Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We'll call the June 16th Planning Commission meeting to order. I get a roll call vote.

Chair Niles.

Here.

Commissioner Walsh.

Here.

Commissioner High.

Here.

Commissioner Anderson.

Here.

Commissioner Keller.

Here.

Commissioner Burak and Hull are excused.

I am here. Commissioner Burak.

Burak's here. She's here. Oh, sorry.

That's okay.

Thanks, Hannah. We also have a junior.

Yay. Miniature commissioner. Yes. All right. So this will be the portion of our meeting for public comment. This will be the time when anyone who has any comments about any item on the agenda, including items up for final action, will speak.

Yes. Hey, Rick Marshall, Canvas Washington. So I was looking over the materials for tonight's meeting and I saw some zoning maps and I thought I should come down and offer a couple of suggestions. But just first, I know staff has been putting in a ton of work on the comp plan and Commission as well. And I just want to thank everybody that's been doing that hard work. Building a city is not easy and it takes a lot of work. And so thank you all for the hard work. So a couple of suggestions. Really, and I think I've mentioned this before, I hate to see us do any down zoning. And the two areas in particular that I would prefer not to see down zoned are in Forest Home and Oak Park. So, I mean, both of these have been multifamily for decades, basically, and both neighborhoods are used to change and have seen some redevelopment. Forest Home is walkable. You know, we have a little bit of neighborhood commercial there. Full disclosure, we own a property on 7th and live up on 10th, but neither of our properties are impacted by this. You know, it's it's close to transit right next to the GP lab property, which is just phenomenal property that I think is eventually going to support really high value development. And I just hate to see us restrict development in that area in any way. I know there's an argument for affordability by by down zoning it, but I really think. that the result is not more affordability. If we restrict the housing types and our ability to develop that intensely, that's just going to lower our overall housing supply and then make affordability less citywide. So, I mean, we really should be looking at developing intensely where it makes sense. And that lower force home area is 1 of those areas. It's not going to redevelop fast. We've had, we've had places in town and I think the south of 3rd Avenue, the soda. Blocks here in downtown are a good example. I mean, they've been rezoned for multifamily or mixed use or downtown commercial for decades. We've seen very, very little redevelopment. So it's a slow process. But again, when people are used to that zoning and they're used to incremental change, let's not take that away and make it harder down the road. Oak Park is a great example of what you get with some misguided exclusionary zoning. Let's push all the multifamily into these older parts of town and then ignore them. But Oak Park, I think, has a really bright future. You know, it's not that well connected to downtown, but it is walkable to the port and the redevelopment that's going on there. It's walkable to some of the commercial along Southeast 8th. There's potential recreation on Washougal River. And, okay, in short, you know, let's not down zone if we don't have to. Thank you.

Good evening Planning Commission and staff. Today I'd like to speak on the proposed mixed use code amendments and the City's zoning code in general. I'd really like to commend, echoing Rick, the proposed policies and the work that was put in and specifically highlight the proposed 20% reduction in parking for shared parking scenarios. This is absolutely a step in the right direction. And it's also an acknowledgement that too much parking is a problem. However, this alone does not go far enough in fostering the stated goals. These documents of promoting compact growth, walkable neighborhoods, and economic vitality throughout the city because it still preserves the underlying problematic parking mandates. And an oversupply of parking is a problem in all commercial zones in our city, not just mixed use. Let's do a case study on the upcoming Parker Village strip mall project. Using the latest plans for the site, I've done the math. Parker Village is slated to contain 150,000 square feet of active commercial space Alongside 782 parking spots at 300 square feet a spot that ends up being 234,000 square feet of asphalt. So, put plainly this development is planned to be 60% parking lot with only 40% productive uses. This is a parking lot with a little bit of retail attached. Why would a developer go out of their way to build a site where the majority is dedicated to a use that generates nothing in revenue? They wouldn't. They've been forced to by the regulatory environment in Camas. Our municipal code mandates a strict multi-use parking requirement of at least one space per 250 square feet. Our regulatory environment is distorting market forces and forcing the developer to put in more parking than will ever get used. instead of the alternative of them building higher value uses that generate more profit for them and more revenue for the city. This is a problem again in all zones, not just our mixed use. Let's contrast that with downtown campus. This is a zone that doesn't operate with parking requirements and you still see for 1 thing that developers have provided adequate parking for day to day use. And on the busiest event days of the year, we accommodate it and we've done the math here too. And downtown produces buildings that are 8 times more valuable per acre than big box developments 8 times. A 20% reduction in parking requirements that is achieved via an expensive parking study only in mixed-use zones is little more than a Band-Aid on top of the real problem. We need to enable higher value land uses in all zones, and the first step towards that is reforming our outdated parking mandates. So let's let the market decide how much parking is needed instead of relying on arbitrary ratios set in the 20th century. Let's do what's best for the financial future of canvas by eliminating our commercial parking mandates. Now.

No, what else in chambers? Anybody online? Right? Those the public comment section. Hey, I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes from our last meeting on May. Nineteenth. After you've had a chance to look at them.

Make a motion to approve the minutes from May 19 that's presented by staff. I'll 2nd, right?

I have a motion to approve by counselor. Hi. And. 2nd, by counselor or any commissioner. Uh, can I get a roll call?

Commissioner Niles. Commissioner Walsh? Yes. Commissioner High?

Yes.

Commissioner Anderson?

Yes.

Commissioner Keller? Yes. Commissioner Barak?

Yes.

