussions with them. But just to note, this diagram was included in the report to note a number of the areas of impact with the existing code draft, not what's been proposed. So just wanted to note here, there are two defined streets kind of cutting through vertically and horizontally. which are no longer required under the proposed revisions to the LUCA. That Green Street at the bottom is still required, though we'll note that does go along that property line, could be implemented as an interim street. And that stream buffer to the east is also not reflective of updates to the CAO. So, you know, it's really unusual for me to speak to a specific comment at this length and this directly, but I do know that these technical studies carry a lot of weight. This one in particular I've heard come up repeatedly. And I just want to make it crystal clear that the study does not speak to the proposal on the table under review at this moment. And it does not provide, in my opinion, much in the way of specific alternatives to get at a better compromise. So. With that, we will move on to the LUCA. So this evening, we're going to be looking at a number of additional components, including our recommendations for base FAR, a mandatory affordable housing approach, and the amenity system more broadly. So the first key component are our base floor area ratios. So, of course, base FAR establishes the quantity of development that's possible without going forward to provide amenities. A big positive change here is we are recommending no requirement to unlock the maximum height. It's just FAR. So the maximum height is what it is. Mandatory affordable housing does always apply regardless of whether you're exceeding the base. But another really big note is that we do have three categories of exempt uses that do not count towards your FAR limits. So up to one FAR of active use space, all affordable commercial, all affordable housing meeting the standards of the code is not subject to that base FAR limit. So just noting here, it's a table, but showing those base FARs by district. A keynote here for context, by comparison, the maximum FARs currently in Bell Red in our areas subject to the amenity incentive system generally range from two to four maximum. So that's maximum possible. We are now bringing up our base FAR for our mid-rise districts up to 2.5%. Base for high-rise ranges generally from 4 to 6. The one exception, which you heard about in the comments, is in our 116th corridor. That's a bit of a special case with some specific policy direction. We're starting with these numbers. This can be calibrated differently. Just for more context, that policy speaks to providing for additional housing opportunities specifically on the east side of that street. We also have some other policy language about prioritizing medical and life sciences in this neighborhood, as well as encouraging residential and sensitive uses to locate further away from freeways like 405. So there's different ways to do that. Currently in the code, market rate general housing is just not permitted in this district at all. It provides for nursing homes and senior housing, but not general housing. On top of that, the current FAR, both base and max, is only one in this district. And again, for context, this one is being brought up to a high-rise capacity. So, we opted in this case to take an incentive-based approach to kind of adjusting those limits to say you can still achieve the same max FAR on the west side, you can still do residential, just have to go a bit further to get there through the amenity system. The other thing to note is that whether a project is non-residential or residential depends on the quantity of residential. So if it's less than half, it would be counted as non-residential. So it's not like you have one apartment, your base FAR is now two. But, you know, I'd say this is a calibration discussion, different ways to get at that policy direction, but that's just the backstory. Okay, next component is mandatory affordable housing. So, under the proposal, all development must provide affordable housing through one or a combination of three options. So, either on-site or off-site performance, where 10% of all units are affordable to households 80% AMI or below, with also some tiers to drop that percentage when you're getting deeper affordability. We provide for a fee-in-lieu option as well, or even dedicating property for affordable housing development elsewhere in a mixed-use district. This is the same program as has been implemented in Wilberton successfully. The amenities, a bit more shifting to the amenities system in general. So as noted on the base, projects have to earn bonus points to build additional non-exempt floor area beyond the base. Areas that are dedicated for public streets, including those required local streets, parks and trails are still counted towards that maximum FAR calculation. Bonus points can be earned by on-site amenities, certain off-site amenities provided for as options or a fee in lieu. Certain amenities earn extra credit in certain neighborhoods, aligning with specific priorities we have there. And then the big change here, currently in Bell Red, there's a tiered system where you have to progress through a providing a certain quantity of earning a certain quantity of FAR through specific amenities. So if you don't fully max out your capacity, you might not provide all the amenities in the list. It also doesn't provide for, say, just daylighting a stream and getting that amenity credit. You still have to go through the tiers. We've set that aside so that if you're doing that on-site provision or any of those named amenities in the system, it's just open to the project to choose what to include. We do have some additional focus in the arts district intensive area, which I'll explain in a moment. This is a look at what those seven neighborhood districts are. This was a new introduction with the sub-area plan. The intent here was to, with Bell Road, of course, being such a large area, get a little bit more nuance around some of those local characteristics and opportunities, set up this framework for us to target incentives a bit more. The system itself is set up to provide extra credit for certain amenities in certain districts, reflecting some of the specific needs and opportunities. So as noted, that 116th Avenue corridor has this emphasis on medical and life sciences. The Bell Red stationery is both stationary and node and comprises the bulk of the Bell Red Arts District intensive area. And then by comparison, you have districts like south of Bell Red Road, which serves as more of a sort of mid-density residential buffer to lower density areas to the south. And this shows the extent of the Arts District intensive area. Lots of exciting work happening implementing the Arts District, much of which won't come through the land use code, but this code does provide proposals to help support the amenities and uses the district needs. This has included providing flexibility for permitted uses, including allowing for small-scale artisan manufacturing. We've also providing incentives for public art, outdoor event spaces and outdoor performance spaces. And finally, just noting again that affordable housing and affordable commercial will not design for the arts district are we see as being really critical to support the district. So now moving through the options themselves, it's a fairly long list. I've got some loose categories. So just remember any of the options I'm about to talk through are all available for projects to choose in more or less any kind of quantity. So affordable housing beyond the mandatory requirement earns bonus points, additional bonus points for going deeper. We are proposing to extend the affordable commercial space option to Bell Red from Wilberton. This option has a director's rule that establishes qualifications for tenants to be able to lease these spaces. The way it works is the property owner selects a tenant, meeting those characteristics, and economic development helps to vet those qualifications. Rents are capped at one and a half times operating expenses, which also economic development helps us administer. We are also suggesting a bonus when leasing to a qualified tenant who's also been identified as either displaced or at risk of displacement from Bellred. Next batch of amenities are in the area of parks and open space. We have an option to earn credit for the value of land that's dedicated for parks. We also have an option for dedicating trails or trail easements. As the commenter noted, we don't have East Trail named by name here, but that's not meant to be exclusive, and we certainly could add some more. We could get that named. Um, we also have, um, amenities available for stream restoration. Um, we have also incorporated some tweaks to the way we set up this option. It's an option that's technically available now. Um, but the, uh, the, the language is unclear as to what types of projects are eligible and, uh, when you only earn credit for doing more than what is required under the CAO. We have added some clarification that if a project is only doing just stream buffer restoration, then they're only getting credit for doing more than what is required under the critical areas ordinance. However, that leaves it open to projects like stream daylighting and others to receive credit regardless. So that is the intent we're headed there. We also, as noted by the commenter, have included the regional transfer of development rights option. We're talking to King County about renewing that partnership and also see a lot of benefit to this amenity and moving it forward. Next batch are art and plazas. So we have many new points available for providing public art with a broad definition. We've also improved our process for reviewing appraisals. Properties have to provide an appraisal of the public art and earn bonus points based on the value that previously had to go before the Arts Commission. We are recommending that it can be reviewed administratively by Bellevue Arts staff to help kind of ease that process. Knowing that they have to get a professional appraisal. We also have options for amenities for outdoor plazas, and we have two flavors of outdoor plaza. So first up is a standard plaza, minimum size, same as Wilberton, there's a set of features that projects can choose from. And that does include proposed something else cool that advances the public realm. We will note here too, a new option is that we have added language that projects that are incorporating those private shared use paths, those shared use paths can, when incorporating all the required elements of outdoor plazas, can earn credit as outdoor plazas as well. A new option that we're proposing, too, is a linear event plaza. This is a type of plaza that provides an extended area along streets intended to provide for programming for on-street events like farmers markets and those types of events. Our final batch is in sustainability. So we have for projects that meet our green building standards, there's two tier options that can earn credit with additional different pathways of certification options for either tier. It's not just one lead track. There's a whole, there's a bunch with some additional performance standards for each. And you can earn credit for natural drainage practices as well. So long list. So one of the challenges, of course, there's a benefit to opening it up to allow for that maximum project flexibility. The key trade-off there with the length of that list is that it can kind of dilute the focus. um so we are suggesting that at least in the arts district intensive area we'd like to see a little more concentration on amenities um so this proposal recommends that at least 75 of those bonus points should be must be achieved by at least two of this list affordable housing affordable commercial outdoor plaza or public art however if you're daylighting a stream or dedicating parks or trails that limitation does not apply. So it's a way to give some focus, we feel, while also still striking a bit of balance there. So finally, we are going to be returning at the future meeting with a recommendation on the fee-in-lieu language. We did want to provide some thoughts just to either guide discussion tonight or to consider as we look forward to next time. So currently, we in Bell Red do not have any kind of limit on the percentage of your bonus that comes through fee-in-lieu. Of course, the tiers do apply. So that's kind of the tension that we're working through. In considering the updates to the fee-in-lieu, you know, we can think about a limit to increase use of defined amenities, but that limits flexibility for development. And a lot of those dollars, like for formal housing and TDRs, can be leveraged really effectively. We are also going to be talking about recommended some established allocations for fee-in-lieu. So while we're moving away from the tiering system for picking amenities, we can think about for those fees in lieu that are provided, dividing those up between priority amenities. So that's going to be a conversation. And finally, it's going to be really important that we right size the fee too low and we're going to see too much less reliance on on-site amenities too high and it'll be too challenging for development. So more to come there. To wrap it up, the specific topics that we're going to be coming back with our final recommendation next time, that'll be the fee-in-lieu, the regional TDR approach, and also that additional flexibility on street parking. So moving on to the schedule, we are in our second study session. This evening, we are seeking direction to move forward to a public hearing on July 9th. In the event that we have the recommendation in July, which of course, as Nick noted, we can continue with additional study sessions down the line, we would move on to council review and action following the August recess in the fall. So thank you. With that, a recap of our direction this evening. Please provide feedback on the key components of the LUCA and direct staff to prepare the proposed LUCA for public hearing at a future meeting.

