Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We will call to order the planning commission meeting for Tuesday, 03/17/2026. Can we have a roll call, please?

Missionary Hall.

Here.

Missionary Niles. Here. Missionary Walsh.

Here.

Missionary Anderson. Here. Missionary Keller.

Here.

Missionary High is excused.

Alright. Thank you very much. Let's see. Looks like first on the agenda, we have opportunity for public comment. If you'd like to speak, come to table and state your name and city instead of getting wide.

Well, if you can wait

for him.

Sanders. Good evening, planning commission staff. Tonight's batch of of zoning code amendments that are

being

proposed talk treat, primarily treat mixed use. Right here in Downtown Camas, we've we've got, you know, the shining example of this vibrant, walkable mixed use district in our city. It's got housing, commercial, grocery, low vacancy rates, high high tax value per acre. Really, really everything you would want out of a mixed use zone, and and we're hope hoping to replicate that kind of success at least in some part throughout throughout our city with these code changes. And and I I think that's really a great thing, and and I think that's what we need here.

We need more housing and jobs and and more places where people can accomplish their daily needs close by. Now there's there's one aspect of this question of mixed use that I'd like to bring to the commission's attention, and that is the parking implications of mixed use. I've spoken before on the fact that parking is one of the most significant aspects of land use. It drives the form of development. It impacts land values, and it it promotes automobile dominated transportation outcomes.

Yet despite its importance, we often overlook it. The the arbitrary parking requirements we currently use to predictably deliver a drastic over the ply of parking for which we all pay pay for. Mixed use development specifically, though, requires a lot less parking than other styles of development for several reasons. For one thing, as we elevate the experience of those on foot and on bike, as we concentrate destinations nearby where where people also live, they'll naturally need to use their cars less, and and less car use results in in less needed parking. Perhaps more significant than this is that different uses tend to have different demand spikes at at different times of the day.

So for example, as as shops start receiving visitors during daytime hours, that's the same time that people that many people are leaving for their nine to fives. So instead of having residential, one one residential lot that sits empty from nine to five and then this commercial lot next door that sits empty all night, if when you have compatible uses nearby and let them share the parking supply, you you you have you're able to have higher rates of use throughout the day, just just a more efficient use of the overall supply. You're able to have less parking and and, you know, less of the sea of asphalt and and overall lower building costs due to that. So due to these effects, less need for parking due to less car use and the possibility of a shared pool of parking between compatible use uses, it really just necessitates us revisiting the way we regulate parking. So in in order to enable good land use in our city, especially good land use in these mixed use districts that we're trying to create, I hope we follow the examples of of other similarly sized cities in in our region and revisit the way we regulate parking in our city.

Thank you.

I think you got it. Any other public will be online? Hand raised?

Has their hand raised online.

K. Alright. I think, real quick before I move on to the next, agenda item, which is the minutes, I probably should, welcome our new commissioner, Joe Keller. Welcome to the planning commission. Thank you. Happy. Yeah. Yeah. Any anything, you wanna say about your, you know, campus living here?

Well, I've lit I mean, I've lived in Kammas for almost, twenty eight years now. Came in in '98, moved up from from California, and have served on numerous boards from the parking committee to to the campus education foundation. So, you know, I'm really looking forward to this.

Thank you for joining us. K. So next, we have the approval of the minutes from the 12/16/2025, planning commission meeting. Take a motion and a second when you're ready. Approve them? Yep. Give me a second. K. Alright. We have a motion from commissioner Anderson and a second from commissioner Niles to approve the, meeting minutes as typed. Roll call vote, please.

Commissioner Hall?

Yes.

Commissioner Niles? Yes. Commissioner Walsh? Yes. Commissioner Anderson?

Yes.

And Commissioner Keller?

Don't know whether I should abstain or vote yes since I wasn't actually at the meeting. So

We we don't have our legal counsel here, and I I think either

is appropriate. I'll abstain as long as it passes.

K. The motion passes. Four is a quorum. Correct? Yep. K. Alright. So next on the agenda, we have the election of the chair and vice chair. We have anybody who's interested in filling either of these roles.

I feel like I'm satisfied with Troy heading us up as our chair. If he's still amenable to doing that, I'm all for that. So I would

Fine either way. Yeah. So Okay. Good. Wouldn't object, and I certainly if anybody else was being anxious to do it, I'd be fine too.

I'm happy with that as well.

Okay.

Sweet. We need a nomination. Yeah.

I'd nominate Troy to continue on as our chair for the planning commission.

And I'll second the nomination.

K. So we have a nomination, for me as the chair, from commissioner Niles and a second from Anderson. Roll call vote,

please. Commissioner Hall? Yes. Commissioner Niles?

Yes.

Commissioner Walsh?

Yes. Commissioner

Anderson? Yes. Commissioner Keller?

Yes. Motion passes. So a nomination for, the vice chair.

And, again, I feel the same way. I'm good with remaining if that's what everybody wants, and I'm also good if somebody else wants to make a run at it.

I'll nominate commissioner Niles.

I'll second that.

Alright. We have a motion to nominate commissioner Niles as the vice chair, from commissioner Keller and a second from Commissioner Anderson. Roll call vote,

please. Commissioner

Hall? Yes.

Commissioner Niles? Yes. Commissioner Walsh? Yes. Commissioner Anderson? Yes. Commissioner Keller?

Yes.

The motion passes. Thank you for hearing you. Alright. So move on to, item number three on the agenda, which is, twenty twenty six legislative session update. And the presenter is Alan Peters, community development director. It's all yours, Alan.

Alright. Good evening, planning commission, and, thanks. Happy New Year. This is, March, but it's the first time we've, we've met this year. So I hope you all had a enjoyable little break from us, but we're ready to get back to work.

And, to kick off, our first meeting, the legislative session just wrapped up last week and just thought it'd be appropriate to give you an update on what has, come out of Olympia specifically related to to planning. And, actually, not a whole lot to share, this year. Although, I do have to share, you know, one of them is pretty significant for us. But, you know, in past years, we've actually had a lot more activities. But I think, you know, one of the big trends continues to be housing and affordability.

And so you'll see that in in the bills I'm highlighting. So your staff report summarizes a couple bills. I'm actually gonna talk about a third one this evening. The first one, and this is sort of the most impactful one, actually relevant to our discussion later tonight, senate bill sixty twenty six housing and commercial zones. So the purpose of this bill, it really is about housing production.

It's intended to increase housing production by providing more land capacity throughout the state and removing barriers to housing development and commercial mixed use zones. The the basic premise of the bill is that cities over 30,000 population must allow residential uses in commercial and in mixed use zones. When the bill was originally, brought up to the floor, that was essentially what it said. You could not go further than that. You could not require any requirement for any commercial in a commercial or mixed use zone as a condition of residential use.

You cannot require any ground for commercial. And, again, the idea was, you know, the state wanted to find more capacity and just open up more zones to residential development. Now in Camas, and I think other cities like us, this, was actually very concerning, for one particular reason, and that is that we have a lot of undeveloped commercial land that we are counting on for for employment growth. Right? Land that, you know, we've been sitting on for thirty plus years in Grass Valley, new expansion areas in North Shore where we have significant acreage, where we're talking about, you know, very realistically, a holding capacity of around 10,000 jobs if that were all to develop in the twenty year horizon.

