Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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

Ria Heiser? Here. Aaron Jacobson?

Here.

Gina Medea?

Here.

Scott Reiser? Here. Justin Ramins? Angela Rosman? Here. Rodney Rutherford?

Here. With the majority of commissioners present, have a quorum and can do business. Next item on the agenda is comments from the audience. Do we have anyone signed in or if there is anyone online who would like to speak please raise your hand. Click the raise hand button.

Our screens

aren't working. Yeah. Our our screens here aren't working as well. So I don't know if that's something that stuff is working on already or not.

All right.

Liz Hunt, if you're ready to come on up. Oh, actually, I have to do my spiel first. So one moment. Yes. Right. So the next item on our agenda is items from the audience. This is the portion of the meeting when we 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 lectern will flash a yellow light when thirty seconds remain and a red light when your time has ended. To be fair to all speakers, we will strictly adhere 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 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. This is not a time for give and take with the Commission. 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 with items from the audience with the list of people here in person that have signed up to speak. When I call your name, please approach the dais to address us. Online audience members may indicate that you wish to speak by raising your hand. Click the raise hand button in the Zoom meeting now. When 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. So with that, Liz Hunt, please go ahead and come forward.

Good evening, commissioners and staff. Liz Hunt, Kirkland resident. I have a few comments about the middle housing zoning updates that you all are working on. I sent you email, but it was only a few hours ago, so I will highlight a few items here. First of all, I wanted to thank you all for reducing the required housing types from nine to six in low density residential areas.

That makes sense. Also, you for noting that development standards like floor area ratio and lot coverage play a crucial role in what can feasibly be built on a lot. Third item, residential lot sizes are shrinking in our city. It's happening quite a bit with the existing zoning, and it's bound to get even more prevalent with some of the new rules coming down. So my question is, how will our infrastructure keep up with that?

For example, we have small lots appearing. There's one very close to my home, which is a condoized ADU, which is a detached ADU, which is on a 2,330 square foot lot in a 7,200 zone. And that happened because of condoizing off the DADU. So we're seeing smaller lots appearing, and we're building more housing, which is awesome. But we hand in hand with that need to manage infrastructure and so forth to keep up with this increase in density.

So I look forward to hearing more about how we're going to manage those impacts. All low density residential lots in Kirkland can now have three housing units, a house, an ADU, and a detached ADU. Current zoning, that's going to go up to allowing four units and sometimes six units on lots. So also, again, questions on how we're going to handle that density. We're already the number three most dense city in the state of Washington, according to the Washington State Office of Financial Management.

So how are we going to handle being even more dense? And we don't even have light rail. Also, law HB eleven ten allows a municipality to only focus these new increases of density on 75% of the property residential property in the city. And I'm wondering why Kirkland has not taken up that alternative, which is spelled out in that bill. The inclusionary zoning option, number two, which is encouraged in the staff memo, have some questions on how that works and what that means.

You can see the email and a couple other questions in my email as well. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Liz. Let's see, do we have anyone online raising their hand yet? I can't quite see it. No one? Okay. Then John Koeppler, would you like to come up and speak?

Thank you all. My name is John Kapler. I'm a Kirkland resident, also a practicing architect. I'm here to talk about the middle housing tonight. You all have received lots of letters, plus and minus, that sort of thing.

I'm here tonight to focus on the code implementation language and how it's written and how difficult it is for us practicing professionals to navigate our way through it. Is very, very complicated. I'd like to first to start off by I believe that the definitions in the code should all mean the same thing for all typologies of houses, and they don't. The code that's currently written does not fix that. A couple of examples in chapter 113, 100 thirteen-twenty five, there's a chart that talks about typology of houses.

And that uses language like square footage. There's no definition for square footage. It's gross floor area. Gross floor area has a very specific definition of what it is. The chart then goes on to define in a specific type of housing, specifically cottage, you calculate square footage this way, but you're also allowed to do two and three unit homes, it's calculated differently. That should not be the case. We should have gross square footage, and square footage is calculated. It doesn't matter the typology. We also get deductions for single family housing. But in Chapter 113, a cottage, according to the city, is not a single family house.

So it has definitions according to the deductions that we get in floor area ratio. However, in 113, two- and three unit homes are also in that chapter, and they do get the deductions. One of the biggest issues that I think is a problem is the floor area I'm trying to go as fast as I can. The floor area allowances gives you a certain square footage on an overall lot. But if you have a cottage unit, the floor area of the cottage unit includes all of the floor area, including the garage and everything beyond the 64 square foot deduction of the front porch.

So if somebody wants to have a deck or even a covered deck, and if you even if you're allowed to have the covered deck in the FAR, you can't in a in a cottage home. It doesn't make any sense if we're looking at bulk and mass of the unit. The last thing is based on the typology of house, when we study how to put different types of homes on a house, oftentimes we cannot get three units or three cottages where we would be allowed on a particular house because the calculations don't work out the same as if we did a single family house with an attached ADU and a detached ADU. And the bulk and mass looks very, very different and the marketplace kind of has an allergic reaction to attached housing. People really want single family housing and single family zones.

Affordability. There's a rule of five in affordability super condensed. You can basically afford if you don't have any debt and you put the 20% down, you can afford five times your income. So I'm glad we're not implementing that because to to for a $50,000 additional fee in a house, you have to make $10,000 extra in your fee. All of you go to your work tomorrow morning and ask for a $10,000 raise so you can pay additional money to pay for affordable housing. Thank you, John.

You. Please share, send us an email. It sounds like you have a lot of details that I think staff and commission would have liked to unpack.

I'm not bashful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, John.

All right. Do we have anyone raising their hand in the online audience? I don't see any, but okay. All right. With that, that's the end of comments from the audience. We'll have another segment at the end of the meeting. Next item on the agenda is special presentations, of which there are none. And so we were on to the next item, which is our study session on briefing on middle housing code state compliance. Steph, go ahead and take it from here.

Great. Good evening, Chair Rutherford and Vice Chair Heiser and commissioners. I just have really brief introductory remarks just to set the stage for Scott Guter's presentation. So you'll be presented with a lot of options tonight as was summarized in your staff report for a bunch of different topics. One of the things that Scott will be presenting tonight, as you know from taking a look at your memo, is some guidance that we got from the city council that was received after the last big briefing that you all had on middle housing on February 27, where you generated a lot of good ideas and and some good guidance.

So we at council's request, we went back to council on March 4 and March 18 so that they could provide some guidance to the planning commission on some of these issues that you were debating on the twenty seventh. The city council wanted some additional time to consider the option, so that's why we went twice to them. And, you know, the topics that they considered are really the main ones that in your memo tonight. You know, the first one is should ADUs count towards the allowed density? The second topic was really which of the six out of nine housing typologies should be allowed in the city and where should those be allowed?

And then the last topic, of course, is should we implement any sort of inclusionary zoning as part of phase one of this work? And then if so, what should that look like? And they provided some really good guidance that Scott will talk about, general support for option two that was really compiled based on the individual pieces of feedback that the Planning Commission gave us on the twenty seventh. Right? On the twenty seventh, it's not like the Planning Commission voted on a specific affordable housing option. So what we presented to the city council on those two occasions was sort of woven together from all of the input that individual members of the planning commission provided. We'll look forward to feedback on that tonight. And with that, I'll hand it over to Scott.

All right, with that, let's go. Let's see if I can Is it me? Gotta move? Oh, look at that. I can do it that way. All right, here we are, the agenda. So One one thing first.

I'm guessing someone's staff is still working on getting our monitors. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. So as as Adam expressed, we've done a lot of work here since we've last met. There's been several touch points not only with city council, we've gone back to transportation commission, we've done several public meetings as well.

There's been a lot of work that we've been doing. Basically trying to respond to the feedback that we heard from this Planning Commission. So I'll go over a little bit of the feedback that we heard from the public and council. I'll summarize what we heard from you last time on the twenty seventh and then we'll move into a couple of those specific topics that council provided some specific direction on in particular when it comes to those three topics density housing types and affordable housing. We'll go over those those items in your remaining packet related to some additional code amendments we've made since we've last talked and some forthcoming code amendments.

We'll go specifically into parking requirements after that since this was a topic that this commission wanted more information on. And then we'll open it up for discussion. Okay. Right. So here's what we heard from the city.