Thank you. I just want to add that we have done that. We had a public hearing and then again, we had a study session after that when we failed. But usually if we hold on the public hearing, it's going to go be... impacting the council calendar badly um should we take a quick um let me see what time is it is 8 0 8 can we come back 8 15 is that good and then we can go for ask round of questions okay perfect

It'll look good.

Can we start? Is that okay if we start 30 seconds early? Okay.

Shira, I'd like to make a suggestion. Obviously, there's a lot of material that we have just heard. And I wonder if when we do our discussion that we could talk about the road first and then ask all our questions. And then after we're done with that, go on to the next question.

Okay, we go and then we do road questions. One question, please keep your follow-up. Maybe another person ask a follow-up question and we can have faster round of the question and more of... creative way to do it um perfect the road questions if you need time to figure out where is your road questions um can we start with you commissioner ninja i know look at me i didn't write that his name now all right so

First of all, thank you for the presentation. I know there were a lot of comments today and a lot of specific items that I think people want addressed. To start off on the street grid questions, my Main concern is allowing for a pathway that promotes development but also ensures that we're able to keep streets as a public utility. If we were to, as a commission, opt to shift away from a rigid street grid, what options do we have in order to do that?

Sure. So and I'm glad you mentioned the phrase rigid because that's I think that's an important distinction. And I think part of the challenge is depending on who you ask, we either I mean, we would say we're moving away from rigidity. Others would say we still have it. So Just to start there. So at present, we do have a defined grid to say there are certain circumstances where we want to see these connections. From our perspective, we would say we have provided additional flexibility to look at Moving those around within the site, even moving the intersection, we used to have language that was a lot more restrictive around making sure intersections always aligned, which is great, but doesn't always work out in a place like Bellred. So, you know, that's that's one thing just to start by depends on how you define rigid. So we have made it so that, yes, there's defined segments. They can be moved around. We're even saying defining circumstances where they can be removed entirely. Ultimately, you know, that's all going to be site specific and require going through the project review of understanding the impacts of the site. And that's where things get challenging, right? Because understandably, I think everybody wants to know right off the bat, like, okay, can my street be moved? And we can definitely look at it, but it does need to go through some more scrutiny. I needed to come around to what your question was actually about, though. But if we want to go further than that to say totally remove the defined segments, as noted, we could move forward with just defining block limits and providing for private corridors to... Divide those blocks. The problem and really what it stems for is going back to a lot of my comments about certainty. So you can maximize flexibility for projects to say, hey, you can divide your blocks however you want, which is certainly a choice. that's just going to give less certainty for us as to where those streets line up, where that access is going to happen. It has implications for our public utilities. We can definitely work with easements. We're putting a lot of scrutiny into our easement language to make sure we have the access. But, you know, the access is always going to be more challenging if you're working with a private easement rather than public street. It can get messy when you start to talk about, say, you know, two projects next to each other that are going through the review process at the same time. You know, the code provides for those moving forward independently. And so you can't really coordinate across the two when setting up a precedent that provides for individual flexibility. So that can have some tricky consequences when you're not really fully knowing how the two projects might line up against each other. What else should we note there?

I just want to note, too, because within the question you said, you know, looking for a pathway to promote development. We, too, also, of course, would like to promote development. This is not a new cost for these properties. This has been the policy since 2009. This cost is, in theory... in underwritten with the property if anything we have been making it much much easier and cost effective both in dialing back the number of segments more than a dozen segments have been deleted the flexibility that christina noted has also been added on in addition to capacity increases and the flexibility to also cantilever over some of these segments and have more building area to be able to take meet some of our housing and job growth that we're expected for expecting for this area At the same time, we also know it's really important to have that reliable connectivity as part of the vision for Bell Red. That was important in 2009. It remains important today. So that's what the lens was that was applied as we were starting to make refinements to the grid itself, is trying to figure out what are those core pieces that we really think should remain. And then even within that, just since that April meeting, trying to build in additional flexibility to allow a total off-ramp from the local streets. But we still want some of those key connectivity pieces to be met. So that was the compromise that we felt was really thoughtful and informed by the stakeholder input and by you all providing input as well to get us closer to the vision, but also make sure that we are promoting development within the area.

Commissioner Gephardt.

Yeah, thank you. I'm going to build a little bit upon Commissioner Notion's question. And by the way, thank you for a really good presentation and very thorough background and vetting of some of the things that were submitted. It's helpful to be able to you know, sort through the chronology of what's, uh, what's developed here. So appreciate that. Um, so I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add to that, um, question from before, because I, I'm, I have a, um, a leaning towards the public, um, the public option here. Um, just because of the certainty and the unburdened nature of the access. I do have concerns about the long-term access that's gonna be needed and the certainty of the public and of utilities and other services being able to access the space. I would have to ask, though, if there's any way to provide any more flexibility in terms of also location and street typologies to accommodate some of the local site conditions that might be required here. you know, looking at the diagram for the Albertsons property in particular, you know, it does seem like an opportunity to do something different than just a straight line, you know, there. And if there are opportunities to do something that would be public, but would be a little bit more creative for, you know, site-specific conditions, that would be good. My impression from the the materials we received though, is that we're very constrained and limited on street typologies. And I don't, I don't frankly get that. I mean, I don't know why we can't be more creative when it comes to some of the typologies that could be applicable here. So is there, is there a way to both have a public, um, arrangement and, um, and provide for a little bit more flexibility when it comes to site-specific conditions. And I know you've already provided more flexibility and that's much appreciated, but I just wonder if there's an ability to do something more.

Yeah, well, and I do want to speak to that a bit more, especially with the one property you mentioned, because I think that's a great example of what they're showing that they're requesting to basically change on the map. So that's under the draft. That is something that we could absolutely consider in the project review process to say, you know, when you go through that process, When you go through that review to say, here's the scale that we're talking about, because remember, you know, this site is zoned for high rise, whether or not that's going to ultimately be the proposal, there is potentially a lot of activity happening there. So the proposal that the city's put forward with that east-west segment, that is kind of based on certain assumptions about what kind of Future development is going to be happening on those streets that likely will need a connection to an arterial. That alternative scenario shows some different connections. Those could work. Those could potentially be mitigated. They would just need to, you know, there's more detail that we would need to understand those impacts and model them before we could confidently, you know, approve that change to the map. So, you know, it always comes back to trying to strike this balance of flexibility and certainty, you know, because from our perspective, seeing that we would say, yes, that is something that could be changed. It has to be reviewed. We need more information to think about it. Versus if the ask is, can we just change the map right now? We wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable doing that. So it comes back to what kind of flexibility are we looking for beyond that? of challenging uh but anyway but back to the the uh street types themselves um if you're getting into you know can why can't we have uh like public um non-car streets for example um unfortunately like the the transportation department the process to have public streets defined there's um a pretty involved process to define those standards that are required before we can accept streets as publicly dedicated. Unfortunately, we don't have defined street typologies for non-auto streets and don't have the capacity to develop those near term. So we do have the flexibility to look at those as private options. And so that's why really we're a big part of why we recommend this option to say, hey, we can provide for substituting private streets for public because that does provide the venue to replace uh an auto oriented street with a private active transportation corridor for example um anything else you got there yeah and is there like if there's anything more guidance you know we're always looking for ways to make it more flexible so i mean yeah i'm i'm encouraged by what you were saying about the location and that

under the right circumstances and with the right support that the city could potentially look at an alternative location, not necessarily cutting right through the property, but maybe some alternate route that could increase that local access.