That's approved. I don't know, Brian, maybe I'm just, or Sean, I'm just looking into the future for you. all right that brings us to the first item on our agenda which is the yuriko raccoon annexation and madeline will be our presenter today thank you planning commission let me there we go we got my screen no yeah okay perfect there we go okay good evening it's been a little fast i know it has we missed you

Okay, so for the record, Madeline Coulter, one of the planners for the city, and tonight I'm filling in for Robert for the RACU annexation. Now, this is a workshop item tonight for this 10% notice of intent. So before I get into the project specifically, I'll just give a quick background of where we are in the process. This annexation was submitted and it was taken to Council on May 18th. And so, when annexations are taken to Council, Council can either reject the proposal, they can modify the boundary, or they can accept it. And for this one, they decided to accept it as proposed. And then tonight, what we are here for is to workshop items. We're not looking for any formal recommendation. We're just looking to talk about the zoning designation and then hold a public hearing next month where Planning Commission will give a formal recommendation to City Council for a zoning designation. So this is the subject site. It is 2.37 acres. It is one single parcel. It is just north of Woodburn Elementary. And then Camas High School is just to the northwest there. This is near, so about a year ago, North Road Annexation. If you guys are familiar with that, that came in, here we go. North Road Annexation was brought in Yep, that was adopted about a year ago. So now that is all city limits. That's all zoned R6 currently. So this subject site, it is just this parcel directly south of that. There also, if you can see, there's these four parcels right here that are outside of city limits. Those were not specifically included with this annexation. Generally, staff and council like to not have little pockets like this. But in this scenario, we received formal letters from these four parcels. They did not want to be included. And so that's why we're the proposal only includes the one site there. Okay. So now getting into the zoning, if we look at the comprehensive plan designation, this is where we start. Um, we see what the designation is, which in this case, it is single family high. It's in that yellow cream color there. Um, and within that designation, if we look, I don't have a slide for it, but in the packet and the staff report, there's a table there and in the table, If you take a look at the single family high designation, it shows you what zoning correlates with that. And in this case, the only zoning that correlates is the single family residential R6. So that's the only one that's within that. And this is the outdated zoning map. So it doesn't show North Road, but that above it to the north. This whole area is currently zoned R6. You have this parcel up here that's developed. That's R6, as well as this parcel down here to the south is. So, in our 6, so that's kind of a quick overview, happy to answer any questions. But again, tonight, we're just kind of open it up for discussion and we'll come back. Next month questions.

I feel like we didn't we ask these properties when we did the Norse 1. It just took him a few months to say yes after it was all done.

I think, and they submitted a letter, and I think in their letter, they recently purchased the property right after. And so now they're, they're interested.

Yeah, sure.

And then. I just want to ask, I recognize that we. Have 4 letters asking not to be annexed from the adjacent properties that create that pocket.

is that sufficient to leave the pockets um so in this case i'm i mean technically the city could decide to include them generally the city doesn't like to include parcels if they specifically request not to and then also this went to council on may 18th and council had the option to modify the boundary to include these if they wanted to but they decided not to they decided to to keep the single parcel

Don Nottoli, As the feeling that eventually these parcels will be annexed but just know this time just wondering about the extra work and process.

Don Nottoli, They could eventually in the future it's part of the urban growth area. Don Nottoli, They Council just decided that they didn't want to didn't want to include these so if they did come back later at a different time, we would have to go through the annexation process. But as they've sent letters and requested not to be included. I would assume that would be for quite some time.

Thank you for that. I bring this up because there was a number of pockets in the city. I work in that are completely surrounded by city. And still county property, which causes service delivery challenges. So I. Glad to see this isn't fully surrounded. Are there any examples of. Pockets of unincorporated county within canvas city currently.

You're asking about like islands that are unincorporated. I think that's a question that I was going to add to what Madeline stated. I think 1 of the considerations that we would make, and I think council made in there. They're thinking here is. the the likelihood of those parcels being further developed and so i think in this case they are they are low density but there are some newer homes on there they're single family um and it's not likely that uh within a reasonable time frame they would they would develop. Whereas this property owner has, I think, expressed interest in coming in. And one of the things that, you know, if we did a deep dive into the annexation process, typically you want the signatures of 60% of the property owners or 60% of the assessed value, right? And so that was not achieved here. And that's where I think it would be a little bit abnormal for us to extend the annexation area You know, 3, 4 times the size of what was originally requested. Right? So it's a little bit backwards there. You know, if if there was a larger area and 1 parcel is left out, there's times when we've recommended and councils agreed to bring in those areas and just around things out.

Thank you.

The letter mentioned a previous annexation vote. I didn't quite understand what that was about and whether this had come up before and failed to be annexed. Could you say more about that?

Yeah, so here in red, this is the North road annexation. This came in. Last, well, I think a couple of years now, and it was adopted last year in May. I believe these parcels were considered to be part of this annexation. But because we got the letters of these 4 parcels, they did not want to be included at that time. So that that was kind of the reasoning why they, they weren't included then.

Got it. As I recall, that process was driven by some number of the property owners in there, right? It starts with them. They bring their neighbors along.

This is a little bit of an odd request in the sense that normally we would like to bring a larger area in. I think there was a comment made about the efficiency of the process. If we were talking two years ago or maybe even two years in the future, We may be looking at it differently, but in discussing it, you know, our feeling was this was this was something that we would have liked to have included last year. Didn't happen. This is still sort of a fresh annexation and there's a possibility of this being included with the rest of it. Terms of future development possibilities. So, again, normally we wouldn't necessarily bring a small. In individually, we're just sort of. Viewing it sort of as the 2nd phase of that North road annexation.

