Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Hey, good evening everyone. We got an echo. Testing. Maybe that's an empty room.

Hello. Okay.

All right, well, thank you, Amanda. Okay, welcome everyone to this evening's Planning Policy Commission. July 23rd, and we're gonna gavel this meeting into session. It's currently 6.31 p.m. Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting. The Planning Policy Commission is in person. Staff or members of the public may be attending virtually this evening. Kristen, do we have a quorum this evening?

Yes, we do, Chair.

Excellent. Okay. We're going to have a fun evening tonight. This is my nightmares are made of. So the great thing is this evening, you guys have seen this material probably three to four times now. So I think most of our responses are probably going to be baked in. The fun part of this evening, it's going to be very formal. We're going to make motions and amendments and have votes and we'll see how that goes. But we want to begin with the approval of minutes, and before you, you have the July 9th PPC meeting minutes. Are there any questions, concerns, anything to point out to staff? Okay, hearing none, those meeting minutes for July 9th are approved. Right now, we want to hold time for general public comment. We are having a public hearing a bit later, so this is, again, just for the good of the order for the Planning Policy Commission, and I will look towards Amanda. Do we have anyone online who would like to speak this evening?

We do have people online, but I do not show that they have any comments at this point.

Okay. And it's worth mentioning to those who are watching us online that again, we'll have separate time during this session to have public comments for the actual public hearing that is about the regular business. So again, we're just right now, it's just for the good of the order, the planning policy commission, the city, anything you'd like to mention, but having no hands and having no audience this evening, we're going to move along to our public hearing. So this is the first item of business, which is to hold that public hearing and provide a formal opportunity for public comment regarding the promoting building investment code amendments, specifically proposed title 18 amendments related to requirements for natural context areas, transparency, permitted uses in the UV comm RET zones and parking requirements. Okay, this is where it gets formal because there are four separate amendment proposals. We're going to follow a little bit different process this evening to keep it all organized, not only for staff, but also for us. So staff is going to present on the first topic and then the commissioners will have an opportunity to ask follow up questions. So for each, topic, then we will open it up for the public hearing, let the public comment on that particular topic. And then we will move on to the next part of the presentation. We will repeat again, commissioner questions, let the public comment, then go back to another presentation, public comment. And again, we will actually wait for our deliberations at the very end. Once the presentations are finished, once the public comments have been made, and then we will deliberate all of the topics as a whole. We're still gonna break them up individually. We'll have four different motions, but we figured this is probably a better way to keep it organized. It also gives our public the opportunity to comment on individual pieces of those amendments, so they don't have to stick around if they don't want to. I thought we might have more in person, but that's okay. But that was kind of the idea. So members of the public only need to sign up once, but should feel free to come up to the podium after each topic to provide their comments. While this process is set up to hear comments related to each code amendment after it is presented, members of the public should feel free to make comments regarding any of the proposed amendments during the time allowed after each presentation. So when the PPC has asked all of its questions and we have taken all public testimony, we will close the public hearing and begin deliberations. We will address each amendment one by one. Okay. Kate Kaney, our principal planner, and Yiyi Chen, our associate planner, will start tonight's presentation. So Kate and Yiyi, please go ahead when you are ready.

Hey, just give me one moment. I think we are ready to go with the presentation now. Great. All right. Well, thank you. Um, and good evening. I am Kate Caney, the principal planner here with the city. And I am here with my esteemed colleagues, um, to, uh, present the four code amendments that the commission has been working on over the past several months. So again, um, we are here, uh, to hold this public hearing also to take public comment. provide an opportunity for the PPC to deliberate and take action if appropriate tonight. Again, the public hearing is a little different, just as a reminder. So after each of the amendments are presented, then there is that opportunity for the questions from the Commission and public comments, and then we go to the next topic. So just a little bit of background for those who may not have been following very closely. So these proposals tonight that are the focus of this public hearing are part of the overall promoting building investment in Issaquah program that was launched earlier this year by city council and the administration. And the main goals of this program are to really accelerate building housing, building the other development envisioned not only in the comprehensive plan, but also in the central Issaquah plan. So we had, or sorry, there were 17 different projects identified on what is called the PBI work plan. Two code amendments were adopted just last month, and the four code amendments tonight, natural context areas, transparency, Allowing multifamily uses in the UV comrade zones and parking requirements are the second set of amendments that the commission has been reviewing and that are out to the public for comment. So the schedule as we move forward after tonight is August 4th. There will be the city council planning development and environment committee meeting where we will bring the recommendation from the commission as well as all the public comments we will receive. And we anticipate council to take action later in September. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and hand over the presentation to my colleague Yi Chen.

Good evening commissioners and everyone in virtual attendance. My name is Yi Chen and I'm an associate planner with CPD. And tonight I will be presenting natural context areas. So just to recap from the PBI Council Goals and Outcomes Work Plan, for natural context areas and transparency, the main issue is it is difficult to meet energy code requirements with significantly larger windows for over 30% of the facade. And then the goal and objectives is to provide flexibility and transparency requirements along natural context areas. And some of the possible actions that have been proposed are to reduce or eliminate transparency requirements along natural context areas. So for this proposed amendment, it's gonna be Central Issaquah's natural context areas. And the applicabilities are when you're located in Central Issaquah and within 150 feet, either partially or totally of natural context areas. And this includes regulated streams, regulated wetlands, city parks, city open space, private open space, and natural storm ponds, all located within Central Issaquah. So as of currently, we do not have an intent in our code. However, we do have policies to encourage developments to prioritize resource management, integration of Issaquah's natural features while ensuring they remain accessible to the public. So just to kind of recap what staff is proposing, and this is, we added a definition for natural context areas, along with an intense statement and clarified applicability subsections. We removed transparency requirements for the full facade when facing natural context areas. However, this has only been replaced by ground floor transparency requirements. And we added a flexibility to meet code intentions. And this includes site design standards to recognize the need for access and amenities eligibility when separated by a street. And building standards will still be maintained. Wayfinding has been added for clarity and prohibited uses. Subsection has been incorporated and this is for uses such as drive aisles, dumpsters, and loading areas. All right, so for since you guys all have been, you know, marinating in the track changes, we decided to just give you some examples tonight. So the first one is going to be the building design because we kind of reformulated it to kind of be site and building specific. So facades that face natural context areas shall be designed with balconies, stoops, porches, rooftop terraces, and ground floor transparency and no blank wall treatments still apply. And this is to demonstrate what the code intends when the site is, you know, the facades are facing the natural context area. And so here's an image to just kind of show what we're looking for with all the balconies and emphasis. So the next one is going to be for site design, and this is for sites directly adjacent to natural context areas. And our intent is for uses and activities must connect the site to the natural context area, and this is through the incorporation of native plants, public walkways, and water-oriented features if by a natural context area with water. So some prohibited uses and activities are going to be dumpsters, outdoor storage areas, driveways, drive aisles, parking and loading areas, just to prevent the division between the site and the natural context area. And lastly, we have examples of site design when there is a street separation that's occurring between sites and the natural context area. And this includes driveways, drive aisles, parking and loading areas are allowed in order to give sites their entitlement to access and amenities. However, this just means the site design. building design guidelines will still remain effective. So in the previous sites that you've seen, there will still be balcony stoops, transparency and no blank wall treatments that will still be applicable. And that concludes my presentation for tonight. Are there any questions?

Thank you. Okay, this is where the formality begins. Commissioners, do you have any questions regarding the presentation? on natural context areas. Any questions at all? Commissioner Adair.

In the case of a street, it would just be specifically the drive aisles, the parking, et cetera. You would still be prohibiting dumpsters and storage. Is that correct? Yes.

Any other questions? OK. So now we're going to formally open the public hearing, which we will close after all the presentations. But we would like to open the public hearing this evening at 6.43 PM. This is a team effort tonight. So Amanda, has anyone signed up to speak? Amanda?

We're just waiting for one quick second to see if anyone does. OK. No. No, Chair.

Okay. Thanks, Amanda. Taking bets, which is going to be the big topic this evening. I'm going with parking. I think parking is going to be the one. All my chips are in for parking. Okay. All right. So we are now going to move along to transparency. It looks like Emily is up. So Emily Medina, please go ahead.

Thank you chair, Emily Medina, senior planner. And we will run through the transparency code amendments before you tonight. So again, issue that was identified as part of the PBI council goals and outcomes, difficulty meeting the energy code for developers when they're significantly large windows and high transparency percentages along the facade with a goal to provide better flexibility and transparency along street frontages. So transparencies, windows and doors, on facades, helps break up the buildings, prevent blank walls, increase pedestrian interest, activate ground floor uses, all those pedestrian friendly items that we like to see. So going through a summary of our proposed code amendments. The first one is revising how transparency is measured. Currently it is zero to five feet with the proposed amendment two to eight feet to better represent the desired pedestrian experience in regional building practices. That sheet that was in the packet last time is in your packet this time as well. That shows various examples along Front Street and how changing the measurement allows the percentages to be met more easily and also just provides the experience that we actually desire at the right height. The other proposed amendments, we revised the applicability for ground floor transparency sections to exempt townhomes, light industrial and industrial uses. We removed a sign code standard that's already addressed in our sign code. And then we separated multifamily and commercial ground floor transparency and the current code, they're grouped together with the same percentage. And so we decided to propose to separate those two items and then eliminated retail as a separate category and are just proposing to use the broader term commercial. In terms of how we're changing the percentage standards, the proposal is to reduce the existing citywide requirement for 70% ground floor transparency for retail uses to 45% for all commercial uses everywhere in the city, with the exception for commercial uses in the urban core zone, where the 70% requirement will be maintained just along streets. And I just included an example of the Great American Diner which has about that 45, 47, depending on how we measure it, percentage to give you a visual of what that looks like. and lastly we are proposing an amendment to add a deviation so that if a building has more than three facades that faces one of those triggers for ground floor transparency streets through block passages natural context area or publicly accessible open space that the transparency requirements only need to be met on two facades the example on your screen is trailhead which has two streets and a natural context area and above the natural context area there's actually three block passage as well so they would have been required to meet transparency on three sides of the building however even if transparency isn't required on all the sides and they use that deviation or as Yi was talking about with the removal of the transparency for natural context areas and just the ground floor transparency standards applying we still do have a whole host of other design standards that apply blank wall treatment which includes artwork, trellises, decorative tile, masonry, changes in materials, patterns, color. We have entry design standards, and then we have separate standards for mixed use and commercial ground floor versus multifamily ground floor that just a whole host of menu of items that have to be selected from and met. So even if transparency is not occurring, other items are. All right. Are there any questions?

All right. Great. Thank you, Emily. question from the commissioners regarding transparency. Everybody knows their stuff. Commissioner Holmstrom.

Turn on your mic.

Would a developer have to apply for that deviation or is it granted?

So the deviation is wrapped into the land use application. It's not a separate permit, but they still do need to request it.

And somebody else has to approve that then at that point.