A of the city is generally supportive of like our two phased approach. As you recall, we are basically trying to just get across the finish line with minimum compliance. We are not talking about, you know, other optimizations, some large changes to the zoning code at this point in time. We just need to get to the June deadline and move on with a more intensive analysis, more thoughtful analysis with feedback from the public. We've heard a lot of good directions so far.

Some of it was provided tonight. We'll be exploring that in phase two. We've also heard some support also about how we've managed our including housing types in the code. We've identified them as strategically allowing us to basically point the state to our code and say, we are including all, you know, the necessary housing types that that are required under the law. They support that, but as we've heard from the public that that was not they weren't supportive of of us applying all of those housing types in every every location in the city.

So that was one one of the comments that we heard repeatedly. And then there was concern about our affordable housing options. In particular, you know, there was a lot of concern about that we might be going a little bit too far with our options that they actually, there's concern that it might hinder development of middle housing. There was concern that any kind of inclusion, some of these inclusionary requirements might even penalize existing homeowners. Concern there.

And so with that we've developed some additional code. Here kind of jumping forward to a meeting that we just had with, council, with city council. They gave us some specific, feedback on these items. You'll see here on the screen, I don't know if we can move my head out of the way. You can't even read this.

Thank you. I'll just move to the bottom of your screen. Anyway, so council was supportive of continuing to exempt ADUs. However, they wanted to keep our current requirements of just only allowing two ADUs maximum per property. They supported staff's revisions to the housing, allowed housing typologies based on different zones, specifically the differences between low density and multi family zones.

They also wanted us to continue to pursue affordable housing, you know, at least drafting affordable housing starting at the first unit, but really wanted to include exemptions and a delayed effective date with those inclusionary requirements. So going in the way back machine, back to last month when we talked to you, which kind of drove a lot of the updates that we drafted for you here, which was that at our last meeting we heard from the planning commission that you wanted us to explore accessory dwelling units with density, that you wanted us to look, be a little more to scrutinize where we're putting the different housing types in our city. And then specifically, again, as Adam kind of mentioned, there's a bunch of conversation about affordable housing. So what we heard collectively that we do want to kind of explore what we called options three and four in that last packet that if we do that though that there has to be a lot of incentives built around that option, that there has to be clear inclusionary requirements, again exempting smaller units, additions, and then there was overarching consensus that there was, that any new inclusionary requirement that we that we we would put into place that it wouldn't constrain, any new production.

And lastly, there's a we should also consider vesting, the vesting vesting options or, a delayed affordable housing code amendment option. Okay. So getting into density, here's how we responded to density. Here we brought so this is kind of the the the thing that we would have brought to you before council, but council got here first. So so we drafted up a couple options for you for you to consider.

We've already received guidance from city council, of course, so but I do wanna present those two options for you. Our existing code does double the density. You are allowed to have accessory dwelling units but you're only limited to two per property. We are the last draft code that we gave you we said well follow state requirements, keep our double density for those larger lots that may be able to go beyond six units that are currently going beyond six units so we don't penalize larger properties. But we said we'll include, we can do ADUs with every unit, right?

You guys didn't like that, by the way. So we heard that you didn't like that. So we came back with this option where we would analyze, including ADUs in unit density. And then there's the option of like just, you know, keeping excluding it but just limiting it to two ADUs maximum per property. Spoiler alert, what happens when you do include ADUs in the unit density, you only get to six maximum.

That's where you get. City council was very, very supportive of just allowing ADUs to continue to be exempted, the limit keeping that limited to. So not changing too much, just being additive with the state densities. This is a kind of example of what that kind of looks like. So our initial, so I did these like, this is my this is my isometric drawings.

These little butter cubes. We start up in this corner over here where this is your single family. Total, total, allowance, which would be your height, your your lock coverage, and your and your floor air ratio, your maximums there. And then under our current code, can take that same volume, you can split it into into two, and then have two ADUs on that. Under the state code, you have four by a riot everywhere in the city.

And then in certain circumstances, you can get up to six, which would take that same volume and break it down into six. The x out option was the option that we had presented to you before, which got you up to pretty much eight, or 12, sorry. But as the table kind of shows on the side there, those units get really small really quick. Because we're not doing anything in this phase of code amendments that addresses the butter cube itself. We're not replacing the butter cube, we're keeping the butter cube as is.

So this starts to break down at least in terms of feasibility really quickly. So we were pretty confident that even if you did allow for all the housing types, that they would quickly break down and you wouldn't get all the housing types based on what would just basically be allowed under our general massing constraints, maximum floor area ratio, maximum FAR. But with that we've adjusted it still and we only are allowing a few housing types in low density residential zones. Yes, go ahead.

Can I just ask a question since we're on that slide? What about detached ADUs and why isn't that part of the figures on this?

Well because they're still constrained by the same massing standards, right? You only get to, only get 50% lock coverage. It doesn't matter if you have an ADU on there, a detached ADUs, attached ADUs, it doesn't matter. We're keeping you can still constrain to those massing standards, overall massing standards.

Okay, thank you. Thanks Scott.

Okay, so getting into the proposed housing type. So taking your direction saying, no, we don't want to put all these different housing types in place in our city. We just split these up into the two different categories, our existing multi family and then our low density zones. Since the allowed by right state minimum is four. We kept the triplex, the duplex triplex and up to four plex.

Then we got rid of the multiplexes five and six. We kept cottage housing because that is a very successful housing typology. Townhomes because they are predominantly what also is being built in most of our multi family zones and keeping stacked flats as an option in there. In terms of like courtyard apartments, we decided that there's, because there's some open space requirements around courtyard apartments, we think that we already have a successful code in our cottage, a clustered housing typologies, our cottages. And as we've heard here, even tonight, that our detached cluster is actually more, would be more popular.

We also think that a courtyard apartment and required open space around the units would not be beneficial in multi family zones. Would be kind of restrictive. And we don't think it would just be picked up successfully in those areas. So here's the multifamily zone. We just add the five plex and six plex in here.

If you can get there. And again, not keeping the courtyard apartments in the city. We can always revisit courtyard apartments if we want to in phase two when we're adjusting massing standards and such. But we feel like also that you can probably get to a courtyard apartment style even with duplexes and triplexes being able to be incorporated into a project if you can get up to two duplexes or a triplex in a cottage or some variation thereof. All right, now moving on to affordable housing.

This is a slide I might have given you before, but this is basically what the state's option for inclusionary requirements. This is the reason why we're talking about this in the first place because under the state code, there would be inclusionary requirement for all properties outside of a quarter mile of a major transit stop, which is basically that right now is that stop around the Stride Station that's being built. And that leaves most of the city up to being subject to this inclusionary requirement. It only talks about the fifth and sixth unit being inclusionary at these affordable levels at 60% area median income for renter occupied and 80% area median income and owner occupied that's a 33% inclusionary requirement if you want to get to six. The obvious outcomes of that would be that no one would ever want to do that so we would only get four.

And you can imagine we already have cottage housing at this point in time that is above that number. We have developments that are above that number. So what would happen on those larger lots is that we would just subject them to just not building to their maximum potential, development potential. They would just end up, if there could be six cottages, they would still build four. That's what they would do.

So that's the outcome here. The city staff is definitely not recommending this as an option. So we crafted up a few options here. Again, keeping the state option up there, taking your feedback. And again, we came to you the first time with some general parameters that we, basically are guiding principles of like what we would, how we drafted up the previous options.

And we narrowed it down to option two here that's displayed, kind of taking your collective feedback. What that ends up looking like is the one plus in option two that would be one is keeping it looking at affordable housing at one at the starting at the first unit but keeping our existing inclusionary affordability which is actually at the 100% AMI for owner occupied, that's pretty much what most middle housing is going to be. It's not going be renter occupied, it's going be owner occupied. So we felt like that was a little more generous. And then we carved in a little bit of those exemptions you talked about before exempting units that are up to about 2,000 square feet.

We want a little bit of feedback on that because we kind of give you a range between 1,702,000 square feet. That this would exempt existing units and then not penalizing any added square footage that you put on existing units. The third option is always defer this over. Now this is something that we heard at the March 4 council meeting is like can't we just defer this to phase two. Right?