I would assume it would be easier because of this roads that have been developed already going down to the new development communities. So it's not as been, you know, so it's attached to that.

Yeah, it's contiguous with the existing waters just came to the party. It looks like. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Answer now. All right. Thank you. You should get it. All right, our 2nd item on the agenda is the 2045 zoning code amendments and our presenter is Alan Peters.

All right, thank you commissioners. Yeah, so, uh. Tonight's workshop is sort of a continuation of the last summer we've had this year. We've touched on a couple of sections of, uh. Code updates that we're recommending with the comprehensive plan update. So our target still remains October of this year for adoption of the plan and associated code updates. We're trying to cover some of the bigger items. Inevitably, there's going to be things that. We'll continue to address in subsequent years, but we definitely want to be able to move forward with a lot of positive substantive changes to implement the new plan. And so tonight's topic. We're covering mixed employment and mixed use zoning. We touched on these both previously, one more than the other. And so I think what I'll do is start with mixed use. I think it was in March we shared a draft of this code and got some feedback. So first, I want to tie it back to the draft comprehensive plan and goals and policies related to this chapter. So first off, the plan does support expansion to mix these areas throughout the city of Canvas, both through the Proposed land use map, which was included in the packet as well as through the goals and policies. So there's a citywide land use goal of accommodating a mix of housing and employment opportunities. And then there's a goal on mixed use areas to specifically create mixed use neighborhoods. And there's a number of reasons why, but part of the idea is to create developments that can be more walkable and support the various needs of the community in a smaller area. And then 1 of the new concepts that the plan introduces is the requirement of a minimum percentage of commercial space. In all mixed use settings, which is not something that our current code has. The map again included in the packet is the draft land use map shows a new mixed use designation, which is something that's entirely new to the map and. In the sense that previously actually currently mixed use is a zone that falls under the commercial designation. So some commercially planned areas are zone mixed use. That means that you could take a commercial property and rezone it to mix use without a comp plan change. Or you take a mixed use property and rezone it to commercial without a comp plan change. I think we heard loud and clear that there's a lot of support for mixed use areas. And so we decided that we. but that warranted its own designation. And citywide, there's about 250 acres within that range of parcel sizes and settings. So downtown is a mixed use area, but we also have some greenfield sites, some residential areas that are being up zoned to mixed use, and then a significant portion of the North Rorschach area is also mixed use. So that's the map and the plan. This is a slide from earlier this year. We talked about, you know, that specific goal of our policy to require a minimum percentage of commercial, you know, that choice of requiring a mix. That is, we would be enforcing a 50 50 balance. There's some pros. I think it's good that it ensures jobs and housing together aligns with the plan vision. We talked about the cons could be a little bit harder to achieve in the short term. There's definitely in these mixed use areas and projects, residential seems to be the priority for developers. You know, line flexibility again. I think one of the pros is just easier to develop and finance, but it's significant. Han is besides not achieving that mixed use character we're looking for. It does risk and under production of jobs, and we are counting on these mixed use areas to provide some employment opportunities. For the city moving forward and so we, we've assigned values to each of these parcels and we would not meet that target. If we allowed fully residential products to come in. So, with with this proposed chapter actually thought it'd be helpful to go through pretty much all the code and specific highlighted areas here. These are a couple new purpose statements. so one new one is to require design integration if the mixys project is proposed and constructed in a horizontal rather than vertical regime meaning you know what we want to see is uh not a case where someone you know says hey i'm going to meet your 50 50 requirement you're going to split off half of this and turn it into a subdivision and the other half is going to be some sort of commercial use where there isn't connectivity. That isn't the idea either. It's not just to utilize half the acreage for one use or the other. It's to have some sort of integration between the uses. And the reason why is because we want to encourage vibrant, walkable neighborhoods. So those are a couple new purpose statements. So I want to focus mostly on this mix of uses section, which has been substantially revised after feedback from the planning Commission, and particularly a couple sessions with our staff and where we're able to think more about again our priorities and what we're trying to achieve with mixed use selling. So There's be a new mix of uses section. What it would say is that development proposals shall include a mix of non-residential and residential uses through either vertical mixed use. So that's not only where there's ground floor commercial and residential above horizontal mixed use, which means, you know, perhaps you have a residential in a different building than the commercial. Or combination of both that mix of uses would be demonstrated through approval site plan. So all these projects would go through the site plan review process and that's where they would show. What the, uh, the intent was, and how that mix of uses would be met. For vertical mixed use projects, essentially what this says is that residential uses could be located above ground floor commercial or other non-residential uses. And then a building with ground floor commercial or non-residential uses and residential uses above shall be considered consistent with the mixed use intent of this chapter. So basically any vertical mixed use building works provided that that ground floor is something other than residential. So that's pretty straightforward. There's a lot more information here now about how we look at horizontal mixed use projects. So where commercial or non-commercial or non-residential uses and residential uses are provided in that horizontal mixed use setting, separate buildings, separate portions of the site or otherwise, the development shall consist of a maximum of 50% residential uses. How that's calculated, there's going to be two ways you can calculate it. The first would be it's going to be measured using site acreage. where that site acreage is calculated based on the area devoted primarily to each use. So you'd be looking at the building footprint, you'd be looking at the outdoor areas, the landscaping, the parking, any pertinent structures or utility, stormwater facilities, that type of thing. So that residential area as calculated cannot exceed 50% of the site's acreage. Another way would be through the gross floor area devoted to each use. And so this creates an opportunity where what we're saying is you take a square footage of those residential units, whether they're apartments, condos, townhomes, single-family homes, you take that combined square footage, and you'd have to provide the same amount of square footage in that non-residential use. And so what that could result in is a situation where maybe you have an office building that's four stories tall, um on a more compact footprint achieves that exact same amount of square footage and so there's a balance in floor area dedicated to the use but because of you know more efficient site planning maybe that building's on a smaller footprint it uses structured parking and so the requirement for land may be less than 50 of the site and so it allows you to do a more compact commercial development that provides again that 50 50 split through floor area know we thought about uh which path to take and if there were advantages to either um I think you could look at it both ways. The gross floor area ensures that, again, there's the same amount of floor space dedicated to each use. Acreage, visually, it might look like you're using more towards commercial versus a residential use, but envision a situation where someone takes up half of a site for commercial to single story building, strip mall type setting, a lot of surface parking. They use the remaining 50% of the acreage for multifamily. You know, at a pretty dense level of development, you might actually be creating a lot more residential traffic and floor area in that setting. And so we're providing both paths here. And then there's a requirement that the development be designed as a cohesive mixed use project. And that's going to be demonstrated through, you