It would either be the administration or if it's a level four, it goes to the development commission that would have the final approval of the deviation.

I think wouldn't it be easier if that was just code? It could be good. We're hearing that the deviations are. Troublesome and I'm just in. This is kind of a new one and it seems like. Maybe we could consider just making that part of the code rather than a deviation. I think it just brings up a lot of question marks for somebody trying to develop something. That's just my thoughts on that.

Any other commissioners across?

I would actually like to say in support of Commissioner Holmstrom's proposal to include the deviations, I mean, to avoid deviations and to include all of this into the code.

Okay, we want to deliberate when you guys can make all of those things during amendments. Right now, we just want to ask questions.

Okay.

But you are more than welcome to in about a half hour. Questions, questions? Commissioner Adair.

So for the sake of clarity and questions, how onerous would you say the deviation request process is in your experience?

Like Jeopardy, nice. Well, I'm not a developer. I'm a staff who's reviewing the deviation. And in my experience, when a deviation comes in, staff evaluates it if it's possible. We wouldn't let a developer move forward with a deviation if we did not think it was going to be approved.

just to follow up so however to what holmstrom is saying do you think deviation like would you say it would add a significant amount of time to the permit process or to the application process to request a deviation

I don't think it adds any time, but I think a lot of the concerns developers had is it adds a layer of uncertainty because there's no formal okay, no formal approval until the decision is issued. And often on permits, especially a level four permit, which is the one that goes to development commission, that can take months from when they apply for it to when the development commission makes a decision. So even though as staff, if they asked for the deviation, we would Only let them move forward with it if we believe they were meeting the standards to get that deviation That is still not a formal. Okay, which I think is where the developers hesitancy comes forward is they don't know Officially if they get that deviation until the final land use permit decision is issued

Want to go one more time? Please.

So this would be any what would count as like a level form.

So it would add like a few months to the permit process. The deviation isn't going to add any time to the permit process because it's wrapped up into the whole review. Yeah, so no additional time.

community planning and development director. I just want to make sure we sort of explain the deviation versus the variance process. Because some of the confusion comes from if you cannot meet the code, There has to be a due process for someone to ask for a variance, which is a public hearing process. There's a very strict criteria that you have to comply with. You have to meet all of those things. And the test in those kind of circumstances is that you're not giving a special privilege or something to one person and not the other one. That's a pretty high bar, but we have to provide that if your unique circumstances, topography, whatever that situation might be. So that's a separate avenue. The deviation process is actually baked in into the process that you're already going through. So there's not a separate application. There's not a separate, it's just part of the process. If your underlying process is administrative, it'll come in as that. If your underlying process goes to development commission, it'll be approved as part of that. The trick there is that to have a very clear criteria for approval so that the applicant and staff know and they come to the same conclusion for different applicants. So what we want to avoid, which we used to have before Title 18 update, is called administrative adjustment of standards with a very broad criteria and you could we couldn't give people answers whether it would be approved or it won't be approved. Right now, what's in Title 18 is you can ask for these nine types of deviations, but each deviation type has a very specific criteria. In the matter in front of you today, there's a balance between you know, giving people flexibility and giving people a path, which is the deviation process. So for people to choose which two facades work for them, they have a path forward. If you put it in code that you have to have it along these two facades, and then you have a circumstance where that may not quite work for them, they won't have that option to request a deviation. So those are pros and cons of the two paths. If you want to put it in the code that you have to have at least two facades, the first one has to be the street, the second one has to be... ... So right now I think you, but it's giving, the deviation process is really giving people flexibility to choose what works for them. So I know I understand that it can be confusing between requirement to request a deviation so you can't get an answer versus a path forward for, this is a preferred option, but we're willing to entertain another one if that makes sense for this particular property.

Maybe can I add something? So if I tell me if I'm wrong, if I'm simplifying this wrong way, basically, like you said, deviation it's in the code. They just have to follow the menu of items. So they know exactly if they're looking for the deviation, what they need to do in order to get it. A variance would be more to your point. You have some type of troubled lot topography. That's going to be a little bit more, I think to Emily's point, you know, they're going to look at it. They might be able to give you some initial guidance, but ultimately, And if you're doing a level four anyway, it doesn't matter. That whole permit has to go through the development commission. And again, it's wrapped up in that, but the deviation, they already have that in code. They know exactly what they need to meet in order to get it.

Yeah. Yeah. I think this particular amendment in front of you was trying to build in more flexibility that not all three sides have to have it, that you get to pick two type of thing. And I think that was a thought process. Yeah.

Okay. So Commissioner Kress, and then we'll go Vice Chair Patterson.

This is more of a clarifying question. So it relates to this and probably other things like parking, which we'll have a lot of time with. This is for new construction only, or is this also like a remodel? And if it's a remodel, at what level does this get implemented? Because that could have an unintended consequence. I'm just trying to understand when are these rules implemented?

Definitely for new construction for new development. And then we have a redevelopment threshold in our code, which is 50% of the assessed value of the building. So if you trigger that 50% value in your remodel expenses, then it becomes applicable.

So it's 50% of the entire property value?

The assessed improvement value. So not the land, just the improvements.

Is that the same threshold for everything, even like parking?

Yes, that is our redevelopment threshold for everything except for non-conforming uses.

And have we found in the past when you do that, it stops people from wanting to, if they know they have a different set of rules... Has that been a barrier for them to actually say, I'm going to redevelop this because now it's made some of these new rules impossible for me to do what I need to do? Or is this?

In my five years here, I've never heard of it being an issue.

All right. I would assume every city has some type of threshold. And I'm going to piggyback off to John for a moment. Didn't I read in the packet there's also like a 10% of the size also? Does that also trigger? bringing those up to code? Is that parking, 10%?

That's not my amendment. That doesn't sound familiar. Fair enough.

I thought I saw it in the packet. So the thing that made me think of this, and once again, it's all about our own selves. There's a building down the street from me that's being redone, which looks really nice. It's at the corner of where the trolley goes by on Dogwood. And they're redoing the facade and putting new windows in and all of that. And it's a commercial building of some sort. It's an office building. So with this trigger, I have no idea that, oh, they have to put bigger windows in because of this. Or I'm not sure what the rule changes would be for that example. And I'm just wondering whether that was a scenario that

would trigger this i have no idea how big the remodel is but if it's under 50 of the value of the building which i guess is a pretty high bar it's a pretty high bar to me and we do um they i don't know how much you want to know in the weeds of it but they have to submit an excel spreadsheet that breaks down the cost and then our building official helps us review it to make sure it all makes sense um it's only it's only been utilized in my time here for two or three permits i have because it's usually pretty obvious if it's under 50 or over Correct. And yeah, it's very rare that it rides right on that 50% line.

Great. Thank you, Commissioner Kras. Vice Chair Patterson.

Thank you, Chair. I want to go back, circle back and try and close the loop on the conversation we just had about the deviation variance code. Because I think the missing link that we're still not quite at, and maybe you two can give me a head nod, is that we talked about deviation variance, but I think your question was more about do we actually put code in for that specific scenario of the multi street-street natural context, is that correct? It wouldn't be a deviation or a variance, it would actually be code specifically addressing, is kind of what you were getting at, correct? Or at least you were, okay. But I think what I heard from Minnie and team was that if we were to do that, it might get too specific or almost over-prescribed, where we would want to instead use the deviation because we it would actually give them more flexibility and then they get to pick from options versus us kind of telling them what they had to do. Is that a fair way to state that?

Yes, I can also pull up the code. Um, I, I have it, I have it.

I made a back pocket going to the appendix.

Oh no.

This to your head.

To answer your question, that is the intent, yes. Having a deviation versus having it fully baked in as a code requirement in colloquial terms gives us a little more wiggle room. That's the intent behind it. It's commission's prerogative if you want to make amendments future to make it part of code, but that was our intent behind having it as a deviation.

And here is the list.

So if you have three facades that would require it, and you, developer, don't want to do that, you can request a deviation to only have the transparency on two sides. And we have a list that is in priority of where we would prefer for the transparency to be, which would be on streets, the fronts, then the side streets, then three block passages, natural context area, and open space.

Perfect. Is that helpful? A little bit. Okay, thank you.

Yes. Great questions. So if you, as you deliberate and you think about this, if you don't want a deviation, then you would just say only two sides of the building need to have this. instead of your through block passages, your streets and your natural context areas, that's where you would, you could potentially get, you know, only two buildings, but a variety of reasons. So this gives you a little bit more flexibility if you're a designer or a builder to choose, but it also gives you guidance on streets are more important, the through-block passages are more important, and it balances that approach of activating your spaces because you're making that connection. So if you go down the path of taking the deviation out during your deliberations, then it would just say you only need to meet two out of your four sides. That would be it, right?

I just want to make sure you're done with your presentation. Okay. I think that was the last slide I saw. There it is. There it was. Okay. Any questions for Emily regarding transparency or deviations or any of the above? All right. Well, thank you, Emily. Okay, that is two of four. Oh, thank you. That was a little mistake. Just wait till later. Amanda, do we have anyone signed up that would like to make public comment regarding transparency?

No, Chair, we do not.

Okay.

All right. All right. We're going to continue to the next proposed amendment regarding multifamily uses in the urban urban village, commercial and retail zones. And Andrew Love will be presenting on that. So Andrew, when you are ready, please go ahead.

Good evening commissioners. I'm here to present, uh, on what you just said. Um, so just to refresh everybody's memory on June 11th is when we first kind of started the discussion on both the UV Comrette and then also the parking. And then July 9th, two weeks ago, we took a first look at the amendments set before you with some highlighted changes, minor changes in my case. So here we have, you can see the chart that we've taken a look at before, but just to refresh your memory, we have the PBI Council Goals and Outcomes chart. And really for the UV commercial retail zones, one of the goals was to comply with Senate Bill 6026 with a possible action of allowing multifamily in those two zones while not losing retail requirements. And just in case anybody is joining us online that is not familiar, this is a location of where the UV comrade zones are. It's in Issaquah Highlands area, centered around the Grand Ridge Shopping Plaza. And the intent of these zones and the zoning code is to provide commercial and retail opportunities that serve and support the community's live, work, and play vision. And just a brief background on the legislative bills. So a Senate bill 6026 is basically what is requiring jurisdictions within the better subject to the growth management act with a population of 30,000 or more to allow residential uses in areas currently zoned for commercial or mixed use development. This is due in December of 2027. So we were looking to be early adopters. And this does kind of have what I would refer to as trickle-down effects because there's There are two other bills that were passed in the last five years or so that require co-living in any UGA area, which the city of Issaquah is within a urban growth area where at least six multifamily residential units are allowed. So co-living is thereby triggered as well as permanent supportive housing and transitional housing because those two uses that are two of the four step housing uses are need to be permitted in any zone where residences or hotels are allowed. So next I have the proposed amendments on the slide, kind of an abbreviated version because I removed the headings and the rows that are not being changed. You could see that the multifamily dwellings are proposed to be permitted uses in both zones. Right now they are not, along with co-living. Transitional housing and permanent supportive housing are currently allowed in the UV comm zone, but those are also proposed to be amended to allow them in the other zone, UV red. So that was the first one, a little bit shorter than the parking, but are there any questions I can take from the commissioners?