And the concern was, well, if this bill goes through and it applies to Canvas, developers can come and buy that land and just build houses. And in some cases, they would do that immediately. So we actually, worked very hard with our lobbyists and, actually, Stevie in particular to to try to, get some amendments to this bill. One of the things we looked at was raising that population threshold. What was successful was, this 40% exemption.

So, cities are now able to require resident or sorry, require commercial for 40% of that capacity. So what that basically means is is 40% of that area, we can have commercial as a condition, but 60% still potentially could just convert to residential immediately. So we we did articulate those concerns. There's some areas where, you know in Downtown Camas, I don't think, you know, this would necessarily be detrimental just because it's more of a redevelopment type area. Although, I will say that the Downtown Canvas Association and Main Street programs were very concerned about it too because, you know, they do want mixed uses in these downtown areas.

So they were advocating for amendments to the bill as well. But for a, you know, built out city like Seattle maybe, you know, but it might not have been as big of a deal. But for us, this was pretty significant. So we're happy with the amendments that were made. We are relieved that we do have some time before this does apply to Canvas. So our population right now is just under 28,000. Only anticipate, you know, probably five to six years. It could be sooner. It could be longer. I I wouldn't imagine it'd be sooner, though, as when we would reach that population threshold of 30,000 and that at which point, this would apply to cannabis.

So it is something that I think we need to keep in the back of our mind as we talk about mixed use in particular. And, fortunately, we have some lead time to think about how we wanna use that 40%. And, also, perhaps, there might be some changes in the next five years. So that is that, Bill. Any questions or

about that? K.

This next one's a a little more boring. I mean, it's just really related to permit processing. That's been another target area, the idea of streamlining permit processing and trying to make it more predictable. There's been some changes that were adopted, in 2023 with senate bill fifty two ninety. We, implemented this last year with some code changes that planning commission saw that council ultimately adopted in an ordinance.

Basically, you know, that changed our our review time frame scheme from a standard across the board 120 time period to this tiered approach where a type one permit, we have sixty five days to process, a type two, a hundred days, a to to say type three is a hundred and seventy days. And a type one permit is basically an administrative process, doesn't require any public notice. Type two does require public notice, and type three as a public hearing. So it's simple through complex. And so in some cases, we have less time.

In some cases, we have more time. And there was also some instruction there on on, how those days are counted. So that's counted from the day that an application is deemed complete and days when it's in our hands to review. So the clock stops when we bring it back to the applicant and say, okay. We need this additional information, and it starts again when it's in our hand. There's also new reporting requirements. We're into year two of that, and we've been reporting on that. It's taken some work to try to get a reporting up to speed. But, you know, based on what we're looking at and what we're seeing, we've done very well with complying with those timelines and are are now pushing ourselves to comply with the new ones. I don't think we'll have any problem doing that.

But there was there was some amendments with this bill twenty four eighteen clarifying that, you know, when we're doing it, determination of completeness, what we're supposed to be doing is just ensuring that we have all the things that we've asked for, not that all those things are perfect or complete or sufficient to to, you know, issue a decision. So, you know, we might ask for a report, and if we get the report, it's complete. We can read the report later and find out that it's missing critical things. There's some clarity on on when fees come in and how shot clocks relate to that. So, you know, we are not counting days when we're waiting for payment on an application fee.

That seems kinda obvious, but that's something the state has clarified here. But another interesting thing here is that, you know, Citi isn't gonna be penalized if we're waiting on comments from another, review agency. So for example, if we're we need action from, you know, Fish and Wildlife or from, Department of, Archaeology or, even from the army corps or WSDOT, right, which could happen, the clock isn't running when we're waiting for that other entity to provide comments and feedback on an application. So I think that's an important clarification. And then one interesting thing that we haven't really looked into a lot is there's now a new requirement for cities to designate what's called a permit responsible official.

I'm I'm not exactly sure what that means. And then there's also a new requirement for a single point of contact for each residential project application. I think in both regards, we kind of already do that. The code does designate the community development director as being responsible to administer the code, and and that position delegates their responsibility to different staff. And that staff is usually the single point of contact for that application, and in most cases, it's a planner that is facilitating something through the review process.

But to the extent that any clarity is needed, this provides that. And then final bill, again, I didn't address this one in the staff report, but this this is significant and pretty consistent with some of the trends we've seen from Olympia in the past few years. This is related to step housing. Step housing is, you know, a a type of housing that's meant to bring people out of homelessness. STEP stands for shelters, transitional housing, emergency housing, and permanent supportive housing.

And so, you know, basically, you can separate that into two categories of your, transitional housing or permanent supportive housing. These are more sort of residential type facilities where people, transitioning out of homelessness either for a short period of time or maybe permanently need some on-site support. It's not necessarily in medical or clinical, but there's some supportive services that'll help transition them out of homelessness. Some people do need that permanently. And then, you know, emergency housing and shelters, these are, like, vets.

Right? Large facilities providing nightly housing for those who need it. What this bill has done is said that transitional and permanent supportive housing needs to be allowed in all residential zones. So that is new, and you cannot apply stricter standards than those that apply to other housing uses. But what that does mean is you can apply the same standards that apply to other housing uses to this.

And so what I would anticipate is that, you know, if this use were to happen in a residential zone, it would look just like the other residential uses in that zone. So in a low density residential zone, it might be something that's happening in a house that, is converted to that use. Still has to meet all the requirements of that zone. It's not going to be a a large shelter type building if the zone wouldn't allow an apartment building. And then shelters and emergency housing must be allowed in all zones, allowing hotels, which has already been something that is required by the state.

So the new part here is that we could see transitional housing and permanent supportive housing in in in any residential zone. So that's something I think the effective date of that. I think we have a couple years to implement that, so we'll be able to learn a little bit more about that. So, those were the three bills. Again, there were other things that came down, but this was a short session relatively.

And, so we'll be working on implementing those. There were some other things that didn't make it through. Still a lot of push again for permitting reform. You know, there's a interesting bill that we've seen in the last few sessions on corner stores, that didn't come through. That was, you know, the idea there of requiring cities to allow, you know, small cafes or corner stores in in all residential areas, but, but that didn't make it through. So that's all. Any any questions? The step housing,

does that apply to all jurisdictions or jurisdictions over a certain population size?

I believe it's all jurisdictions. It says cities and counties. I didn't recall reading the population.

Okay. Thank you.

Back to the first one with the 40%. Great job with the lobbying. Does that effectively mean that out of a 100% of the area zone commercial now, 60% can be developed as residential once we once we reach that threshold of 30,000?

That's how you read it. Yes. The question is how that 4060% gets determined. My assumption is that it'd be up to the city to map that area, due to inventory, and and we would, I think, highlight those areas that we thought were most critical for for employment. I didn't point out this map here, but, you know, this is the West Side Of Canvas, where, you know, we have red commercial or blue industrial areas.

Some of that is developed, but, you know, there's a lot of open space out there. And and that in particular is the area where we do have that concern of, you know you know, we we are holding out for employment and, you know, gosh, if that was residential, I think it would turn very quickly to residential. So, you know, I think that's the area that we would be focusing some of that 40% on for sure.

Thanks for that. The

only question is on the actual other bill on the type one permits, type two permits, do we have any data as to where we currently stand on those? Are we typically under the 65?

So we don't know how we're doing relative to this new tiered approach. We have been tracking on that a hundred and twenty days, and we have been under that hundred and twenty days. Type ones generally are are I I would say, I know from experience, they're being issued under that sixty five day period. So I think I think we're probably close, but we just we haven't actually looked at our historic data and put it in these batches to see where we're at.