know, basically the site planning, how the buildings are oriented, whether the parking is shared or coordinated. pedestrian connections, landscaping, open space, any sort of landscape design elements. So again, what we're trying to avoid is a situation where your residential component is sort of fenced off and detached and has no relationship to that commercial. Ideally, someone that lives on site and works on site would have a pretty straightforward way to get to their job and wouldn't have to go outside of the gate and walk through the parking lot to get there. So beyond that, the code would present a preference for commercial areas to be located along street frontages. It says that where there's frontage on an arterial collector or design overlay corridor, which you all talked about last month. Commercial or non-residential uses shall be located and oriented towards the street frontage so as to maximize visibility and accessibility of these uses to the street. So the intent here is, you know, we have, you know, some pretty prime real estate, some of these mixed-use areas. We've got properties along North Shore Boulevard, along Pacific Rim, along SR 500. And we would like to ensure that that frontage that's visible to vehicles and pedestrians is utilized for the highest and best use, which we believe is commercial here. And so this is an example here of this is a Renko station where sort of a mixed use district. And you can see the orientation of those commercial uses on Cornell Road. And as you move away from it, it transitions into residential. still very auto-oriented development. But the idea here is to utilize that frontage and again the way that we think supports our economic development goals the best. The code would also support you know, a situation where on that frontage ground floor retail existed, but the stories above were residential. That would still be consistent with the code. On smaller lots, we drew the line at 20,000 square feet or about a half acre. A development proposal would be allowed to be either 100% commercial or 100% residential. And that's just because, you know, again, some sites are better suited for one use or the other could be difficult to achieve that mix of uses on a small site. And the other thought is, you know, we really are trying to look at that mix of uses on A district wide level. Um, so I think downtown is a great example of a mixed use district where you have some parcels that are fully residential. Some are fully commercial a lot that are both. But we have a mixed use district that's been sort of created organically through those smaller partial sizes. So, uh. If you have an existing small parcel, you could go either way and the desired outcome would be achieved that again, that district level, not necessarily on the parcel level. and residential flexibility. This is a new section that we spent a lot of time discussing. How can we provide the flexibility for someone to meet the intent of delivering commercial quickly and also letting them build a little bit more residential because the reality is I think most developers today certainly would like to do more residential than 50%. And again, we're coming from a situation where the mixed use zone today does not have minimum percentage either way. And the North Shore mixed use zone, which was only adopted back in 23 allows up to 70% residential. So, um. In order to get to that 70%, what we're saying here is there's a couple of ways you can do it. 1 way would just be to do a development agreement where you'd come to council and convince council that intensive is zoning and therefore you should be entitled to get up to that 70%. That's going to be flipped to council's discretion. That's an involved process. Most developers aren't going to want to go through that, but it's an option. or we can look at unique sites a little bit more closely and with Council's blessing go to up to 70% and not above. But the other tool here is a little more clear. If a applicant comes to us and can demonstrate that they're going to provide a superior outcome by ensuring timely delivery of that commercial component, They could use up to 70% of the site acreage for residential as long as they concurrently or ahead of the residential construct commercial. And so we would need to issue a building permit for the commercial components and construction. You started before at the same time as that residential. Um, so we wouldn't issue the residential permits until the commercial ones were issued. Uh, and so the thought here is, you know, you know, we might be able to accept a little bit more residential. That's what it'll take to get that mixed use project built from the ground up concurrently. Um, you know, alternatively, uh, under the base requirement. Uh, we could get a situation where someone says, okay, here's here's my site plan phase 1. 50% of the acreage, it's residential. Phase 2 is commercial, and you'll get that when we're ready for it, right? So this is a little bit of an incentive to try to get that commercial delivered more quickly. And again, while this is a residential bonus in a way, it is still a higher standard than what is currently in our code. Beyond that, there's some new ground floor standards meant to ensure that those ground floors of these mixed-use buildings is suitable for commercial and adaptable for a variety of uses. One requirement here that's proposed is a four to ceiling height of 15 feet, which would just ensure that there's space to meet building code requirements to fit mechanical systems for the commercial use. minimum facade transparency of 60%. So providing a lot of visibility to the street for those commercial uses. And then this third standard is one that, you know, tries to address an issue where we've seen where in a lot of new construction buildings, developers will set aside these tenant spaces that Are sometimes larger than what the market is used to and those spaces can sometimes sit vacant for longer. And so didn't want to be too strict here, but there's some language that specifically says to support small business and flexible tenant occupancy. Ground floors need to be designed to be capable of subdivision into a variety of tenant spaces. So they would have to demonstrate through the entrances, through the structural components, mechanical systems that those spaces could be divided into smaller spaces or into a variety of sizes. So you know a good example would be the livingston uh uh both a good example in the sense that you know that building's been there for several months and does not have any tenants in it yet but you know one of the spaces could be two 1500 square foot spaces or a 3 000 square foot space um as an example i don't know if those uh square footage are exactly right but there's some flexibility there um I think if we can get below 1,500 square feet, that opens up a lot of opportunities. 1,500 square feet is actually pretty big for a small business. That is just one of the concerns is we want to see these spaces be adaptable. That's something that would apply unless the applicant demonstrates that they need larger spaces or if there's a specific tenant that's coming with that. Let's say there is a situation where someone So say we're going to build a downtown grocery store, and it's going to be on the ground floor. It's going to take a 20,000 square feet. That would be reasonable right to build this to suit that specific singular use. And then there was a comment here about shared parking. So there's this introduces some new. Options for shared parking specifically encourages mixed use developments to make efficient use of parking through shared parking, reduce parking demand, pedestrian and bicycle access and connections between complementary uses. So this ties back to the idea of integrated site planning. Um, but where shared parking is demonstrated, uh, that could be reduced by 20% with a shared parking plan. So, essentially, what we'd be looking for is, um, a parking study to be provided showing Kate. This is, you know, this is the residential use. We expect that most of our tenants are going to leave that building leave their parking spots during the daytime. There's an office or medical use next door. Those visitors are going to come while those spaces are being vacated, and that would result in reduction in the required parking. And then more of the site being used for those productive land uses. That's something I was trying to look for some examples. The one that keeps coming to mind. This is Mill Plain Boulevard, where La Provence is and where Tomorrow's table currently is, uh, that's a, uh, it's a large surface parking lot. There's a lot of uses that utilize that. You have a hotel, a couple apartment buildings and residential uses, and then you have a city park where most of those spaces are available for for all users. I don't know if there was a shared parking plan that allowed them to reduce the number of spaces, but There certainly seems to be enough parking for those uses, and I think, again, the demand for each use very so what provides. focuses on breakfast moms table does dinner or lunch right and so they're able to utilize that parking space in between that sort of the thing we're after.