Yeah. Because, you know, the flexibility still remains for them to suggest additional alternatives to that street grid, depending on how the project develops, too.

And I guess the other thing is on the typologies piece, I wasn't so much suggesting, you know, that we look at, you know, non-vehicular roads. alternatives, but maybe alternatives where the impact on the site is not quite as big in terms of the required amenities, whether it's the size of the sidewalk, the planning areas, everything else that starts adding up. Yeah.

Yeah, it's hard trade-offs because, you know, another thing with Ballarat, of course, Ballarat has really low tree canopy. So as we're developing, you know, those amenity zones take up space, but they also provide a pretty big opportunity for planting new trees and kind of helping to provide for heat island effect and other factors. So, yeah. sidewalks too. But I will say, you know, the suggestion about like, where can we be more flexible and on street parking? I think that's a great place to look at, you know, freeing up some extra width. But yeah, lots of competing priorities at play.

Okay.

Thank you.

Just a quick comment. My sense here is that we really all want the same thing. We want to be able to have a walkable, accessible city. We also want to have a development happen because we know the improvements to Bell Red aren't going to happen unless those projects work, unless they pencil. But it's such a dilemma about where do we land? It's kind of like, how do we get to that vision? And we've talked in the earlier meeting about the necessity for flexibility, which I think you've gone a long way towards. creating a lot more flexibility. I was struck with a conversation that Kate, you mentioned something yesterday when we were talking about when we were doing the neighborhood studies and crossroads. And the biggest thing that came back there was the fact that they can't get from place to place. They didn't have the road grid and there's no way to fix that now. I think it's the same thing in the Eastgate neighborhood. So we're at this place where we have an opportunity to to create a future neighborhood in Bellevue. And we also want development to happen. And it's again, that tension that's right there. So I guess at the end of the day, I really, really applaud the idea of working with each of the individual landowners to see how we can possibly come up with a solution that works for both. Every site's going to be different, but I really, really appreciate the fact that you're willing to take the time and effort to look at each one of those sites and make sure that we're not limiting development capacity, but also maintaining the connectivity throughout the area.

Thank you. Commissioner Kennedy.

Okay, thank you. Are we on one comment, Chair? Always. Always. Can I have one question or one comment?

Until Johnny Liu comes.

The last comment I didn't make, possibly. That's hard. I have three. So Just to follow on the comments that many of the commissioners are making already tonight, just really appreciate the innovation and the time and the outreach and the listening and the individual and innovative approach that staff has taken to get a proposal that was quite rigid by, it seems, most anyone's standards to a place that could be more workable and be something that does try to address the competing interests that Commissioner Ferris was just speaking to. One of the things that is fantastic, I think, to hear between the last meeting and this meeting was the description of this. I think, Nick, the term you used was total off-ramp from the public streets to more innovative options. And I was wondering if you could just walk through that. How that will work in practice. So if I'm a landowner, I would love to be a landowner of one of the large parcels in Bell Red. And I want to be able to develop it. But the current street grid runs through my parcel area. in a way that makes that quite difficult. And I come and I say, I'd like an alternative. What does that look like? What does that process look like under these proposed revisions, particularly kind of the increase in off ramp or innovation that you're proposing since last meeting?

Um, yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's a new thing. So to say exactly how the proposal will work is tricky, but you know, it would be a part of the broader development review. You know, we, we will have these, um, we've got these suggested criteria, um, put forward in the code and then as part of the broader develop the broader proposal. you know, the project can, um, identify how it's meeting those criteria. And then those criteria would be reviewed as part of, um, that broader review process to either say, Hey, we agree. This is appropriate to, um, uh, be, um, appropriate to move on through the process of replacing a street grid. So, you know, things like the assessment on emergency access, um, and ADA, you know, those will need input from like fire and building, for example. Um, but you know, these are, this is review that could be incorporated alongside, um, other project review. Uh, is there anything else you'd add there?

Just to, I guess, um, Tie it back to what the current requirement is, which right now, if someone wanted to remove a local street segment from their property, it's a really high bar for them to meet. And it's really an engineering-based decision with our transportation department. And a lot of that has to do with some of the topography challenges or other engineering difficulties that are going to make it really challenging to construct that area. It doesn't allow us to evaluate it based on other kind of aspects. And that was an important feedback point that the commission had and the stakeholders had in the Wilberton process that we just weren't able to kind of work through internally and figure out what's a good off ramp to offer folks that gets us that flexible option, but tries to hold development to a standard, put a little friction in where they want to get to something that's really flexible and get to a private street, And get some assurances on the other side of that process. And so that's what this whole process was designed to create is provide some limited criteria where we would entertain this private street, remove that sort of burden as they are characterizing it of the local street, and allow the flexibility that that private street offers.

That's really helpful. So if I'm coming in and I'm kind of saying, hey, I need option C. The public street doesn't work. This private street on this linear trajectory doesn't work. I have a master plan for this parcel and I'd like to do option C. I have the flexibility to come in and say, you know, within these bounds of the perimeter standards, the emergency access requirements, here's my proposal, and that can be thoroughly reviewed and approved. Okay.

Yes. And it's helpful if the commission has feedback on some of that criteria as well. Because right now we are proposing some options. In addition to kind of meeting some of the baseline requirements, providing access, making sure you're not landlocking your neighbor through some legal agreements. We also think we want to serve the public realm and we feel the local streets inherently will do that. If we switch to a private option, we'd like a little more certainty on that other end. So we've asked for a 10-foot sidewalk and for 75% of the segment to have active uses. Those are opportunities where the commission can also decide what the criteria might look like or what are the expectations if we let someone have a private street. Maybe you want to lower those. Maybe there's a higher bar or different items that you all are interested in. That's where we think we'd be able to get some really good input from you all to develop what does this off ramp look like.

To get that additional flexibility and incentive. I think those were the two other things that on the street grid piece caught my ear. One being the multitude of comments that we've received around the amenity incentive program, broadening the types of... Amenities that would qualify for the amenity incentive system. We heard several comments that brought up childcare sports facilities.

We're only talking about roads. Only street grades. Yeah, let's not go there, please.

Okay, yeah. So just being able to think about if you are one of the parcels, there's nothing to... comply with the street grid requirements, being able to think about a way to incentivize those landowners that are needing to satisfy that requirement, maybe some additional incentive or innovation around ways in which they can see an increase in amenity or flexibility in their in their plans um they're having to build a road their neighbor isn't I think is something someone said the other day and I think I think recognizing that um is important thank you commissioner um thank you I'd like to

elaborate on the comments that were brought forth. Cristina, you mentioned that the difficult thing is to balance certainty with flexibility, and I agree with that. I'd like to start with some information that we can rely on. And I didn't see the traffic report by Traffic Engineers Northwest until today. And understanding that is a year old and not reflecting exactly the conditions that we have on the plan right now. That said, he's only a year old and the street grid right now, the existing grid, is the same. So I would imagine, maybe I'm wrong, but I am assuming for the purpose of this conversation that the report is going to be largely accurate or very close to correct in terms of... Assumptions are different.

Well, the point that she was making was the assumptions they were building on have fundamentally shifted because we have now two draft codes that have removed many of the segments that they were analyzing and identifying as problematic. That was a report that was submitted in a timely way to staff so we could evaluate that, and that was informative as we made updates to the map. So that was the piece of, yes, it's only a year old, but we've since revised the draft twice to resolve many of the issues that they flagged in that report.