We haven't been tracking these batches before. It's just been one twenty full stop. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just trying to meet that. Did we get through I know we talked about, a reset. So when the applicant is unresponsive for a certain amount of time, is that still in effect?

Yes. There is, so that's new. There were new changes that we adopted last year, and I don't remember you know, if you would have asked me three months ago, I would have been crashing. Right on. I think it's something like, you know, if if we don't hear back from you in sixty days or something, we get to add thirty days to the clock. Right? And, it's just like the way you asked me that question. Right? If if I haven't been thinking about this application for three months and I get it back, now I'm expected to just run with it and issue it as if I was looking at it yesterday, but other projects have come and become a priority. You've moved on.

That gives you some time to get back up to speed and sort of move at the applicant's pace. And and the reality is, I mean, I think there's issues on both sides here, but a lot of times, you know, it's rush, rush, rush from the applicant, and then we get comments back, and then we wait, and then it's rush, rush, rush again. Right? And so I think this does sort of make things very clear, you know, being on that side of things, how how that works. It it it kinda makes things clear that, you know, there there's a pattern here and, you know, both sides are trying to be respectful of each other.

And the the shot clocks, I think, absolutely benefit the applicant, and there's a clear path to, you know, get your decision within that time frame, if that's important to you.

Alright.

Thank you for that presentation. Looks like we have one more. Our CAMMA's twenty forty five zoning code amendments, and senator Alan Peters again.

Alright. Thank you again. So, just quick update, on the comprehensive plan process. So, you know, we're, like, a couple of years, I think, into our third year of this, and, we're obviously we're updating our comprehensive plan. Also doing a downtown sub area plan.

Our anticipated adoption, I'm just gonna say it's late. I I don't have a better date, but I'll explain where we're at. We have a draft plan that was released last July. It's been out there for several months. We had a community summit, our final one that was running over the course of several months, September through December, where we went through each plan element and got some pretty good feedback from the public, also from our council planning commission, which we're working into a final draft that you all will see and council eventually see and the public will see as that's rolled out to you.

Right now, what we're waiting on is for Clark County to complete its decision making process, relative to their review of of land use alternatives. So, you know, they're responsible with consulting with cities and determining, the extent of the urban growth areas, and they're looking at three alternatives. One is basically a no growth alternative, keep things the same. Alternative two is sort of the middle road. Alternative three is a little more aggressive.

Their planning commission reviewed that, I believe, in January, and we are waiting on the county council to take some action. And so, yeah, I think, you know, we're we're into March now, the March. The earliest I would expect the county to, you know, do their decision would be in April, and we would expect that we're probably five months out from that date before we can adopt. And so we're looking at basically September at this point. And how we're gonna spend that next several months is, going through the updates that we'll be introducing to the plan, but, primarily digging into the code.

So we have a lot of code work that we've been working on, and we'll be continuing to work on to implement that plan. And our intent, when we wrap up this process is to have an updated zoning code, zoning maps, in addition to that plan. And that's gonna be the case for the Downtown Siberian as well. Well. So our primarily, we're gonna be focused on these three titles.

These are the ones that my department mostly looks into 16, which is environment, critical area, 17, land development, which is basically our subdivision subdivision ordinance, and then title 18 zoning. So, had a couple topics that, you know, we were basically ready to talk to you about tonight. And I think as we move forward, we're gonna try to do a mix of, you know, deeper dives with some more routine kinda housekeeping items items that seems to work well. But I have a couple bigger items for you all tonight. So the first one I wanna talk about is chapter eighteen twenty three, planned residential development.

This is an existing code that we've utilized in Canvas for many years. So plan residential development or PRDs, this is a common option in most municipalities for development. It's an optional development approach that developers can utilize to provide flexibility development. And, basically, what you do is you take a a a large parcel and rather than sort of apply your zoning code parcel by parcel and go by the standard of that zone, gives you some flexibility to account for site constraints, critical areas, and it provides some benefits to the city in terms of open space, rec amenities, innovative design. And I think right now, we're interested in more of a a mix of housing type, and that could be one of the benefits that comes from a PRD.

One PRD that you might be familiar with is the Green Mountain PRD. So this is, you know, one of the drawings of the master plan when that was approved. And there's elements of it that turned out exactly as on that drawing. There's some elements that have changed and some elements that we're still waiting for. But, you know, it's that type of scale of development where you would typically see a PRD.

So I think we've talked a little bit about the purpose of that, but, again, encouraging innovative design, promoting open space, and it allows you to do things like, you know, get compatibility with existing neighborhoods while introducing maybe some more density and then implementing comprehensive plan goals. So our current draft plan does have some goals and policies that support ERDs. And, you know, as we talk about any goals and policies, these are these are in the draft plan. First one is the citywide land use one, which talks about maintaining a land use pattern that respects the natural environment and existing uses while accommodating a mix of housing and employment opportunities. That's something I think that speaks directly to PRDs.

But there's a policy under that goal, that specifically mentions PRDs and promoting the use of flexible development options such as planned residential development agreements sorry, planned residential developments and development agreements to create a variety of accessible housing types with new developments. So the plan contemplates this as a as a way to achieve some of our objectives in the plan. Our natural environment goal of developing the interconnected network of park, trails, and open spaces talks about using things like density bonuses and other tools to create that. That is a tool that is included in our PRD code currently. And then, we have a housing goal on housing choice and affordability.

That goal is to create a diversified housing stock. And one of the ways you do that is, by creating these flexible development options by having zoning that allows that. And then one of the things that as a policy in that plan is to provide incentives and bonuses for the development of affordable housing and middle housing. And some of that could be through, you know, public funds, which, you know, we're we're short on having that at our disposal, but subsidize. And so there's other incentives that don't cost us any money really that could, bring this housing into our community and, not necessarily, you know, making it affordable, but providing some of that, just greater housing choice.

So the current requirements, this is a photo actually of the the Grass Valley, PRD, which is just south of Sky Ridge Middle School, the a neighborhood of, attached single family and detached single family. Current requirements allowed in medium and high density residential zones requires a minimum site of 10 acres, and then it requires a develop a development mix of single family or multifamily housing, but you do have thresholds there. So your single family must occupy at least 50% of the site, but also a maximum of 70%. So once you do a PRD, you are committing yourself to a mix of housing product. And then it says that the multifamily component must be located towards the center of that project.

The idea is they're sort of to, you know, buffer the more intensive uses from the existing neighborhood. There's an open space requirement. It says up to 20% set aside for recreational open space. So that could be active or passive recreation. So, you know, what you'll see is, you know, critical areas, wetlands could be incorporated into that 20% figure through perhaps some trails or picnicking areas, that type of thing.

It could also be playgrounds or sports fields. And then density is based on the overall gross site acreage, which isn't always the case. So if you have a property that has a critical area on it, that can be excluded under the base zoning from the density calculation. But this allows you to look at the whole parcel, and then you can get up to a 20% density bonus from council if based on superior site design is what it says. And the approval is by council after a recommendation from the planning commission. So that's what the code currently allows, and that's something that has, I think, worked reasonably well.

Okay. Question? Yeah. Is the open space maximum is there is there a minimum to it? Is it Oh. Something that is required?