in uh in addressing shared parking here like if i can interject yeah like that particular example actually didn't work very well for the people that did live in that area because of i've seen signs everywhere in that parking lot that says this is not for the restaurant parking this is for our tenant parking so they actually may have started that way but i think they've actually gone the other direction now because they found too many people were parking in the tenant parking spots

Yeah, no, that's I haven't seen that, but that's that's a good observation and you do see that in a lot of situations.

Imagine that if we're here, especially in our city that if you say, oh, well, you leave for work in the day, you know, then somebody might. Park in your parking spot for the commercial aspect, right? People don't have normal working hours, so they might come home and say, Hey, I don't have a parking spot.

Well, I think, you know, I think that's something we'd be looking for in that that parking study right is to demonstrate that it's feasible, it would work. And I think the last thing you want to do is create a situation where it's not really where it's confusing to the visitor right as to where you're allowed to park. And some places it's very clear this is, you know, free for all other places. You know, you have to make sure you're not in the residential parking lot or the hotel parking lot or whatever. Right? And so that's something we'd be looking for with a parking study. Do you want to point out? Because parking has come up a lot. Our intent is to discuss parking in depth, sort of citywide at the July meeting. And one of the things that we'll be sharing for Council's consideration is this state law that was passed I can't remember if it was last year or the year before, but it's one that introduces parking minimum, like maximum minimum requirements that cities can impose. And that applies to cities of 30,000 population or more. So when that was adopted, I think last year, and we talked about being a few years out from that, we're 18 months closer now to that 30,000 level, probably about four years away. give or take some. So one of the considerations would be, you know, do we sort of double down right now and just wait, knowing that that's coming? Or do we just voluntarily comply with that ahead of time? One of the things that's in there is that for vertical mixed-use buildings, you can't require parking for the mixed-use, for the commercial component that mixes the building. So if that were to apply, we want to look at this as well, because you know, this could be providing an incentive on top of something that's already a benefit, right? So we want to kind of think holistically about how these things interrelate. But I think generally the idea of, you know, uh utilizing parking uh as much as you can for various uses throughout the time uh throughout the day uh is a good idea it's just a matter of uh trying to make sure that it works and that's why this language is written to rely again heavily on that parking plan and the applicant's demonstration of that parking plan uh because i think it's going to be hard to predict what those mix of uses might be um And then the last thing, before we get to Commissioner Anderson's question here, incentives. We added one new incentive here, and this is to encourage affordable housing development. What it says is regulated affordable units may be exempted from the residential portion of the use percentage and counted towards the non-residential percentage minimum. The intent here is to refer to the affordable housing requirements that apply to middle housing. And so there's a formula there. So I don't want to repeat all that tonight. But, uh, if you comply with that program. Essentially, we would count those affordable units as commercial space. So, again, this is another way to get a little bit more residential out of a project. Um. and uh would you know wouldn't come at a cost to us except that you know we're giving up some of that commercial land but uh if if a developer were to commit to that 50-year affordable housing timeline uh then that affordable housing component whether it's square footage or site area would be considered commercial uh and i think that uh yeah that was all yeah we can go to commissioner anderson

James Meeker, Thank you Alan for your presentation, if we could go back a slide can you give us an impression of what the difference would be if we enacted that recently passed state policy four years early in relation to the required parking being reduced by 20% or more.

