Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I would like to welcome everyone to tonight's hearing. It is July 27th, 2026, and the time is now 603. This meeting will come to order. Tanya, will you please call the role?

Yes. Ali Shasti.

Yeah.

Ben Reed.

Here.

Brian Kesterson.

Here.

Justice Phelps. Here. Sandra Pereira Reynolds is excused. Todd Iofeso. And bonnie williams appears to not be here for the record remote attendance for board member toddy official has been approved for this meeting.

Thank you. Are there any added items or changes to the agenda from staff?

Good evening, ladies and planning board. It's good to be here. This is the culmination of many months and years of work on some of these items. I just wanted to give a general announcement because we do have some members of the public. You may see us move these houses up. We are working with a system where we instead of saying, hey, I have a comment, we want to make sure that we have some order in the commenting process. And so all of our land use and planning board members have a house in front of them. And when they raise it, it's just to indicate to our chair that they would like to speak on an item. There's no secret signals. The house doesn't mean anything other than call on me. And then because we have one member that's remote in attendance, I will keep track if he would like to comment and I'll raise it on his behalf. So just wanted to give clarification because we've had some people ask, like, what are the signals you're sending with the houses? And it's just the technology we have isn't set up to notify our chair of intent to speak. No actual agenda items or changes.

Thank you, Kristen. The minutes from the previous meeting have been presented to the Board. I call for a motion to approve the minutes of July 13th, 2026 as presented.

This is Brian Kesterson, and I move to approve the minutes.

This is Ali Shanthi, I second.

Is there any discussion? I call for a vote to approve the minutes all in favor say aye aye those against say nay the vote is approved six four one two three four five five five in aye Vote is approved. Sorry. Tonight we are holding public hearings in which the staff will give presentations on the Rediscovered Downtown Kent Plan, Central Avenue Corridor Rezones, and the 2026 Comprehensive Plan Amendments. These are action items and a vote will be held to make a formal recommendation to City Council for each item. The process for tonight's hearing is as follows. I will open and close the public hearing. Staff will make the presentation, then board members will have a chance to ask questions. Board members will place miniature houses on the dais to indicate that they would like to speak. After board members' questions, I will invite testimony from the public in chambers. Tanya will call you one at a time. When you are called, please come up to the podium and state your first and last name and zip code for the record. You will each have three minutes to speak. After all public comments have been made, board members may have questions for staff. If you are a member of the public and wish to provide a public comment, please notify Tonya by signing up on the sign-in sheet near her desk. If there are no objections from the board members at this time, I will open the public hearing for the Rediscovered Downtown Kent plan. We will begin with a staff presentation from Carolyn Eckel.

Thank you. So tonight we are here for a public hearing to cover our Rediscover Downtown Kent plan. We will provide a very brief overview of the plan itself. We've had two previous briefings that are available as well. We'll also kind of, we'll go over comments that we have received. We have received a few additional items for comments that made it in before the 4 PM deadline, so I just wanted to make note of that. There's an additional email that we received and some additional online comments were received through conveyor, so those have all been provided through Tonya, so. Wanted to make sure that we made note of those additional comments that we received. And then we'll go over our next steps in our timeline toward adoption. So today the downtown. Plan is organized essentially by five chapters. Chapter three is essentially the meat of the plan and is organized around a series of six goals. These goals have been updated from our previous sub area plan for the downtown. And they cover a series of items. So goal one is essentially our identity and placemaking goal. Goal two is our housing and living downtown goal. Goal three pertains to economic development. Goal four pertains to equity and the environment. Goal five is our transportation and connectivity goal. And goal six is essentially our infrastructure and coordination goal. In addition to the strategies and actions that are in Chapter 3 of the plan, we do have a design framework which is detailed in Chapter 4, and this essentially is outlining the physical characteristics of the downtown. As it's envisioned through the plan. So these are including in purple the Central Avenue corridor improvements. In blue with the destination streets. And yellow multimodal connections looking at how we're bridging gaps in some of our multimodal infrastructure, specifically by claims. And in green are our perks and trail connections. And in various locations on across the map, we're looking at wayfinding and gateway elements. that are proposed for the downtown. This is essentially a framework. So all of the details and how these pieces would come together would be determined through implementation, working with our partners. And then chapter five is our implementation matrix. So essentially this is what is outlining for each goal. We have a set of strategies and actions. And if you refer back to chapter three, you can find additional detail and information on each of those actions. We have received a number of public reviews, comments, so our online draft of the plan has been housed on our website for the plan. We received a total of 62 comments from seven total commenters, but the plan was viewed by 373 total readers. Some of what we heard, we would expect to hear a lot of what the comments received online show our support for the work that we have throughout the plan. There have been some additional notes. There's a desire to see additional grocery and food options, particularly near transit, for example. There's kind of a re emphasis on some of the recommendations are already in the plan, such as improved Central Avenue conditions, particularly for pedestrians. There's an interest in seeing continued housing options and amenities being developed throughout the downtown. And a balance of comments for walking, biking, driving, transit, parking, showing that there is a desire for all of these various modes to be accommodated in the downtown. But emphasizing that all of them could use some additional support. We have some comments indicating that they'd like to see better use of public spaces in the downtown parks in particular. How can we enhance those parks? And then discussions around art, particularly looking at how we can make efficient and effective investments in things like art in the downtown. So that gives you a very high level glimpse at some of the comments we received through the online document. The complete set of comments are available through both, I think the agenda posted it online and then you all have received those comments as well. We did receive some agency comments, so Puget Sound Regional Council did review the plan. They made some notes for us that we will be addressing in our final draft of the plan. So those include comments related to engagement and support for underserved populations. requests for some additional descriptions on a series of items. They would like some additional detail around transportation and transit.