So that's a that's a good question. I you know, as I look at that, it's not really clear to me. And if Robert or I were to ask him what our past practice has been on that, I think, generally, the target's been 20%. But the language in the code, I think, is is a little vague, and that's one of the questions for you all tonight is what we wanna do with that. So we do have some proposed changes to this chapter.

I'll kinda walk you through them. They're pretty straightforward. I think the the overall objective here is to make this a more predictable process that is, you know, more more straightforward, I think, that, is something that, sort of becomes more of a quasi judicial process rather than, one that's just subject to to council approval. So allowable zones, the change would be that this would be allowed in all residential zones as opposed to just medium and high density zones. That really when you look at the zoning table, we'll only open it up to a few more zones just do it across the board.

Minimum site size, looking at reducing that from 10 acres to five acres, one that obviously opens it up to more locations. But two, you know, as our city grows and infills, I think there's more and more of these five acre sites that, are difficult. Right? And as, and and they haven't been developed for a reason, and this is a tool that I think could help them develop, and then updating housing types. So this isn't necessarily a substantive change.

I think it's just modernizing the language to bring, it's a consistency with what's in our code currently as of the end of last year. And so we're replacing just multifamily with middle housing and multifamily. And, you know, it does provide some additional clarity in that it explicitly allows duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, stack flats, and cottages. Whereas the old code, I think, basically sort of contemplated either attached single family, which would be like row homes or multifamily, which would be apartments. But in cases, those would be your options.

So we're basically looking at you could you have the whole spectrum of housing types. We wouldn't change in this proposal that 50% minimum of single family that would still apply, and then that 70% max of single family would still apply. So you're looking at anywhere from at least, you know, 30 to 50% being, something else. More flexible site design. So this is a change to that idea of locating your density towards the middle of the project, which, I think does make sense in some instances, but also, when you have a property that's maybe adjacent to a nonresidential use.

Say someone wants to do a PRD on a site that's bordering an industrial site. It might be appropriate to put that density, along that boundary. Or if you're on a busy street, like a collector or an arterial road, perhaps that housing can go on that as well. So, that's a new idea to give, you know, getting some more flexibility inside design while still honoring the idea of, you know, maintaining that that buffer transition to lower density residential. And then, you know, the open space and density bonus.

So, it says that you can request a density bonus of up to 20%. Should that be a shell or not? That's one of the thoughts. And if this does go to the hearing examiner, you know, I think having a more objective process would make some sense there. But the open space requirement, which says up to 20%, I I think it would be beneficial to require a percentage.

And, you know, if if the planning commission agreed, I think we determine what that percentage is. I don't know if 20% is too much, if that's a requirement, that it's absolutely a number. Right? But, so that would be a question, and we can answer that after, just wrap this part up. So the biggest change here, I think, is the process.

And what we're proposing is a a shift from the planning commission slash council decision, or it's a quasi judicial hearings examiner process. The idea is, again, our goal is to have a more objective, predictable review, allows for consolidated review of the PRD with other development approvals. And so the idea here is, you know, a site plan, which has to go through staff or a flat, which goes through the hearing examiner. You can consolidate it with that and your hearing examiner if they agreed that the project met the criteria and the code can approve a PRD, as part of a prison learning plan approval. So it's a it's a shorter process timeline.

It's more predictable. And I think this makes sense if we tighten up the rest of the code so that there's a clear path. And so this basically make it an option for any project, and they can know from the beginning of that application process. That if they check those boxes, if they're providing the open space, if they're providing the mix of housing, then they can go down this development path. And if, if they do, then they'll get an approval as opposed to sort of guessing whether or not counsel would support it based on right now what reads sort of as a subjective review process.

This is different than something like a development agreement, which is another way to do a flexible development where there's not as many strict parameters around it. Again, this would have pretty strict parameters on, you know, we want this percentage of open space. You get this type of density bonus. Here's the mix that we're looking for, and here's the zoning that it applies within. Whereas the DA, again, I think just gives more flexibility.

That totally makes sense that, you know, that ultimately is something where council's discretion is is required as part of that process. So, yeah, with that, that open up for discussion. And, you know, as we get into the next one, these are sort of first drafts and looking for feedback on whether we're striking the right tone here, any changes that you like or or or maybe don't like. So I'll leave it up to planning commission now to discuss.

So for the the density bonus, the 20% where you were looking for some discussion feedback. Right? Right. Section 18.23 o five o on page three of seven of the

Correct. Yeah. Think, yeah, 32 of the packet. Yeah. But it's eighteen twenty three zero five o, and that reads a density bonus of no more than 20% may be granted by city council for a PRD as demonstrated by site design and layout. So I think, you know, our question is, should that be a shell, as opposed to a a maybe? And and I think our question is, when would it be a yes versus a no based on the way that's that's written? As it's

written right now with the May.

Right. Yeah.

Gotcha. As far as the 20%, you're not proposing any percent change or modification. It should be working well for the

Well, I I, you know, I don't think we have a lot of examples of PRDs, honestly. So I think, you know, if we were to move towards a shell, then the 20%, I think, is is up for discussion. Right? And maybe we would be more comfortable with the it's a shell at 10%. Right?

That that's reasonable. That gives you a a little bit of flexibility to make a project work. But if you wanna go above that, that's again where you go to council. Right? And so we're what I think what we're trying to strike with the PRD is a balance of giving you some flexibility to support some infill, some housing choice without, you know, going against the the comprehensive plan, without going against the zoning or the expectations within that neighborhood. And so if it's, again, a more objective process, then it might make sense to tighten things down a bit.

Yeah. I don't think I have any issues with switching from May to Shelley. The May sounds very sounds subjective of what would the decision criteria be for yes versus no. I'm trying to think if if I've we've come across been in a planning commission meeting where we were where some where PRD was saying we specifically want a 20% bonus. So I'm not sure that's if if it's happened, maybe it Yeah. Didn't just didn't realize it, but I'm not sure it's come up a lot.

Yeah. I I'm not sure. Certainly not not in my tenure here. We haven't had any.

Is it simply the act of using a PRD that gets in the bonus, or is it some unique thing that you need to assess that wins you the bonus up to 20%?

So what what the code currently says is as demonstrated by site design and layout, and I think the idea there is that counsel today would say, well, we we like your site design and layout. Right? And and, certainly, sometimes that density bonus gets you a better layout or design. Right? It gives you the ability to optimize lot placement. Right? And if if if if we had a code that was, you know and I'd say back in the day, cities had codes that were very, very strict on you know, were were completely inflexible. You just get lots put wherever they could fit them. Right? And, and and sometimes developers would say, well, if you would just give me a variance here, I could I can make this beautiful.

Right. But, you know, I'm just trying to squeeze in the lots. I think that's one of the reasons for it. But I think I wanna remind you too that we're also talking about a 20% open space requirement. And so that's that's a significant benefit to the the public, I would say, even if it's not publicly owned, right, that preservation of critical areas, the access to recreation, that sort of, I think, the trade off is, you know, we'll give you some units in exchange for preserving some of this area.

Drawback of linking the density bonus to the open space percent. You have 20% open space. You get 20% density bonus. You have 10%, yet you're have 10%. Yeah.

I I think it's an interesting concept. So the draw the drawback I would see is, you know, it it it would be something like a a property right now that, let's say, is very difficult to develop because it's 10 acres, and one acre is upland, and nine acres is is wet. Right? And so they're like, well, we'll we'll give you 90% open space, but we want a 90% density bonus to put an apartment building on this one lot. Now if you look at the other parameters in the code, it says that 50% has to be single family.