Alan Fekete, So it's. It's hard to say because the way our parking ordinance currently works is the specific land use dictates the number of spaces that are required. For example, a restaurant is going to require a certain number of spaces per square feet. An office would be similar. It's going to vary, but you're going from something like You know, let's say it's 1 space for 200 square feet for a restaurant to 0 spaces for that restaurant. If the state law, I guess I should say when that state law applies to canvas in 4 years here. Right? So that 20% is. Pretty small relative to. zero space is being yes right but it's you know this that that uh minimum or sorry that that that state law um prohibition on requirement of parking on that vertical mixed use would not apply to the horizontal mixed use setting so um it's again it's fairly complex which is why you know my feeling is um you know i'm looking for just you know general feedback on the concept here, but that's something that I think you'll want to look at a little bit more closely next month as far as how these relate. I don't want to get too deep into the weeds on that parking bill, but one of the other things in there is we wouldn't be able to require more than 0.5 spaces per residential unit or for certain units that are small, we wouldn't be able to require any spaces at all. It's somewhat straightforward in that regard. Right. And that's our future four years from now, regardless. And so, you know, part of our conversation next month is going to be, you know, how much energy we want to devote towards, you know, different mechanisms of regulating parking when there might just be a formula that works well enough. And in all cases, you know, our code is a minimum standard. Right. The state codes a minimum standard and developers could come in and say, hey, you know, you're only requiring this, but we really think we do need this parking.

Right. So I guess what would be helpful next month is to look at something like this image down here and talk about how it might be different following the new state guidance in four years or should we adopt it early? Thank you. I look forward to that discussion. Appreciate the insight. Yeah.

one one thing that we may also discuss uh next week it may be more germane to next week than this week but it does um is is there any advantage to the different mixed use development these mixed use developments for actually providing like non-surface parking because it's certainly more expensive to provide parking that's somehow within the building either

development out of the acre right right um i think it's something that uh we would want to encourage in the mixed-use development setting i believe there's a little bit of language in the north shore code as well as downtown about a preference for it um for example i believe uh There's a situation downtown where structured parking could count towards. Your commercial ground. That's what I was thinking area. And then, I think, going back to the example I mentioned earlier, where, you know, the gross floor area basis of calculating that mix of uses could result in a situation where. The developer says, hey, I could build a. you know, a compact Class A office project, right? I have the right tenant, and they're going to go five stories up, and they want structured parking. But that's going to leave a ton of land over, and I don't want to be penalized because I'm building a nice product, right?

Sure looks a lot more flexible.

Yeah. yeah it's it's more flexible than where we started a few months ago uh it is a little bit I mean I think quite a bit more strict than today's uh code and I think that that's a good thing um and something that I've heard consistently from our planners is you know they're looking for a way to be able to have some teeth around you know the feedback when they see a mixed use project that's just you know too much residential to be able to say okay no there's there's a strict standard here and you need to meet

Just a random theoretical you were talking about. So, if they go that you do. Um, lower cost housing and then if they're small enough. Would you be able to possibly in mixed use build. An apartment that has, like, smaller units and requires no parking.

So, theoretically possible, then theoretically, yes, under this new state law. I want to say the threshold might. Justin Cappos, might even be twelve hundred square feet, which is Justin Cappos, so it's not terribly small.

Justin Cappos, I'm a fan of that, I think, in the right location. That would be a great idea.

Justin Cappos, And then, again, we'll get into more of this next month. Our parking code already for multifamily has a tiered approach. So a three-bedroom unit requires more parking than a studio. Justin Cappos, Okay, So if there's no more discussion on that, um, to move on to the mix employment. So, uh, it's employment. This is sort of a newer zoning concept. We embrace it with the 2,022 adoption of the North Shore sub area plan, and then the 2023 code development in North Shore. So this is essentially kind of most similar to, like, a light industrial or business park zone, and it applies in North Shore currently. These are flexible, job-focused zones. They're not purely industrial. They're not purely office or retail. And so a lot of times you'll see a zone included. Ours is one where you'll have an industrial zone, an office zone, and a commercial retail zone. So it's sort of a little bit of all those, but again, the focus is on creating employment opportunities. It's not on manufacturing. It's not on sales tax. It's on employment. And the draft plan supports expansion to mix employment areas throughout canvas. There's a goal and several policies here again, providing that mix of traditional industrial, non, initial land uses. Flexible zoning, evolving business needs. integrating industrial and high-tech uses, supporting both large-scale employers and small businesses. And then I think one of the other thoughts is, you know, providing services and amenities to serve those employers, right? So, you know, you can envision Grass Valley or Lake Road, you know, the west side of campus, where we do have a lot of these large employers. And, you know, if you're working at any of those businesses, WaferTech, for example, or Fisher, and you leave your office to get lunch, the chances that you're going to lunch in Vancouver are extremely high, right, based on what's available around you. And part of that is a consequence of the zoning, which does not in those areas currently allow restaurant uses or cafes. So that is sort of one of the thoughts here is, you know, not just providing jobs for campus residents, but providing services and amenities for the people that are coming to campus to work. And so a mixed employment area would introduce the possibility of a coffee shop being located, you know, not on a 20-acre site, but on the corner of a 20-acre site that's going to serve the community at large. I think a good example of A modern sort of mixed employment type setting is actually the Hood River Waterfront, which has some industrial scale buildings, some manufacturing, a lot of breweries, but there's also a waterfront, lots of tourism, restaurants, drinking establishments, that type of thing. And they all work together and they're integrated very well. provides a lot of jobs and revenue for that city. And so that's a really great example of what we would love to be able to achieve with a mixed employment zone. So as with the prior item, this is the draft land use map identifying those large mixed employment chunks. And they're basically largely located in the current industrial areas on the west side of Camas. So this is Resulting from a consolidation of the light industrial, the business park, and then our light industrial slash business park zone. Those are all becoming mixed employment. And then there's some new mix employment areas in the North Shore sub area, and then a new mix employment area and vision for Northeast forty third Avenue next to canvas high school, where there's some substantial acreage that I think would be ideal for this type of use. So I mean, it kind of generally summarize this zoning text. Just as the zone is a combination of land that's in those different zones. Some of this text comes from existing language in our code and other sections. There's a purpose statement. The intent is to provide high wage employment opportunities while providing a flexible zoning environment. That's going to again provide that range of commercial land uses, including retail and services on top of industrial office, high tech uses. A lot of the intent of the zone is going to be achieved through the site development standards, which was providing a lot of flexibility and what you can do on a site does have. I think some pretty robust site planning requirements, landscape requirements. There's a lot of flexibility on lot size. So again, you know. We're not necessarily expecting that you're going to have a 20 acre office campus. You might have a small property that's set aside for a cafe. So there's no minimum or maximum lot size. There's a building height of 60 feet. It could be 45 feet. So there's a range there that we're looking at. Setbacks would be 20 feet across the board. So you're going to always have landscape perimeter for buildings and parking. And then there's a new requirement for 5% usable open space. So, 5% of any site would have to be dedicated to usable open space, which is defined here as an area that's going to provide opportunity for active recreation, passive relaxation or community interaction that's accessible to the public employees or customers. So that would be, you know, it could be a plaza, could be walking trails, could be John Pimentel, courtyard picnic area any sort of not just open space, but an area that's programmed or is programmable where. John Pimentel, You know, again, someone at lunch might be able to go read a book somewhere or a neighbor nearby could you know enjoy some of the site amenities so that's 5% of the site, not a huge amount, but enough to provide some value back to to the Community.