Caroline, I'm hearing that there's some difficulty hearing the volume. Can you speak into the microphone a little bit more? I'm not sure it's picking you up. Well, sure.

Is there anything else that I need to do? Perfect.

We can also have you just move to this chair if because these mics may be picking up better. So if they if they show an issue again, we'll just have you move over and speak into one of these.

Yes. OK.

Sorry about that.

So they the Puget Sound Regional Council noted that we should make some additional. Add some additional narrative for a number of items to help discuss the importance of some of our parks and trails. The relationship between some of the transportation projects that we have, like in our transportation master plan and how they are helping people connect to transit. Housing types and variety. They want to know more detail around some of the existing types of housing that we have and the populations that the existing housing serves. They would also like more information about some of our business retention and anti-displacement strategies for businesses. They are seeking some additional clarification from us on expected growth targets.

Hey, Caroline, can you move to that? Sorry, I'm just hearing from the. Thank you. Yeah, sorry. I think it's the mic. I don't think it's you. OK, so you'll just need to press the button. Justice can show you because you don't normally sit in that seat. I appreciate the flexibility.

How's that? Is that working? OK. Thank you. They also requested for us to address some clarification of some of our expected growth targets. So specifically in looking at our activity units for downtown, the Puget Sound Regional Council has a projection that they shared with us, or they have a tool that we use to look at projections. We also had some growth targets that were established through our comp plan. And so they were wanting some additional clarification in the document really be sure that we're detailing and articulating the targets that we anticipate achieving through our downtown plan. They are also providing us some guidance for when we do update our climate element of our comp plan related to the downtown. So that will be at a future time that we would address that comment. We did also receive some comments, not very many too, from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and those pertain to Mill Creek specifically. They'd like some increased narrative around some of the work that we're doing along Mill Creek to restore habitat and then to talk about flood resilience. So those are some of our agency comments. And then we have noted before, but it is a really important part of why we are doing the plan currently is that the work that we're doing in this plan will allow us to be re designated as a regional growth center by PSRC and they are recommending at this time following the comments and their review of our plan that our plan would allow us to be re designated as a regional growth center for Kent. We also wanna make note of all of the people who have contributed to the plan over its lifespan. It grew out of the comp plan. We've had a number of different community organizations and community members who've participated at different stages of the process. In particular, our downtown advisory group really did play a strong role in helping us shape the urban design framework and our goals. And so we certainly want to thank and express our appreciation for everyone who participated in the process. our adoption timeline for this. We are moving forward based on your recommendation. We anticipate bringing this forward to the Committee of the Whole on the 4th, and then it would go forward to City Council consent on the 18th. This would prepare us for our redesignation, which we anticipate from PSRC on September 17th.

I'd be happy to answer any questions So I've been looking for this all along and There's a little less than 300 parking spaces in downtown Kent as it is There's competition for them There's a number of places in the plan where you say we're going to make these make changes to make these more walkable and which sounds like you're going to be taking away parking spaces use it you make the point of there is you know the plan is that people will park once and then walk from there what i don't see is anywhere in the plan is okay where do the where do those people park There's nothing that says parking goes here or parking goes in this area somewhere. There's also no statement about what about people who are mobility challenged. It's like I know people who go downtown two or three times a week. Son in his 60s, mom in her 90s with a walker. It's like... She going to walk from Kent Station or what?

I think those these are great questions. I don't think that the plan itself is not prescribing where new parking would be located. But we're not.

You're not going to say we're going to put it at the corner of Gow and 4th, but I do, but I do. You know, it's like I'm seeing lots of things that says here's how we make it better for walkers. I don't see anything that says our plan is that people will park once and I don't see anything that addresses where they're going to go.