Nonsensical question. So you're going to be presenting parking? Yes. Lucky you.

Yes.

Okay. Questions as far as the UV RET zone? Anybody? Commissioner Zachroff, that's in your neighborhood.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Any questions?

All right. Amanda, has anyone signed up to speak regarding the Andrew's first presentation.

No, Chair, they have not.

You'll be a comrade. Okay. All right. Okay, Andrew, this is the big one. This is the Super Bowl. Yes.

So this is the parking requirements. So please go ahead. Yes. So now we're on to parking. And luckily we have talked a bit about this before in early June and then two weeks ago. So just to refresh everybody's memory, this is broken into two slides. But some of the issues that council has addressed is that parking may not be the highest and best use of land, and especially with central Issaquah, we have a lot of areas of parking, and we haven't really seen the type of development spurred that we have kind of wanted to see through the adoption of the central Issaquah plan. So one of the goals and objectives is to make sure that our parking regulations are right-sized and with possible actions, there's four of them. So the first two that are on this slide would be to adopt minimum parking requirements addressed in Senate Bill 5184, also known as the Parking Reform Bill. And then another potential possible action is to eliminate, or I'm sorry, the question was posed to eliminate or keep the current maximum parking requirements. And then to continue from the last slide, so again, another issue is Central Issaquah, there are a lot of parking areas. Some of the goals would be early adoption of state law and potentially eliminating parking minimums in Central Issaquah, specifically the urban core and mixed use Central Issaquah zones. So possible action number three would be establish minimum accessible parking requirements prior to guidance from State Building Code Council. with a fourth possible action of potentially eliminating parking minimums in Central Issaquah, specifically the urban core and mixed-use Central Issaquah zones. Next, I would like to talk briefly about what the intent of some of our documents and code are when it comes to parking. So really to right-size parking needed to balance community goals. This type of language is addressed in multiple policy planning documents. For example, the Central Issaquah Plan recognizes the need for a good balance of parking, but we also do need to remember that a lot of Issaquah is car oriented, especially, you know, the mountainous neighborhoods. So it's all about trying to strike a balance. And for example, the code under the parking intent, it says to achieve a balance between insufficient parking, which can cause overflow parking pressure in adjacent streets and lots and excessive parking, which wastes space and resources. So Brief background on the state bill requirements. Just in case we had any members of the public joining us tonight, I know that we've already gone through this, but the big parking bill, the state bill 5184, cities may not require, at least if you're 30,000 or more, may not require parking for residences under 1,200 square feet. affordable housing, senior housing, daycare, ground level, non-residential space in mixed-use buildings, commercial spaces under 3,000 square feet, and changes of uses in existing buildings, specifically changes in commercial use. Lowered parking minimums, though, for multifamily housing, meaning 0.5 spaces minimum, and then single-family homes would be one space. commercial space is 3,000 square feet or more, you can require parking, but no more than two spaces per 1,000 square feet. And then separately, since the Commerce Residential Parking Checklist, which you've seen in the last two meetings, addressed all of the residential parking laws that are to be due in the future, we're also including requirements from House Bill 1183 and this may not require parking for affordable housing, which is also covered in the last one, but affordable housing, and then also new or retrofitted buildings that meet passive house requirements, which is basically a way of, it's a method of sustainable building, modular housing, and lastly, housing constructed with mass temper. So since the question, Since one of the amendments talks about specifically urban core and mixed use central Issaquah, just as a reminder, I included a slide of where these zones are mapped. You can see that one of the proposed amendments is to eliminate parking minimums in these two zones. So those are the ones we're talking about. And I'm only going to include the proposed changes since the last meeting. So there needed to be some clarification on the change of use section. And this was due to an additional look at the commerce guidance in addition to feedback from our legal team. So there needed to be some clarification around what changes in use don't require parking. It could become problematic if we have, for example, a school going into a building to reuse the building and then all of a sudden there's not enough parking spaces for the school. So the changes in use is specifically from a non-residential, I'm sorry, the changes to a non-resident, if it's, It's if the change is from non-residential to residential, or if the change is to one of the commercial uses as defined in the state law. So those are the two that a change of use would not require any additional parking than what was existing before. So that concludes my portion of the presentation, but I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you, Andrew. Questions? Okay. We'll start. We'll cruise around.

Commissioner Krause. Thank you. This is actually something I saw in the packet. And I was in here two weeks ago, so you may have covered this. So this is regarding maximums and maximums related to single families. So I saw we break out detached single family. I think it was four, if I remember correctly. Um, but townhouse was, uh, only one which I, my question is how did we get to that? Because a lot of townhouses are built with a two car garage. So are we going to say now you can't build a two car wide garage? Like a lot of them are being built right now in this new, and I wonder why we got to that because I think we need to be very thoughtful on, especially on residential and making them what people want.

Yeah, so based on the feedback from the Planning Policy Commission, we did not touch any of the maximums that were already in the parking code.

That was already existing, that there's only one?

Yes.

I'm curious how they built all the ones off Newport that have two-car garages, because those are townhouses, and then they have two-car garages. I'm looking at you, Kristen.

Those were permitted prior to the code being adjusted, amended. Okay.

Because I do feel, so I'm going to throw this one out there. You look at ones that are what people want, and that is something that is a more desirable thing they want to have. If you're buying a million dollar townhouse, you're probably going to have two cars. I would like us to revisit that or at least understand, I'm not sure if we're opening things now as part of that or is this only things that you want to change versus what's already there as part of this discussion?

I am open to discussing it now. I think that my response to the question is that we did not look at the parking maximum number, so.

Could we, especially on single, I mean, I understand with retail and all that, I mean, a lot of times we have, you know, a lot of things are overbuilt in parking and all that, but I think residential hits an emotional chord when someone is looking for a home and it has to match their needs. So, Kristen's about to.

If you all want to discuss that during deliberations and that's something, but what we were asked to look at was the bill.

Okay. Commissioner Zakharov.

I really forgot my question. Well, the question was, it's actually, it's a clarification. So during all of the changes of use, any change of use does not require the change in parking. Is that correct? Or are there any changes of use that would require change in parking, especially increase in parking spaces?

So the current, the way that the law currently reads is it defines commercial is with a pretty broad brushstroke. And we have kind of taken that to mean exactly what's defined in the state law, which is office, which yeah, so office, they count as commercial, uh, retail, um, eating. So those types of uses are specifically would be, they would not have to, update any parking that's already there on site. Some uses that do not fall into that category would be, um, civic uses, for example, like a new school, um, or industrial light industrial uses would not meet that same category. So we would, the way the code currently reads is that when you have a change in use, you do have to make sure that the parking meets what the number, what the table says. So sometimes it can be a little hard which is what the state I think what the state law is getting at is making it easier for Adaptive reuse of buildings for example, but the way the code is currently presented before you it would just be for commercial either changes to non from non-residential to residential or it would be a changes in use that meet that definition of commercial, which would include commercial, office, retail, but not things like civic uses like schools or light industrial, that kind of stuff. Go ahead, Kristen.

Yeah, Kristen Leeson, planning manager. I just wanted to clarify that with the townhouses, it says one space or a tandem garage that could hold two cars. I read that. So, okay. I just wanted to make sure I didn't necessarily know just one space.

If you look at the things that don't sell or tandem, it's a little deliberate.

I just wanted to be clear that two are allowed.

If you want.

If you do tandem parking. Okay.

Yeah. You could be parked in the back. That sucks.

Just a clarifying question, Andrew. So the idea, I mean, really the intent of that law was to be able to take commercial buildings and turn them into residential. That was the whole heart of it, right? They didn't want to put a burden on converting those.

Yeah. One part, I think, was to make it easier for more housing to be built. Right. For example, if there's a giant office building that's vacant and people want to come in and put a multifamily in there, not to stifle that, potential development because there's just no, there's no more room for parking. On the flip side, I think the other part of that amendment is making it easier for a change in use for new, for example, right now, if let's just say there's a vacant vacancy in Issaquah Commons and a new developer or a new store like Uniqlo wants to move in, we technically have to make them prove that the amount of spaces for retail, like there's enough in there, but it's our, that development is already built out. So that's just like one example. Like in, in that case, they were obviously able to meet that because they're coming to Issaquah. Yay. But like, that's just one extra hurdle for new businesses coming to the city that they would have to prove. And in a lot of these places, the it's already built out. So if they're coming to a new, a unit in a multi tenant building, it's, um, could be cost prohibitive for them to add additional parking spaces.

So just for fun, an example is city hall is going to be, they bought the edetics building. They just bought on Newport. Yes. Now, because on, is it new? Maple is a maple, but the use isn't changing. It's just office to office. Correct.

Correct. So it would be, well, it, I'd have to take a look at the, The parking table, because it is a civic office, but it says there's a civic uses row. And there's also a government facility row. So I would have to probably take a further look into our definitions.

I was just trying to get to an example of maybe, again, something converting. Again, it's really more about what's going to be used within the structure.

Correct.

Right. And again, maybe it's just because it's mostly the conversations we hear. The idea was really to help convert commercial buildings into residential for more housing. But obviously, on the flip side, it has to do like if the school district was to buy an office space, then they would have to conform with parking. Correct. OK. I do have just two small questions. And this one kind of bothered me. So there's like half a parking spot. Yes. And then there's this whole spiel in the packet that talks about rounding down, decimals round down. Is the half a parking spot, it's based on the size of the structure, so there's really, is that always, because rounding down in my mind would go down to zero.

So what you're thinking of is, for example, so co-living we didn't touch, but co-living is 0.25 spaces per unit. And then multifamily is the one that we're touching to meet the state law, which is 0.5 spaces. So you aren't really going to have a building, a multifamily building with just one unit, because then it would be a single family. And then as far as the rounding down goes, so if there's like, say, seven multifamily units in a new building, it would be rounded down to three spaces. And that decision to include that language in the parking amendments rather than Because I think if that language wasn't proposed, most people would just assume you can't have a half a space, so round up. But the commerce guidance, they're still finalizing the final version. But in the draft guidance, they did say that since the law says no more than 0.5 spaces per unit, then if you were to ask for, say, four spaces for a seven-unit multifamily building, then you would essentially be asking for more than 0.5 spaces per unit.

Okay. No, you see it in the table. I mean, again, everything like single family, it's very clearly one or zero, no minimums. And then you get to these weird decimals. And again, to your point, no one's going to build a multifamily with one half of a unit. So obviously it's based on the square footage or the GFA, GMA, probably getting the acronym wrong.

That's what you meant. Yeah, so some of the uses in the parking table are determined by gross floor area, but other uses like multifamily, co-living, are determined by the number of units.