Thinking about this at a future date when we actually start talking about massings, changing the butter cube, okay. When we start changing the butter cube maybe we can start talking about that here. The reason why we're still presenting this to you here is because there is, we're adding capacity already with the added density. And when we get to phase two there will be less, that's what we'll be bargaining for. This could actually be a placeholder.

Option two could be a placeholder, especially if we have a delayed effective date that puts us out closer to the phase two adoption date. Forecast is this is what we're going to be looking at as a citywide inclusionary requirement. Those of course can be dialed, all this stuff can be dialed up or down in phase two. And I'm going to pause here for a moment because I think Adam wanted to talk for a minute.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks Scott. First of all, thanks for your patience on the monitors. Our IT staff and our admin staff are trying to fix whatever is going on. So thanks for bearing with us. The one thing I wanted to do is take a minute and talk about some of the public comments that we've gotten over the last couple of days. They've been mostly from the master builders and I think folks affiliated with the master builders. We received really two letters from the master builders. One was from February 26 and then one was from March 26, so about a month later. And they do say slightly different things.

And so what I wanted to do is go over just in a little bit of detail the February 26 letter, which I think option two is very responsive to actually. The February 26 letter from Master Builders makes four main points, and I'll just go through them one by one and talk about how the middle option responds to the concerns. The first point that they made was that the economic analysis done by Arch they do not agree with, and they don't think that it would result in feasible housing development. I just want to be really clear, option two actually none of the options really incorporate the Arch recommendation. The Arch recommendation was to impose a per square foot fee on middle housing, and none of the options that are being presented tonight do that.

As a matter of fact, option two exempts all middle housing projects from any sort of fee whatsoever. So I think we were responsive on that point. The second point that the master builder's letter made was that the proposed affordability requirements are not economically feasible for anyone building small scale projects. And again, option two really exempts all small scale projects, right? That would exempt any projects less than 2,000 square feet or 1,700 square feet.

So you could build as many 1,700 square foot or even 2,000 square foot cottages as you want and not pay any money towards in lieu fees. So that was the second point that that letter made. The third point was that Master Builders encouraged an alternative that would increase the square footage exemption to 1,500 square feet of living space. And again, you know, option two goes even farther than that, right? The proposal is to exempt anything up to 1,700 square feet or 2,000 square feet.

So I think the exemption goes even further than what Master Builders was recommending in that letter. And then the last point that they made in that letter was that they urged the Planning Commission to reconsider any expansion of affordable housing requirements in a way that ensures they do not disproportionately impact middle housing or ADU development. And again, you know, based on the exemptions that Scott identified, ADUs and middle housing would really not be affected by option two. So I just wanted to be clear about how we responded based on planning commission feedback and city council feedback to the issues that were raised in the master builder's letter. The letters that we've gotten over the last couple of days I think take a different approach and make different comments from the letter that we received before.

Basically what the letters that we received over the last couple days are saying is just defer to phase two, which is a totally valid option. It's still an option that's on the table in front of you, but it's really different from I think the direction or the suggestions that Master Builders was making on February 26. So just wanted to go over some of the public feedback that we got. I'll hand it over to Scott.

Yeah, so we can have it. We can wait and open it. When we open this up for discussion, we can talk about it then. But if you have any kind of questions now, we can take those questions. Otherwise, I'll move on to the parking analysis.

Is there interest in I see a one hand interest in talking about this now, asking questions? Okay. Go ahead. Question Jacobson.

Just a question. When you said that we're not doing a per square foot fee, what is the affordable housing requirement going to look like?

Yeah, I can talk about that a little bit. So we already have an existing approach to figuring out in lieu fees. It's a program that's already in place in our medium density zones, high density residential zones, mixed use zones. And basically what the in lieu fee is is if you have to provide a fractional unit, for instance, less than one unit, we calculate an in lieu fee in a lot of cases. And the in lieu fee is based on, really it's the cost of construction of a generic affordable housing unit.

It's not necessarily, that doesn't necessarily correspond to what's being built as a market rate unit, it's just a generic affordable housing unit that's built in the city. So the in lieu fee is basically the difference between the cost of construction of that generic affordable housing unit and how much a lower income household pays for that affordable housing unit. And so this is a very rough estimate because it changes a little bit based on the land values that are different across the city. But generally speaking, sort of for a generic affordable housing unit built in the city, the in lieu fee for one unit is $400,000 right? So that's the cost of the that's how much that is the in lieu fee for building one affordable housing unit.

So basically, if you're building one market rate unit and you are imposed a 10% inclusionary requirement, your in lieu fee for that one unit would be $40,000 and so that equates to something like $16 a square foot for a house that is 2,500 square feet. If you're building a bigger house than 2,500 square feet, it would be less than $16 a square foot. So again, just to answer your question, Commissioner Jacobson, we don't impose it on a square footage basis. The in lieu fee is just based on the cost of construction of a generic affordable housing unit in the city. And sorry, just one last wrap up note is that that is just the current methodology that we have today.

That doesn't say that this planning commission couldn't, we couldn't revise the code based on planning commission guidance and city council guidance to establish a different methodology for in lieu fees. But that's the methodology that's currently baked into the code today.

I have a follow-up question on that. When you say it's on a per unit basis, and then you're talking about this 2,500 square foot, is it being worked out to being applied proportionally based on the extent to which that 2,500

square foot unit goes beyond the threshold? Or is it because you've crossed that threshold, you pay the full 10%. Yeah. Is what I just described as the way that we calculate in lieu fees today, right? So if you're building a four unit project, right, that is subject to in lieu fees, You know, 10% of that four unit project is what you have to set aside as in lieu fees, right?

So, you know, you would basically calculate the, you know, the in lieu fee for one affordable housing unit, right, and then you would take 40% of that. And that would be the in lieu fee that that four unit project would pay. So this is, what we're talking about here is a different approach, right? So under this approach, say if you are building a one big house, right, one big single family house, you would pay 10% of the in lieu fee for one affordable housing unit, which again, just as a really rough estimate is for, you know, one affordable housing unit, the in lieu fee for that would be $400,000 so that one single family house would pay 10% of that, which would be $40,000 And I don't think, based on the current methodology that it would be the fee would be very much affected by how big the single family house is. Okay.

Does that make sense?

I know it's same fee no matter if they went over the threshold by one square foot or 2,000.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So under this current approach, yeah, if you're building a 2,001 square foot house, you would be subject to in lieu fees. And I know there's different approaches to that as well that we could talk about with you. For instance, you know, exempting the first 2,000 square feet from the house, so you would pay the in fee on the last foot or something

like that. Proportionally on the last foot. Yeah.

So there's different approaches to it. And again, this is a slightly different approach to how we currently do in lieu fees, right, because we would subject even one unit. Option two would subject just one unit to the fees.

Okay. Commissioner Wright, Kaiser.

I have a lot of questions about $400,000 I don't think you can build affordable unit for $400,000 No, I think we're at $6.10 now or something like that. So I guess my question would be, are we asking the builder to triple the building permit cost? Because right now it's $75,000 for a building permit in the city of Kirkland, which I'm sure everyone's surprised at, but it's that much. Are we gonna be asking them for 200 and something thousand dollars here pretty soon at the beginning of the build to offset the affordable housing that might be built down the road? Is that kind of where we're going with this?

Yeah, not not exactly. I guess what I would say is that the way the current methodology is established in the code, it actually is a very modest in lieu fee. It is insufficient to actually pay for one affordable housing unit. So if you're paying in lieu fees for one affordable housing unit, it actually doesn't generate enough money to pay for one affordable housing unit. It's less than that because the again, the methodology is it's the difference between the construction cost and how much a lower income household pays for the affordable housing unit and that was just a formula that was established years ago and it was intended, I think, to go easy on the development community but it does not generate sufficient revenue to pay for an affordable housing unit.

And again, that's subject, you know, that could be subject to change, but that's the current methodology that we have.

So if you have what is your amount of money you're putting down for the construction cost? How much money are you putting aside?

It's basically how much money it costs to develop a generic affordable housing unit, which I think is generally speaking just a small standalone, you know, single family house or a duplex unit, something like that. So

That's gonna be $900,000 That's a stand alone unit. It's gonna be $900,000 to build. Like

You're talking about the difference between what they would pay in rent and or, you know, like the the portion of the amount that would be paid in rent and then the subsidy on top of that. So I I think that that accounts for the the difference between the what Commissioner Heizer is describing as the total cost of building. And then there's the amount of that that would be paid for by the rents that are received, the reduced rents that are received, and the other portion that is paid for by the in lieu fees. That's right.