Another note, too, is that kind of the core argument of the report, the core finding, is that the local street grid is not needed for arterial capacity, which is something we've never refuted. What the real benefit of the local grid, so just to kind of back out and kind of talk a bit more about the way that analysis works, that analysis looks at just impacts to the capacity on the arterials. So in Bell red, you're talking about a really large area between those arterials. And that analysis backs out to kind of look at the amount of capacity we're modeling between those arterials as one big mass to say, based on this one big mass of future development between this massive area, this is the load that we expect to see. at these intersections based on that growth. What it doesn't capture is where are there new driveways coming in? Where are there new access needs for certain additional garages? Also, how much growth maybe is happening in one tower versus another? Where does that traffic come up? Our fundamental assertion is that those details are the ones that really matter for the local grid and really what the real benefit of the local grid is for is about local access, local circulation. So if you make the decision just based on arterial capacity, which could be a choice, Yeah, the local street grid isn't needed there. And that report makes that finding. It would make that finding probably again today. But I think that's not the rationale that we think is most important here. So that's just kind of a bigger picture take on that.

Understood. That was going to be my point. Yeah. The report does say that at the district level, the capacity is met by the existing street grid, correct? Yes. So to use a perhaps maybe more adequate analogy for what I'm trying to say, instead of the circulatory system, we can look at music, jazz, for example. If you have at the song level or at the main level, you have a structure that every musician comes in and follow, you allow for improvisation within that structure, and it still works. And that's the kind of... mindset that I'm trying to bring here. You have that district level street grid that is meeting the capacity requirements for traffic at district level. And that's something that I think you can control with confidence. You can say, this is going to work. And then at the local level or hyperlocal level, because it's such a specific, each side is very different. Like And we were there last week in the, in the bell red walk. And, and this is very telling. I don't know if everybody can see the little lines on the corners. Those are all the contour lines that depict the change of elevation. This, this is a crazy requirement for the site.

So we'll talk about it. We'll keep going. Keep going.

This is an example. It still applies.

Yeah.

When, when you have that. framework that people abide to when we have the flexibility. But you don't have the very rigorous requirements of the internal streets predetermined. This allows developers to come in and resolve the problem locally however they need to resolve it. Now, there's performance criteria. You need to have maximum perimeter and you need to have fire access and you need to have driveway access and trash and all this stuff. They can resolve that. And they're going to do it better than us because they know their property like nobody else. Right. So. What I would like to suggest is, I mean, you have a lot of good arguments for having the local grid. On the other hand, we hear from a lot of people that they're saying, like, this is well-intentioned, but it's not providing us the true flexibility. Once you jump into a site and start looking at it, you're running into a lot of problems. So I don't see this as a very complicated issue. You can do two things. You can do a prescriptive path, which follows the street grid, the local grid. Or you can do a performance-based path, where you provide what's the performance. And you can choose. And I think every time that we can provide developers with flexibility in, I guess, piggybacking on your comment, in how to achieve the outcome, I think it's a good thing. And neither of these needs to compete with each other. We have the framework, which is kind of corroborated by the report and by what you just said. And then each parcel can have the flexibility to decide to follow the grid or to...

And I think, you know, our interests aren't at odds here. Like a lot of what you're saying, I agree with completely. Because, you know, our take is, you know, take this one as an example, you know, what they're modeling. We're not saying no, we're just saying we need to know more. We think, you know, we need to know more. And I would say almost certainly, you know, with the size of this site and with the amount of development projected, there's definitely going to need to be a connection through there. I think reasonable minds can agree there. All we're saying is we are open to different scenarios. We're just saying they should be reviewed at the project review level to really respond to what's being proposed. Because another take, too, is it's not the case to say that the grid as it stands now, you know, that east-west connection you're showing there with the big grading. I mean, there are different scenarios, even if that wasn't moved, which, again, that east-west, that can be moved around to accommodate the grade. That can all be reviewed. The site can be regraded differently to avoid that. I know there's some, like, retaining walls there that they're kind of working around, but that can be set aside. So... It's both, first of all, just with the grid defined as it is, it's not true that it's this one line cannot be moved ever. And then on top of that, you know, moving around that segment further can be considered. We've worked all this stuff out, and we're recommending an option that includes private streets instead, and we could review that under this draft. I feel like we're getting there. There's a difference of opinion on what that looks like.

Correct me if I'm wrong. My impression, and I think the impression of many of the people that came to speak, is that there's no really... There's a moving target if you're not following the street grid. It's like, okay, I can propose something, but how do I know what I can propose? And it seems like maybe that, and maybe that's the next step. Maybe it's like, what is that performance option that I know I need to comply and demonstrate, right? It's a departure ultimately.

And we are almost 18, no, 32. eight minutes on first one and we haven't finished the first round and some of the commissioner takes 12 minutes can we like just fasted if you're done can i go to the next one you all wanted more flexible option that is not targeting move and we want to get to the position though staff come is that the correct understanding can we move on is that okay i just want to be sure we are and we need to extend the time i know uh is that okay yeah let me let me wrap up Okay. Thank you. It's 12 minutes.

For me?

Yes. Started at 2035. We interrupted. It's okay. It's okay. I just want to, I just want to, I don't want you to stay here until midnight.

If we are to provide a prescriptive option and a flexible option, I think the performance criteria needs to be very clear for everybody. On the other hand, I think it would be very useful and I would like to see response. There were a lot of very good comments today. I don't think we want to zero in on every one of those, but it would be good to have responses to those comments for the next session, if that's possible.

Thank you. Thank you. Vice Chair Liu, can someone take a motion to extend the time of the meeting?

I'd like to motion that we extend by half an hour to 9.30.

Honestly, I think it should be one hour. One hour? Yeah. You already took the motion. Did you do that too? You haven't done the second?

Okay. Can I revoke my second? I'd like to amend that we push this back an hour to 10 o'clock.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. I know you're so optimistic.

Please go ahead. Appreciate all the work that you guys have done on this. And I know it's a lot to be taking input from all sides. So thanks for all the work. I'm not going to beat the dead horse. I'm just going to give an indication of where I am and then also kind of try and approach it from a different perspective. So I think first, I would love to maximize developmental potential within Bell Red. I think it's a really strategic area for Bellevue as a whole. It's like two stops away from Microsoft. And so, and like, you know, one or two stops away from all the office space in downtown Bellevue. I think it's going to be, if we can develop it, a really key spot and landing spot for a lot of, say, new grads that come and work at these companies. And so, I think prioritizing flexibility for developmental potential is where I lean towards because it's such a strategic spot with Bell Red Station nearby that I think we can sacrifice a little bit of the grid in order to get us to a more buildable place. So that's one thing. The part that I want to ask and talk about is, so personally, my primary use case for Bell Red, I bike around, and I think we're really lacking on east-west connections throughout Bell Red. I think right now it's only Spring Boulevard, and that's partially created. There's no way I'm biking on Bell Red or Northeast 20th because I'd probably die if I do that. And so what I'm trying to get to is I think north-south connections make sense for feeding into the arterioles. And like that study said, we're not going to be overwhelming the arterial capacity, which I think is great. I have a bit of a fear for the east-west connections on the grid where people will be using those as an alternative to those arterials and then create these kind of intense traffic traps for people. And I'd much rather see those east-west connections be prioritized for pedestrian and bike rather than for cars. I just think that feeding those into arterials that can handle it – prioritizing safety of pedestrian bike, east-west connection, especially if, you know, I think people are going to be using those to get to 405 really frequently. So I, where I'm going with this is I understand the need for public services and access points. Is there a way to kind of prioritize the north and south roads that would still maintain kind of priority or emergency vehicle access and all the needs that we have from a public infrastructure standpoint while also helping the east-west ped and bike and active transport connections to kind of like shift some of the defined north-south segments to um It shifts the east-west roads into more ped and active transport. And then it'll kind of force a little bit more onto the north-south, which I think makes sense just being kind of between Northeast 20th and Bell Red.

Well, that's exactly what the vision is for the green streets, which provide for those east-west connections all the way across.

Like actual roads.

They do require roads, but the design of them has a heavy emphasis on plantings, on nice wide sidewalks, on bike. So it is very much, yes, they allow for cars, but they are a public street typology but it's one that's designed naturally you know for lower speeds for accommodating pedestrians and bikes in a really comfortable safe way um because another consideration is you know with that that that east west connection if we want to have those really nice continuous connections all the way through the district if we're shifting to private typologies then that gives us less flexibility to define specifically, okay, your private street can be exactly here.

I hear you, yeah.

Yeah, and we really see the green streets as being super important for that east-west, like linear park almost functionality. Yeah.