And so, you know, it's maybe not gonna be 90%. But and that so that's sort of a worst case scenario. But you might look at that and say, hey. That that's exactly what we should be trying to do is, you know, figure out how to preserve as much as we can and and maybe transfer that development from, you know, this part to that part of the parcel. Now if we're talking about trees, right, people love trees, and and, those have, not to say that wetlands don't have ecological value, but trees have an aesthetic value that, wetlands sometimes don't.

And you might say, well, yeah, we would absolutely do anything to save those trees. Right? And so, it's a choice, and that's where, again, I think we're we we can't address every single situation. We're trying to do something that's objective here. But I think those numbers at twenty and twenty make some sense right now.

The density bonus really is the carrot to get a developer to do a PRD where then the city can have some info on what it looks like.

Right. Yeah. And without it, are we providing enough flexibility with the other things that we're allowing you to do here to to to achieve that? And, you know, one of the things that's also worth pointing out is, you know, we just did a pretty big change on middle housing where until last December, you you couldn't provide that type of development in in most of campus. Or if you did, it was a more difficult process.

And now by right, you can build middle housing. And so that was one of the incentives of the PRD in the past that, you know, may not be as valuable anymore just because the base zoning allows it. So I I think, you know, if if I'm making, you know, a recommendation of where we might wanna go, to make it successful as a quasi judicial action, and that assumes that if that's the direction we wanna go, then I think having an objective, you must have this percentage of open space, and, you know, that qualifies you for this percentage of density bonus, would be the the correct way to go.

Do any other commissioners have any thoughts on the the may versus shall

language? I think it's appropriate. Was I just gonna ask you, is most of Green Mountain were those PRDs, the development that happened at

So there's the Green Mountain PRD, which is, I would say most of, I think, what's been developed to date, yes, is part of that matchup plan. The Eastern portion is is not part of the PRD.

Yeah. I was just gonna say, I just was remembering fourth of July last year going through the neighborhoods there, and it was so nice to have the open space because the entire community was out celebrating, and there were kids everywhere. And you could just tell it was working. So I I think that just tells us that we had a good plan in place and just having this move along the same lines and just cleaning it up would be great.

Just to finish the I'm gonna be tying the two together. It sounds like you're saying there's a cap for, the density bus at 20%, and there's a ambiguous 20% open space. Are you supposed to tie them together and say, if we're achieving 20% open space, you're gonna have a 20% bonus?

Well, I think that would just be using the numbers that are already in the code and tying up the language to say that, you know, your your open space is 20%. It's not up to 20%, and your 20% bonus is a shall, not a may, assuming you, again, do everything else that this code is allowing you to do.

I think that would make sense. The known quantity at that point.

Mister Walsh, any feedback on the the shallower, mister May? No. Sounds good. I I agree with what the commission has said so far.

Alright. So, I'm just kinda explaining where we're in the process. You know, we'll have several more workshops, and this is one of those things where we'll we'll take that feedback, make some tweaks, and then sort of shelve this for now and bring it back to you, later this year, and there'll be time to have another review and make a formal recommendation on it if we are on the right track with that.

Before you before you one question was, is you're going from the 10 acre lots to the five acre lots?

Is

might have still the newbie. Is this going to work at that small of scale where you're having 20%? It that's kind of just a, you don't have to answer the question. It's more that if you come forward.

Yeah. I'd say it it really depends. Right? Depending on the zone, that 20% might just be one unit. Right? Yeah. In others, it could be a few more. And so it's gonna vary. Right? Good question.

So mixed use chapter eighteen twenty four. And just to start us off here, this is something that I think, is still a little bit more conceptual and we really appreciate some feedback on. But we do have a draft here to sort of start a conversation. But mixed use zoning, it's not it's not new to Canvas, but it's something that I think our plan has drafted is relying much more on than we have in the past. But we have an existing mixed use zone.

It has several purposes here, and one of the, you know, specific purposes is to have mixed use areas, meaning mix of commercial and residential, and promote it says here is a compact or efficient growth pattern that you can achieve by by mixing commercial with residential and having, you know, amenities and needs met close by to to residences. But it really doesn't say a lot. This is what our chapter currently says. And, again, it allows, but it does not require a mix of commercial and residential land uses. So you could have a project in a mixed use zone that is strictly commercial just as you could have a project that's strictly residential.

And as we've looked into other jurisdictions, that's actually not really unusual. A lot of mixed use zones are are written in that fashion where, it's sort of a either or. The idea, I think, on a district scale is you do get that mix. The comprehensive plan talks about mixed use in a couple areas. There's a citywide land use goal that talks about, you know, getting citywide accommodating a mix of housing and employment opportunities.

But there's also a goal on mixed use neighborhoods to create economically and socially diverse mixed use neighborhoods. And it talks about, you know, some of the reasons why multimodal transportation, housing, employment, education, recreation, health needs of the community, meeting all those, checking all those boxes in one place. And I think the area we do that best is is downtown where we're at. This is this is a mixed use area. And we have, you know, that horizontal mixed use where some lots are just one or the other, and we have buildings that have both uses in them vertically.

And then there's three policies within that mixed use goal, and some of them are design related. Some of them talk about, you know, pedestrian and transit housing types. I wanna focus in on the last one. Create a mixed use zone that requires developments to include a minimum percentage of commercial space in both vertical and horizontal mixed use settings. And so that is sort of the key question for the planning commission tonight is, how we wanna meet that that policy.

This has been vetted with the community with you all, as well, and so, we want to do this. The question is, you know, how flexible or strict do we wanna be in that regard? So I wanna share the proposed land use map for the plan. We've never had a mixed use designation in the comprehensive plan before. That mixed use zone that we have falls under commercial currently, currently, but we are looking to create a a brand new mixed use land use designation.

And we're proposing about 250 acres citywide in that designation, which is a significant increase. I don't know exactly how many acres we have today, but it's not nearly that many. And on this map, it's sort of that darker blue, not the light blue. So downtown is mixed use. We have some mixed use in North Shore.

We have some mixed use in Camas Meadows. Some new mixed use areas that we're proposing would be along Pacific Rim. So that's where we're looking at a current commercial site that has had development activity and looking at possibly making that mixed use. A piece of the Ledbetter campus that this campus school district owns, so at the intersection of Ledbetter and Lake Road, about 10 acres there that we contemplate as mixed use. And then there's a couple spots up on on Prune Hill, 28th Avenue, and is that Sierra near Dorothy Fox, just west of, you know, where the the the gas station is up on the hill.

That was a area that's been zoned commercial for forever. And over the years, some of that commercial has converted to housing, but there's still an opportunity, I think, there, given the traffic patterns and the location location to to to do some mixed use. And there's some new mixed use areas along Northwest 6th Avenue and then on 3rd Avenue as well. And so I I point out this map just because there is a pretty big range of parcel sizes and settings. And so you have properties, like, in North Shore, in Camas Meadows, and on Pacific Rimwear.

You know, these are large sites where you could do a true project as opposed to, you know, some of these things downtown or on Prune Hill where maybe it's parcel by parcel something develops. And those parcels are surrounded by residential as opposed to these on the West Side of the city being surrounded by commercial. And so I think that's something that, you know, could inform our discussion on on how we address this choice of mix of uses. And so requiring a mix, you know, we'd be enforcing a fifty fifty balance of commercial and residential. There's some pros.