That's fair. I think so. Currently, we do have parking located in various areas of the downtown. We understand that there is a need to preserve the parking that exists. So we're not making any recommendations to remove parking anywhere in the downtown area. We would like to encourage as many people as are able to to have the ability to park once, and that hopefully would allow for parking to be available in other parts of the downtown, for there to be a better blend of parking options available for people who do need it. We also hope that as we improve multimodal access, that hopefully that will also offset some need for additional parking stalls if people are able to access it by walking or by bike when possible it would help offset some need for parking we've had some parking studies done in the past and i know i wasn't here when those were completed but i don't know if kristen you have additional insights

I can speak to this and we did talk extensively with the advisory group as well as land use and planning board on this issue. What we found for the amount of uses in our city and and the parking, we actually don't have necessarily a parking number problem. It's a parking distribution problem. And so a lot of that is because of safety to access different parts. because of the distance between it. There's a lot of things that go into parking, and I'm not saying no more parking at all, but the state has made laws that make it so that the city cannot require parking anymore in our downtown. That is something that is in TOD legislation. We advocated strongly for recognizing unique conditions in Kent where we may need it, and the state said, thank you, no thank you. We are going to move and remove the city's autonomy and authority on that. So, Brian, we've taken steps. Previously, there was a large convening when the 2013 plan was adopted. We did a whole parking study, and there hasn't been significant changes in actual development patterns that would shift that study. And we actually have had more parking come online through There's more openings at the Sounder Station because of changes that have happened from commute patterns, as well as another parking structure that's going in. So a lot of what you're seeing here is to build a parking structure in a different location is tens of millions of dollars. And that's not financially feasible. And so what we are recommending is for those that come downtown via vehicle, at some point they become homeless. walkers or rollers or some sort of pedestrian and so we want them to be able to access parking and move about town in a good way and then also assess the parking that needs to be for local businesses and for others that is continuing to turn over so this will be a larger conversation as we see where the state law shakes out and where things happen But the point was to say that we recognize that there's changing conditions. And so there's been a variety of proposals. We've talked with the Kent Downtown Partnership and other businesses several times. And I think this is something that we're saying we're acknowledging this is a need in the plan. Further discussions will be needed to build final consensus. But we're hearing that and we're responding to that. And some of this is, again, ongoing. Financially, we just can't build a parking garage. So we're also saying other strategies are when we know that there's lots that are underutilized or spaces that are underutilized. And a lot of that reason is because of their proximity and the safety to get to those spots. And so it's a multi-pronged approach that's being proposed.

What I'm looking for is things like we recognize that we're going to have to take off the two hour maximum on the parking spots. We recognize, you know, we are expecting people to park on the streets. And so we recognize that some street parking still has to be there.

And those are certainly conversations that will continue even during the development of this plan. KDP, you know, I think you know this well, did a survey of their members and it was pretty split of who wanted the parking limits expanded, who wanted them removed altogether and who wanted them modified. So there's not a clear consensus right now. And so for us to put a recommendation and saying this is what it shall be felt like it would be disingenuous to the further implementation and engagement process. And so So certainly evaluating that is something that we can do in the future. But to install and then uninstall and then reinstall, those signs were at a request for businesses in the past. And so we want to respect that and have a robust conversation. And that's where some of these other efforts in the plan would also help support that as well. Thanks. Thanks.

Thank you staff for numbers are there any additional questions for staff I Do actually have another question which is you know you you also talk a lot about? You know activities temporary activities can't cornucopia other things I Don't see anything in there about restrooms I which is always a problem with farmer's market and anything else. It's like, where do people go to the bathroom?

Yeah, if you would, because we've had various iterations of it.

Yeah. So this is an ongoing conversation and a lot of it, again, I hate to say this, but it boils down to safety. And so there's no denying that restrooms are something that the community has identified. There's also no denying that they are a place right now in our current conditions where there's illegal and unsafe activity happening. And so Our parks department is actively working to try to address those issues and working with our leadership. And so some of that has been addressed through more temporary solutions. Like during cornucopia days, there's porta potties and other, other more temporary solutions. I know parks is working on doing some remodeling, if you will, or updates to existing bathrooms and to incoming bathrooms that are in other locations that are using SEPTED crime prevention through environmental design and other practices. So this is something that I very much acknowledge is a challenge that as a community, we're not alone. There's a lot of jurisdictions that are grappling with this and how to address it.

Caroline, and I get, you know, we get these agency comments, and I don't know if we've seen, I don't know if I have them in here, and maybe I do, and I just didn't see them. I probably didn't see them knowing me. But my question for you is, can you kind of expand a little bit more on both the transportation and transit access and the housing types that they're looking at? Because my concern is Our plan expands, is broader than what Puget Sound Regional Council is actually looking at. So our housing numbers are going to be different because we're looking at a much broader part of Kent than what they're looking at. And I don't want us to get hamstrung by another government agency.

