Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This meeting of the Kirkland Planning Commission is called to order. Let's start with a roll call.

Brie Heiser? Here. Aaron Jacobson?

Here.

Gina Medea? Here. Scott Reiser?

Here.

Justin Robbins? Here. Angela Rosman? Here. Rodney Rutherford?

Here. A majority of commissioners present, have a quorum. Now, do we have any comments from the audience? I don't see any attendees either in the audience or online, so my assumption is no. Seeing none, we have no special presentations, so we'll move on to our study session on streamlining design review briefing.

Thank you, Chair Rutherford, and welcome to twenty twenty five Planning Commissioners. It's good to see you all. Before I kick it over to Tony Levitt, just wanted to welcome a couple new planning and building department staff to our team. So you'll see a slightly different crew supporting your planning commission meetings moving forward. So we have Jesse Davis and Tyler Gurley here tonight, handing taking the handoff from Brian, who supported you through most of your very hard work last year.

So welcome to them, and you'll continue to be very well supported on that front. With that, kicking it over Tony Levitt who's leading the project for implementation of HB twelve ninety three. He's gonna walk you through the overview of that. He's also we also have John Regala who's the staff liaison to the design review board and has done a lot of design review in Kirkland. This is a no action item for you tonight, we're not asking for any action. Kind of doing a similar briefing to the middle housing briefing you received at the end of last year. So with that, I'll hand it over to Tony.

All right. Great. Thanks, Ali. Tony Levitt, Senior Planner with the Planning Department. I am actively involved with multiple design review projects and have done multiple design review projects through the years in the city.

So, let me dive into my presentation. First off, just kind of an overview of what we're going to discuss a little bit tonight, so I'll go on to the next slide. House bill twelve ninety three became effective in July 2023. A complete copy of the bill was included as attachment one of the staff memo for tonight's meeting. The bill requires that the city apply only clear and objective regulations to exterior design of develop of new development.

Per the bill, for the design review process, a clear and objective regulation must include one or more ascertainable guidelines, standard or criteria by which an applicant can determine whether a given building design is permissible under that development regulation and may not result in a reduction in density, height, bulk or scale below the generally applicable development regulations for a development proposal in the applicable zone. Additionally, the bill requires that the design review process be conducted concurrently with a review and decision process for project permits and also that the design review process may not include more than one public meeting. The regulations must be implemented by the city within six months of the periodic comprehensive plan update adoption, which means a deadline of June 30. Since 1999, the city has had a design review board process, which has since helped foster high quality urban design and buildings within the city's design districts. The process involves review by either the design review board, DRB, as part of the public discretionary review process or by staff as part of an administrative design review process.

The flowchart on the right kind of shows the process that a design response application goes through. First step is the applicants come in for a pre submittal, then we have them submit a CDC application. The conceptual design conference, what that intended to do is for the applicant to provide three concepts of the project. They always have a preferred concept that the board can look at and provide guidance for the applicant as they move into the next step, which is the design response conference. Once they move into the design response conference, they submit an application, and that starts actually a more formal public review process.

So when we've determined the application has been complete, we issue a public notice for that project, including mailings and boards and all that stuff. And then we start the design review process. Typically, a design review board I'm sorry, design review board review of the design response conference takes at least two meetings. We haven't occasionally had one, some have been three. I would say, on average, it's probably two.

And that's usually about a, I would say, on average, probably a four to five month process on that. And then ultimately, once everything has been completed, including the environmental review, we'll issue approval of that decision. As far as administrative design review is concerned, that strictly handled by staff. And that process is done either prior to or as part of a building permit process. And those standards are more prescriptive in that they outline specific regulations that the applicant has to meet so that staff can review it.

Here's an example of the design districts that are located with some of the design districts in the city. These are kind of the major ones. We have the Market Street Central Business District. We have the Station Area Plan Design District. We have the Totem Lake Business District and Neighborhood.

We have the Bridal Trails Business District and finally, the Juanita Business District. We do have some other smaller ones, but I just thought I'd would show you kind of the major ones that we deal with. Projects that require review by the DRB must comply with applicable design guidelines based on the property's design district designations. The guidelines are intended to be less prescriptive to allow the DRB more flexibility in administering their requirements. The board has discretion to approve minor variations like setback reductions in certain zones.

Additionally, there are zoning regulations including public plazas, open space, landscaping and rooftop amenity spaces that require approval as part of the DRB process. I thought I would just kind of show you here an example of what the design guidelines look like. So this is an example of what our typical design guidelines look like. We have an introduction section, which really talks about the intent of the design guidelines and what they're there for, what we're doing with them. Really, it's a general statement that we use kind of for all the design districts.

Then we go into different design elements, kind of an illustrated guide to what we're looking for within projects. And then we go into the purpose of each of the design guidelines for the various sections. So, for example, this is pedestrian oriented business district. So, there are a lot of the design districts that are located where these guidelines apply to. So, this goes into the purpose of the statement of those.

And so, as you can see, really, design guidelines or design review started was with downtown core. And so, we've again had that since about 1999. It does mention there an adoption of a downtown plan in 'eighty nine, but it took a while to implement the actual design process, design review board process. And then we go into the various pedestrian oriented various elements that the Board is going to look at and what it does, it goes into issues, the issue, the discussion, and then it has a specific guideline that the Board will be looking at and the applicant will need to comply with as part of the review. Additionally, there are some special considerations that are outlined for specific zones, for example, this one for downtown and the other districts.