Okay. I still kind of believe that that could be an area of compromise where we do see more of a private street grid and that I think as you guys go through review and permitting that that can be the kind of forcing function to have a contiguous east-west connection. And I think that would also help with maximizing a little bit more development through some of these properties. But I hear that those green streets are a great way to go, but I think because we lack the a dedicated non car street typology that this may be an aspect where we lean towards having a Miller flexible and kind of private street grid.

If I could add to just on the flip side, this conversation did come up in Wilberton as well. And one of the concerns around restricting vehicle access on some of these streets is you're locking in kind of what that developer can do on their property where they have to gain access. It just creates sort of a another inflexible kind of requirement to have to plan around. And to predict kind of where everyone is going to take access is a little difficult. If you have a vehicular street that also has adequate facilities for ped bike, then you sort of resolve that problem, though it is taking up more space, of course. But trying to... predetermined areas that we would want to restrict vehicular access would require a lot more study with our transportation department and probably a lot more coordination with the development community to understand if this is going to create now a new area of issues that we'll have to work through at other study sessions.

I see. I'd still think, like, I hear you for sure. I think in areas where we can be a little bit more flexible on the green street requirement, I'd love to see. But that's kind of my primary point here is that from a biker's perspective, that east-west connection is really dangerous. And I'd really like to see traffic calming happening along those rather than forcing more cars through those east-west connections.

Thank you. I have two quick comments on... question, plus one to everybody's conversation. I agree. Nick and Christina, the 103rd Avenue Northeast It's in downtown Bellevue. It's partially owned publicly and partially private, right? Avenue and State. Is that correct? Because it was a big lot and then Avenue and State has been built and Hunter 3rd Avenue. I think the section that is between Avenue and State building, it's private owned street, right? And then from that up north, it's public. Is that correct?

I'm not entirely sure. I know that the weapon that gains access off of Northeast 8th Street is private.

Exactly. And then after that, when we are getting to 10th Street, after that is Public Street, right? Near Overlake. Okay. For me, that's one of the successful... If you haven't walked there, maybe you have. It's one of the successful private-owned streets in downtown Bellevue, it is. Yeah. I have my own criticism about it, but for me, it's one of the successful ones. I use that one instead of Bell Viewway because it's easier, it's less traffic and all of those. And then how long that process took. Was it complicated? Was it a lot of time consuming to come up with that private-owned road or was it a hard process for the developer?

There is no grid requirement in downtown. Okay. So they weren't expected or that property wasn't obligated to provide a public street through it, to my knowledge. Mid-block connections is the thing in downtown to break up the super blocks, not a new public dedicated right subway. Okay.

And if we want to replicate something like that, is it easy? Because what I'm hearing from all the commissioners is about flexibility. Like, can we give them flexibility to come up with something like that as a successful... If the transportation department believes like me it's a successful street, they might have an opposite opinion. But is it something that we can come up to give the option? That was my first question. And the second question that I have is about... Are we forced to be super rigid about these are just streets or can we say, hey, if you're going to go develop your street, this might be a possibility and we can talk about it through the process that we are going to go put in place for review. And then if we are putting that review process in place, is that going to go take a lot of time of the developer or it's going to go be like a quick two months process?

Yeah. So first of the, the question on the Avenue example, I'm having, it's kind of like a, almost like a cobblestone type of texture to the road. So that's a private street. There is a lot of area within the bell red district that that street typology is allowed without any kind of friction. It's all of the areas that we require you to meet your 1200 foot perimeter block distance, and you don't have a predefined segment. Those are the areas where the city has a different priority in mind. And so within those areas, that's, you know, probably a third of the district, a third of this 900 acre TOD is where we're getting a little more particular around what we want to see in terms of our local streets. And in those cases, that's where if they're still really interested in doing an avenue type street, that option is available through this off ramp that we're discussing. So that's still a possibility if we open that door for folks. But in terms of, I guess, the process to get that decision, it's really hard to say. We do want to look at those site circumstances to understand what are the challenges that they're facing. And then how can we also address some of the concerns that we have that we feel local street more easily addresses. And so that's a process not dissimilar to any other sort of discretionary process that applicants are subject to as they redevelop tower size projects. So yeah, that would be handled through the permit review, where we have the right staff looking at the right, most up to date analysis that applied to the project being proposed. that's the time where we feel like it makes the most sense to make those really site-specific decisions rather than doing sort of this broad brush, let's let everything kind of go a certain way. We need to have that time to study is what we're suggesting.

Okay, thank you. Then we're going to go have those streets on the plan, but there's a process to review if you have other suggestions, and we're going to go nail down those details.

we go for a second round of the road and please keep your question to like one minute then we have like three people three minutes per person uh commissioner ferris mine's gonna be less than one minute um you were saying that you're looking for feedback on some of that criteria one of those criteria that you had for a private street was 75 of the facade and i suggest that that's too high of a number We've known that it's difficult to get those spaces active. So I don't know what I would suggest, but 50%, maybe even 30%. But I would like to take another look at that. Thanks.

Kamishan Gepal?

Yeah, this is a good discussion. I keep coming back to... some of the uh the inflexibility that we have in terms of street types and i just wonder if there's anything else that we can do i mean i think about like um places like the netherlands that have these um streets called um vonerfs you know which are these um sort of slow moving streets where you've got um a combination of uh of um of uh vehicle, slow moving vehicle traffic, pedestrians, bicycles and the like, you know, that all basically share a space a lot of times with a lot of greenery around it. I just I just wonder why our transportation department has a sort of one size fits all perspective with respect to what is a permissible public street. And it just seems inflexible for the kinds of development and creativity that we want to see i see that as a big part of the problem here and i don't know what because i i'm skeptical about the idea of private um in this area because you know if we're planning for the long term of what things are going to be like 50 75 years from now this is our one opportunity and i i i'm concerned about whether if this is in private hands you know the the public and the public interest can really be um guaranteed you know in in those situations without a lot of disputes with landlords or without a lot of interruption of access or lack of maintenance you know possibly um you know so i think all those things are are a concern. So I just wonder if there's any more flexibility that could be created with the transportation department. I may be asking you to do a difficult thing. I'm just curious about whether there's an opportunity there.

Yeah, appreciate that feedback. And we can share that as well. For awareness, the project, Bell Red Luca has an oversight team and a leadership team. So we've got department directors, and we have department assistant directors represented from utilities, transportation, fire, There's a lot of folks that are reviewing and having oversight. This question has been raised. You all raised it. We've heard it from the stakeholders as well. We've discussed this. We're just really challenged right now given the lack of a standard and the lack of kind of what the maintenance practice would be with that new typology. And then also given that there are some budget discussions happening and transportation has a lot of priorities right now. And so this is maybe a more risky venture at this point. And so it's just really not feasible. So then that alternative is the private street gives the ultimate flexibility to do a Vooner for to do some other typology. But then, as you noted, introduces a bit of that risk in terms of long-term maintenance and reliability and some of the other benefits that a public dedicated street can provide. I'm happy to relay those comments again as we meet with our oversight and leadership team again and then be able to kind of share if we have an update or get any movement.

Okay. Not optimistic. And I guess I'm looking for, just for clarity's sake, I'm looking more for something like a public voter as opposed to a private one and whether there would be the ability to do something like that.

Thank you. Commissioner Nielsen.

Thank you. My question is in your presentation you mentioned that for current private streets that if the owner is not doing what they're supposed to be doing and maintaining it or whatever it may be that the city has to basically force their hand and that costs money and that costs resources and time of the city that could be spent elsewhere. Um, given that this proposal allows a pathway for private streets in some situations, I'm curious if you can give a little bit more information about what the current situation is in terms of enforcing that, how much money does it actually take? Is it just any information on that at all would be useful for me, I think.

Yeah, we don't have a lot of experience with having to enforce these private streets because they're not a super common typology in the city. We have an example in downtown, actually, though, northeast ninth place behind the Marriott, the Courtyard Marriott. there's dumpsters that are staged out there it's not a pleasant street and that's an area that we've never really been successful in getting them to just listen to us and that predates kind of any sophisticated agreement that would help us in terms of getting that compliance we do know that it's it's more challenging in that type of an arrangement because we do have to go after somebody and that's not really putting us in a great position and also um we also know the public does not differentiate when they're on private streets versus public streets to them it's the city's responsibility i'm calling the city a light bulb's out there's a pothole there's something in the road i need this fixed and so we would likely say okay we don't control that street we'll have to figure out how to get you there it's just a poor service response also just from a practical standpoint That I think also makes this a little less attractive in terms of we're the ones that are going to have to field those calls. Not usually something developers are going to be dealing with.