I had it written down much more elegantly than I proposed. Anyway, okay, that was my question. Any other questions regarding parking? All right. Amanda, one more time, has anyone signed up to speak?

No, Jay, they have not.

Okay. Well, that concludes the presentation question and public comment portion of our public hearing. So we will close the public hearing this evening at 7 24 PM. All right. This is where we earn our money. This is deliberation and voting, which we're going to move into this process. And we're going to, again, address each amendment one by one. This evening, our alternate commissioner, Commissioner Adair, will also be a voting member. And we'd like to begin with, and again, please note, all commissioners can deliberate. Just voting is a little bit different. So we'll begin with the natural context areas. Is there a formal action requested on this particular agenda item? Is a commissioner willing to make a motion?

Vice Chair Patterson. I'll get the party started. I would like to move to recommend the approval of the Title 18 Land Use Code Amendment regarding natural context areas in Central Issaquah as presented.

Excellent.

Thank you, Vice Chair Patterson.

Is there a second? Thank you, Commissioner Adair.

I second the amendment.

Perfect. And staff has been kind enough to help us with some prompts. You guys will see those throughout the rest of the evening. OK. The motion to recommend approval of the proposed Title 18 amendments related to requirements for natural context areas in central Issaquah as presented has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or someone would like to make an amendment regarding them? And you can begin discussions. I mean, like I said, if you get to a point where we're starting to move towards an amendment, staff will be friendly. They'll prompt us to make the amendment. So, again, just feel free. This is your time to deliberate.

I just want to say I do think this is a really fair amendment. I appreciate the way it's written. And I think it kind of addresses the concerns of the whole facade being too much while still maintaining a level of aesthetic appeal to the natural context areas. And I think that it does allow some flexibility as well. So I appreciate it. I like it.

Thank you, Commissioner Adair. anyone else like to comment okay chair voice i i would agree with commissioner adair i think there's a little bit of give and take here again if the street separates the natural context area builders and developers are able to do more but if it is adjacent or budding up to then again we want our developers to take that into consideration is a qua is a unique city with a lot of wonderful outdoor attributes, and we'd like them to take advantage of it. And I think we gave them an out by offering a couple different things, whether it's the two streets, three streets, facades, even though that's more to do with transparency. But I think as far as the dumpsters and the mechanics and everything, I think that's a little bit of give and take. All right. Looking to phone a friend, Kristen. So now that we've pretty much deliberated on this particular Motion, do we need to vote on it? Okay. Yes, you do. I've got my cheat sheet here, okay. Let me do my due diligence. Would the maker of the motion like to speak?

No, Chair, I think we've said what we need to say on this one. Thank you.

Okay. We will move to the vote. So if there is no further discussion on the motion to recommend approval of the proposed Title 18 amendments related to requirements for natural context areas in Central Issaquah as presented, let's take a vote. All in favor, please raise your hand and say, yay. Okay, that's a unanimous vote. One, two, three.

We need to know, please, who is voting tonight as an alternate commissioner. Did you? I'm sorry. I missed that part. I apologize. That's OK. That's OK.

There's a lot of words in here, right? But one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, seven or seven, right? Yeah. One, two, three, four, five. A lot of stuff going on. OK, that was unanimous. Seven voting to confirm. All right. We're going to move to transparency.

Before you move to transparency.

Oh, that's right. OK. So the city council, I believe it's the city council, has asked us to help them understand our reasoning. And we're going to do this after the vote every time, just give them a brief understanding of our thinking why.

So I think I alluded to this as showing our homework.

I think Commissioner Adair and myself kind of mentioned the way we felt. Would anyone like to add as to why you voted this particular way? Commissioner Crafts.

I mean, straightforward common sense. I think it was well thought out. And the fact that we didn't have huge deliberations shows that it was common sense and not everything has to be hard.

We'll save that for parking. We'll save that for parking. Agreed. No, agreed. And again, the other thing I would say is we've had, you know, three, this is our fourth meeting on this particular topic. So I think we've kind of fleshed it out. Obviously staff has taken a lot of what we've had to say. turned it into those proposals. So there really isn't as much deliberation. Like John said, this is pretty straightforward. As Commissioner Adair stated this, I mean, I feel like we're giving a little and we're still keeping our context area, you know, the way we want it to. And again, having a street to block it, they can still put some of their utilities down there. Is that blurb sufficient?

It is. We still need reasons for not maintaining the current code and why you didn't go beyond it.

Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Anyone want to add? Yeah.

This is new to me too. Vice Chair Patterson. Absolutely. Personally speaking on, I think the reason to not maintain the current code is that this process has allowed us to accept feedback from many stakeholders in the process, whether it be builders, and developers, us as a commission and the city staff and the public. And I think it was apparent that a change was needed. And I think that while still maintaining the community expectation that we have, we found kind of a happy medium, if you will, that gave some flexibility. So it didn't make sense to maintain the current code because it wasn't working is what we found from what I've learned. I think that also plays into option three and why we didn't pick that. I think removing and relaxing the regulations beyond what was proposed might have been too far in the direction of the developers that would have taken away what the community and the commission who lives here would prefer. As Chair Voice mentioned, ISQA is known for its natural context, if you will, and we want to celebrate that where we can, understanding that it does require building challenges, and that's why we made some amendments. So I think that's why we landed on option two and not one or three.

Yeah, that's a great summary. Fantastic job by Chair Patterson. Yeah. I mean, a lot of hard work went into those design standards previously and again, but in all fairness, the most vocal people that came here were developers and they cited plenty of reasons they felt that these, some of their projects weren't feasible. So again, trying to meet people halfway. Commissioner Adair.

I'll also say that I did a lot of physical breakdowns myself in drawing, and I felt that looking at it, 50% was looking like an onerous amount of transparency. So that's why I did feel like it was OK to move forward. I also think, realistically, the marketplace is going to demand balconies and windows that overlook natural context areas on its own right that's something that developers will sell and one reason i don't want to relax the regulations entirely is i do think our context areas are community spaces and that we want to enhance the beauty of those and So I don't want to see dumpsters lining the back of the seat. That's not fun for pedestrians to see. So I think it's fair to treat them like a public thoroughfare.

Great. Okay. Looking towards Kristen.

And if you wouldn't mind, so we're just trying to figure out the easiest way to get through this process. So as you go through your deliberation, after you've made your motion, We'll have these slides in terms of this option one through three, and then we'll just throw this slide back up because council was also interested in understanding the rationale behind the possible actions that they provided in terms of their goals and outcomes work program. And in this case, we've collected the feedback to date and it seems sufficient perhaps for moving on. Just flashing through those slides and moving to the next one.

Okay, great. Thank you, Kate.

Okay.

I was trying to put my place in the script. There's got to be something after this, right? Okay. Moving on to transparency. Is there a willing commissioner out there to make this motion? Commissioner Kras.

So I make a motion to recommend approval of the proposed Title 18 amendments related to the requirements of transparency as presented.

Is there a willing commissioner to make a second? Commissioner Zakharoff.

I would like to second the motion.

Okay. The motion to recommend approval of the Title 18 Land use code amendments regarding transparency as presented has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or amendments? But we'll start with discussion. Is there any discussion regarding transparency? Commissioner Holmstrom.

One thing is we kind of went from a zero to five foot measurement in the beginning to two to eight. And that's a 20% increase because we went from five feet to six feet. And there were some examples that that's helpful in some cases. But it's also essentially for a newer building that's adding more windows, more window square footage. Now you need 40% or 45% of six feet compared to 40% to 45% of five feet. Is anybody following? Yeah. I'm just wondering if we want to talk about that, and that's...

It just can be measured from 2 to 8 feet. So it's still 45% of the area.

The whole wall? Can I? I think I'm following what you're about to say.

I was just going to pull up the track changes so we can just look at it together and make sure we're all on the same page. That's all right. I know I wrote it. We wrote it together, but I am still reading it to make sure that I am understanding. Yeah, so it's. For instance, 40% of the whole ground floor facade for multifamily and that can be measured from 2 to 8 feet, OK?

I follow what you're saying, yeah, thanks.

I would assume that would help the builder. Achieve their numbers. even though we've lowered the threshold in a lot of circumstances with the exception of urban core and front street, which still have a very high transparency rate. But for the majority, we actually dropped it a lot. And again, I think going from two to eight, we helped them achieve those numbers.

What do you mean? Wasn't a lot of windows at zero feet. No, no. I don't think.

Well, I mean, Commissioner Holmes from your builder, it'd be a lot more difficult to have those windows without any type of curb. So to actually have them start at two feet, again, you saw those numbers that Emily was kind enough to go tape all of Front Street. They actually grew, so it helped their numbers. Okay. More comments? Please, Commissioner Zakharoff.

Well, it's the time. for deviations. I would still be on a position. I understand staff's position on this, but there are several different reasons why predictability is really needed for developers. And at this point, we really needed development in Issaquah to move on. So I would still like to see a possibility of including all of the possible design standards that can be used by developers into the code rather than use the deviation process. Because deviation process can make permitting or going through all of these processes longer. and take more money. And there is also several things that are needed for developers to, let's say, get money needed to finance the beginning of their project or the project. So I'm supporting the motion, and I seconded the motion, but I would still like to see the possibility to include all of this into the code. Thank you.

Do you want to make a separate amendment to see if any of your fellow commissioners feel the same way? Oh, I'm sorry. Did I miss Emily? You're fine. I don't know what I'm doing. Or do you want to feel out the commissioners? You don't have to make it formal. I mean, I guess is anyone kind of feeling the same way to codify deviations? Absolutely, Mr. Patterson.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I think I've weaved through this thought process throughout this meeting. I commend Commissioner Holmstrom for kind of addressing it and the staff for explaining it, but I think ultimately what I've understood is that the deviation as it's documented currently in the amended amendments, amended code, actually provides flexibility while also providing clarity of what they can do. So I think it's saying like we understand that there is a scenario that exists where you could run into having multiple you know, facades that require this, but we're giving you these options. They are a deviation, but that fits within the existing permitting process, uh, versus as, uh, many described the variance process, which is a lot more involved and would require a lot more steps in time. Um, this would actually be saying like, if you design for this deviation, then, as part of the entire process that exists today. So I definitely was leaning towards that direction at first, but I think after the clarity provided, I've kind of moved back to feeling like the deviation of that particular instance with the options that were laid out actually give a good, I'll use the term happy medium again, where it provides the flexibility while also giving them clarity and direction.

Commissioner Zacharoff, do you want to?

Yeah, so, well, I completely understand the Vice Chair Patterson's position. The problem that I see here is this staff, this commission, probably this council, support this position on deviation. But we're trying to create a rule that will work for, not only for today, tomorrow, but 20 years from now, possibly. It will be a different staff, different commission, different council by that time, probably. And the rule should be working no matter what we are guaranteeing today. So it's kind of like, it feels like it's our promise that deviation will be looked at from this point of view. But, so first of all, the change can happen and most likely will. And that's one thing. And another thing, when it's a deviation, we have like when, With developers, we also have financial institutions involved, and they might see the deviation very differently, and so it might present a problem for developers to finance the project. So those are kind of like my arguments. Thank you.