So let me make sure that I'm addressing both of those for you. So for the transportation and transit related comments, they specifically were wanting us to provide some additional detail on how our transportation master plan projects were furthering the goals that are in the plan, specifically how we hope that these transportation projects will further transit access. So that was a very specific kind of detail line item that we did suggest, but they wanted a little bit more detail on how we anticipated

these would be related to one another and why would be prioritizing those specific transportation projects in the transportation master plan did you have yeah so PSRC Caroline's being humble PSRC said our plan was excellent and they were providing comments asking for clarification not changes in that regard so they said add descriptions help draw the we'll wait for the help draw the line a little bit more clearly to say why what we're proposing in this plan increases the PSRC goals or addresses the PSRC goals for regional connectivity in these other efforts. And so same with housing. So these were, we will be making minor additional points and clarifications, but the, the strategies and actions and goals are not changing based on those comments. So it's, we very much were, I think they were very, um, supportive of the work that we have done. And it was not asking us, I did not perceive it as an overreach as much as it was just additional clarification and details.

Okay, so they wanted more information, not trying to get us to change. Correct. Okay.

And I would say that the housing was very similar. It's essentially they wanted, they have items around kind of affordable housing and they wanted to know how our current downtown housing is stacking up. Are we providing kind of our share of that puzzle? And we feel that we have a strong affordable housing market in the downtown. We're looking for more of a mix. And so they wanted, okay, well, if that is the policy direction for Kent, that's kind of more unique to us. They just wanted more details on what the existing blend was so that they could say that we are meeting those goals. Yeah.

I also have a rules question on, because the online comments do, I need to submit them as an exhibit.

So we have updated the agenda already, so they will be in the record. So no need to add additional exhibits. They're all included in the packet.

Excellent.

Thank you. Thank you for checking.

Yes. All right, staff, are there any, or all right, board, any further questions for the staff?

All right, thank you, Carolyn.

If there are no further questions from the board, we will call on public speakers. Tanya, is there anyone signed up to speak?

No, there is not.

All right, thank you.

Chair, may I ask that we give one last call if you'd like to speak on this item or other items to sign up and we will take...

I was working. Okay, perfect. Is there anyone in the audience not signed up who would care to speak? There we go. Sorry, I'm trying to read through the...

You can stay, because we're going to call your name in a second. So you can walk towards the dais. Over here, yeah.

This is Jack Key, is that correct?

Yes, K-A-Y. K-A-Y.

Please state your first and last name and zip code for the record. Then you may make your comments.

Okay. It's Jack K. Island Torklift. So that'd be 98032, I guess. So anything else you need from me? Okay. We've been down in Kent here for 50 years, as of June 1. So 1976 was when we moved into town, a little shop, family business. We have seen a lot of changes in the downtown area. And your comments, Brian, on the parking concerns, your comments on the bathrooms, we've expanded to two campuses. We now have a campus in Royal City, which is about 15 acres that is outside of Moses Lake, if you're familiar with that area at all. That's where we do manufacturing. Of course, we have our service center that's over here, our service installation facility. We've designed and developed a lot of different products that we market across the U.S. Most people don't know this information. We have 180 people on our team. Most people think about just a little forklift over here on the corner and the Kentucky Challenge that we host every year to help the food bank. But most people don't know the magnitude of our business. We're a small business still. Family members in the business. And we're working on the next 50 years. That's what we're doing. And so I got the letter in the mail. And if I understand correctly, from your timeline, this is going to be put in place mid-August.

Council will be considering it in August and then it will have a 30 day active date.

Okay, so they're going to they're going to vote on it and say, yep, this is what we're going to do. They have the choice to vote. Yes. Right.

But I can't determine how council vote. Right.

Right. And so all this is going to be happening here within a really short period of time. So. The health and safety you mentioned from the restrooms, totally understand that for the public, but you also have the people that live here. And there's a health and safety problem there too, where we constantly deal with human waste in our area. I don't consider myself better than anybody else. Coincidentally, I had some surgical gloves and I was picking up some human waste right on our business today. And so the fact that we have these big plans to revitalize downtown and we have no public restroom plan, how long have we been talking about that? Any guesses?

Your three minutes are up.

Three minutes are up?

Yes. So you can have another 15 seconds to conclude.

Okay. Yeah, so I love the fact that you all are interested in revitalizing downtown, but there has to be some sanity to it. And expecting people to ride on metro buses while talking to the mayor. I'm being told that people riding on the buses are not even paying to ride on the buses. And the people that you want to ride on the bus won't ride on the bus because of all the free people that are on the bus that are obviously not lawful. So that would be my only comment there since I don't have enough time to really... Discuss my, my thoughts here, so I do appreciate all your effort. I know you guys all have the best effort in mind here for the city and helping the city and revitalizing the city. But I think that we got a lot of work to do. And I think that the current plan doesn't thank you for your comments. Everything needs to be addressed.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Is there anyone else in the audience not signed up who would like to speak? Seeing no further speakers from the public, I want to ask staff if they have any further comments.