I just want to make sure that we're being honest and very transparent about what we're talking about, because 40,000 seems very low. And I don't we we don't generally build a lot of 2,500 square foot houses. We either build 17 to 2,000 or it's over three. So I just want to make sure that I mean, one affordable housing unit is what 600 but that would not be a single standalone family house that's going to be an apartment dwelling right?

Yeah I guess I guess what I would say is that and again I think if there's interest in getting into sort of the details of how the fee is calculated, we should bring our staff from Arch in who help us calculate that fee. But generally speaking, based on my understanding at least, we're not assuming that generic affordable housing unit and the city is 2,500 square feet, right? I'm guessing it's something like, I don't have the numbers in front of me but I'm guessing it's like a thousand square foot housing unit or a 1,200 square foot housing unit or something like that which would have a much lower construction cost than a standard you know 2,500 or 3,000 square foot house so

it would but it's not going to be anywhere near $400,000 it's still going to be you know you still have roofs foundations storm water detention tanks that are $300,000 So it's not low. It's not the numbers you were putting out. I think those numbers are inaccurate.

Okay. We're happy to bring back, yeah, we're happy to bring back numbers from other projects that we've imposed in lieu fees on at the city.

Yeah, and I also want to say we're talking about modest and it's very modest in lieu fees. No one else is doing in lieu fees for residential standalone single family construction. And what I would say also is that the reason that the Master Builders Association is asking and changing a little bit, because I want to address what you said earlier, is because we don't want all the builders here to go bankrupt. So they need a little bit of time to sort out whether or not they can afford to do the projects and pay the in lieu fees because we've been given no information really what that looks like and the information we've been getting from all of our builder community especially the ones that build the most of the housing that we have here in terms of residential says this is completely unfeasible and they'll have to bring to you know $700,000 to closing to pay for it so there's just a big disconnect between whatever Arch was giving us and the staff is giving us and what we're hearing from the builder community I wanted to address maybe why the change that the master builders took for a minute here was just they need some time.

Yeah, that's fair. Again, I think the approach that is being recommended in option two no or no in lieu fees for middle housing. So again, it's a different story I think for single family projects but the current the option two is yeah, literally no in lieu fees for middle housing projects.

Any further questions on this? All right, go ahead and move on.

Okay, so let's move on. Oh, I lied to you. We did. We're not going on to parking. We're just going on to the additional code amendments that are in your packet.

They do some clarification and a little bit of consistency with our existing standards for multifamily. Essentially what we do is we just adopt the current multifamily minimum density standards for projects in medium and high density zones. These were adopted in 2020 with the middle housing code amendments that essentially ensure that for properties in medium and high density zones that they build at 80% of the density, of the minimum density. And this is based on the underlying density. We're not saying like this would apply to the new state density.

We're just keeping the least your base density consistent. So the reason why we would do this is so that developers could not just take a townhome product that they were already going to build in a multifamily zone and just use our chapter 113 as a bypass to get around the minimum density requirements. That's the reason why we put that in there. We did some clarification for how actually calculate gross floor area for cottages. This is just based on existing practices, the kind of interactions we've been having with developers, making sure that whatever we're calculating in terms of gross floor area on these size limited units that they're spelled out and consistent with our current practices.

And then right here again is other clarification component right here on the affordable housing requirements for multi family zones. So we re crafted this a little bit so that if you have a multi family project considering that we're having a lot of discussion right now about applying inclusionary requirements at low density zones for the first time, right. We just want to make sure that our practices in multi family zones remain consistent. So we just refer out multi family zones to existing inclusionary requirements. We may give them additional density, you know that's pretty much what you're getting with application at 113 but you're still going to be subject to the same affordable housing requirements.

And we'll be crafting a separate low density zone If that's the option that is recommended here that we would draft an affordable housing requirement that would replace the existing one that we have in that chapter with something that's based on the feedback in the sense. So that kind of keeps them completely separate. So for that standpoint we could actually start looking at differences in the way we might, as you've kind of discussed here, about how do we calculate the fees. Maybe completely different methodology just for the low density zones if we chose at this point. So that's an option.

And then finally we did some updates to the accessory dwelling unit regulations. By the way we were pretty close to what the state was already so these were just minor tweaks. We did some clarification again on gross floor area because it's the only other building typology that is size restricted. So we just made sure that we were being clear on what you're exempting out of gross floor area when we're talking about such dwelling units. Moving on to some forthcoming amendments.

This is going largely into the Senate Bill sixty fifteen, which really gets into just parking. What are you allowed to exempt? All that kind of fun stuff. But also, of course the top bullet up here is like any kind of feedback that we received from you tonight about inclusionary we will include that as well. Obviously that's the forthcoming.

The issues that some things that are in 01/2013 that we didn't address this time around deal with non conformance of existing structures like existing non construct structures being able to be converted into accessory dwelling units. We have to address that in our non conformance code. Street improvements, basically we have to revise some of our requirements around required street improvements and what the state is now exempting as we're drawing units from those street improvements. So we have to adjust those a little bit. And again going into the parking requirements we have to now start to create standards for tandem parking, allowing for different surface materials, and reducing our stall sizes for residential uses and then dealing with allowances of existing non conforming parking areas allowing those to continue.

Those are very technical like tweaks into our non conformance code Just trying to meet the state standards and really focusing on residential. Alright now here we get into parking. So last time we came to you we had this slide that kind of showed you like here's our existing requirements and here's the state requirements. We've just kind of put in your packet in the draft code the state requirements. It was pointed out that hey once you get outside of a major transit stop our existing parking standards are a little more lenient than the state standards.

And maybe we should, look into that a little bit more. So that's what we did. We took some existing projects. We did some analysis on them. These are the different, unit totals, of these projects.

Our current, parking requirements on the next column. And then what the development community is actually parking at and then the state maximum requirements outside of a half mile of major trans stop. Short story is that developers are pretty much building like about two parking stalls per unit. It shouldn't be a surprise for most of the folks that actually do that product type. That they're closer to the state standards but in certain circumstances where maybe we want to add flexibility especially when there is frequent transit service available, they can go down.

So the project down at the very bottom chose to use our minimum standards where that would have been probably doubled under the state's requirements, probably making that project not feasible. Here's just, I don't we just wanted to do this. We went out around 06:00 in the morning, one morning last this week, Tuesday. And went to these various projects, about six of these sites, saying if we did actually see some issues with overparking on the street, we didn't. This is not an in-depth analysis.

It's one day and didn't take care of evening, off peak hours. This was at the beginning commute hours at 06:00 in the morning. But we feel pretty confident that there's really very little on street parking impact from this based on pretty much that developers are actually parking for the market and what the market's demanding. There you go. So with that, we came up with this recommendation which is just kind of a hybrid version which is within the half mile we obviously have to meet the state standards but once you get outside that half mile of a major transit stop we just revert back to our standards around frequent transit And then on point three is like meet the state standards for accessory dwelling units which we currently would require a stall for the second accessory dwelling unit in most cases.

That would be none at this point in time. That's the staff recommendation for amending the code, at least the graph code. Now we can open up the discussion. These are the discussion items. These are the items that we covered here tonight including the ADUs and density calculations, the range of housing types.

Some questions for you about the affordable housing requirements, specifically what we've drafted and what we're offering up as the three options. Some feedback on those additional code amendments. Question about, you know, maybe having another briefing prior to a public hearing, and and then getting your take primarily, on the two options that we provided for the parking requirements. I'll open it up.

Commissioner Medea?

Thank you. Thank you, staff. Appreciate it. Okay, so I'll go through each of the questions. On the first one, I think we're in a good place focusing on the six of the nine typologies. I think that's been pretty well vetted, counsel seems to concur with clarity that the five and six plexes would only be in the multifamily zone. I think that's probably consistent with what the public could get behind. I also feel like there's agreement on the ADUs limiting them to two and not including them in the density count. I'm down with that. Okay.