It achieves the goals of our comprehensive plan. It creates these vibrant areas, ensures jobs and housing are located together. I think a big pro is pro is it produces the jobs or at least preserves the jobs lands at all. Cons, number one, it's harder to achieve in the short term. Right? It's not always viable, in the current market. And sometimes when it's done, and I think we've all seen this anywhere, you know, those first floors are often vacant for a while. Right? And this is, I mean, you can go to any city, right, where that's the case. It's it's not just gonna be Canvas.

It's it's Vancouver. It's Portland. It's Seattle. It's Chicago. Those new spaces have higher lease rates, and it takes a little bit longer for those to fill in. So that that's that's the potential con. Allowing flexibility, this is where we would allow fully residential or fully fully commercial. You know? Today, definitely easier to develop in finance. It's more responsive to the market.

I think you're more likely to see that short term activity if you allowed one or the other. And and more than likely, what you're gonna see is residential. Cons, it it doesn't achieve that mixed use character on a site level. On a district scale, over time, it could. And the big con is the risk of underproduction of of jobs. And so this is kinda similar to that conversation we had on that that senate bill that passed. Passed. We don't wanna lose these lands that we're targeting for at least 50% jobs to to no jobs at all. So there are some proposed changes to the zone. We started with the existing mixed use zone and worked up from there.

So we're introducing a requirement for a mix of uses, some new development standards, and some incentives. And at this point, these are just some concepts, and I think there's more that we can do to to improve this. But this at least, again, starts a conversation for us and, you know, might warrant some further conversation with the planning commission over the next couple of months. So this mix of uses chapter or section does a couple things. First, it it it establishes a a general preference for 50% commercial and 50% residential, But it does state that that mix can be achieved through vertical orientation, meaning, like, ground floor, retail, or geographically distributed on development site, which another way of saying that is horizontal mixed use.

Says, I'll go to be here development proposals consisting of more than 50% of residential use must demonstrate through a phasing plan with specific timelines that the remaining commercial development will be realized within a four year window of the commencement of the final residential phase. So what we're saying here is we may go above that if there are market conditions that would produce that commercial within a reasonable time frame. And so I think the idea here is 60% residential with a commitment of commercial in four years might be better than 50% residential today and no commercial commitment ever. Right? And that could sit vacant for for that next four years or longer.

C clarifies percentages development proposals consisting of the maximum of 70% must demonstrate that the 30% commercial balance will be realized concurrently with the residential development or within two years of the completion of the residential component. So the ways these relate is basically saying 50 to 70% is where we have some flexibility. But if you're gonna do 50 to 70%, it's either four years or or two years where we achieve that balance. And

then

it says on lots smaller than 10,000 square feet, which is about the size of a a large single family lot, quarter acre, a development proposal may be either 100% commercial or a 100% residential. And so I'll sort of pause here because I think this is, you know, sort of the area where I think there could be the most discussion on. But what we're introducing here are three things. One, it's the concept of fifty fifty. That's that's the target and that we're flexible as to vertical or horizontal mixed use.

The second is, k, we're opening the door to more than 50% residential, but that's only if you're gonna give us that commercial quickly. Right? And and that from a development perspective, that makes total sense. Right? You make some money on the housing first, and then you can reinvest that back into the project. But this is where, like, the development the developer is serious. They're serious about the commercial. They if they're gonna do this within two to four years, they have a plan. It's really just a matter of getting the finance lined up. And you hear this all the time, and so we're saying, okay.

We'll we'll give that to you, but you're gonna have to commit to it. And then the third thing it does is it does open the door for maybe there's a threshold. Maybe there's a scenario where you can do one or the other. And that threshold, you know, I think could be based on partial size. I think thousand makes sense.

That could be a higher number if if you felt appropriate. It could also be based on the context. So, for example, you know, if you look at, 28th And and Sierra up on the hill, maybe that's a place where you would suggest it could be either or. Now the parcel size of 10,000 feet probably already works there and gives you that exemption. But so keep that in mind that, you know, that's an option too is you can regulate it not by parcel size only, but by location.

And the other thing that I think was probably an oversight, as we put this together is, I don't think we would be opposed to a 100% commercial in almost any sense. Ask that. Yeah. Right? So and unless, you know, you came up with, hey. There's there's situations where we really, really are wanting that mix. For some reason, I think a 100% commercial would would always be acceptable. Right?

One question. As we talk about these percentages, is percentages of what? Units, square footage?

So it's this might be a good place to move on to general standards here because that answers the question. And and I think this could use some clarity, but it says ground floor uses. All mixed use developments must have a minimum of 50% floor area and frontage is committed to retail or office uses on the ground floor. K? But that it's just talking about ground floor.

And then upper floors anywhere are other uses allowable within that zone. So we're basically saying any upper floor could be any use at all, be residential or commercial. I think the way you look at this has to be related to the the actual footprint or acreage of

the parcel.

How much of the site are you committing to the mixed use? And, I think that would require some amendment to the language here. But, basically, how much of that site? 50% is committed to residential or commercial. But I think if that 50% commercial was just a one story building, we would be open to adding residential on top of that.

So it might be that, you know, the overall square footage of the use would lean towards residential, but the amount of land that it's occupying would cool. And that's where parking is critical in how you calculate that as well. And this doesn't get into that, but, absolutely, mixed use presents an opportunity to do shared parking, and that shared parking could be shared between the residential and commercial components. It could also be shared between a office and retail use. I think a really good example of sort of parking based mixed use project is, on Southeast Mill Plain where, Le Provence is and a Marms Table and, The Hub used to be you know, that project has those two uses.

It has an apartment complex. It has a hotel and another apartment complex. There's a park there, right, that all shares uses. And, you know, I think, you know, the what Province has breakfast hours, Amarama's Table has dinner hours, and so that parking, is used at different times. And still a lot of parking, but if that project was all built separately, you'd have much more there. And so now we're asking ourselves, is that parking commercial, or is it residential?

In the the smaller, parcels up on the, 28th.

Yeah.

If we're a mixed use area is, like, say, 10 acres and we permit multiple residential developments, is it looked at as a mixed use area of 10 acres at some portion that has to be commercial, or each individual parcel can be residential because they're under 10,000 square feet? Yeah. It's like there's all of it too.

Yeah. No. That that's a good question. I think what you would be looking at is the project itself would have to meet that threshold. And so, at that point, you're not looking at the parcels, individually. It'd be someone assembling parcels, and that project might result in, you know, all the commercial being here and all the residential being there. You could also look at, you know, sort of district wide a a target. The problem is that residential is gonna use be used up very quickly. Right? And then the rest is commercial only. And so I think that know that there's a fair way to enforce that.

I guess the risk with the the small parcel size exemptions if you're by parcel and number one, two, three, each one's residential and it's allowable, then you end up with just residential.

Yeah. No. Ex exactly. Right? Which is why I think, you know, that threshold is is fairly low, but it's it's primarily addressing areas where it's redevelopment.

So there's existing homes there or existing businesses. And, you know, if if someone redeveloped an existing duplex and turned that into, you know, a three story apartment building, that I think would be perceived as a benefit. If a small office building was redeveloped into ground floor retail with apartments above, I think that's a benefit too. And you're not getting a whole lot more commercial out of it, but you're still getting that activity that might make that mixed use district as a whole more viable. Right?