Yeah, I see deviations as being a trouble spot. The biggest killer of projects for developers is time. And if you don't know exactly what you're going to get in the review process, that's just going to add time. I know personally there's been review stuff I thought was going to be real straightforward, and it gets shot down. And so I could see a developer thinking they're going to get a deviation. The city thinks otherwise. Now the developer has to redesign the whole building and resubmit. And the carrying costs, the cost of that redesign and the carrying costs of paying for the land and all the other project expenses as this goes on. That's a ton of time and a ton of cost and that's when projects go away. So I think it's just something in order to encourage more building and development that that deviation thing is, I think that's a real sore spot for developers cause they just don't know what's going to happen and that's a problem for them.

Okay. I definitely want to let other commissioners get in here. So commission, Do you guys want to make a motion to, does someone want to make a motion to change that? Got to be careful with questions because we can't really. Oh yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. So, um, we talking about something broader or something very specific because I think the motion should be based on something very specific of the thing that we're talking about not that we think code should be more specific and have less things which sure we should have things be as specific as possible but that's not something that I would say is a motion to put in something very specific of what we're talking about so that's why I'm confused by that and I would rather just have that more of a guiding principle of when we look at things that are code related, how do you, and you guys already do this, like how do you get it as clean as possible, but you can't do everything. So I think it's less about emotion on this specific topic and something more broad that's probably not part of this discussion. If I'm not getting it, please explain it to me, but that's how I look at this discussion.

Would someone like to answer Commissioner Krause?

i would think this is a kind of a topic in between transparency and the natural context context area so we have a lot of kind of buildings or projects that might be built in the area that will require deviations for their development and rather than currently requiring, rather than give it as a deviation, we should probably give an exact kind of development decision.

Sorry. I saw Commissioner Matthews. Commissioner Matthews.

I think, to me, it feels like we're overcomplicating the issue because earlier, I'm sorry, I forgot your name, but you stated that it doesn't take any additional time or money to do a deviation and that normally when a when a developer is going through the deviation process, you've already supported that. You're not going to go, OK, just do your deviation. I don't think it'll get approved. But I don't think that's exactly what's happening. Is that correct, that you typically believe that they've met all the criteria or they can meet all the criteria before they even go in for a deviation. I do.

And I would state it doesn't take any more money in terms of permit fees. I don't know if a developer would agree that it doesn't take any more money, but from the city side, we don't charge for deviations.

Yeah, I'll just do very quickly. I'll just say to me, I mean, if a developer is looking at a piece of land, he clearly sees the natural context area. It doesn't, it didn't just come into being from the time he purchased the plot. So he's going to know exactly what's going on with that part of land, and then when he looks in the code, he's going to see, oh, I'm required to do this, this, and this. The deviations are actually a flexibility tool for the developer. We're just saying that if you do happen to be on a parcel that has two streets and a natural context area, here's the list of menu options that you need to get to in order to you know maybe get rid of the transparency for one side to me it's actually giving them more flexibility because again no developer is buying a piece of land and going oh my god there's a stream there you know it's there so i i'm kind of in i myself am completely fine with it but again i'm just one commissioner so i think i saw commissioner adair

I mean, I think what we have here, and maybe Emily, if you go on a little bit more on the difference between a variation and deviation, because I think we're kind of coming up against semantics from my perspective, where it feels like the deviation is in fact baked into the code. If they have an issue, then it's like, oh, if a then be if it's kind of like a flow chart, right? So if you're in this situation, then you can go do this and pick one of these things versus a variation, which is where the uncertainty is introduced.

So a variance is a permit type that requires a whole process and hearing a deviation is baked into the code. It is part of code. And in this case, it's a. fairly straightforward deviation. Sometimes they're not as clear, sometimes they're a little more gray, but this one's fairly straightforward. If you have more than two facades that face one of these, you can do transparency only on two instead of having to do them all if you do these things. It's a fairly straightforward deviation. And it is just baked into the land use permit. So if it's a land use permit with an administrative decision, the deviation is just baked into that review and approval and then same with the others.

Yeah, if I may add, I think Emily's figured out a solution that addresses this problem. If you vote on it and you cite, but maybe if she shares that potential solution, it might help some of the information. So you're right, it's more of a semantic issue, whether we're calling this a deviation or we're just baking it in the code. I think it would help what you were showing me if you pulled that out.

So essentially right now, as it's proposed in the packet, it is a deviation. Deviations are written into the code. But if commission wanted it to just be fully baked in as a requirement rather than or as a standard rather than as a deviation, it would look something like.

Stand by.

Yep. OK.

So.

Oh my gosh, three screens is too many. G is the code that's already, I'm gonna get there, is already the code that is existing. So this would be, it was in the deviation section and it would instead be, yep, it's trying. I just zoomed in, it's just delayed. So rather than being at the end of the transparency section as an optional deviation, it would just be embedded into the transparency section. So we would have that section, you know, 40% for multifamily, 45% for commercial, 70% for urban core. And then this would just be baked in. So instead of the deviation, it would just be right there. If you have more than two facades, you only have to do it on two, but you have to do these items. because the deviation is pretty straightforward. It's a pretty fine line between it being a deviation and it being baked into, I would assume that developers would want the menu myself.

I, and again, I, I'm, I know we're not really asking the staff questions right now. It's really more for us to deliberate. So I mean, again, let me, let me know if, if anyone thinks otherwise, but to me it gives them more flexibility because they can choose different things to do. If we tell them, okay, you have, These three areas that you're buttressed, you have to do this. Well, OK, that's fine. I mean, I guess you get more clarity, but you're also limiting what they can do. With a deviation, they can go, OK, I'm going to design everything because they bought their lot, they know what they're up against, and they go, OK, this is a deviation. I want to choose this one. It's easier for me. And then it goes part into the process when they're doing their land use permit, correct?

Yes, but the way this deviation was written, it's pretty clear that you've got to go street front, step back, street side back. I think when it comes to the deviation, what there is is there is room for more conversation around, does that actually make sense on this site? So you're right in so much of is this is in code that this is the order that it's priority. This is what you're doing full stop. If it's a deviation, there is a little bit more room for flexibility on, on the, um, cause you're already deviating from the standard. Okay.

I'm comfortable, but again, this is our time. Commissioner Adair.

Yeah, I'm comfortable doing it with the deviation as well.

Commissioner Matthews.

I also, I was going to say more fond of, I actually really like the language for the deviation. I think it does give a bit more flexibility because you definitely don't want to just pigeonhole people into doing, okay, you have to do this and this and this. If you have a deviation and your site has a little, you know, a different approach, you might want to have a different way of doing it and not have to do it just like it's in code. Because that's a little more simplistic. Every site's going to be a bit different.

Yeah. No, and that's true. And I think that's true to Commissioner Olmstrom's point is, again, when you're building, every site has a saying. But to me, that's more of like a variance. Like, oh, I didn't know I had an aquifer down here. Like, you know, the city didn't map it. That, to me, is probably more of like a variance thing. You're starting to go down that road if you are surprised. The deviation is just it's part of the design standard you're setting when you're coming up with the blueprints and everything on the land that you've purchased or are looking to buy. And again, it seems pretty cut and clear what you can and cannot do if you're not going to do the transparency standard. Again, they could go for it and do all three facades. They might not want to. And then they could go, OK, we don't want to do three facades. Here's what I can do. So would anyone like to make an amendment to the motion that's currently sitting out there. Is everyone who has wanted to speak about transparency spoken? That's funny. Okay. So the motion to recommend the approval of Title 18 land use code 1 regarding transparency If there is no further discussion on the motion to recommend approval of the Title 18 Land Use Code amendments regarding transparency as presented, let's take a vote. All in favor of the motion as it was currently stated so eloquently by Commissioner Kras, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. So again, unanimous, seven of seven. Okay, Kate, you can lead us in the conversation about, yeah, maybe I'll explain why. Yeah, why did you choose that? Yeah, please, Commissioner Kratz.

Yes, you get to speak first. I get to speak first. So the one thing I liked is it starts putting, like the way we measure things is the way reality is now. Building windows to five feet, I mean, You know, look at anything new that's been built in the last 30 years. You have taller floors, taller buildings, taller windows, and all of that. So it just takes into consideration not only the way buildings are being built, but the way we want them to be built. So I think that kind of lines up. I think you mentioned earlier, I'm not sure, does it help the numbers? That's probably an output of it, but it's just reflecting what we hope it should be. So I think just the reason why I think we My key thing as recommended was that my point of not relaxing more things, I will make this statement more broadly and I will probably do it on the other ones as well. There is already a lot of requirements that the state gives us and I think It has to be a really good case for us to go above and beyond to do more than what the state has already asked us to do on a lot of different things. So I think doing things that are smart like we've done makes sense. And I think that's the kind of the process that you'll hear me talk about as we go through some of these other ones. So that's all I have to say.

No, that's great. Thank you, Commissioner Kras. Anyone like to contribute? Commissioner Matthews.

I like to say that I really appreciate the work that has gone into this because the original code was convoluted and difficult to go through. And now it's very simple and I feel like it's easier to read and to understand what you're required to do. And I would not be a fan of going and completely going down to 15% or getting rid of the requirements because I believe that having transparency at it at the rate that we've agreed on is going to be a benefit for the city and for residents that live here.

Yeah, great comment. Thank you. Commissioner Derrick?

Yeah I think one thing I like about the current amendment is one reason I voted for it is it's very common sense to measure between two and eight feet because that is our eye level and we want transparency at eye level and it accounts for the fact that buildings need foundation you don't want windows flush to the ground so that and one reason I am not in favor of relaxing the regulations beyond what is proposed. If we look at Emily's wonderful photos that she took of Front Street, I think it really epitomizes the difference between buildings with high, low, medium transparency levels. And the level of transparency at 40% and above is, I think, necessary to create that community pedestrian engagement that we want with a walkable community. If you want people to walk on your streets and feel safe on your streets, they need to be able to look into buildings and feel like they're part of that community. So having that level of transparency, I think, is very important.

I want to make sure I capture everybody. Vice Chair Patterson.

Just make sure we do our homework here. Yeah. Option one, I think for a lot of reasons it conflicts with the energy code. Obviously the measurement of the wrong zone of the facade was a big one. And I think staff's analysis showed us, you know, why it's unachievable in a lot of ways. Option two is I think what we landed on with the amendment and then option three, I think we saw and agreed that there was no true identified benefit, maybe a little bit of cost savings for developers, but overall I think it would have traded away the pedestrian experience that we were trying to maintain by not going too far in one direction. We dropped it, but where it's below a lot of our peer cities, but not so much that it kind of destroyed what we had built. in the first place. So we made the townhouse exception. You know, the deviation allows for some flexibility that also provided some guidance and clarity on it. So overall, I think, you know, that's why option two stood out to me and why option one and three were not. Great comments, everyone.