So on the inclusionary zoning, affordable housing stuff, like, I came in here really leaning toward Option two, but after speaking to some developers, and then I was at the MBAC's middle housing luncheon that Adam presented at. And then hearing some more conversation about it tonight, I'm really hesitant. To be fair, I did speak with planning staff about these options in the vein of, like, the pros and the cons. And that is based and, Scott, you said this tonight, too, based on the idea that it could yield more affordable housing sooner rather than later, which is, of course, what we want. But seeing the pivot in MBAC's letter, despite some of the things we tried to do to address their concerns in the earlier one from February, I'm feeling like it would make more sense to allow time for more thorough analysis and input from the builder community.

Because as I've said before from this dais, we don't build housing. You all do. And so I wouldn't want to put them in a situation where it is a disincentive and they don't build and we don't get what we're looking for. So I've kind of shifted a little bit on that. I would be interested in hearing more about whether if Maybe

on this one and I didn't do it really clearly in the slide deck, but if you can kind of mention like which option, because I'd like to kind of tally the options, right? So there's option one with state, two is staff, and three is the defer.

I think that's where I'm leaning, yeah.

Just to

be clear, yes, because we'll have a conversation

I want be clear, I just want to make sure that I can.

What exactly we, yeah, pass on to counsel.

Thank you.

But wait, there's more. So but I would like to understand what that means. Like, is there an ability to say, yeah, we want to do this, but the implementation date is later? And I know Neil Black asked that same question at the Council meeting, like how do you have both. Okay.

But going on with my I'm going to answer all these questions and then let the rest of the Commission speak. On the zoning amendments regarding multifamily density, etcetera, I mean, on paper, I'm not swimming in that space. This gentleman here was talking about some of the inconsistencies across each of those typologies, and that would be nice if that could be a little more clear. And one of the things we heard as well, Adam, at the Ambacs luncheon is how difficult it is, and I never thought of it from this perspective, for the builders who build in a variety of municipalities trying to have to understand how to apply those various codes to their projects throughout. So anything we can do, even within our own space, to drive consistency would probably be appreciated.

I think I mentioned that. And then regarding an additional briefing, I'm not sure if I know if that feels totally necessary, but I'll defer to the rest of the group. And then option one on parking. See, kept that last one brief for you. Okay, I'm done.

Commissioner Rosman?

I guess I'll go through all of them as well. I think pretty much I'm going to go with what Commissioner Medea said on all of these. Let's take our time with the inclusionary. It's freaking hard to build anything right now. And, you know, as much as I want affordable housing, I want housing more than no housing at all. I don't think we need another briefing. I think we're ready to go to a public hearing and very much in favor of option one for parking.

Commissioner Reusser?

I'm in agreement with deferring it because I just think it's going to add too much of a permitting fee onto an already burdensome for building and especially in the building environment that we may be going into. I do have a little bit of a concern on the stacked flats. That's the only option that I really did not like. And I just think it it looks too apartment like for our neighborhoods. And also the constraints of height, it just doesn't seem like a really viable option.

But I I'm not an architect, so I I don't know. I can see it would work really well if you were only putting two units on a, you know, low density zone. Getting three might be a little bit tight, but if you have a sloping lot, it might work. And I am also in agreement on option one for parking.

Can I make just a really quick comment on the stacked flats and why I think they're actually an important, is specifically the accessibility piece, for, anyone with disabilities or seniors that can't do stairs, stacked flags can be a really great option for people to have housing choice that doesn't include stairs within the unit?

Well, aren't Okay. So aren't staff like, so you'd have one unit?

It's like one per floor. Yeah. So stacked. And so it makes it a lot more accessible for folks to have housing units that are single floor.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

It does. I was like, but access, you'd only have access to the first, but

Well, but, you know, then the First Floor is completely accessible, and then people can go, you know, upstairs or have one, you know you know, electronic up, and then the entire floor is on one main level.

One of the reasons I was not is our example Yeah. Was not a very good example in the picture.

Question of clarification from staff on stacked flats. And my reading is that you could bill I mean, that's kind of covered already with duplexes and triplexes. A duplex or triplex could potentially be built as a stacked flat. Or are duplexes and triplexes explicitly horizontally attached?

They can be either. I mean technically they can be either. It's a really confusing bill that kind of added housing typologies in there. I'm just like okay. Technically do that in our multifamily zones.

We're just agnostic over it. We allow for attached or stacked. In phase two we'll probably just get rid of housing typologies and just go to just a generic stack flat, detached, tatched, stacked option in all zones and just be a little bit different in how we regulate them in our what is now low density zones versus our medium and high density zones. So just be different massing standards.

Okay. And allowances. In the next phase potentially regulating more based on the exterior form rather than how it's divided up internally.

We're yeah. I mean, we're lined up with simplifying the code. We want to get there. It just, you know, that kind of stuff is it takes time to do and we just didn't have time to do that. We wanted to start right off the gate just, you know, taking out 113 altogether and just kind of blending it into our code and being really clean and clean it up. I mean we have developers that talk about this all the time. We talk about it all the time. It's it's something that we want to do and that's what we want to come back to you in phase two and talk about. Sounds good.

Any other commissioners want to comment? Commissioner Jacobson.

Thank you. I think the I'm in agreement with the rest of the commission on everything except the affordable housing requirement. A question: When we say defer, does that essentially mean we're giving up the ability to enact an affordable housing requirement using the extra capacity from this policy change? Or is the option for deferment saying, we'll do something and we're going to hold on to that? Or is it?

Yeah. Yeah,

thanks a lot Commissioner Jacobson. That's a really good question. Yeah, we cannot, I would say this, bank the additional development allowance that we're providing in phase one. So we would really have to forego adopting an affordable housing requirement until phase two. We can't bank what we're giving in phase one and then combine it with whatever we do in phase two and then adopt something. We could include a whereas statement, you know, in the adopting ordinance for phase one if you decline to adopt an inclusionary zoning requirement now and just say, you know, the council intends to adopt an inclusionary requirement in phase two, but that wouldn't allow us to bank the the development allowances that we're giving in phase one.

Okay. Thank you. I wasn't at the council meeting, but I watched the recording. And the sense that I got was that there's not an intention of, like, the because there's not an option to bank it, there's not really desire to completely get rid of that option. And so I'm supportive of keeping with option two.

I am concerned at the possibility of the if the threshold is put at 2,000 square feet of a rise in, we'll say, nineteen ninety nine point five square feet homes. And so I would be interested in some sort of option that is not like a all or nothing sort of thing. And so exempting the first x square feet, I think, would be much better. In terms of implementation date, would want I don't know exactly how long it would take how long it takes for developers from when they buy the property to when they get a completed building permit in because that's when they vest. So I'm open to flexibility on that.

But I would I don't think I I think we need to learn from experience and I don't think we're going to do that by punting it all the way to the end of phase two. We know we're going to have the discussion again in phase two and I think it would be useful to see what happens with an implementation date that's not at the very end of phase two. So sometime early next year, I don't know what the exact date is, could throw out, like, 04/01/2026 or something like that. But I'm open to being persuaded in either direction on the exact date. And I'm also open to a higher size exemption that higher than even 2,000 square feet because I think we don't want to be penalizing the sort of typical home that people live in.

But I wouldn't describe but I wouldn't say that building that take tearing down a $1,000,000 home and putting up a $4,000,000 home is making Kirkland more affordable. So I that's why I see this affordable housing requirement as a priority. I think I if we if staff are gonna bring an option for that, I would like to see how much funding it would have brought had it been applied to previous years. And we can throw on some, like, multiplier of, like, okay, this probably then reduces the amount of development because we're adding requirements on it. But I would like to see how much that would actually generate because the city currently does not have any any meaningful source of funding affordable housing.

I think this is a good option we should be considering. I believe that's it. Thanks.

Mr. Heiser?

Yeah. I mean, would just go back to that and say, yeah, the comprehensive plan that we suggested included recommended, included policies that said specifically not to add to the cost of building housing. So we are going against our own comp plan that we've adopted by discussing this. We were very clear on we don't want to add any more cost. We're going to have higher cost to building housing.

So if you're also taxing that housing, it's just going to go up. So I don't want to be in noncompliance with our comp plan and our policies there. I don't think that makes any sense. I will say this because I haven't heard anyone else have the bravery to say it, but Arch when I was reading Arch's analysis of their pro form a of what they thought a builder could possibly manage to give to affordable housing, they left out the 8% in closing costs. The closing costs handle excise tax.