And, you know, one of the things you hear is you you need customers for your businesses. Right? So and we agree, which is why we want housing downtown is to support the businesses businesses here. But if it's all housing, then there's no businesses to enjoy. Right?

And so when you have that mixed use area, you can sort of start to appreciate why you want that mix so much as we're trying to create new mixed use areas from the ground up. It's a little bit hard to envision, you know, the risk or benefits. But, you know, I think what what what we're trying to do here in support of the comprehensive plan is, is really, I think, from our perspective, it's it's about preserving jobs lands. Right? And using mixed use as a tool to bring those jobs, rather than yes, I think there's a focus on mixed use districts, right, the vibrancy, but, we we want the jobs.

And what we're hearing is, hey. Give us residential instead, and, we're sort of meeting halfway here. And it's not gonna be a halfway meet if if we just say go all residential. And, again, you know, as I've studied what other cities have done, the idea of a strict percentage is, is not the norm. But we did introduce that into the North Shore sub area so that mixed use zone up there, has a seventy thirty requirement.

So a maximum of 70% residential, which is, you know, well above 50. It's still a lot, but, but that is more strict than the mixed use zoning currently have on the books. And, you know, I could point to a couple mixed use projects that have developed. I think most of our mixed use zoning really is in Meadows area right now. So the Nines at Camas Meadows is a project under development today. A lot of single family and townhomes. There is one lot that's intended for a sort of restaurant tavern type use. Percentage overall of land, it's very small, very small amount. But that came in as mixed use. It's consistent with the zoning.

And the way we look at it, that component really wasn't even required, but they elected to do it to be consistent with the the zone even though the zone would have allowed you to do all houses.

I think having the requirement is gonna be wise. I think I did the same thing driving by the Camas Meadows, development. I was like, wait. That's not how I envisioned this was gonna look Yeah. Because it was all homes. And I was like, this was supposed to be a mix, wasn't it? Yeah. You know? And so just coming out of our process, I think I assumed that it was gonna be a mix. And in reality, the way we have it on the books is it's like, great. It's mixed. I'm putting in all the houses. Yeah. Good. If I can do houses, I'm doing houses.

Yeah. No. Absolutely. And and it surprises me somewhat that, other cities don't have that mix requirement, but some of it might just be where these zones are applied, and and we are trying to create new mixed use areas. Right? And that's the challenge. If you're starting from scratch, and you're just leaving it to the limited developer, you're gonna get something different than, you know, our mixed use zone in downtown, for example, has been successful because it's already a mixed use district.

Well, then I guess the question I had, which maybe we don't need to worry about here, but how is it enforceable if we do something like, okay. You can do your residential now as long as you guarantee that you're gonna do the others within two years.

Yeah. I think that's a that's a difficult question. Because, you know, is it a bond?

As long as you can. If you're a developer, and that's

where your money is. Right? So it it could be a bond. I I I don't see that being received. Well, I don't know. That it'll be difficult to enforce. You know, it one of the ways that the way it's done right now is, when someone builds a, a, you know, six story building with a Ground Floor that is commercial and it stays vacant. Right? That that's what you can see. Right? So that's the level of performance that

I think We'll build a suit sign.

Yeah. And it's up there for a very long time. And then eventually, it might turn into something really great or it's, you know, a tax office or something. Right? So I mean, that that's, I think, always the risk. Right? And that's one of the risks we're acknowledging here as you look at the pros and cons is you require upfront, you'll get it upfront, but is it gonna be anything or not? And what do you have

to stutter

to give them the flexibility or not? I think for us that the key is, you know what we're looking for is really is is this idea of having fifty fifty as the goal appropriate and, should we consider a way to increase that percentage? What is the, you know, what what can we ask for to get that percentage higher for a developer? What we stink again, what we really want to go after here is the commercial development jobs component. And if if that's going to be delivered, then then great.

Right? But if if it's not going to be done within that two to four years, then it might not make sense to do that, and we'll just we'll just wait. So, you know, I I think we, you know, we can continue to to like I said, this is one where, you know, we just felt like we needed to get it in front of you for some discussion before we go too far down one path or another. But, you know, if the concept makes sense of fifty fifty, we'll go up with some sort of benefit to the city, whether it's jobs on a timeline or, you know, maybe it's open space or something like that. Right?

There there's potentially things out there that might make that worthwhile to pursue. And then I think what we're missing here is the 100% commercial is, is fine.

I do like kind of between having both b and c where you have we have what's our I our ideal and on a timeline, but we're gonna be flexible. Yeah. If you're coming in, I'll pick on tomorrow's table and you bought a lot. You're gonna build a restaurant and then build houses around it. Yeah. They giving them more flexibility on how many houses they're going to build because they're already committed. You know, they're committed to commercial first.

Yeah. And I I think if in that situation, it it'd be so much easier to say, yeah. We'll we'll take we'll take that.

Yeah. The thing I think we're missing is that we're assuming build the space and the jobs will come, and there's another another piece to it that Yeah. Just having the space available is not sufficient to generate business. There's gotta be a a secondary component that this this commission can't control, but it has to be in train and collaboratively, rolled out. Because like I said, we you can cities have developed ground floor commercial spaces unoccupied. Seems like there's a we're hoping that having the space creates a demand for

it. Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think what we're what we're hoping for is that, in some of these locations, there is a demand already for that space. It's just that, some of the sites aren't fully suitable for commercial. Right?

So you might have a property that has great frontage. Right? But there's a slope on the backside of it, and, that might make more sense for housing. Or, you know, there are some utility costs that are just, you know, enormous to to start the project. And, you know, if you can, you know, have cash buyers buy lots from you, then, that'll pay you back for your infrastructure improvements and make that commercial more viable.

And these are real examples. And I think, you know, looking at the ground floor retail example, those eventually fill up. Right? You know, you've may have seen examples where they're vacant for a long time, but they eventually do fill up. And and sometimes it's as the neighborhood builds and those residents move in and they have a demand for services and and you get to what you want. And sometimes they're empty because the, you know, landlord is is patient enough for the right use. Right? And they're not willing to just lease to, you know, a a use that's not active retail that's gonna serve their residents. So, you know, I think College in

Northern California that I loved the story that went along with it because they didn't the architect didn't put any sidewalks in when they built the college. And everybody was up in arms because they were like, well, there's no sidewalks. They said, just wait. Open the college, and they waited to see where the kids actually walked. And then they put in the sidewalk. And I think that's kind of what we're talking about with some of those commercial spaces like Livingston or something like that. You build the commercial space, and the incentive is you can go higher and put way more than 50% residential. But then who's there is probably gonna dictate what kind of businesses are gonna wanna be in that space.

Yeah. No. That's that's absolutely true. And I think, you know, there's ways to look at the type of housing that comes in. You know? I think we're assuming it's likely multifamily, but, you know, in Camas Meadows, it's single family. In fact, large lot single family in some cases. Right? And so each site is unique. And, again, we're we're we wanna we wanna have the flexibility, you know, the pros of all that, but, you know, we wanna avoid the con of going back to, again, that bill, which is, you know, sort of in the back of my mind is making sure we're not losing 60% of our prime jobs, lanes to housing.

And so one of the questions we're asking ourselves too is, you know, is the correct approach knowing that that's coming in five or six years to to really be strict about, okay. We're gonna get as much commercial as we can. We're gonna preload it, or do we consider the alternative of, hey. These developers are gonna wait. They're watching the clock, and they're watching this grow, and they're gonna jump at year six and just build housing.