But I mean, like a bit more on the mechanics too, like while we do have maintenance agreements for these private streets, you know, what's the scenario if somebody is just not pulling their weight? It's a certain process of, you know, we've got to send a strongly worded letter and then we go to the hearings examiner because, you know, we have to, we use due process and that is the venue for that to happen. Right. um those processes take time that's all our lawyers you know all their time that could be spent somewhere else and best case scenario we achieve compliance at the end maybe you know so not that every case is going to turn out that way but yeah it goes back to scaling you know scaling the more that we rely on them the more we expect that these circumstances could happen thank you thank you commissioner kennedy

Thanks. Yeah, so following on a similar thought pattern, two things. One is I wanted to plus one Commissioner Villavase's idea of having really clear performance criteria, and actually that encompasses the two things. One is to follow on Commissioner Nielsen's comments that, having clear guidelines for property owners on the expectations for providing open access safe access emergency responses and the cost of those and the timeline expectation in perpetuity would be really helpful, I would think, to those property owners on an ongoing basis. If you choose option B of a private road or option C of your own, choose your own adventure, here is what is going to be expected, here is what that will cost, and here is how long. And I think similarly, Commissioner Villavasis had pointed out that performance criteria that are clear – enabling property owners to walk in and have a clear presentation of their option c that can meet and tick off the boxes that the the city is expecting would be really helpful and potentially expedite that timeline so commissioner conlu is asking about what could we expect for a timeline associated with option c am i i'm calling this option c no one else is but i'm expecting others to follow along and spend several um What I really mean is, can we create a process that is helpful for everyone in streamlining expectations and ensuring that if I have a property owner, whether I'm going to go ahead and execute an option c or i want to sell that parcel to someone else and they will have to do that that it's very clear it what the expectations are and what needs to be done so that i can move forward with that that sale or execution uh in a timely manner we can all get the development that we're talking about in this region um both of those are critically important emergency access immediate access clear roads and the expectations of the city and perpetuity and being able to give clear direction to property owners to be able to develop their land or sell their land.

Thank you. Commissioner Velazquez.

Very brief.

I'm looking at my watch, don't worry. I got you. So,

I just want to, plus one, and elaborate a little bit on Commissioner Crinkton's comments. I just want to push back a little bit. I am not satisfied with the explanation that we cannot do this because there's no standard. I understand, and I empathize, and I understand you're managing a lot of, reconciling a lot of interest for many parties. But if the problem is we cannot do... Private is difficult because of maintenance. I get that. And then public is difficult because there's no standard. Well, let's resolve one of those, right? Let's just figure something out. The other point I wanted to make is talk about flexibility and just kind of stepping... a little bit far away at a conceptual level. Flexibility, like all the proposals that we've seen and the way people talk about these projects, they're trying to do something really kind of inspiring and flexibility allows for that. And this is an arts district and I think there should be a, There should be that congruence between the overall rules that are going to govern this district and the outcome that the projects are going to produce. So I think flexibility is going to enable that. This is more of a conceptual portion, but I think it's important to have that relationship at that level.

It was good. Thank you. Maestro Liu.

Yeah, I'm going to plus one Commissioner Goebbels' gripe, I guess, with the lack of typologies. I feel like that's something that would address a lot of my concerns, and I think that's something that we're lacking. And bluntly, nothing's really been built in Belvedere over the last 10, 15 years. And so what's wrong with getting it right if we can take a little bit of time and get the right typology or get the right typology? set up there, I feel like that's well worth it. So I guess I still lean towards, I think we want to get something built there. I think there's a great opportunity. My little cousin's about to start at Microsoft and I think he would really enjoy living around Bell Red, but there's really not that many options out there. So I think the two things are, one, I think we can get this right in terms of this public-private street split, but also in terms of street typology. And I think the second thing is Where possible, I think leaning towards flexibility to allow for development there would be my preference.

I don't have any comments. Nick and Christina, do you have some summary to tell us what do you feel about our comments and feedback about Rode? Because I know we are just... We shared our opinions, but I just want to hear from you too.

A lot of good notes. I think we'll take a look at some of the criteria again. We'll also have that conversation again with our transportation department, note the feedback, understand kind of if there's more rationale to share or if there's any movement. And then, yeah, I think we'll also do a little work to understand how we can get some more certainty or assurances around David Price- How we get those long term maintenance and some of the reliability that we were hoping private streets could provide we have language already in the code. David Price- And that we think we could get there again I don't think that's the problem you can write a very. lengthy agreement that addresses so much, it's just how you enforce this, I think, where the big challenges, but yeah, we can certainly come back with more responses there. And then looking at some of the performance requirements as well, and trying to get to some of the clarity around the criteria and how someone might achieve this off ramp So there's more certainty, we have some work to do with our stakeholders to to help them understand that option more in practice. There's not a shortage of ideas out there in terms of people wanting to get to those private streets so that might be a good opportunity to run some of those through this process, do like a mock process and see if we discover anything.

And if the planning commission wants to go with the public hearing in July, do you feel you have enough time to be in touch with the active public commenters who are having some objection about the draft? If so, how many stakeholders do you guys have actively who their parcel is controversial and they are seeking... Yeah.

I mean, we heard from some tonight, so that would be a good start. And then the public hearing, you know, again, it's that milestone. It allows us to notice that there is a public hearing, cast a wider net. That's usually when the commission also hears from a bunch of other people. Most of the folks that you're hearing from, they own property. They are very engaged. And so I think that that public hearing offers more opportunity to get comments. Not necessarily, we don't need to have everything resolved by that point. So if the question is, do we have enough time between now and July to kind of meaningfully address some of these, I think we can make a lot of progress. I don't know if we'll resolve everything. We won't. There we go.

Part of this is going to be, and I think what makes this so hard is You know, we have a take on what flexibility looks like. We know the stakeholders have a take on what flexibility looks like. We welcome any kind of input on how we like help make that more concrete. But you know what? We do end up having a lot of these same conversations. So we'll keep going. But we have been in constant dialogue with pretty much everyone you heard from tonight. So yeah.

Are we comfortable with go to the next subject? I have like six more subjects to talk about it. And you're welcome if you don't have any comment about that one, just say pass. It's totally fine. You don't have a comment, you don't say pass, plus one, it's fine. Just for the sake of 45 minutes we have. Okay, we can start with FAR, Commissioner Ferris. I know.

I will be brief, I promise. Okay. I'm going to do two quick things. One, just a quick comment on the 116th Avenue. I'm inclined to say, to think that we need to do the 4.0 FIR on both sides of the street. It just seems like the right thing to do. That's how I'd weigh in. Also, and I have to give credit to the folks at Habitat for Humanity who reached out to me today to talk about the fee and lieu that's in here and They pointed out, which I then dug back into the documents and it's there in black and white that I didn't realize that because all through this time I've heard Fee and Lou and it meant to me that that goes to the Fund for Affordable Housing. But it doesn't. You've got a lot of that Fee and Lou going to Uh, streams, regional TBRs and that that's the current one.

So that's not what we're proposing. That's so the current Bell red approach, um, you can, there's no limit on fee and Lou, but there's a set progression of first, depending on where you are, there's a set increment that goes to housing. Then there's a set or increment to goes to parks. So the current draft, we have totally put in a placeholder for fee and Lou to say, we need more discussion internally. because we would suggest considering some allocation, because we've got different priorities, but there's different ways to get there. So I think the current approach, the problem is, you know, there's a set amount. You often don't go beyond that. We could seek, you know, get alternate direction, of course, from the commission to say, hey, we think we should go all in on affordable housing, but remembering, you know, there's other priorities involved. like parks like the tdr option like arts um different considerations there for how we allocate so we'll come back to this topic yeah we're coming back to this topic yeah there's just a just to clear up there's definitely a placeholder on that we don't have a the recommendation in place right now and i'm going to ask one quick question again on me and lou yes um could we conceive of something like

let's say there's an affordable housing developer that's going to develop a project. And I've got another developer over here that wants to pay the fee in lieu. But instead of going through that whole process, they can say, I'm not going to develop my affordable units in my project, but Mr. Affordable housing developer, I'm going to pay for the essentially what I would be expected to develop over here. So it's just more of a direct, uh, contribution versus going through a convoluted system. We'll talk about that.

I feel like our system might provide for that, but we should talk to housing people. Yeah, yeah. It's a great suggestion. Basically off-site performance, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Commissioner Geppel?