They cover realtors' fees. They cover title and escrow fees. That's 8% of the sales cost of a house. It's a huge number. They then inflated the builder profit in their model.

So my question is, because they were involved in this from the beginning, did they do that on purpose because Arch is a pass through company? So if they're helping with creating the policies and what recommendations are going to come to us, wouldn't that benefit them? And the money gets passed through them. So when I see something that is so poorly done like this, it's either it was done to either deceive the planning staff, the planning commission, and the city council to look like builders make a ton of money. We can just take some more from them.

Or they simply didn't even know anything about closing costs. So it's really hard for me to go, I'm going to listen to a model that was created by Arch because they don't have an it's not an arm's length transaction with them, and we're not getting usable data. Also, Arch was very much involved in eighty fifth, and that's been a debacle. So I'm leaning towards option two or option three so that we have enough time to get, as we've heard from the Realtors Association just now, a more thorough and informed discussion regarding the economic feasibility of such requirements for developers of middle housing? Well, it's developers of any type of housing because we all have to play by the same rules.

We're all having to figure out financing. We're all having to figure out how to get permits through and not have all these carrying costs. But we need some more time. And we actually need do we need to get a third party consultant involved that doesn't profit from these policies? That would be one question I would have. And I'd really like to listen to the builders in this case because we clearly didn't do that on eighty fifth, and we're not seeing anything, any movement there. And we're still seeing movement in Bellevue. So I I have some issues, and I I don't feel like the amount of transparency about the fee in lieu situation was very good here. I I know you did give us some numbers. I'm still kind of confused about them.

But I think if we're talking about fees in lieu, we need to be transparent about what is the planning staff looking for, what kind of numbers, because that's what kind of created this entire issue in the first place is we were looking at the affordability requirements on apartment buildings. And if you put that directly onto a single family house, that's your profit. So no one's going to be building. No one's going to be financing the construction of building housing. So I don't want to be the first in the nation, like we always are, with everything and just adopting, because it really has not helped us getting piling on more regulation is not helping us getting housing built and that just means the price goes up because people want to live here and there's no housing to be bought so enough I don't want to lecture anymore I like option three When we talked to Allison, Allison, you thought that maybe we would vote tonight, but are we not voting on which option to to recommend to counsel tonight because it's not a public hearing?

So I think what we're how we've been going down the line and getting the clear kind of guidance from each Planning Commissioner on which option you prefer is is really helpful. And then if Planning Commission wants to, like, take a vote as to which option you want us to develop into code, you can. We're kind of getting that as you're going as long as you're clarifying, like, each saying individually what option you're in favor of. Okay. We can accurately reflect this what the split might be.

Okay. And then Gina did bring up that we thought we might do a really good idea, do a recap at the end of the night so that you can tell us what you're planning on giving back to counsel. Okay. I think that's a great idea. Code amendments, just make it less complicated for all the architects and builders, please. So I don't think we need another briefing. And then parking requirements, option one is good.

I'm gonna, make some comments, and then I'll turn it over to commissioner Matteo for more. Building on Commissioner Heiser's questions about Arch, I was wondering I know I realize that Arch is classified as a partnership between cities. My impression is that its staff is funded by the cities and not by the funds collected. Is that accurate? So it's not like Arch is taking Arch's operations are funded by a portion of the fees collected or is I think that might be getting at some of Commissioner Heiser's concerns.

Yeah, I can I can try to respond to that? Yeah, I'm not sure I'm totally following the profit making entity for for Arch or the profit making claims about Arch. Yeah, there are city contributions that are made, I think, out of our general fund that go to Arch for their operations. So based on my knowledge of how that works, it's not a function of, yeah, how many permits we process or anything like that. Or how much is collected is designated for these affordable housing fees. It's they aren't funded by a portion of the fees collected. Yeah. In lieu fees that are collected go into the trust fund, right? That is then the Arch executive board determines how to allocate to individual affordable housing projects.

But not allocated to their operation? Correct.

Yeah. Okay. That's that's my understanding of how how Arch works. Yep. Okay.

That was my rough understanding, but I'm glad to have that clarification. On streamlining codes, this is something I was wondering about more broadly. How much does staff collaborate with nearby jurisdictions on seeing how our codes can be made more similar and make it easier for builders to move from one to another? Is that something that's

Yeah, thank you for that question because that's what a policy that we've kind of created in our comprehensive plan and adopted. As you recall we've had a briefing, first briefing on this early or late last year. I think it was November, right? I believe we started talking about this conversation. And this is back before we adopted the comprehensive plan code and so the initial intent was to try to start looking at what other jurisdictions are doing.

I did reach out to Redmond and Bellevue and there's a bunch of jurisdictions that have been sharing information how they're approaching middle housing code. Specifically I wanted to look at our neighboring jurisdictions like Redmond and Bellevue and seeing what they're doing and having some conversations with them and their approaches towards that and wanted to see if they were, if we can collaborate a little bit, at least in the general sense, that we can like not make code that was too con you know, it's not like speaking, you know, different languages at different they they do right now. But we've been working a lot on that and this is probably one of the main things that we'll be taking away from the first phase of code amendments and watching other jurisdictions especially like Bellevue as they're gonna adopt their middle housing code. And so we'll be able to now look at what Bellevue's done and what Redmond's done and then we can kind of make some similar adjustments that might maybe align those a little bit more. At least, you know, it's been mentioned here like verbiage and making things clearer and Yeah.

More Making the patterns more consistent Yeah.

It's easier for them to follow. Not necessarily setting the same thresholds or measurements, but

I I feel for the developers that have go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I do. I do. Because they have to they have to I've had many conversations with them. It's like, does Kirkland do this? All right. Yeah. So that was definitely part of the conversation for sure in Faculty. Sounds

good. I think my on the questions that are posed here on let's see, affordable housing, I guess we'll start down that corner. I don't have a strong preference other than I want to make sure that we are not inhibiting the construction of housing. I have some serious reservations in general about the way that we place the economic burden of affordable housing on, especially today, on our most affordable housing, being the apartments that are being built. And so I'd like it to be not on housing at all.

But you know, in, say, for example, on commercial property or that sort of thing. But that's outside the scope of this discussion. So the more that we can do to either delay delay or the discussion or adopt something that maybe can have a deferred implementation date to give us the flexibility to to further refine it in phase two, if that's a possibility. Just want to make sure that we don't it's a very complex topic to untangle and to understand, and I don't want to be pushing the clock too much on this to try to get this just right. I wanna try to make it easy on staff too and and minimize the amount that you have to to juggle between now and and the deadline.

So and be able to focus on what really matters. Let's see. ADUs. Ah, yes. ADUs.

Let's see. Right now, it's it's draftages two limits per subject property. And that, I think, is maybe a bit vague. I I look forward to, like, how this actually gets thought of in in code because I could see this being, like, is it per lot or separately sold property? Or is it what happens when we allow from unit lot subdivisions?

Does that become then, Okay, you have a duplex, and then each of these duplex units is allowed to. So there's a bit of untangling there potentially that we'll have to work through. Let's see. Would an ADU be able to be placed on, say, a front or a side yard with any of these? Or is this still limiting the the placement that's existing?

No. No. No. We we can that was removed from the code. What what's that? The The location.

Location limitation was removed from the code?

Yeah. The limitations there. The only one that is still standing is I believe related to subdivisions, historic lot subdivisions where that's the only like condition in which, you know, if under a preservation of a historic home, that there's a, that the accessory dwelling unit is not kind of, I guess obstructing that from it. And then, yeah, that's the only case in which we have not really touched that yet.

All right. And then there was a question that I saw out in public social media space, I shared with Scott earlier about current carve out for the second second attached accessory dwelling unit in code that states that that can only be 10% of the lot lot area over, say, the the zoned zoned lot size. I was trying to make sense of this comment, and you responded, but I'll let you respond to

Yeah.

So And do we intend to make We actually

yeah, so accessory dwelling so there's two sections that currently under code right now would limit the size of an accessory dwelling unit especially the second unit.

Detached or if both.

Either, you know, any kind of any accessory structure that is regulated including accessory dwelling units would be subject to this additional size limitation. The way the draft code is now is that we just eliminate accessory dwelling unit from that regulation. So it actually is just removed from that. So if that was the question, that has already been addressed.