John Pimentel, Would that. Open space requirement on that on these type of things. So there's some larger properties would would like a food cart space. Satisfy that thing if you had obviously the, the carts themselves wouldn't be the open space, but if you had most of the ones around here are starting to get pretty. Yeah, I don't want to find as far as like, they have a large commons area for eating and that kind of stuff.

I don't I don't I don't think, you know, the food car, like, a strictly food cart space itself would not meet that. I think that just be a commercial use. But what I would imagine here is that, you know, you have a food cart. You know parking area located in a usable open space where you don't have to necessarily be a customer of that food court to hang out there. Right? But um, it I mean, I think a good example of usable open space are some of the open spaces we have downtown. Right? You know, it's available for anybody. You can grab a coffee from a coffee shop downtown and enjoy it on a bench downtown. Or you can just sit on that bench because you want a place to sit, right? And that's the idea. This is available to everybody. Everybody has access and feels welcome. And so, you know, on a lot of sites, it's going to be very little. On a 20-acre site, it's going to be an acre, right? It's a pretty substantial area to work with. Parking. James Heiting. Boy parking, I think, you know, a really important use, particularly in areas where we don't have great transit currently. And so You know, be allowed, obviously, but the idea here is that employee parking would be located behind buildings, not visible from the street necessarily. Visitor parking customer parking could be upfront and that's a model. You see anything in a lot of corporate campuses and it's pretty clear. This is for visitors and it's going to have a little bit different feel more welcoming than perhaps the employee parking somewhere else. Loading areas could not be visible from the public right away, so they'd have to be located elsewhere besides the front elevation of the building and screen from view. The screening requirements for garbage utilities, there's lighting requirements. So kind of general site planning requirements to do our best to work in large scale projects generally. These are not necessarily intended to be walkable areas, but still have a nice aesthetic appeal. There's also building design guidelines on materials, site orientation, design features, sort of general architectural standards. And these are all, I believe, in the light industrial business park zone currently. So i'll point to the use table. So this is an important piece of of how this relates to the existing light industrial zone. So this is a table in chapter title eighteen of the code, which identifies the allowable uses in each zone. So it's a main tricks where on the top that row has each zone and then that first column is all the possible land uses and it'll tell you whether a use is permitted or not permitted or a conditional use in a zone. And that last column is the mixed employment North Shore zone, which is what we're using as a template here. And you can see if you wanted to go through that table line by line, that it allows a broader range of uses than those individual zones. So, you know, business park is generally thought of more of as an office or research type zone, light industrial, more light industrial, those commercial zones, more retail or commercial. and so you'll see that in in some of those zones there's uses that are not allowed that would be allowed in another zone and mixed use sorry mix employment um basically combines those all into one so uh providing that flexibility um you know part of the reason we're doing this is to bring some efficiency to the code but also as we look in the west part of canvas you know um trying to provide some flexibility in how those spaces that have not yet been developed or that might be infill potential are being used. Um, and then, as we think about uses, warehousing is 1 that we wanted to point out in particular warehousing is an allowable use in these zones today that would not change. But we actually drafted some language here to address concerns. Um, not just locally in canvas, but, you know, generally in land use about, uh. Large fulfillment centers that take up a lot of land don't necessarily produce a lot of revenue or jobs in particular. So, these are uses that would still be allowed, but only as an accessory use when directly associated with and supported into a permitted principal use located on the same site. So this would not just provide. It would not provide just for like cell warehousing. It would be a situation where you were manufacturing, you know, or you had retail. So you could have a warehouse space for that use, and it could occupy up to 50% of the space in a building. So it's still allowable, but not as a standalone use moving forward. Another use that Hearing and reading a lot about his data centers. Um. My interpretation of the tables is that data centers as standalone use are not allowed in the code. Uh, but similarly, I think, uh. I guess the data center generally is viewed as a standalone use, but companies could have server rooms and things like that. That would be fine. I don't think that's something that our code necessarily needs to get into. But our interpretation of it is the code is basically silent on it and therefore doesn't allow data centers.