I don't think we have any further comments unless there's any other questions from the board.

Okay I will now call for a motion to close the public hearing. I call for a vote to close the public hearing.

This is Justice Phelps. I move to close the public hearing.

This is Ali Shastri. I second.

I call for a vote to close the public hearing. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

My ayes have it. The motion passes. The public hearing is closed. I will now call for a motion. I will call for a motion.

So land use and planning board members, this is your opportunity if you would like to move forward with a recommendation to city council.

I, Ali Shasti, move to recommend the city council adopt an ordinance adopting the rediscover downtown Kent plan, subject to revision during ordinance drafting and review by the city attorney.

This is Ben Reed. I second. Any discussion?

Is that a yes? Yes. With all due respect, what I'm looking for is exactly what you said. is we recognize that parking is something that will take ongoing work and that we will have to evaluate as we go forward to make sure that we are addressing the ongoing changes in the need for parking and restrooms and other things like that. To leave it blank, to say we're gonna do all these things to make it more walkable, But without saying anything about even how we're going to address the parking situation leaves a significant hole in the plan.

Thank you. Brian, are you okay if I respond? I think I'm a little bit confused because there's an entire under the transportation goals. There's an entire. Uh, strategy with actions focused on parking and focused on those items that would be implementation items, and they're listed in the implementation section. So. i am wondering if maybe we could add something between now and our council presentation to say something about to strengthen that language to say you know this is an ongoing conversation and ongoing work because in staff's opinion we have worked we that is exactly what we're trying to say so maybe it's not articulated clearly and maybe there's a little bit of a disconnect there. The intent is that these are issues that, so taking a step back, the purpose of this plan is to maintain certification so that we get on the order of five to $10 million every two years on transportation funding. And so, the goal for psrc certification the requirements are to address the housing and jobs targets and to address transportation connectivity the rest of it is our items that the community raised that we said we still want to address in this plan even though it's not required to be addressed so we are on timelines to meet certain certifications for funding purposes We recognize, you know, we've had ongoing conversations. Police has been in the rooms with a lot of these meetings. public works, parks, business entities. And so the intent is that this is a vision, a 20 year vision and the implementation work will follow. And so I know my Kristen saying we're working on it or we'll continue to work is not super promising all the time. I know that there's a history of the city saying we're working on it. Um, the goal by dedicating an entire sub strategy and actions was to say, parking's a big issue. Like we're going to pull this out as its own issue. And then I think a lot of the other issues, you know, some of them are symptoms of safety, symptoms of public safety, symptoms of these other items. And so that's, we heard from you all and we heard from the downtown advisory group. Like if you don't address safety as your number one priority, goal and action. The rest of this doesn't matter. It's icing on the cake. And you're not going to get a cake. And so we hear you on those safety concerns. There's a lot that we're advocating for, for funding and enhanced enforcement. The plan calls for exploring what it would be like to have different types of funding strategies to do more downtown cleanup with private properties. A lot of that is in the plan, but maybe it's a little bit more nuanced because We're working out some of those details still. So this is not we are in no way saying we're just going to create bike lanes and all of these problems are going to be fixed. No, not at all. We know that's not a that's not a solution. We also know that people like to experience downtowns that they like to enjoy. And there's many components of that. So that's why we called out the parking specifically. That's why we've called out safety specifically. those items so I hear your reservations we would be happy to take a look at it and see if there's ways we could strengthen that language further but I just I want you to know I'm I'm a little bit confused and having a disconnective did that section not not commit the city or not seem strong enough that we're addressing it

I didn't hear it, but that's totally fair. I suspect that there are things that you think are communicating that that I'm not picking up on.

And great. This is not to blame you at all. It's me to say, let me know where we missed the mark on this.

Okay. And I can provide some direct, some specific comments on it.

Okay.

Thank you, Brian.