Okay. Two other quick topics. Density minimums, I'm a bit concerned about the way the density minimums might either inhibit the construction of larger apartments, say a three, perhaps even four bedroom units, because this there you're creating a a you know, you'd be sacrificing density for having the larger apartment units potentially. So I want to make sure that we aren't putting that at risk. And also want to avoid inhibiting increment incremental development on larger lots.

So maybe you start out by building one cottage on a large lot, but it's arranged in a way that allows for more cottages to be built on that lot at a future phase, which could, I think, make it easier for to be financed, for example. If you could, like, build one now, then we'll sell that, then we'll build another one, then we'll sell that. Much less capital capital intensive is kind of what I was thinking. So just want to be careful about that. In the square footage calculations, I was looking through.

I was wondering why would we limit uncovered deck space in that. And the other one was about areas under staircases being closed off. They wouldn't be counted if they're closed off and inaccessible, but I think especially in cottage houses, you want to be able to open up any sort of storage space that might be useful. And if it's closed off and inaccessible, that seems like a waste of space that could be make it more functional to live in a more compact dwelling. And I don't see the purpose or the usefulness in providing an incentive to close off and make spaces inaccessible.

I think that covers most of mine. One last point on typologies. I see the townhomes are included. I wonder how that would work, assuming that townhomes mean that they're attached side by side. But if we as long as we have side setbacks, it's not really practical unless we have some mechanism for allowing neighboring properties to agree that they can go up to the to the lot line.

So, I mean, at this point, it'd be like, you can build hound homes as long as they all fit on one lot and and adhere to the to the existing envelope limitations, which I'm guessing means really only see them in duplex or fraud plex form.

Yeah, so some of that would be addressed in the unit lot subdivision code that's being drafted right now. So there's a requirement under state law that we you know, adopt a unit lot subdivision. It was that's being picked up by, Janice Swenson. She's been kind of working on that unit lot subdivision code. So that would allow for, you know, these units to to essentially be on their own individual lots.

They could be potentially in there. So right now the way the development standards for middle housing code is that it's considered like a parent lot. So really what your setbacks are around the perimeter. So then under a unit lot subdivision, then you can take the individual unit lots and make them their own little components and stuff.

In that scenario, could you potentially aggregate multiple lots into a larger parent lot and then subdivide them under this? Or would that be

Yeah. They're just treated as one parent lot. So these are just one parent. You'd have to do that as a lot consolidation first, and then you would do it like that make that the parent lot. And then

So it's like a jumpsuit. It jumpsuit. Yeah. Okay.

Now, yeah, it could happen. But idea is that the way that we're dealing with right now most of those developments can develop with the exterior setbacks being respected and then they condominiumize after that. Unilots Okay. Subdivision just allows you to just take that same concept and make them actually fee simple product.

All right. Great. Thank you. I think Commissioner Mateo had a comment or question.

I had a follow-up question. As we are talking about the affordability requirements and the concept of delaying. And I want to be clear what we're giving up. But we're not giving up density options, right? We're giving up incentives that later could be used to attract development.

Yeah, thanks, Commissioner Medea. I think, I guess the way I would describe it is that, you know, under state law, right, you have to give development allowances to require affordable housing. And so we're giving something right now, right? It might be relatively modest in scale but you know we're expanding development allowances for housing, middle housing right now and again by forgoing adopting affordable housing requirements now we would be basically giving away those development allowances and not getting affordable housing in return, if that makes sense. And then again, based on the direction that we've gotten from the vast majority of commissioners, when we go into phase two, that's when we would consider affordable housing requirements.

And again, the outcome of that would be based on, you know, additional development allowances that are being granted as part of phase two.

This notion of what we can't bank now, I guess I'm still not clear on. I'm still in favor of delaying, although with respect to not continuing to kick it too far down the road. But I want to just make sure I understand and that it's clear when we recommend to counsel and to the public what it is that we're what we're giving up by delaying. And I'm not, I'm still not sure I'm clear on that.

Yeah, so you're, what you're giving away, I guess, as part of phase one is allowing, you know, development up to six units per lot, right? Any reductions in parking, right? The additional housing typologies that we're adding, right? So those are all the development allowances I think that we're giving as part of phase one. And in exchange for those, we're not asking for affordable housing. Does that make sense? Am I

If we use like a bank metaphor, right, like the and we say like we're use like a credit structure, so we're like we are giving a certain amount of credits right now. If any new requirements, like new inclusionary requirements, have to achieve some type of proportionality between the give and the get, the credits that we're giving in phase one, if we don't adopt anything new, we don't get to add the credits now to the credits that we might be giving with the phase two adjustments. So if the total of phase one and phase two would be like this many credits, if we only do inclusionary zoning in phase two, it might only be this many credits. We can do that, and that's the direction we're hearing. But that's kind of

the

concept, trying to achieve some type of proportionality with what we're asking for in return.

Okay. And then last comment. As we think about that vis a vis the fact as was stated again tonight, right, we already are the third densest city in the state. Like, I'm still hopeful we'll continue to make good progress in housing and affordability, even if we do cool our jets a little bit now and defer it in option three. Is that kind of a fair guess?

Yeah, think that's a fair guess. Again, that's a totally appropriate approach. Again, depends, the caveat is that it depends what happens in phase two, right? So if ultimately, you know, council, based on planning commission guidance, adopts a phase two that doesn't give a lot away, that might constrain our ability to require affordable housing. And I have to say, you know, there's not a very scientific formula that you can build for something like this, so it's slightly subjective, but we try to be as rigorous about it as possible. But I just wanna be really clear that what you're going to be asking what you would ask for as part of phase two is going to be based on how many new development allowances do you grant as part of phase two.

Mind if I ask one clarifying question? We can potentially, say, adopt option two, but with the deferred implementation date of like a year or so down the line as kind of a way of banking it, being able to refine it.

Yeah, I wouldn't call that banking. I know, I know. Yeah, Yes, that's correct. Yeah, you could adapt. You could adapt phase, or sorry, option two now and have a delayed effective date of whatever you feel like is appropriate.

Yeah, okay. Commissioner Reiser?

As and if we get to phase two, I would still rather see incentives to get builders to build affordable units because we're using the penalizing. I would be game for reducing parking if they did affordable units. I would be for giving them, you know, deferred permitting costs or, you know, breaks for those units that are affordable. It just seems like we have so many other ways of to work with the builders, and I'm sure builders could come up with even better incentives than I can, to encourage because we keep asking acting like the only way we can get this affordable housing in these units is to either have a very good natured builder that's gonna do it without being asked or penalize them for making additional housing when we need the additional housing. So I I would rather see in our next go round at least an option to have, okay, if you build an affordable housing unit that will continue to be an affordable housing use unit for a long period of time, the city can give you some incentives.

And we had examples of that. I'm sorry to interrupt.

What's that?

I I didn't realize you were still

No. No. No. Go ahead. I mean, I I would say, hey. I'm I'm you know, don't really like reducing parking minimums, but I would say if somebody's building an affordable housing unit near a transit line, okay. Maybe they don't have to have a parking. I would go to zero for that. That would, I'm sure, give, you know, a break to these developers and builders. I would say, hey. Is there a way we can reduce not the permitting on the full priced units, but the affordable? Can we give them a permit break?

Yeah. And so we we do have examples of that in our code already. So I think in response to your interest, we do have some areas where we have examples or precedent. And so in the station area, the Planning Commission actually did recommend and Council adopted a lower parking requirement for affordable units than market rate units. So for affordable units in the station area, they have a parking requirement of zero compared to the parking requirement for market rate units.

So that's that's a way you incentivized it. And then we do also have some zoning districts where you can get bonus density if you provide on-site affordable units. So if you provide one affordable unit on-site, you can get two bonus units, and that would be in addition to the whatever the maximum density is for that zone. There's also a couple zones where we provide a little bit of height bonus for affordable units. And so we have some precedent and could give you some examples if you wanted to build on that in phase two. I really appreciate the

would like to, and I I would say probably the Commission as a whole, I'm not speaking for everybody, but I think they would like to see it at least.

All right. Would anyone else? Does anyone else have any comments, or does staff have any further questions, any clarification about your summary?