Does everyone that's spoken want to speak? I want to make sure Commissioner Millinder Irwin, Commissioner Zachroff, Commissioner Holmstrom. Want to make sure I get you guys in the conversation too.

I had an earlier comment, Chair Boyce. I just wanted to echo my agreement and thank everyone for the very engaging points that I was certainly thinking of and were made way before I could make them. So thank you. I'm in full agreement. And I want to thank staff for all the hard work in making this make a lot of sense for us this evening.

I'll second that. Yeah, not really a whole lot to add. I think the Commissioner's summed it up pretty well as to why we landed on that particular one. We listened to the developers who came in and made their case that these windows were everything from inefficient to costly. To Vice Chair Patterson's point, we're actually a little bit lower than our peer cities, yet in our very high thoroughfares, we've kept it up to 70. We've changed the way that we're measuring So that is a boon to the developers. And again, I don't think we want to go lower or relax in the regulations further. We're trying to get away from blank walls. And I think Commissioner Adair mentioned it pretty well. For a safe and secure city, we want transparency. I think when you see more glass, you see less graffiti. And again, there's things you can do to combat that, trellises, art, stuff like that. We want people to be able to walk and to look in stores and retail. And I think we kept that all there. All right. OK. OK, moving on. to a proposed changes in permitting uses in urban village commercial retail zones. The motion is there before you. Is a commissioner willing to make this motion? Commissioner Zakharoff.

I think it's my turn. I make a motion to recommend approval of the proposed title. It's an amendment related to permitted uses for the UV commercial retail zone as presented.

Great. Thank you, Commissioner Zakharoff. Is there a second? Great. Thank you, Commissioner Millinder-Irwin. Okay. The motion to recommend approval of the Title 18 land use code amendments regarding the change in permitted uses to the urban village commercial retail zones as presented has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or amendments to this particular topic? Commissioner Zakharov.

I can just, just for the start of it. This motion is actually follows the, all of the new rule changes from that, I mean, from the state. So it's basically gives us no real room until we go. And we have on some of the slows, we're trying to go ahead and just makes, makes sense.

Well, that's summed up very well. Further comments regarding this particular topic? Compliance. I guess the only thing that will probably be asked by staff is why now? Why not wait? We've got time. Yeah, I don't know. Get used to it early. OK, I don't think you're going to get a whole lot of commentary on this particular topic. So if there is no further discussion, and I want to make sure everybody got the opportunity to speak. Okay. There being no further discussion on the motion to recommend approval of the Title 18 Land Use Code Amendments regarding the change in permitted uses to the urban village commercial retail zones as presented. Hearing none, All of those in favor of recommending approval of the Title 18 land use code amendments regarding the change in permitted uses to the urban village commercial retail zones as presented, say aye and please raise your hand. Aye. Unanimous. Seven for seven. Okay. Yeah. All right. So now we're looking for some reasons to justify our vote. I'll start with Commissioner Zakharov, and then we'll go to Vice Chair Patterson.

Well, I think I've already kind of said why we've started it, and I probably can answer the question, like, why now? Because everything takes time, and we only have, we only had, by what, like, 18 months or so in several cases. So, and anyways, development takes a lot of time, way more than 18 months, so why not now?

Why not now? I think December 11th, 2017 is the date. Whoa, whoa. Sorry, everybody. Sorry, just gave everybody a little bit of, whoa. 2027. Okay.

Vice Chair Patterson. Yeah, just to once again address our three options. We land on option two. I think the reason option one or three wouldn't work is because it would put us out of compliance, as Chair Boyce called out. We do have a little bit of time to do it, but I think it's a why wait situation. So choosing option two put us in compliance and the amendment looked great to me, to us.

Agreed. Anyone else like to add on? Okay. Hopefully you got what you needed. Okay. All right. Here we go. Moving on to the final proposed changes regarding parking. Is a commissioner willing to make the motion for parking? Commissioner Millinder-Irwin. I make the motion to recommend approval of the . Oh, sorry. Leslie, you're going to have to do it all over again.

See? It came out all clear to you. So I'd like to make a motion to recommend approval of the proposed Title 18 amendments related to requirements for parking as presented.

Even better the second time. Is there a second? Commissioner Zakharoff.

I would like to second this motion. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you both. So the motion to recommend approval of the Title 18 Land Use Code Amendments regarding parking as presented has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion or amendments? And we'll start, I'm gonna start by ignoring this rule. Commissioner Millinder-Irwin, would you like to kick it off? You don't have to, I just, I've been ignoring this little note that says, ask them first.

I'm gonna pass this round.

Okay, no problem. Commissioner Kratz.

So this may end up in an amendment, but let me throw out my thought. And I'm kind of cracking open something that was not originally asked, which is when I go back, I mentioned this earlier, is maximums for single-family townhouse. Right now it says one or a tandem. I would like to look at that to be... Maybe matching what we do with single-family detached, because if you have a townhouse that has a two-car garage and maybe there's a driveway, it just allows you to have that flexibility. And I think we would be too limited to do what we have in our current code. And I'm not sure, I'm looking at Kristen, would this be an amendment if we want to do this, or is this more... How would this work?

I think it would really be more of an add-on and something that we would need to.

Well, it's changing the code.

Right. It's changing the code, but I'm thinking.

The maximum doesn't, it's not because of state law. It's not because of state law. Okay.

It's something that we placed on initially that we placed in central Issaquah back in 2014 and then added this one when we did our parking amendments in 2017. I mean, sorry, 2021, 2022, somewhere around there. One of the reasons, I believe, for the amendment is because when you do a garage, no more than 50% of your facade can be garage. And when you're doing a townhome, they're narrower, and there's not as much room to do that.

So I'm curious. So 50% of your facade on a townhome may need to be rethought. I mean, I think... Garage door, double car is 16 feet. A townhouse is not going to be 32 feet wide by most of them. But I think if you have, I'll use the ones, the example I gave earlier that are off of Newport. You kind of drive through. You're not even seeing it from the street. It makes it a more usable setup than the tandem. I was a little flip earlier on the tandem comment about the person who gets stuck in the back is not very good. um so i just want to make sure that we have the flexibility for people to have especially let's be honest the townhouses that are being built are not cheap i mean the ones are all between a million and a million and a half dollars and you're gonna so i have a question for you one of the things that we've been talking a lot about lately is that we have

multifamily standards, standards for multifamily standards for commercial. We don't have standards for townhomes right now. So something that we've been talking about is establishing separate design standards for townhomes. Would this be something that you would be willing to wait for? So then at the same time we could look at the widths We could look at the townhomes, see what the standards are, and just take a bigger, more holistic look at the whole thing. If you're asking me or... I am addressing you. Me personally.

I think because, and maybe we wouldn't have predicted this, you know, 10 years ago, but townhomes is the thing getting built and that's the people don't want to build condo style, um, like stacked condos for all the reasons of insurance and all of that. Townhouses are more affordable than single family, detached. And if you look at what's going through at least the areas in Central or Isco Valley and all of that, there's a lot of townhouse developments. So I think having something well thought out on townhouses is a great idea. I would ask maybe in the interim on this one, we have some flexibility because if I was wanting to build a townhouse or I'd say, wait, look at all these other ones that you're allowing the thing that I can't do. So I'm not sure in the interim, yes, we should do maybe a real deep dive on townhouses because that's kind of the preferred new form. At the same time, have some flexibility on parking until that's done. And what format that is, I don't know in this. But we don't want to stifle people building that next round because... because of that. That's all I have to say.

Because it's sitting in code as of now. Commissioner Adair?

Yeah, just to Kristen's point, I would like to see us dive into townhomes in the future because that was actually something I really thought about with regards to the transparency and when we were asked to exclude them from transparency standards. And I realized that middle housing and single family didn't have transparency standards the same way multifamily did. And I was like, OK, so ultimately townhomes are closer in my mind to multifamily and single family. So, yeah, I think we should, there's a lot of them going up everywhere and might be worth revisiting.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're going to see consensus from everybody, but Commissioner Holmstrom.

I certainly understand what you're saying about the two spots. It may not apply as much as we think because I believe a parking spot space in Issaquah has to be 18 feet to be considered a parking space. So, the town home at a driveway that was 16 feet, that would just be considered a driveway. So you wouldn't use any parking spot requirements for that. Now you could still park a smaller car there, but I agree. First, many are getting built in the future. We should have some standards go along with this.

Yeah, I'm gonna make a point of order here. Uh, this is all great discussion. Very important. I think it would be best at this point to make an amendment if that's okay.

Yeah, if you want to make a motion to make an amendment, go for it.

Yeah, so I'd like to make an amendment to this motion for city staff and council to explore townhome standards in the future. I think at this point, may I deliberate now?

Okay, well, you'd need a second, but that's not really a motion. It can be a recommendation that we include in the agenda bill.

Okay, perfect.

Okay.

Yeah, so we'll make the recommendation then. But the reason why... But you do need agreement. Okay, right now. Would you like me to state my case?

You can state your case.

It's so hard to go between formal and formal. I know, right? Like, oh, I didn't need to be that formal. Okay. No, ultimately, because I think we're all making great points here, but this conversation is going to go in a deep place that I don't think we're ready to go yet, and this particular topic is too far gone to go back. I think that we need to take the townhouse standards seriously. through this process from the beginning and incorporate it more formally in the future. I just don't think, I think we're opening up a can of worms that maybe we hadn't considered up to this point. So I think we should make a recommendation that they do that homework. But I think tonight's probably not the correct time to do it.

I would concur 100%, Vice Chair Patterson. So having said that, yeah, we'll ask for that recommendation to be put in towards city council. I don't think there's anybody who disagrees that we should be looking at town homes more closely. And if I understood vice chair Patterson point, basically what you're mentioning is let's keep the motion as it is in terms of the one parking spot has been that way since 2017 or whatever year I mentioned. So it's not going to hurt anybody moving forward. And then let me ask you this, and hopefully I can ask this type of question. How long do you think it would take to do a study like that?

That's a good question. And I was going to talk about this in a few minutes. But we're getting ready to address architectural standards. And I don't, depending on the size of that, which we're trying to figure out right now, depending on the size of that, we could potentially include it. If not, it can be next year. which isn't that far off.

That's pretty quick. So even if you guys did have a, staff had a big workload, I mean, waiting a year, I think we can all live with that for the one parking spot. At least I can, as of now for tonight's discussion. And I want to thank Vice Chair for roping us back into the actual discussion, so.

I'm still confused. There's three developments. They're all pretty big that have two-car garages that are all being built, like the Front Street ones next to Jerry Gold. You've got the ones off Newport, and then you have the ones that are near the Vail Apartments. All have two-car garages. So if it's a standard, I'm just surprised that that's the case. Either they've got variance for them, which means that's what people want to buy and build, And if that's the case, I think we may want to do something even before a year or two that keeps the momentum and not has this thing, which I see as a problem.