Justice? So I'm kind of going to go down the same line as Brian a little bit. I think You did call it out to a point, but we didn't call out parking. We didn't call it out. broadly in our presentations and in everything that's been discussed in front of this board. And kind of same with public safety, it gets highlighted, and I will applaud staff for that. Throughout the plan, it is highlighted that we need to bring public safety back into Kent or strengthen it here in Kent. I've grown up here. This is my home. I'm born and raised, I'm 31, and I have left Kent for maybe four years to go to college. So I've watched downtown grow and change and do all of this. I think there's still more work that needs to be done with this plan. And with some of it, we need to look at certain aspects of it. Again, parking, the restrooms, public safety. Those need to be called out higher and more priority than weaving it through, or at least in the presentations. Calling that out and making sure that we all understand what's happening with it. Again, I know the first presentation... July I think we did talk a lot about public safety and we talked about some of the aspects that would need to happen in there but we it just still it feels a little

So thank you for that. This is not a public safety plan, so there's specific planning efforts that you could do for public safety. If chief were here, he would be right there with you. Mayor would be right there with you. There's been significant changes in state law recently that have limited the city's ability to address. honestly address possession and open possession of drug use. And that's a significant challenge in our downtown that's contributing to safety. So a lot of what we did in that first briefing was talk about needing to advocate at state level, needing to advocate for resources, to support the enforcement efforts that are known to work when we can fund them and sustain them. But with funding being cut at the state level, with all these other issues, we recognize that safety is critical. Again, what we're here today to talk about is certification of a 20-year vision for a plan that then would require and would result in implementation efforts. If we don't get this final recertification, we're at risk of losing... a lot of grant funding opportunities that offset a lot of our city operations today. So the purpose of adopting this plan is for a recertification for PSRC requirements to enable grant funding opportunities that otherwise will be at a loss of about $10 million every two years that we currently sustain and have. So I'm just letting you all know the realities of what a 20-year vision versus specific implementation measures are and what the purpose of this document is. So I hear you on safety. We all, I think, all agree we need more efforts. This is really supposed to be a land use and planning document of how can we do land use and development changes to support that. And so it's a multi-tiered approach. We're, as a city, working on it in many ways.

Thank you all. Is there any further discussion? All right, if there's no further discussion, I will call for a vote to approve the motion as presented. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Those against say nay.

No.

The vote is approved four to one. All right. If there are no objections from the board members at this time, I will open the public hearing for the Central Avenue corridor rezones. We will begin with a staff presentation by Deja Mitchell.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Deja Mitchell, Long Range Planner, and I'm here to give a presentation on the hearing for Central Avenue Corridor Rezones. So just some context around the purpose of why we're doing this. So as Kristen mentioned, our downtown area is one of 30 PSRC regional growth areas. Um, we are wanting to recertify to continue to have. Or to continue to maximize and prioritize public investment. So, our 2044 comprehensive plan calls for continue planning and investment in our Kent and in our cancer regional growth center. So we have our downtown 1 and we also have 1 in our industrial area. This is one of two. So really that goal is just so we can help realize the visions for those areas around planned housing, economic development, and infrastructure investments. So as Caroline mentioned earlier, the Central Avenue corridor is a key route through downtown Kent and an important focus in implementing our rediscovered downtown plan as well as recommendations. So as part of implementing that rediscovered downtown plan, the city is proposing zoning changes For properties along the central F corridor, these changes are intended to support the vision for a vibrant mixed use downtown. So both our 2044 comprehensive plan in our rediscovered downtown plan. Encourage increased density and broader potential for housing and mixed use development downtown. So essentially what we are wanting to do in this area is increase housing opportunities, mixed use development, and neighborhood serving uses by addressing barriers that we have in our KIT City Code. So our existing zoning classifications for the corridor include GCMU, which is General Commercial Mixed Use. We have Downtown Commercial Enterprise, Transit Overlay, so DCET, and then we also have just General Commercial. So the proposed amendments would rezone most properties along the corridor from James Street to Titus. So let's see. Not what I meant to do. So along this corridor, so we rezone these properties to DCE. So essentially extending out this DCE that we have here all the way here. So all of that would be red opposed to the lighter red that we see here. It also would rezone one property at the bottom here from GC to CM. And that's just so we can match the surrounding zoning area. So continue to be CM like the rest of the parcels in that area. And then also to maintain consistency with the underlying land use. So in this area, the underlying land use is commercial and in order to rezone, it must stay in that same land use. So it would have to stay commercial opposed to urban center, which is what our DCE area is. So currently zoning in our general commercial and our general commercial mixed use, it's more restrictive, there's less housing, and there's also manufacturing and industrial uses that are inconsistent with our rediscover downtown plan. So just a general overview of what the changes are that we're proposing. So first, the change from DCE to, I'm sorry, the change from CM The change from general commercial and general commercial mixed use to DCE provides for less regulations for townhomes, multifamily buildings, communal residences tier two, residential facilities with healthcare and independent living facilities. So originally these were only allowed in a mixed use zone. So it really restricted the amount of housing that could be in our downtown area, in particular in that corridor. So now we've opened it up for this to be all through our corridor. So there's less restrictions, so it's easier to get a permit for these types of housing. We also reduce industrial uses, wholesale uses, and service land uses. So less heavy equipment and truck repair, bulk retail, mortuaries, things that just don't align with our Rediscover Downtown plan and don't call for a vibrant downtown. We've also decreased lot areas, so before it was 10,000 square feet, now it is 5,000 square feet, so allowing for smaller parcels. We've also decreased yard setbacks, so there's no longer any side yard setbacks or front yard setbacks, whatever the case may be, unless it's budding a residential neighborhood or residential district. We've increased site coverage, so allowing for a bigger footprint, opposed to a smaller footprint, which was there before. And then we've also increased height, so now height is regulated based on our design review for downtown. And those are our main changes as far as switching over the zones or rezoning rather. We did have two comments submitted for public record. So these comments were concerned with maintaining the existing uses. So that's that legal nonconforming, legal nonconformance that we talked about last time. And then we also had another comment regarding what uses were changing, which we just went over. As far as adoption process, so if this passes out here, it will be sent to council next week on the 4th to the Committee of the Whole and then later towards adoption. Yes.