Yeah, other than plus one-ing the FAR for the west side of 116th, I don't have any other comments.

Thank you. Commissioner Nilsson?

Yeah, I'm going to plus one all of Commissioner Ferris' comments, and that's all I have.

Commissioner Kennedy?

Yeah, so as far as FAR, I would also support the extension of the FAR on the other side of 116th. I am not clear on the implications of that cutting into what is meant to be a medical and research zoned neighborhood, and it looks like it's a pretty narrow swath. And so if you take that piece of 116th and incentivize residential development on it, are you basically getting rid of what percentage of your medical and research zoned neighborhood are you losing? Is it like a third of the neighborhood?

Probably. I mean, it's a pretty small area that's been prioritized for that kind of medical life science corridor. I see. So, yeah, I mean, that's the big trade-off. There's different ways to kind of look at those incentives. We do have other incentives to encourage medical and life sciences specifically. But this is just another tool we have to say, you know, this is really the priority in this district. Okay.

just opening up competition, um, obviously on that land now. And it was an area that we previously did not allow any residential. It was really focused on, this is where we want to direct our medical, um, uses. It's along the hospital corridor. Um, so it was a very intentional policy that was established in the comp plan that we're following through with code to just in one area in bell red advantage off or a medical office. Um, and yeah, And the policy choice to kind of equalize that is just going to, I think, increase that competition for the land because it's no longer being differentiated.

I will say another consideration is, you know, leveling that out too. This is, you know, we are talking about a benefit that is ultimately specific to market rate residential. So if you're doing affordable housing, like 100% affordable, all of that, affordable housing area is exempt for the FAR calculation. So that base, that base is not going to impact that project.

Got it.

So that's another, you know, kind of what I'd suggest to set aside, you know, just think about, you know, how far should we go in incentivizing medical incentive, medical facilities and research facilities.

I gotcha. Yeah. Um, that's helpful. And I think I need to better understand that to have an opinion on it. Um, but when I think about FAR, I also think about several of the other comments that we received this evening. Um, I would echo other commissioners and, and, um, just reaffirming what I think you're already doing, which is responding to and, and ensuring that, um, we're listening to and trying to respond to comments received some of which have to do with the amenities incentive program, which, um, gets to, Uh, and I think, uh, I was, um, compelled by some of the, the comments this evening about broadening opportunities for amenities, um, to other areas. Um, so just, uh, uh, would. Uh, advocate for a consideration of are there other types of, um. qualifying features that we would want to consider. There was a comment that said that FAR is not valuable and that it's not an effective amenity And I was curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Sure. Yeah. So what that's speaking to is, you know, the additional FAR amenity is only valuable if you're going to need to use that in your project. So a great example is while a huge swath of Bell Red now we're proposing to be zoned for high rise construction. Um, and we're recommending base FARs kind of equivalent with high rise construction, which are quite a bit higher. Um, we know that there's definitely, especially in the near term going to be cases where we're not seeing those towers just yet. And we're, probably going to see still some mid-rise going through some of those projects might not need to take advantage of the amenity system to get there so that's an example of where that can play out and then onto the amenity options you know we we can expand the list that's always an option the trade-off there is dilution of the vision. So, but absolutely, you know, if there's something that you're like, yes, this absolutely should be prioritized for Bell Red, you know, we can think about including it. Just bear in mind, you know, there might not be as much concentration of the amenities provided. That's the main trade-off there.

Understood.

Yeah.

Commissioner Kennedy, you are at your six minutes. Is it okay if we go to the next person? Yeah.

I had one more. Okay, it's almost six minutes. Okay, go ahead. Which is the phased amenities comments that we received from a couple different commentators this evening. That seems like a reasonable request. So just in addition to looking toward your guidance in considering the breadth of the amenity incentive would also... um then get valuable to consider that phased approach if we have large projects and master plans it stands to reason that we would need to consider how the amenities would be phased in thank you

Thank you. I'd like to plus one Commissioner Ferriere's comments. I really like the flexibility of just applying the amenity incentive system to FAR and not necessarily to maximum height. And I'd like to know what you think about the mass timber situation where mass timber reaches its maximum allowed height without maximizing FAR and then Like, what do they do? Right. So I just want to hear your thoughts about it.

Yeah. Yeah. And similar to what? Yeah, I think that the group that put forward that they we got some really helpful input on explaining kind of the limits that they're working with. So for if others aren't familiar, mass timber basically is. has like a specific inflection point where if you go any higher due to certain construction, everybody knows. Yeah, it's like so you kind of end up running into the wall that informed. We did increase the maximum floor plates for residential mass timber quite a bit in response to that into to that input. So, yeah, we got some really helpful, helpful suggestions.

Is there a way to have like the option to transfer some of those unused rights.

Oh.

I don't know, similar to what Christopher was saying or like what King County was saying, like, because the city wants mass timber. Yeah. It wants density and mass timber kind of,

Like if they could do it like that.

And it's going to leave some undeveloped portions. So is there a way for that project to transfer those rights to another parcel so they have less of a burden and then you can incentivize mass timber or something like that?

We can look at it. Yeah. Kind of a TDR within the city. Yeah. We'll give it some thought.

And another quick comment is, I mean, as the city is getting built together by everybody, I mean, you guys, the stakeholders and everything, does it make sense to discuss with transportation department that as priorities get developed, the standards for these private streets get developed in conjunction with them, and then they start as private streets and eventually become public streets? Maybe? Something like that? Off topic, but... Yeah, we passed the road.

The road's time has passed. The road is done. Thank you. Chair Liu?

Plus one to the comments on what's 16th. I think it makes sense to allow for equal treatment there. I wanted to also ask about this request about the rest, like adding language around restoring a stream rather than just daylighting. I guess, what are your thoughts on changing language there? Because I guess from my understanding, daylighting stream takes potentially like a lot more effort. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, there's definitely fair points that we're not necessarily like providing enough specificity because, you know, our take is to say, okay, if a project is truly just like This is just, you know, a basic buffer restoration that would have to have to be happening anyway that you're only getting credit for going beyond that. But, you know, better defining what we're saying about like what constitutes like a really fundamentally different project. Like, yeah, we can definitely get some more definition in there because I agree this could be clearer.

Yeah, and I think from our earlier discussion around critical errors, we kind of veered towards a little bit more of a let's get actual, what's the term, like results-oriented, I guess, if you will, around critical errors. So I think this makes sense, but I'm going to leave it to you guys who are the experts in this area to actually update the language. That's it.

Thank you. I do not have anything. Everybody covered everything. Do we need a second round or we are good? If we are good... No, let me ask Christina. Are you all good? Is there anything that you wanted to clarify or you want to... We're good. Is there any miscellaneous items that we didn't have... For covering in road. And can we go one round of any kind of question that you did not ask in the road and F.A.R. and affordable housing? And I'm agreeing with Commissioner Ferris. I just want to see the fee in lieu is going to affordable housing. I need a budget line. It comes in and it goes down when I'm looking at. a budget. I see where it's coming in and where it's leaving. I don't want to be in the bucket and we use it for everything because it's affordable housing.

Oh yeah. And we do have very specific guidelines on how we use fees in lieu. We have to define specifically where it goes. We then have five years from receipt to spend them according to those purposes. So absolutely. Like We don't have the recommendation today because some of those conversations are developing, but yes, that will be established. Thank you.

And I think I love the comments of the King County about transferring and all of those. I think those are all creative ideas that we are looking for. And honestly, before we go to the miscellaneous round, I walk in Barrett again a lot. I used to walk in Wilberton and now it's Barrett. The current buildings are not flattering, honestly. They're like three buildings... They are, sorry if any of the owners are here, not nice. None of them is nice. And when I'm walking, and I take a train, I do too, like I walk here, I take a train and everything. Honestly, if those workers stream on the water and the trees won't be here, I don't want to walk there. It's not nice. The train is beautiful. but the current developed buildings are not beautiful. I don't know how we're going to turn that to the art district to be nice, creative, and arty. I really think we need to do it because those three buildings, no thank you. Miscellaneous round, Commissioner Ferris. I have nothing to add. Appreciate all you guys, though. Thank you. Commissioner Geppel. A couple of missing minutes. Go ahead. Yeah, we have 30 minutes total.

