Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This is the Kirkland Planning Commission meeting of Thursday, 02/27/2025. Let's start with a roll call.

Bria Heiser. Aaron Jacobson.

Here.

Gina Medea. Here. Scott Reiser?

Here.

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

Here. The next item on our agenda is comments from the audience. And I will explain how this works. This is the portion of the meeting when we will hear from the public about items that are not scheduled for public hearing, of which there are none tonight. In order to hear from as many people as possible tonight, we are allowing any individual wishing to provide comments to speak for a maximum of three minutes.

The timer on the dais will flash a yellow light when you are nearing the end of your time and a red light when your time has elapsed. To be fair to all speakers, we will adhere strictly to the three minute limit. The Commission wants to hear from as many different views and opinions as possible. If you have already heard another speaker state your comment, please consider not repeating the same comment and instead provide a comment or perspective that is unique to you. In making your comments, we ask that you please direct them to the Commission.

But this is not a time for give and take with the Commission. Furthermore, obscene, profane, threatening, harassing, or abusive language towards the commission, city staff, or those in the audience is not allowed. As audience members, please refrain from any demonstrative agreement or disagreement with a speaker, such as clapping, cheering, or booing. These actions are not only disruptive, they may also intimidate or have the effect of excluding others in the community whose views may differ. We'll begin items from the audience with a list of people here in person who have signed up to speak.

When I call your name, please approach the dais to address us. Online audience members may indicate they wish to speak by raising your hand in the Zoom meeting now. When it is your turn to speak, we will admit you into the virtual room as a panelist. Please remain muted until I call your name, and then you may unmute to address the commission. And our first speaker tonight is Nicole McKenzie.

There we go. Let's try that again. Good evening Commission. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Am sorry I'll try again.

I fortunately was able to review the packet early enough this time to get comments in well in advance of the meeting. Unfortunately, it appeared that a significant part of one of the charts in Chapter 113, I think it's point two five, was not included in the packet. And as a result, that left me thinking that certain things were being proposed that were not. Nonetheless, I stand by. I did send follow-up comments earlier this morning.

I don't know that all of you had an opportunity to review those, so I just wanted to speak tonight to address that. I do recognize that staff is sticking with the state's requirements of if you're beyond the quarter mile walking distance from a major transit stop, then it's only up to four units, not six, unless you do two that are affordable, in which case you can go to six. So I recognize that. Nonetheless, I still stand by my statements that it's not necessary for us to allow all nine of the different middle housing types in all areas across the city. And I think that we need to be mindful, too, of the fact that the proposal allows for one attached ADU per unit of middle housing on any lot.

And so that is definitely above and beyond because it doesn't count towards the density allowance. So in areas where you are allowed up to six units per lot, you are actually allowed up to 12 units if you can find a way to fit it on there under the current height and FAR regulations. However and I understand that those regulations will provide some limitation as to how much what density we have and what kind of middle housing we have. However, we also have been told by staff that they will be coming to you guys in a Phase II to propose changes to the height limits and FAR limits. So to say to us right now, Oh, don't worry, because the FAR and height limits are going to prevent that, is a little bit disingenuous knowing that proposed changes are coming.

So I ask you all to keep that in mind, and I do continue to address the comments regarding affordable housing that I had previously submitted.

Thank you, Nicole. I see there are two online attendees who would like to speak. So should we I'd like to admit Josh Leisen. And while we're preparing for him, Richard Carlson. Is he available in person? Is he online? Okay. Alright. Then we will maybe have him next after.

Alright.

It does look like we have Richard admitted into the room chair if you want to

take his If Richard is available, then go ahead and speak.

Thank you. Am I getting through here?

Yes. We can hear you.

Okay. Good. My name is Richard Carlson. I live in Juanita Bay, at least for most of the summer, and I've been working on housing issues in high income, high growth areas for over fifty years, probably longer than anyone you've ever met. And today, what I'm talking about is basically the net result of all of your rules is going to create a new endangered species in Kirtland as families.

You effectively I know that wasn't the plan, but effectively, you are creating heaven for developers and a real problem for families. Developers will find it amazingly profitable to buy up existing single family homes, to tear them down, and those are the most affordable existing single family homes, and put up four to six, if not eight or 12, small condos. All construction in this community in the future, will be small condos. The economic incentives will be amazing and their economic disincentives effectively taxes on any single family homes. And that means any kind of home large enough, which I think it was 1,500 square feet or larger, to make it comfortable for a family to live in.

Remember, all of our housing is only affordable by very high income families, and they're not gonna be very excited about trying to raise a family in a thousand square foot condo with the developers we're happy to build. So effectively, you're going to have two markets. You will probably reduce the cost of the small condos, but the net result will be an explosion in the prices of family house because you are going to build no more in

Last words I heard were no more.

I

think we lost him with about a minute of time remaining, so I think we can't

I'm sorry. I'm still speaking here. You can't hear me?

Well, you dropped out at about with one minute left with the words nothing more. So

Oh, okay. Well, give me my forty seconds. Yeah.

We'll give

you a minute. And Okay. Go ahead and proceed.

Okay. Because on top of that, you're multiplying, the number of vehicles. High income people that can afford this housing, they will all have cars, they will all drive cars, they will clog up the roads, And for every single family unit you lose, you're gonna add five, six, seven, eight vehicles with no garages, which will mean a war, for on street parking. So I'm not I hope this isn't the kind of community you want, a childless community, clogged with traffic. But in effect, that's what you're backing into, and I hope you rethink it and send the the staff back to save family housing in the city of Kirtland.