And this is more of just a process slash director's decision discussion thing. Going to Deja, your last slide. If you could go back. Yes. So those four that we have that are being reduced, we're prepared, right? Because there were certain business classifications that were in there that need to be switched. We're prepared to make those changes now. sooner after it's approved than later, right?

Correct. It will go with the timeline with the rediscovered downtown plan, but that is something we do plan to address right now. We're just doing the rezone and getting that out of late and then going from there we'll do some adjustments to our code as far as the uses that we want.

Because I know some people may look at those codes and get a little nervous like we all did.

Yeah, so we will admit the uses allowed in downtown need to be modernized and updated. And so that use table is on one of the, again, it's the difference between the policy work versus the code work. And so in the fall, we'll be starting looking at the uses for DCE to make sure that they're modernized to reflect what the downtown plan calls for. Okay.

Thank you, staff. Members, are there any additional questions? All right. If there are no further questions from the board, we will call on public speakers. Tanya, is there anyone signed up to speak?

No, there is not.

Is there anyone? Oh, okay. Yeah, is there anyone in the audience not signed up who would care to speak?

Yeah, at this point, you can just go on.

Hi, Sally McDonough, 98042. And thanks for all the work that you all have done. This is pretty amazing. I have one question that might be kind of a little bit off the wall, but as you're looking at putting more residential land uses down on that corridor, has it ever come forward about, I remember from past meetings that we really need housing in very, the low income range and then the high income range. Is there any way that anyone has ever addressed whether we could make some of these multifamily buildings, townhomes owner-occupied? So that would be my question, that Kent really needs more owner-occupied available housing. And I would think this, particularly in medium and high density, we might be able to get some of those in. But I don't know.

I'LL ADDRESS THAT. AS THE HOUSING PERSON, YES, SO I'M SORRY, ARE YOU OKAY IF I ADDRESS? OKAY. SO KENT DOES NEED A LOT OF KIND OF THE TWO ENDS, THE EXTREMELY LOW INCOME AND THE MARKET RATE AND ABOVE HOUSING TYPES. THIS CODE AMENDMENT WOULD ALLOW OWNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH THAT. THERE'S STATE LAWS AND Limitations on what would traditionally be called a condo in those higher density properties because of some issues with defects of building those properties that makes the market less likely to want to build them as owner occupancy because of insurance liability issues. The state has been working on that. for 10 plus years to clean that up and they're still working on it. So theoretically, these could be condos that you would see in other states where they look like multifamily and you don't know whether it's an apartment that's rented or an apartment that's owned. The reality is that's likely not to happen because of the state liability insurance requirements. However, this also opens up new opportunities for things like which are much more likely to pencil and can be owner occupied as well. So it's helping to fill in some gaps along that area of different housing opportunities.

Thank you staff. Is there anyone else in the audience who is not signed up who would like to speak? OK, seeing no further speakers from the public, I want to ask staff if they have any further comments. I will now call for a motion to close the public hearing.

This is Justice Phelps. I move to close the public hearing.

This is good. This has been read. I second the motion. I call for a vote to close the public hearing. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those against say nay. The motion the the eyes have it. The motion passes.

public hearing is closed i will now call for a motion this is justice phelps i move to recommend the city council adopt an ordinance adopting the proposed amendments to the zoning district redesign redesignation on the official zoning map to implement the adoption of rediscovered downtown Kent plan subject to revisions during the ordinance drafting and review by the city attorney.

This is Ali Shastri, I second.

Any discussion? IF THERE'S NO FURTHER DISCUSSION, I CALL FOR A VOTE TO APPROVE THE MOTION AS PRESENTED. ALL IN FAVOR, SAY AYE. AYE. AYE. AYE. THOSE AGAINST, SAY NAY. THE VOTE IS APPROVED, FIVE TO ZERO. ALL RIGHT. IF THERE ARE NO OBJECTIONS FROM THE BOARD MEMBERS AT THIS TIME, I will open the public hearing for the 2026 comprehensive plan amendments. We will begin with the staff presentation by Deja Mitchell.