Would it be smart to put that on that table? I mean, it could say like data center standalone. And have access all the way across. I mean, when I was looking at today, I was going to the questions I had for you. I was just like, huh? I didn't see it anywhere listed anywhere. I'm just like, for. This is that might be a good thing to say, but I'm looking it up and doing my little Google site and come up and say.

Okay, yeah, and that's that's a totally reasonable thing to do. I think, uh. It wasn't something we're necessarily thinking when we drafted drafted it. Um. But then in preparing the packet in this presentation and thinking about warehousing specifically that. Christopher McConkey, came to mind for me, and so we could add that or add similar language around that use. Christopher McConkey, Because I think it's always a good thing to clarify you know there's a land use I think it's. Christopher McConkey, It says something like high tech industry right, so I could see a site selector saying Oh, this is high tech industry right um that's not how we see it. Christopher McConkey, it's not. Christopher McConkey, Not developed it's not resurgence it just. there um and obviously something that's needed uh but we have very limited developable land and we'd hate to see you know our land and resources utilized for a use that um isn't providing a lot of benefits back to our local community is there any warehouses actually permitted right now like in the plans because I know there was a talk of one by way of protecting John Pimentel, I mean years ago, but yeah so still standing and Tony has permitted three warehouses one has been constructed on order of 13th and fiber strong for the interstate batteries warehouse canvas man was in the F two more permitted on link road.

John Pimentel, I would be very careful of how you put in the data Center first of all. from being in the industry, you don't have any land that's big enough to make it worthwhile to actually build a data center. To making sure you don't restrict it to the more common use would be you have a large office building with engineers and people in it, and they need a local data facility. careful, you don't make it such that you say, No, HP, open AI, Apple, we're not open for you, because you can't have like your, you know, You have mostly workers here, but you need this.

We need to think about adapting our thoughts here on warehousing, where it's an accessory you're serving on-site industry as opposed to an off-site data center.

It's the same thing as warehouses. If it's primarily a manufacturing facility, but they have to do some warehousing, you want that, but James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, it's the same thing as it is primarily office tech Center, but they do have some data Center that's good what you don't want is the giant building yeah.

James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, stand alone, and I think I think even you know if the apple built a campus here, they might have a standalone data Center on that site right right it's not gonna be 20 acres but yes, going to be.

James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, It could be consolidated, and so I think that's that's what it is it's like you're you know they may have something on that time.

So I think those are both good suggestions, especially because it's sort of the topic that you're, you know, warehousing is one that we have a little more experience with in Canvas because it has been permitted and we're seeing, and we've seen a lot of development in Vancouver warehouses, right? But yeah, I mean, hopefully you're right as far as, you know, electrical and water restrictions and then land on top of it, you know, Other than power being cheaper here relatively than other areas, it's probably not the best place to do it.

But yeah, because even Hillsborough size wise land capabilities is getting too small. Yeah, the data centers aren't big enough.

Yeah. OK. Big footprints.

Yeah, so it looks like Commissioner Anderson has a comment, but that was the extent of our presentation.

Thank you, Alan. What would restricting lower area to employee ratio be a way to achieve that we want jobs not giant buildings so you can have a a HP you know a development center we have employees or you can have a giant data center with five employees so a ratio of employees to square footage could be a way to limit that that unintended desire an undesirable use

I see where you're going with that. I will say, you know, one of the planning targets that we're working with and trying to meet with all of this is a goal of, in some of our commercial areas, of 20 jobs per acre, right? And that's difficult to meet with, you know, warehouse use. However, you know, there are a lot of good job creators and HP would be a good example. That has some pretty compact workspaces, right, but has very large labs or common areas, cafeterias, right. So there's a lot more. It's some of it just office design right now is adapted to more common areas. And so I think it's gonna be hard to, to address all the possibilities of, you know, different types of employers, whether it's, you know, manufacturing might need a ton of floor space because they're, you know, they're building modular homes inside of a factory, or again, you know, a tech company, might prioritize large common areas over individual workspaces. But I think, again, what we're looking at is that overall goal of 20 jobs per acre, and through that, trying to develop a code that prioritizes uses that generally provide a good ratio of jobs. And I think we've highlighted to here the data centers and the warehouses, which just don't do that. And the other thing we're looking at is kind of similar to mixed use. Not every employer is going to provide that ratio that we're looking for. But ideally, on a district wide and city wide scale, we're achieving that goal. And we have actually done pretty well with that across the board because you only need a couple future investments or wafer tax to be able to balance things out for those lower density type uses. Thank you, Doug. um all right so those are a couple quicker items but big ones uh next month's meaning like I said we're going to go into a little bit deeper dive and the use table in each zone uh and tie that together with with parking and so um you know again I think just a little bit of preview there uh you know we're going to be looking for some feedback and thoughts on uh John Potter, You know whether it makes sense to sort of get ahead of the state's impending deadline on on on meeting their parking requirements.

John Potter, Any other comments on this. John Potter, All right, miscellaneous updates. John Potter, I don't have any okay. That our next meeting is July 21st. And with that, we'll close the meeting. Thank you.