Right? And maybe there's a halfway point where we can salvage some of those jobs. So, again, I think I think we've sort of arrived at there's a middle ground here, and we'll, you know, continue to do some research on that and let me bring this back. I think, again, the parking, comment is one that, I think is worthwhile to address to see how that fits into this scheme. Finally, there is an incentive section, in this code already.

There's a a TIF or traffic impact fee reduction. I I'm not didn't have time to look at what that reference was, but there's a possibility for a traffic impact fee reduction. There's also a 5% increase in lot coverage area, if public art is provided, which I thought was great that that's in there. That's something that we've actually been pushing for more on a citywide level. There's a sustainability incentive, so it's it's reduction in review fees for low impact development.

So that's how you handle stormwater. And so using those first three as an example, we came up with a couple ideas here. And and these, I think, definitely need to be vetted more, and and this is something that, absolutely counsel, would would need to support. In any case, it'd be adopting the code. You'd just be recommending.

But, these are pretty big incentives. The first one is to encourage vertical mixed use to allow, up to half of the residential component to qualify for the city's multifamily tax exemption program. And so what that program is is it allows you to have basically a tax holiday for eight to twelve years on the added value that you're bringing to a site through more residential. And we have a couple target areas. Downtown is one of them.

So the multifamily you've seen develop downtown has utilized this program, and it's a way to encourage development to happen downtown. This would be used as a way to encourage that vertical mixed use. So it's not to encourage housing, but it's to encourage ground floor retail under the housing. So that would be a a local choice the state would allow. We'd have to determine that it made sense, and we were getting enough out of that.

And that might also relate to target areas. So it might not be something that would have to be across the board, but maybe it would only apply downtown, for example. The final one here, and I think this is something we need to to vet, but it's based on kinda real on the ground experience is to encourage in current development of commercial with residential in those vertical mixed use products. So, again, that ground floor retail preventing this vacant space would be to waive permit fees for versus a $100,000 value of tenant improvements. So the tenant improvement is basically, you know, you have this space that's unimproved.

As a tenant, you're coming in, and you're installing the finishes for your use. And that's sometimes what makes these new spaces so expensive is there's this upfront cost. It's not the same as a restaurant moving into a former restaurant space where they have all the kitchen facilities and bathrooms and things built out. You're basically in a shell and you're building that from the ground up. And so that means you have to bring in someone that, one, can handle the higher start up costs and, two, can hire the higher monthly rent that that space is demanding.

And what we see is sometimes those permit fees and specifically the impact fees are you get sticker shock. Right? K. I'm anticipating a certain amount, but now those fees have put me over the edge where it just it's not feasible anymore. And a lot of times, the building owner will provide a certain amount of you know, up to $50,000 will contribute to those costs because they get a benefit if their space is improved. Right? And so maybe in conjunction with that, the city can help encourage that. And the idea here is current improvement of or sorry. Current development of that space. Right?

So these are, again, a couple tools to try to encourage that vertical. And, you know, you know, say again, think they've just been thrown in there as examples of tools that may be at our disposal. You know, we wanna vet those, a little bit more and then obviously get councils buying.

You sounds really, a really good incentive. Yeah. What would be a ballpark permit cost for a $100,000 improvements? We have a is it one percent or 10%? Like, what what are we talking about in terms of

That is I I I'll say I don't I don't know, but, the fees are not the higher fees are the impact fees. It's these aren't based on the value of the improvement. It's based on the impact that's created. And so it's traffic normally that is, what's creating that high cost, and it could be a $100,000 of traffic impact fees. So a 100,000 value of tenant improvements is pretty small amount.

That that's that's budgeted for. Right? The, you know, $30,000 impact fee, quote is what is not anticipated. Right? And so the idea there is, again, just to try to find some way to make those TIs kinda improvements more more attainable.

And so, again, that it's a concept. I think, you know, we would go back and look at, okay, what are other cities doing? If anything, is it does it make as much sense for us to do this? Or maybe as part of the condition of the building permit in the first place, you're requiring the developer to provide that incentive so that, you know, they are contributing to those spaces and and not relying strictly on their tenant to do it. Right?

So, again, the the whole idea here is there's there's a reason to incentivize, you know, affordability to a certain extent, which is why the MFT program works in downtown. But we generally don't need to incentivize residential loan. That's not what this is trying to do. It's intended to incentivize the development of commercial, concurrent with residential.

I think that kind of helps with the question I had earlier about enforcement. You know? We all like incentives better than we like bonds. But if you had the incentives there and say, well, if you don't choose to use that now, then we are gonna require a bond, you know Yeah. Within two to four years. So it's even more of an incentive. Yeah.

I think on e, it would be good to understand a past look back of

kind of

what have some of those incent those impact fees been and whether I'm still having a tough time, like, locking my mind around whether there's enough of them that that's a barrier or not. Yeah. I mean, certainly, know the build out piece Yeah. Is a definite barrier, but it's whether the impact fees is Yeah.

I think for

commercial first small sale retail commercial, and I'm not sure.

Yeah. I would say, the traffic impact fees definitely are a barrier. And and that's assuming I mean, in the assumption is most, most interested parties in those spaces have done enough homework that they understand there's a build out. Right? And so, you you're budgeting for the build out. Right? You know what that's going to be, and you're budgeting a percentage of that being fees. Maybe it's 10 to 20% even. But we, you know, we've had projects, downtown with impact with traffic fees alone of $70,000. And and, you know, those business owners were surprised.

Right? And they made it work. Right? But, you know, you could tell they they were not expecting that. They had a they had an amount in mind. Right? They knew they weren't gonna be able to do this for free, but it wasn't 75 $70,000. Right? And so I I I think the impact fees would be a little bit harder to to to be able to waive, but we already include something in the code here again where there's a reduction that we can contemplate there. But, you know, what we're looking at here is things that Citi can incentivize that may cost us revenue.

They're not costing us out of pocket necessarily. Right? But, you know, is there a way to transfer that to the the building owner? So can they commit? We're gonna pay those fees, or we're gonna prepay them or something because we know that by doing so, we're gonna be able to attract more tenants. And and it's particularly the small businesses Yeah. That are affected. Right? A chain, you know, they're used to it. They've done it a million times, but the small businesses sometimes get turned away from that.

So yeah. I I think, you know, I have, I think, good enough direction to be able to continue to move forward here on, you know, some changes to ultimately ensure that mix of uses is what we're after, without completely, like, killing the viability of of, that zone developing in any reasonable time frame. So, it'll be a tough balance to find, but, we'll continue to work on that and bring it back to you. So, yeah, that's all I had for, for tonight. But, yeah, just back to a few more workshops like this with a couple topics that we dive into some more and some lighter touch points as well.

Thank you, Alan.

Thank you.

See, next on the agenda, we have miscellaneous updates.

The only update really they wanted to share was, obviously, you know, NASA Ashky was elected to counsel, and that's what created the opportunity for for Joe to join the commission. Marla Maroon, resigned after the New Year. She received a a position with the Port of Canis, Washoe Gull. So, we currently have a vacancy on the planning commission. There's a application window that's open currently, and then the mayor will be hopefully making that selection soon to to round us out to the full body of seven. But thank you all for for being here, and I look forward to having the full commission soon. Sounds good.

Let's see. Next meeting date is Tuesday, April 21. K? And let's see. It's 08:29, and I will close the meeting.