So that continues on and deals with the various elements, including horizontal massing, vertical massing, that kind of thing. So, it's just kind of a summary of what that entails. Okay. Great. As far as administrative design review is concerned, those projects need to comply with the regulations contained in Kirkland zoning code chapter 92.

The regulations in 92 are more prescriptive requirements than the design guidelines and are administered by city staff. Again, the reason for that is that typically we have one or two staff members reviewing that and we don't have a board to provide guidance on that. The review is done again as part or prior to or as part of the building permit. Mine the one thing that can occur with ADR is minor variations. If an applicant proposes a minor variation, I.

E. Setback reduction, they cannot be approved administratively and they have to go through the design review board process. So the city has hired a locally based consultant, Framework, for this project. They are going to assist us in looking at our regulations and how to comply with the House bill. Framework's team has worked on multiple projects in the area that center around design review implementation.

Projects that they've worked on include drafting the design guidelines for the city of Bainbridge Island in Seattle, drafting of design regulations for Redmond, high North Highline, which is located in King County and Lynnwood, and finally, have worked on development standards for the cities of Sammamish and Langley. They came highly recommended when we checked with their references, so we think we've hired a good consultant to help us with this. Framework will work to analyze the city's current design review process and provide options to staff about how the process can be modified to comply with the one meeting requirement. Framework will also work with city staff to present a recommendation for any necessary zoning amendments to the planning commission. And finally, Framework will propose amendments to the city's design guidelines and or regulations to ensure they are clear and objective and ascertainable, including consolidation of the current six guideline documents into one.

The consolidation portion is not required by House Bill twelve ninety three, but staff believes it would help to make the guidelines easier to navigate for developers and for the larger community, ensure consistency among similar projects and allow for more streamlined updates in the future. So some of the key process decisions the staff will be looking for the for the Planning Commission to provide guidance on will include the DRB's role in the future process, timing of the one DRB meeting, elements that should be included in a public process versus administrative, the conversion of guidelines into regulations and the consolidation of the existing guidelines. While there is limited time to conduct public engagement with this project, community outreach will build on the 2,044 comprehensive plan engagement efforts and involve community members, including but not limited to community stakeholders, organizations, associations representing residents, and the design and development community. Because this is a highly technical update, the outreach plan is focused on individuals and organizations who are well versed in the issues of housing development, affordable housing and design. At a minimum, staff will use the following engagement tools during this phase of amendments.

We'll set up a project web page for easy reference to the state requirements, the city design review process, and project documents. We'll set up an email list sign up will be made available for this project. Staff will also utilize email alert lists. As far as focus groups are concerned, we will conduct meetings with developers including commercial, market rate, affordable housing developers, architects, DRB members, organizations representing residents, including, Kirkland's Alliance of Neighborhoods and others to gain professional insight and feedback on potential code amendments. And finally, we'll hold an open house where we would provide the community an opportunity to engage with the project materials, staff, and elected or appointed members of the city.

Attend of the scheduled open house will occur prior to or immediately, before a public hearing. It will be scheduled on day when commissioners or council members will have an opportunity to attend. Other engagement tools may be employed, such as city social media accounts and attending public events. As far as attentive timeline is concerned, I've outlined this on the slide and in your memo. So we're here tonight for the briefing.

We're looking to do a city council briefing next month. A planning commission study session will be done in sometime in April. Public open house and subsequent public hearing we'll be looking to do in May and then hopefully council adoption in June. So as far as tonight, some of the questions that we want the Planning Commission to focus on, for discussion while reviewing the the memo and attachments. First, do commissioners have any questions or feedback on staff recommended code amendment approach to achieve compliance with House Bill twelve ninety three?

Do commissioners have questions or feedback on staff's public engagement plan? Third, is there an additional information the Planning Commission would like to find helpful for staff to include in future briefing on this process? And finally, does the Planning Commission have any feedback on the current design review process or priorities for the future process? Additionally, I have provided some examples. I think these are good examples of projects that the city has worked on with developers on and kind of what they started with and what they ended with.

The first project is Village At Totem Blake, which is the lower mall. The picture on the left is the concept, and the one on the right is the approved design. You can see how that changed over time and some of the things that the Board had a say in as far as the design was concerned. Additional project was the Voda Apartments, which is the old antique mall site in Downtown Kirkland by the Transit Center. This is more of just kind of showing their concept and how the project evolved.

The massing didn't change a lot in this one, but the design of the project, how the board was able to have the applicant use materials and modulation and different elements to break up the massing of the building. And finally, is this Madera project. This is one of my projects I worked on. This is kind of one of probably the more dramatic changes. So, the one on the left was an original concept that they came to the first conceptual design conference, and this was their preferred concept.

To be honest, all three of their concepts were very similar to each other. So the board was really really felt that they didn't provide them with three legit options for massing. So they requested the applicant go back and kind of look at the massing and see if they could come up with three different options. It took them a couple of months, but they came back with the one on the right. And to be honest, the staff and the design review board were kind of blown away by the change in the design.

It really was dramatic, really opened up the project to kind of broke up the project, opened up with public plazas and private plaza areas that really the Board felt was a lot better design and really achieved kind of what the goals of the bridal trails plan were. So with that, that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Any questions from the Commission?

Commissioner Jacobson. Sure. So I have a few questions. I think the big one that I'm still trying to

understand is when we say that the

regulations