I was just standing, I was just corrected, and we've done so many parking amendments over the years, 2021, 2020, but inherently this one was done in 2025. So those things that you are looking at now were submitted they submit a complete applications prior to those amendments being made for the maximums.

I would like to not wait a year or two to make that change. So what are my options? What are our options?

I think it's pretty full.

So like I said, no, no, no. Here is an option. Can I make it? Can we make an amendment? to change that from one to a different number than one to two yes you can okay

I may add to the discussion. So townhomes along a public street versus getting access from an alley or an auto court is what they call it, can be two different types of developments. So the ones on 7th and Holly along the street, you don't see the garages. The Front Street one, those are also along Front Street and Holly. Those are front doors.

Those three, none of them you can see, the garages.

Yeah, because they are being loaded from the back. And I think in those situations, having a two-car garage, because you're not impacting the public realm, the street is probably from an aesthetic and connection of the built form and the public street in the realm is probably okay. If you were to get garages along a public street and you just saw five flex with two car garages all lined up right next to each other, then you'll see, you know, 10 cars all in one place.

So I think I agree with that. But I think, yeah, so I think the table didn't say that the table to said, yeah, the tables.

I think that was the last amendment is what you've landed. Right.

It doesn't matter what street you're located on. It just says one

So as you think about it today, if you want to address it today, then you could. Maybe options would be to not have a maximum, which the con of that could be that someone could build a fiveplex with two car garages along the street. The way it's written right now, you could do tandems along a street. So at least you'll get some built, you know, variety in your design scape. Or you could say it's tandem if you're along a public street. Unless you're on the back side, then you can, you know, if you have access to, then you can have, then you don't have to do tandem.

I like that. What do you like? Do that.

As long as all of you think that that's where we're going.

So if I'm understanding correctly, then we could amend the maximum number of parking spots, but to prevent it from being all along the street as a garage front, would that be a different portion of the code that would then have to be addressed later? Or could it be addressed at this time?

I was thinking in the table where it says, you know, two, what does it say? One parking space, but you can have two tandems. You could say along the public street, along the street, that's, that's what you have to do. If you're not along the public street, then your maximum is two.

What you guys are doing is basically we're making a formal recommendation. Ultimately it's going to be council's decision to make, but what you're doing is what we're taking as our formal recommendation. If Commissioner Kras would like to, you can make an amendment to this parking saying, hey, we caught this during the presentation. We don't like it. We're sending this along with our formal recommendation.

Is this even a recommendation or we're just like, we're essentially just writing down what we're already doing. Well, you deliberate.

If all of you agree that this is an amendment you want to incorporate, then we'll take that forward to council.

Right. But it is a public hearing in the sense that this is all formal. But you can make the amendment if you'd like. or anyone can make any amendment. But you'd be making an amendment to the proposed title, and again, that's fine. If you want it to be specific, yeah, state your case. Yeah, for sure.

I will even do this without a cheat sheet. We'll see how this goes. I would like to make an amendment to clarify single family townhouse to allow a maximum of two parking spots if not facing a public street.

Did I get that right?

Did you say it one more time?

No.

I'm writing it down.

I would like to make an, okay, are you just messing with me? No, I'm actually trying to write it down. Okay.

Vice Chair Patterson was filming. Okay. When not facing a public hearing.

Yes. You got it?

I have to repeat it too. Okay. No, you're fine. Okay, is there a second for Commissioner Krasa's amendment? Commissioner Zakharoff has.

I would like to second.

Okay, so now we get to go on John's tangent, which is now we're going to wrap this one up before we move on to the whole package. So any comments, deliberations? Commissioner Crafts, you get to go first. You put it on the floor. Defend.

I mean, we're essentially putting into the code the thing we're already doing. And it establishes the ability to have the parking that people need and what people will build at the same time preserving the public road with the code that already exists.

So it's just really clarifying what we're already doing. Any other comments? Commissioner Zakharoff.

Well, I myself did not notice this in the code as Commissioner Cross noticed, but it completely makes sense to me because I think all of the arguments were kind of correct, in my opinion, regarding the town homes getting into probably the most popular new way of property. And tandem parking is not the most comfortable way to park, definitely. People mostly have two cars or more if they're living in a million-dollar townhomes that are currently on the market. And I think this is something that is needed. I think it has a purpose. And that's why I completely seconded it, and I'm in favor.

Commissioner Adair?

So I don't disagree with any of the points made. I agree with them. I only just wonder if we could have an example of the text or the table, how it might appear. That would be great because I just want to be very clear that it's too provided it's not on the front street. If that is the case, if it's not on the publicly facing street, I am in support. I just want to make sure it's very clear.

Vice Chair Patterson. I'm kind of in the same boat. I think I accept the idea of this, but I think right now I need to understand what's changing the most. Didn't we just all say that it's happening today? Like they are building two car garages? Is it just that that's a market change, not a requirement? I'm just trying to understand it the right way.

It sounds like there was a parking update in 2025 in those permits that have already been through the pipeline.

Gotcha. And now it's down to one, and we want to put it back to two. OK.

Someone from staff want to make sure that I've covered that?

I just want to make sure we're all discussing the right thing. You know he asks a good question when they're all on their computers.

I'm going to share my screen.

We're working on finding that chart and bringing it. Oh, OK. So actually, here we go.

OK, but I did get that right, Kate. Basically, the ones that have been built prior were already through the pipeline before that parking reduction happened in 2025.

That's what it sounds like from the other staff that was here.

Perfect. Yeah, just a little bit of context. While they're looking, would anyone else like to continue to comment? We'll take a formal vote on Commissioner Kras's amendment, but definitely keep taking comments. Yeah, just John's amendment right now. I'll just say for my part, Commissioner Kras brings up a great point. This is the popular building trend at the moment, and I appreciate the fact that we are explicitly saying not on public facing roads. I think there's a bigger responsibility when you're taking up public facing public pedestrian facing common areas. But having some flexibility in the back area, in the back 40, I think is more than fine. And I'm comfortable with it. And to the other point that everybody made is hopefully this will all come back, including the parking when we look at that holistically, but the entire townhome structure. But I think this is an okay Band-Aid for now.

So the current code that is being shown on screen is for single family attached, which covers townhome. And the requirement or the allowance is one per unit is the minimum and then in the, the maximum is one per unit or tandem space with a two vehicle capacity. Sorry, we don't have the headings in right now. And they're in those zones or those tier one and tier two parking in like central, greater central Isqua and then outside. So would language similar to the one, I mean similar Is this the new language that you're proposing?

Yes, it would be something very similar to this. So I would say one per unit or one tandem space with a two-vehicle occupant's air capacity when facing a public street. When not facing a public street, two side-by-side spaces are allowed. I'll work with current planners. Okay.

I was checking with current planners, sorry.

It is. It is. No, like I said, it's a good catch. Okay. Now we've got to vote on the amendment, correct? Okay. Now I have to state it, correct?

Yes. Would you like me to take a stab at it for you?

Sure, please.

Okay. I would like to make a motion to amend the motion to amend the motion to... accept the amendments as presented to state, let's see, regarding single family attached units so that one, this is very long, one unit to state that one per unit or one tandem space with a two vehicle capacity when facing a public street, when not facing a public street, two side-by-side spaces are allowed. And this would be to section, to table 18.604.080A.

Great. Thank you, Kristen. Okay. All in favor of the current amendment on the table, please vote and say, yay. Yay. So that amendment passes unanimously. All right. With that, having said that, going back to the original conversation, just as parking as a whole and minimums, we'll pick it up with somebody who wants to begin. Commissioner Zachroff.

I would like to kind of follow up a little bit on my question regarding parking and change of use that we have discussed. We did not discuss much a change of use except for commercial into non-commercial. I would like to propose, I don't know if it's going to be an amendment or at least a recommendation, to make sure that the change of use from one type of commercial to another type of commercial will not trigger any change in parking laws unless it's required by the state law.

Okay. How does everyone feel about that? Strongly? Passionately? Because I think if there's not a strong feeling either way, that can be more of a recommendation, correct? Does it have to be an amendment? We can recommend anything to council.

I missed part of it, so I'm sorry.

That's the way it is currently written, is that if it's from any one version of commercial to a different version of commercial, then there's no additional parking required. So, yes. Okay. Commissioner Zagroff.

Just for any commercial, right?

Any commercial, yes. Anything that fits in the definition of commercial, including what you would typically think of as commercial, retail, restaurants, but it also includes the definition in the law office for whatever reason. So that would also count as well.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Patterson? Yeah, general, yeah. Okay, I'll put this out to the Commission. I'm considering making an amendment to this motion to divide it into two, like an A and a B, three A, three B. And the reason why is because I think part of this amendment is a requirement for compliance with state laws. I think there's a big section of it that we basically have to do. But there also is a section about removing parking minimums in the UC and MUCI zones. And I think that should be considered almost like two separate recommendations. Because I think that there's different reasons why we might recommend one but have some additional notes on the other one. From what I've understood in our last conversations on this topic, we kind of said, like you said earlier, the state already kind of goes above and beyond quite a bit that we shouldn't go even further. And so let's wait to remove minimums until we see how things shake out. And as we saw, there are a lot of minimums that are removed. I forget the list, but there's a handful that still exists that we would additionally be removing. I think from the wait and see, we then kind of said like, ah, maybe we'll revisit and talk more, but I don't think we ever really dug into it any further that I recall. get to a solid point where we said like yeah let's remove them and maybe you will all get there tonight but at this very point I'm not quite there on that portion of it where I personally would not feel comfortable making a straight up recommendation saying yeah let's get rid of all of them whereas I do feel that way about the compliance piece so That's what I'm thinking about. I don't know if you have any, I can make the formal amendment, but if anyone has any thoughts or discussion on just separating it before I do that.

Yeah, Commissioner Kraus. I know I talked about maximums for, so let's go to minimums. And I totally agree that we need to be super thoughtful before we go above and beyond on things that are already probably pretty hard. And And I would support holding off on getting rid of minimums. And maybe we get there eventually. But I agree that having that be a specific thing that we look at or maybe just postpone is probably a good idea.

So when you, when you guys mentioned getting rid of minimums, we're not talking about the state pieces. So like affordable housing, it's none of that. That's just, you're above and beyond meaning, what is it? It is central.

Urban Quarren, mixed use Central Issaquah.

urban core and central mixed use is a quad. Those are the areas being proposed to completely eliminate parking standards. So it sounds like Commissioner Kras and Vice Chair Patterson are against removing those minimums. But let's keep going down the dais. Commissioner Adair.

So I'm of the opinion I would like more discussion regarding the minimums and I would almost go further and say I would like to see it split into commercial and residential because personally I feel more comfortable reducing or eliminating minimums I mean, like apart separately from the state requirements for residential, but I have different feelings about commercials. So I agree that I would like maybe more time to discuss and dig in and see rather than just, hey, let's get rid of all parking minimums required, period.