Hello again, I'm here for the 2nd time to present our hearing for our 2026 docket or a comprehensive plan amendments. So an overview on updating the comp plan. So every city and or county or jurisdiction planning under the Growth Management Act must conduct a review of their comprehensive plan every 10 years. We recently did ours in 2024, so that would be our 2044 comprehensive plan. Our next update is due in 2034. So in between that 2034 deadline, we do also have a five year implementation progress report to our mid cycle progress report, and that is due in 2029. If we have any changes or any amendments that we want in between those two periods of time, so 2034 or 2029, we are allowed one group of amendments per year for our comprehensive plan. So these amendments cannot be, or they must be, sorry. They must abide by these four rules here. So they must not adversely affect the public safety or general welfare. They must be based on new information or circumstances that were not around or available when we adopted the comp plan. They will also result in long-term benefits to the community as a whole. And then they also must be consistent with goals and policies in our comprehensive plan. As far as processes, usually this would start last year, so last September, and usually that's with the public having some type of amendment that they want, so something like a rezone. However, we didn't have any this year, so they've all been staff-initiated amendments. So currently right now, we're in this little section in the orange, so we're in our hearing section, where you all will make recommendations to City Council to adopt. And then after this, it'll go to Committee of the Whole and then adoption. So we'll have Committee of the Whole Next week, as well as the sorry, we will have to meet the whole next week on the 4th, similar to our rezone hearing. So as I said, it was a small docket this year. So we had three staff-initiated docket items. So we had changes to our land use map, changes to our future land use designation table, and then changes to our functional roadway classification map. So our first change here is changes to our future land use map or figure LU4 and our comp plan. So this is a small change here. So our map on the left, IS INTENDED TO SHOW OUR LAND USE DESIGNATIONS. HOWEVER, THIS AREA CIRCLED HERE ACTUALLY SHOWS OUR ZONING DESIGNATIONS FOR OUR INDUSTRIAL AREA. SO THE CHANGE WOULD BE ESSENTIALLY JUST SHOWING OUR INDUSTRIAL AREA'S LAND USE DESIGNATION, WHICH WOULD BE INDUSTRIAL OR MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIAL. SO A SMALL CHANGE HERE. EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE MAP WOULD BE THE SAME.

AND THIS WAS A SCRIVENER'S ERROR, SO IT DOESN'T SUBSTANTIVELY CHANGE ANYTHING.

that we already had approved it just was an error on our part so we're correcting the record our second change is update to our future land use designations um in particular our implementing zones so as you all know um last year we did do a consolidation of our zone so a lot of our zone names are no longer the same so where they where there may say, I don't know, SR1 or SR3, and now it says NRL and NR2. So this change essentially just updates our zoning names for implementing zone. It doesn't change anything in the remaining columns or rows. Everything will stay the same, just updating whatever says the previous zone names to what we have now for our new zone names. And then lastly, we have updates to our functional roadway classification map. So this is a public works initiated amendment, and it's to our Veterans Drive. So this area here. So this map currently states that Veterans Drive is a minor arterial, which was true at the time of adoption for our comprehensive plan. But since then, Veterans Drive has opened up to connect to I-5. So the use forward and the traffic has increased, so it's no longer a minor arterial. It now serves as a principal arterial, so there's a lot more traffic And again, that direct access to I-5. So again, no longer a minor arterial, but a major arterial. And this change also is in alignment with our comprehensive plan transportation element. So that's all the changes we have to the docketed items. This will also, again, follow our timeline as far as going to Committee of the Whole on the 4th and Council on the 18th, or Council Consent on the 18th.

Thank you, Deja. Members, are there any questions for staff? If there are no further questions from the board, we will call on public speakers. Tanya, is there anyone signed up to speak?

No, there isn't.

Is there anyone in the audience not signed up who would care to speak? Seeing no further speakers from the public, I want to ask staff if they have any further comments.

No.

I will now call for a motion to close the public hearing. This has been read. I moved to close the public hearing.

This is only chance the second right?

I call for a vote to close the public hearing. All in favor say aye aye aye. Those against say nay. The motion has passed. The public hearing is closed. I will now call for a motion.

I, Ali Shasti, move to recommend the City Council adopt an ordinance adopting the 2026 docket, amending the 2044 comprehensive plan, including the future land use map designation and associated table, and local functional roadway classification map, subject to revisions during ordinance drafting and review by the City Attorney.

This is Ben Reed. I second. Any discussion? Right, there's no further discussion. I call for a vote to approve the motion as presented all in favor say aye aye aye aye those against say nay. The vote is approved. If there is no further or is there any further business to bring before the board?

No further business.

Since there is no further business, this meeting is adjourned.