Thank

you. Thank you, Richard. Next, I think we I'd called please, we do not, applaud or show any signs of approval or disapproval, from the audience. Thank you. The next online speaker was did we have someone lined up?

We'll line up Josh Liesen next, and in the meantime, on with Jeff Fogarty.

Jeff Fogarty. I'm on 120 Fourth Avenue Northeast. I've lived in Kirkland since 1969. The amount of density that Kirkland is contemplating is beyond anything I ever imagined in our community. My wife and I physically built our home here in 1989. I recently retired from a fifty two year career in development and construction. I participated in designing master plan communities and industrial developments, and I

have built

them. I recently I have experience in what it takes to create dense living spaces. Much of the discussion has been about things that we can see, DADUs in backyards, townhouses, high density apartments, more retail office space, increased traffic. We're all concerned about how we'll be affected by the increased congestion that will result from adding the contemplated development. I'd like to add some impacts that we don't see and I've not heard much discussion about.

There's a tremendous amount of engineering and planning required to deliver water, electricity, natural gas, sewer capacity to us. Water system requires a source of water. How much do you need for now and forecasting for future growth? And is it available? Then you need to design your pipe sizes, your storage to allow for peak flow demand and fire flow.

With all the infill around here in recent years, I'm going to assume that our water pipes are close to running at full capacity and our reservoirs that hold that storage that we need to handle peak demand and fire flow are not capable of adding the growth that's being proposed. When density increases, so does peak demand. When peak demand exceeds the design capacity, bad things result. Fire storage is reduced. Water flow needed exceeds the ability of the pipes to convey the water.

Pipes are damaged and low pressure results. And risk to our property and personal safety increases because water flow at the hydrants reduces. And there are many and there may not be the necessary water stored in our reservoirs. Many people in L. A. Have had this experience recently. Has our water system been designed and built for the additional density being proposed? Conventional wisdom says our ability to store and convey water is far short of what will be needed. A similar design process is needed for the other underground and overhead utilities. Questions need to be asked.

What capacity is needed to support the density goals? What will it take to design the upgraded infrastructure? What will it cost? And who pays for it? If the city engineering and planning have not answered these very basic questions, we should not proceed. Thank you, Jeff. I had five seconds left here.

That's over time. It's increasing Three

minutes is not enough. I whole have lot I'd like to say on this.

You're welcome to send comments via email as well. Thank you. Next is let's see, Josh Lysen. Can you hear me? Yes.

Wonderful. Thank you, Planning Commission. My name is Josh Liesen. I live in Houghton. I'm also the owner and president of Merit Homes. I sent a letter email to the commissioner this week, and so I just wanna take this opportunity to kinda go over my points, in brief. First off, Merit Homes has been a belt developer of home building sites in Kirkland for over twenty five years. We were also early adopters of the city's missing middle housing code, chapter one thirteen, when it was first enacted, back in 2020 and have since sold and built built and sold 30 cottages and six ADUs. And we have more than 40 of these unvested missing middle, product type in our pipeline today. So we're strong supporters of the mission of missing middle housing.

And so so but with that, with this current code amendment, we have, three concerns, primary concerns. First off, the affordability housing fee in lieu uniquely penalizes Kirkland developers. You know, since Kirkland was early adopters in this missing middle code, us Kirkland developers have a pipeline full of this stuff. So our projects did not have this fee like Redmond did at $30 a square foot, and Sammamish did at $40 square foot in our projects or in our perform of our projects. So to put that on our projects now midstream without that factored in on top of everything else, cost increases and softening home prices would be very detrimental to us, Kirkland and Missing Middle Builders.

I see my time is running, so I'll get to my second point. Well, I would like to argue you could you could either change the vesting period to the ELSM permit or just further delay the fee limit to study it further. The second point and is that we don't wanna penalize if you want missing middle housing, we wanna penalize the builders to of doing it. We wanna incentivize them. And we have to compete to buy land off these these homes that need to be torn down from bigger lots to build multiple units.

And we're competing against people who would live in them, or fix them up and flip them. And this is just one more one more, you know, detriment to doing that, one more hurdle to overcome if we have this we're pet this penalty. Third and last point was the Arch report that came out last July 15 had some math in there about there was some extra profit that's that could be made from developers to for affordable housing fees who are doing this missing middle, and we just don't agree with that math. Our math comes out different, much different, and I'd like to study that with the commission or others. But there there is no such extra fluff, that can you can just penalize, this product with that extra fee.

Well, you that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Josh. Next up is Ryan Gillis. And while he's stepping forward, let's also, allow Scott Morris to prepare him for, as the next online commenter. Go ahead, Ryan.

Hi. My name is Ryan Gillis. I've been born and raised here in the Kirkland area. I own a real estate and development company where we focus on missing middle housing developments in Kirkland area. Along the lines of what Josh already touched on that I don't need to repeat, I just I wanted to touch on some of the feasibility requirements as you go through underwriting a piece of property. We have a project in Redmond. We are well aware of the $30 a square foot that he had mentioned earlier and how that impacts projects. We're also aware of what Sammamish is doing. And we're also seeing that some of the surrounding cities are kind of catching on with the Arch bandwagon, similar to what he had mentioned where the math doesn't really match up. So that being said, I'm not sure exactly how Kirkland is going about their affordable housing requirements.

But we do have a couple of projects where we've paid fees in lieu in the past. And the way that those are set up right now is very arbitrary. You can't really determine what

the