Yeah, all valid points. I think last meeting we were discussing it, and I think originally the first time we discussed parking, we all kind of came to that Let's not go above and beyond. We don't need to. I think the idea was, I think one of the committees came back and that was the idea was maybe to get rid of the minimums in these areas and see how it worked as almost like a sample size and let the market drive them. And again, I could be, like I said last meeting, I could probably be convinced either way. But again, looking for more commentary and then we'll let Vice Chair Patterson put an amendment out. Commissioner Holmstrom.

have the same thought process I just in that zone I don't see a ton of available street parking right now there's tons of private parking lots mm-hmm but we can't assume people are just gonna be allowed to park in those so if they have to park in the street it's just there's I mean you look at north of Gilman there are no streets that's a huge strip of land that could get redeveloped and if there's no minimums I don't know where people

would park a car so i'm totally in favor of retaining yeah retaining the minimum for the urban core central okay um well i think everyone's kind of had their piece do you want to put that amendment out there mr patterson yeah absolutely um cool so i would like to amend motion three to divide it into two separate motions

Motion 3A, the amendments required for compliance with SB 5184 and HB 1183. And then motion 3B, regarding elimination of parking minimums in UC and MUCI zones. You get that okay?

Yes, so just to be clear, you're trying to break it into two motions?

Correct.

Okay, you could also make an amendment I don't know which, I think I know which way you're going, but you could also just make an amendment simply to amend the motion to not remove parking minimums from.

Okay, I'll argue my own case here. I don't know that I'm necessarily against minimums. I just don't know enough to make a decision for now. And so I guess that does mean I'm against it for now. So if it makes sense, we can move forward with approving the state requirement ones and recommending further discussion.

Correct and what you can do is again we can put that as a note that you know because we need to you have your reasons for not doing things and we're including those in our packet so we'll say didn't recommend at this time would like you know further research done on whatever your reasons may be.

Question for you Kristen was it appropriate Would something appropriate, and again, this is not my strong suit, would it be appropriate for the amendment to say to basically break out that, maintain minimums in these areas, or is just an informal recommendation okay? Because that's the proposal that's technically out there, is we're saying no, we're okay with getting rid of the minimums.

Right. The amendment could be to remove the That's what I'm saying.

To remove the proposal, to remove minimums, just remove the proposal, remove minimums.

Okay. From, yeah. But we do need to formally do it because technically we've...

Yes.

We didn't vote on anything. It hasn't been seconded.

Pretend I never said anything. So yeah, I would like to amend motion three to move forward with the amendments reviewed for compliance with State Bill 5184. in House Bill 1183 and remove the elimination of parking minimums. That's good, that's good, that's enough? That works. Okay.

Could you do me a huge favor?

And a little sticky pad so I know what to say here in a couple seconds. I'm gonna buy myself a few seconds by pretending to cough or something, I don't know. Okay, so now we need a second for Vice Chair Patterson's motion.

So Commissioner Adair. I second Vice Chair Patterson's motion. Do I need to say what it is again?

No, you don't. Great. Second's perfect. Thank you, Genevieve. Okay, it's been seconded. So now we have time to deliberate and discuss what Jesse put out there. How does everybody feel about that? Because we are going to vote on it. before we get back to the general topic. Would anyone like to discuss it? Now is your time. And again, we're just talking about Vice Chair Patterson's motion. Commissioner Matthews.

Yeah, I think it's actually a good idea because I'm not very comfortable with removing minimums at this time either. Just because, again, we don't have parking on streets. We don't have side streets to have people loading their cars.

No. And the only thing I would say to the commissioners is remember about two meetings, two parking meetings ago, this is where we all kind of landed. And I think last meeting, you know, we might've got to convince maybe we can do this. So, or maybe I did, but ultimately this is, this is why we're all here. So again, everybody's opinions valid. I want to do commissioner Holmes from brings up a good point about Gilman. So again, very thoughtful. I'm sure there.

Yeah, and I'm, you know, I'll probably wound in getting rid of parking minimums. But at this point, I do want to see more research and I want to know what kind of safeguards we can put in place, for example, for people who live in neighborhoods. Like we had a public comment brought up and she's saying everyone's parking on streets and we don't know when or where. So if we need to set up a permit system or something like that, I'd rather have a good idea of what kind of administrative cost does that come with, that sort of thing.

No, thank you, Commissioner Adair. That's a great point. We did receive public comment, and we received a lot from the developers, clearly, and that's great. They're a part of our community, but we also did receive public comment of people that made that exact comment. Yeah, and to your point, I agree. I think I could see myself getting rid of them and let it be market-driven completely in the future, but, you know, it never hurts to have more information. All these things can always be revisited. Okay. I think my sticky notes are getting ready. Perfect. Okay. Okay. Oh, there it is in the notes. All right. So we are going to take a vote and the motion to move forward with the state requirement parking amendments and remove the proposal to remove parking minimums from the urban core and central Issaquah mixed use zones. All in favor, please raise your hands and say aye. Aye. Seven of seven, unanimous. Okay. Back to parking. I think we kind of knocked out the big stuff, but clearly we're not done. More deliberation on parking. Is there anything that hasn't been said? I mean, there's a lot in there, and to John's point, parking is emotional. especially when you can't find it. Okay. It might be the hour. It might be we just talked a lot. Any other comments as far as the different proposal? I think again, some of this was state driven. Obviously we want to be in compliance. I don't see any reason to wait. I think the, the amendments that we made as far as the town homes, Absolutely, and I think as far as Vice Chair Patterson's, again, I think we can make a sensical argument as to why those amendments were put up.

Okay.

So what am I looking at?

You're just looking at the, we're looking to responses for why the commission did or did not adopt these. I think you've discussed most of these. I just put them up here just to make sure.

Okay. Now I'm going to have to put the regular motion with the amendments. Amendments are voted on. Don't have to worry about them. Isn't there some magic formula I'm supposed to say?

There is. So the last one is to... What's that? You just move to adopt the parking amendments as amended.

No, we don't have to take a... Because it was already... We initially began the deliberation.

You approve the amendment, but then you have to do the final motion, which would be... I recommend... Yeah, I move to recommend approval of the parking amendments as amended.

Okay, move to recommend the parking amendments as amended.

Right, so you would say this, except that where it says as presented, you would just use the words as amended.

Okay, I like that. Okay, the motion to recommend approval of the proposed Title 18 amendments related to requirements for parking as amended. All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Unanimous. Seven for seven. There's a lot of formality this evening. That's good. That's what I get for not bringing my Robert's Rules. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, before we move on, planners, do you have what you need? I know we kind of debated that one more than any of them, so is that enough homework shown?

I'll defer to the planners, current planners.

Are we good?

Good to go.

Thank you. Okay. We talked that one to death. Yes. Okay. Well, I'll stop here real quickly. I want to thank staff. It's been great to have Yi and Andrew and Emily with us. I hope to see all of you again. Thank you for all of your hard work, your fantastic presentations. And, yes, thank you again. And of course, we want to thank Kate and Amanda, Manny and Kristen, who are regular, wonderful staff that are always with us. All right. We are going to move on to the end of this evening. Let's start with City Council updates.

Okay. So these amendments will go to PDE on August 4th. On June 29th, the city council approved the amendments as you all forwarded them to regarding step backs and open space. The vote for that was five in favor, two opposed. The reasons for a puzzle was they were looking to have the setbacks Didn't feel like we had looked at all the options and wanted to have those included in the architectural standards. So as you know, they have already amended the planning development environment committee has already amended our table of amendments and asked us to please include the step backs as part of the architectural standards when we revisit those. So that was step one. We'll be moving on to step two a little bit later. Any other council amendments, many that you could think of? Okay. Those are council.

Okay. Did you say amendments?

I probably did.

Oh, it is late. It is late. Okay. Any other business or announcements?

Just want to remind you that we do have so many notes here that we do have an August. We have August 13th, I think. And then in August, we are doing an August 20th meeting, not the 27th. We're doing the 20th. So we are doing that one. At our next meeting, we're going to take a little bit from code amendments. We're going to talk about comp plan amendments. So the ICAP... and the climate action plan, the parks, and the regional growth center amendments that are coming to you. The next time we see you, we'll be talking about the analysis that's been done for the inclusionary zoning, development bonus, multifamily tax exemptions, and FAR. We'll look at the results from different scenarios that our consultants are doing for us. And we'll talk about those with the Planning Development Environment Committee on September 1st. And then moving forward in September, just a reminder, we'll be talking at that time about architectural design standards, variances and deviations all at the same time. They're separate on the list, but we're going to look at those at once, we think.

Excellent. Well, thank you, Kristen. Yeah, I noticed that, too. So just everybody knows August, our meetings will actually be a week apart. So August 13th, August 20th. So not, it'll be the second and third Thursday of that month.

Pardon me? It will, it'll go, it'll be updated and go out on the 20th. We needed to do that in order to have time to make it to planning development committee in time.

Okay. All right. Any other announcements from the commission staff? Anyone. I did notice there is a cool festival going on, August 13th, our next meeting, Thursday, the aircraft. Is that new?

Oh, yes. That's new, isn't it? It is new. Yes, that'll be very, very fun. What is it? Is it competing with salmon days? No, not at all. So Mick, the guy who initiated it, I love this. He's a professional clown, and he has the clown garage here in Issaquah. But initially... initially he travels all over the world doing this stuff and initially he wanted to do paragliding but that sort of in kind of fell through but they're going to be different acting kind of things different acrobatics it'll be over here at the community center there's going to be a small parade there's just going to be lots of fun it's sort of an arts and crafts kind of weekend it's but different it's more physical you know it's not sidewalks chalk sidewalk or anything so it's

I saw the banner go up over Front Street. August 13th through 16th? Yes. You said clown, right?

That's what he does. He was part of Cirque du Soleil. Some pretty cool stuff.

My kids took clown lessons from him. He's great. He's a great clown. He knows what he's doing. My kids are much better jugglers for it.

Excellent. Okay. Well, our summer of fun has not ended. We still have a little bit longer to go. Commissioner Zakharov.

Every weekend in August, the front street will be closed. Oh, for the... For Saturday and Sunday, and there will be different activities. Oh, that's right.

Well, we... So, we are... I'm not even sure. I know that... Is it just August, the month of August, or is it... They are going to start closing Front Street for some weekends. Interesting, okay. Yes.

I know every weekend in August because I was asked if anybody from dance community can participate and they probably will and you might see me or not see me.

The date's kind of changed, but yes, it'll be, keep your eyes open for that one. Yeah, that'll be fun too.

Yeah, and what else do we have? Tuesday's Concerts in the Green is back, so what was Tuesday I went? Stonesie, Rolling Stones cover band, it was great. If you could survive the 90-some degree weather.

But yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Okay, I think that wraps it up. Again, I want to thank staff for all their hard work and thank everybody here. We're going to adjourn this meeting of the Planning Policy Commission at 8.52. Night, everyone.