One is on the comment on access to East Rail in Bell Red. Can you address that? I mean, it sounds like it's in the sub-area plan, but it's not addressed in the LUCA. that would be a concern just given how much we're having in terms of resources going into East Rail and then also the opportunity there. What are we doing for access?

um yeah so the uh um we we can i think we can come back with some additional information there but yeah we've got the amenity option for trail connections though needs to to name that specifically um but yeah we can come back with more follow-up on that okay and while again i

going back to the street grid comment, I'm still in favor of the public option. If the commission goes in the direction of a private option and allowing for a private option, I suggest looking at figuring out whether there are ways to sort of supercharge the city's remedies in connection with any kind of easement, right? You know, could you get, and this is something for you to talk with your council about, could you get abatement rights? Could you get additional specific performance rights? Could you require a performance bond? All those kinds of things. That if you were a private party dealing with a party, you'd be looking for security for performance. You wouldn't be just saying, well, we got an easement and that's good enough. I wouldn't take that as a private party. I'd be looking for more. So if you are going to go with a private option, look at figuring out whether there's a way to provide greater assurance for performance. You know, private for the for the public benefit and for the public access to make sure that it's it's a little bit more assured. Because that would that would make me more comfortable if we were to consider a private option. Great point.

Thank you. Commissioner Nielsen.

I'll start off by plus one-ing Commissioner Lew's comments on the difference between the daylighting and restoration and seeing some kind of creativity with the language there. And also plus one-ing Commissioner Geppel's comment on looking for ways to ensure that maybe through a bond or some other arrangement to ensure performance under these easements and private roads. My question is, we had one comment around the vesting period. I believe they were requesting a 10-year vesting period. Can you just address that real quick and

Sure. So it sounded like the commenter is doing a master development plan and they'll likely have multiple administrative design reviews that would nest beneath that master development plan. The current process and the commission has reviewed this process and we've updated it is to allow up to 10 years of vesting. That's at the director's discretion. And it's when there's those kind of compelling reasons laid out by the applicant as to why we want to grant 10 years of vesting. What that doesn't do is vest individual design reviews that are not yet submitted to the land use code that's in place at the time that that master development plan is approved and that that vesting period is approved. The master development plan addresses really site layout. It doesn't get into specifics around the building designs. And so it would be premature to try and vest projects that are not yet submitted to a code that was in place at the time that they laid out kind of a conceptual site. And so that's kind of the, it seems like the request is a little more certainty on yet to be submitted design reviews that are scoped within that master development plan, which would be a departure from our current practice that we have held for a very long time, to my knowledge. Thank you.

Can we share my analysis? Yes.

Fee in lieu. There was a question on the agenda whether we think there should be a maximum percentage of I guess the fee in lieu that you could pay as opposed to performance on site. I'm curious about what other commissioners think. And on one hand, I think the more flexibility is better, so it gives you more options and that's how it's working in Warburton. On another hand, I also think that maybe it's something to consider that the parcels next to the train stations, they probably should provide at least some percentage of affordable housing on site. And also to mix it up, I do think the idea of having some of that fee in lieu to be devoted to the arts development in the district, I think it's a brilliant approach. So I don't know where I stand on this issue, so I don't know if you need an answer from us today, but I'm curious to hear what you think as well.

Yeah, and we'll be back with a more fleshed-out response. And unlike Wilberton, the fee in lieu is really targeted at affordable housing. In Bell Red, we are looking to use a fee to achieve arts, to help with parks property acquisition, to help with stream restoration, other sort of outcomes. And so then it's trying to figure out if we just set a fee and we just allow people to pay into it, how should we allocate that? What's a reasonable expectation property should have to actually do some amenity on their project rather than paying out? So those are really... Involved discussions that we're having right now with our parks department with our community economic development department as they represent arts and then our office of housing. So trying to figure out how do we find the right allocation for each kind of amount. So, yeah, more to come.

And I guess the other comment is early movers to get started on Bell Red or to kickstart the process. Remind me, why is there not a catalyst or pioneer provision like there was in Wilberton, which is proven to be very successful to this point? Yeah. I think that was removed at some point and I don't remember why, like, is that something that can be brought back in?

Well, it was removed from the draft just because the, the current catalyst happened. That's the spring district. So they were able to move forward with, um, a DA and a lot of other flexibility as, um, the first one in on bell red, you know, right as soon as the vision was new. So, you know, our take would be, um, In Wilberton, I think we saw that that catalyst took off. Perhaps it was calibrated a little generously, I think. At this time, we feel like it's not necessarily warranted in Bell Red just because... You know, development has been proceeding. You're much more well-versed with it.

Well, I mean, I would think that's the response. There's more momentum in Bell Red. We catalyzed development, the city catalyzed development with the 2009 provision that allowed the Spring District 30 acres to basically redevelop and help kind of encourage development along in that corridor. That's not really the case today. We are seeing redevelopment happen, though not at a fast clip, but we are still seeing that. And so a benefit of doing a catalyst provision or a pioneer provision, I mean, pioneer, it's in the name, they're kind of the first to get out there. Um, that's not really the, the facts on the ground. Um, there's a lot of development, um, that's in the pipeline. So, um, it's, it's not quite the same situation that we were faced with in Wilberton, which is, and to be clear, we actually didn't propose that in Wilberton either. That was a stakeholder request and a commission direction. So, um, we got there. Um, but yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Commission. Thank you. A lot of my comments have, or my, um, What did we call this category? Random? My random comments?

Miscellaneous. Whatever you want to talk about.

I've already been addressed. I think following on the current conversation we were just having, one thing that caught my ear and I was taking note of this evening was the conversation around market benchmarks associated with the AAE. IP and just thinking about that in the context of what the fee and lieu should be set at and what is an appropriate amenity incentive, I'm not sure how you do those market benchmarks. It sounds like a good term, and if it's possible to be able to look at similarly situated market cities or be able to look at the Wilburton example, which apparently seemed, you know, like an effective incentive and look at other examples that weren't and find the right balance that does seem like a good suggestion. So I wanted to highlight that.

Thank you. Mr. Liu.

All my questions have been answered. So I think I'll just say I think I'd rather have our public hearing be closer to what a final product looks like. So I have a personal preference to have one more study session in between now and the public hearing.

Just getting back to Are you coming in August? Because I don't think we have any opening and not a schedule. Kate, just tell me. I think we need a session in August if you prefer.

It could go to the fall.

Yeah, it could get pushed. If you don't have any, Matt, are you giving any?

I am very interested in like, you know, from transportation. I feel like that would be beneficial for us and that'll probably take time. So I have a leaning towards another study session, even if it delays the final public hearing.

Yeah. There's no deadline. But just to be mindful, the council is going to begin engaging on budget. And so if we do miss that window, this would push us into Q1 of 27. Totally. So just want to be transparent with that.

Because we have in June, July and September, I don't know, five public hearing or something. I just want to know it's like, yeah, it'd be like.

Yeah, I will say that many of the items on Q1

Your mic's out.

Yeah, it's like all you guys. And so if, you know, moving the calendar around is really moving those projects around.

We can take a look, but it's also, you know, we can take, just take more time. It's just, you know, making sure there's awareness that.

Okay.

More time is more time.

So go ahead. You can take a motion if you want.

Quick comment. Obviously you're coming back to us around the fee in lieu. And it seems like that's a pretty important topic. And to have kind of what your proposal is before we have the public hearing then allows the folks to be able to comment. So I'm leaning on the vice chair's side as well, as much as I really wanted to get that.

Yeah, I agree with that one. And I just wanted to... don't know if where is the planning commission leaning toward but i don't know if we are agreeing it should go to like uh parks and everything you guys can come with the with the option but just like i personally want affordable housing go to affordable housing i understand we don't have budget enough and we wanted to just juggle but I don't want the money to not get to the affordable housing because we want affordable housing. And then the other thing I personally really want, I just want to remember this is a TOD, like bell registration between 130 and 132. It's like the best location. I want you guys to go above and beyond, do something. We really go with high rises. If the developer wants to do it, we do it. This is like really a prime location. between 130 and 132. And that area is like five minutes walk to the train station. And I think it's really, this is the one time to do it, have a beautiful area and just make it happen. And we have like, 15 minutes. Okay. Are we all good about one more study session and not going for public? Okay. Nodding, nodding. Great. Is there a motion to approve the... Thank you so much. Thank you. You missed your miscellaneous rounds, parents.

I know, I skipped. I would like to make a motion that we approve the minutes of April 22nd.

Is there a second? Any discussion? All in approve, say aye. Aye. I'd like to make another motion that we adjourn our meeting. Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you all.

And Lucas, I'm happy.