We want to sorry. You want to just for our ability to kind of move forward with the affordable housing requirement, do want to do a motion for any particular option or direction in option or recommendation to City Council?

I think it was pretty clear that it was option three, right? Do we do we need a motion for all of this or just that one particular? I I

can read back what what I have, but if any of the planning commissioners are feeling like you want it more formal, you can certainly make a motion. So what I have noted is one commissioner that stated a preference for option two, four commissioners that have stated a preference for option three. Chair Rutherford, I didn't hear a specific option stated, and then, of course, Commissioner Robinson is or Robins is absent tonight.

I think I was saying two but with a deferred implementation.

Yes, I'll make a motion then for to recommend option three for the inclusionary zoning requirements.

I second the motion.

Can I make a quick

one? Yeah, ahead and make a comment.

Sure. Just on the piece about, you know, if we give something now then we can't bank it for later. We're not really giving much of anything right now. You know, we we did our middle housing work back in 2019, you know, implemented in 2020, and we're not really I I don't know how you could argue for any kind of affordable housing requirement based on the, like, sliver of what this gives. Because, you know, if we were in another city that didn't already have middle housing codes, I I would say that that would be different.

But, you know, I feel like this is just, like, fractionally different. So I am very good with just option three. Then if we wanna talk much bigger incentives and gives, then that's, I think, the appropriate time to talk inclusionary zoning.

Commissioner Medea?

Can we just make sure that as you relay to counsel what we talked about and how we wound up on Option three, that we definitely still have a preference to engage in that work sooner rather than later, so we're not continuing to really push it out indefinitely? Thank you.

We certainly can. And just as I think Scott has a schedule slide next, just specific to this because we really want to make sure that we're conveying Planning Commission's direction to counsel in a way that everyone's comfortable with and that we're being accurate. So we are not going back to counsel before we come back to you at this point for the public hearing. So you'll have a chance to hold the public hearing, receive testimony, reach a formal recommendation. And it's sounding to me like this is falling into the category of the type of projects you would like to send planning commissioners with us to counsel so that you have an opportunity to speak directly to them.

So I think this seems like a a good one for you to send some of some representation to counsel directly with staff.

Sounds good. Vice Chair Heiser?

I very much agree with Commissioner Rosman's statements. Do we should we go to a vote or does anyone else?

Yeah, we can call the vote unless I see any other one wanting to discuss. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. That's five in favor, one opposed.

Okay, so I think we wanted to kind of summarize what we've heard. Right, so it seems for the densities and ADUs we're generally agreeing that the options that were, that the, what we've draft, staff drafted so far, it seems like the right approach, including also the range of housing types in low density versus medium and high density zones. Large agreement on on that. No some some some feedback on some of the code amendments as it relates to, you know, additional code amendments and some of the code amendments that we've also brought to you today that were part of the additional code amendment group as code amendments that weren't previously presented to you specifically with chair Rutherford's comments on those topics and we'll be working on responses to that where I think we got a pretty good vote on not receiving a briefing until the next until the public hearing. Is that correct?

Think we got a vote on that. But but I think we heard largely that that no briefing is needed go to the public hearing. And then option one for the hybrid city and state parking requirements that we presented tonight. Is that covering it?

Sounds good. Looks like we have consensus on that.

You like the slide? I like the slide. I don't have another slide by the way. I don't have a schedule slide. Next time we tentatively, in your packet we tentatively schedule a public hearing on the eighth. This will give you a lot of time to like, we get a little bit of wiggle room there. So if you needed to continue. Oh, Sorry. May. May 8 is the next time.

I'm not gonna get gone to you on the eighth. You're not even around on the eighth. So May 8, and that gives you an option to kind of even continue if you needed to to the following meeting in in May. Hopefully not. And then we'll have plenty of time for counsel to consider your recommendation in either May, late May or early June. Well ahead of the time when we need to actually get adopted before the state.

Alright. Sounds good. I think that brings us to the end of that item on our agenda. Right? Alright next item listed is public hearings of which there are none followed by a reading and or approval of minutes we have minutes for February 13

A motion to approve the minutes from February 13.

Second.

Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. And on to the next item. Administrative reports and Planning Commission discussion. Reports from staff?

Yes, just a couple. So for a quick calendar update, we have no items on your April 10 meeting. We will be canceling that April 10 meeting. We'll see you back here on April 24. That will be a little bit of a busier meeting. We have a second briefing on the Juanita zoning request. So that's the Michaels and the Goodwill sites as we've been calling them. Just a quick update. We did go to the Finhill Neighborhood Association last night and had a really good conversation. It was a packed house about those specific code amendments.

So we'll be bringing a second briefing back to you on that with draft code with a range of options for you as you directed us at your first briefing on those code amendments. We'll also be bringing you your first briefing on our critical area ordinance updates. So that's another state requirement. We're required to update our critical area ordinance this year. That covers streams, wetlands, geologically hazardous areas, and habitat areas.

So first briefing on that is coming to you on April 24. And then lastly, a really brief public hearing to discuss the zoning text amendment that enables development agreements throughout the city. So not an actual development agreement, just zoning text that says people can propose a development agreement. So that public hearing will be on April 24. And then aside from the public calendar, just wanted to give you all an update on what's happening with the planning work program.

So this is on council's calendar to discuss on April 1. Chair Rutherford and Vice Chair Heizer will be coming with staff to that meeting. Council is not intending to adopt the planning work program at the April meeting, and but they are receiving a briefing. And so we have a draft planning work program based on your last discussion on it. Chair Rutherford and Vice Chair Heizer have reviewed that draft work program. The draft work program and the staff memo for it will be published in the council packet that goes live tomorrow. So that would be a good chance for everyone to look at it. If you have any questions about it, we're happy to answer. And that's it for me.

Sounds good. Any topics that any commissioners would like to discuss? Seeing none, waiting for the uncomfortable silence. And seeing no one speaking up, we reach the next item on our agenda, which is comments from the audience. Would anyone like to speak either in person or in the online audience? Ahead and come forward. And Liz and I do see you have any hands online. If you want to speak, raise your hand, hit the raise hand button. Go ahead and come forward.

Hi. Liz Hunt. I wanted to just speak briefly about the parking. Thank you for the data that you folks gathered on parking that is being provided in units that are being built and what you're seeing on the streets, data is always good. I would like to add that you didn't come to my neighborhood.

I noticed we weren't on your list of projects that you included, and I don't know what the time frame was for them, so maybe that was why. But I have noticed that we have a lot of building going on and a of middle housing being built. Well, they're ADUs and DAUs, so not so much middle housing. But what we are seeing is or what I'm seeing is that the somewhat bigger developments, for instance, that take down one house on a good sized lot and they're providing four units, so two homes and then two detached ADUs, so if you've got four separate living units, Those tend to have more off street parking provided. It's a bigger lot.

There are bigger units being built. However, the popular plan that we're seeing with three units replacing one unit, where you have a main house, an attached ADU with a little breezeway piece, and a DADU, that one to three plan, we are seeing much less parking going in on the second and third unit. They tend to be smaller units. And they have maybe an off street parking space snuggled up to the alley. But even when I went on a tour of one of those, the realtor said, oh, well, you're not going to you don't need to park over there.

You're you can park on the street right here in front of your unit because that's what you're going to want to do. And that's what they're doing. So there's a noticeable increase in on street parking around those one to three kinds of developments. Thank you.

Thank you, Liz. Would anyone else like to speak? Go ahead and come up, John.

John Capler. I appreciate the robust discussion. Thank you all for doing that. One comment that didn't come up at all regarding parking and access to properties is building site coverage. In Kirkland, we have a 50% number for FAR and a 50% number for coverage.

Oftentimes, that requires homes to get skinnier and taller, so we have room on the site for patios and sidewalks and outdoor areas, that sort of thing, which we all love and enjoy because we like the outdoors here in the Pacific Northwest. When we cram other units on the property and try and give people parking on their property so they're not parked on the street, we want them to get on-site and parking. That takes pervious area to do. The housing units that was just spoken of, oftentimes you need impervious area to get to the back of the property to allow access to the back of the property with a vehicle. In Kirkland, you can only have one curb cut.

What we're talking about tonight is planning. We don't really cross pollinate with a lot of the public works issues. And oftentimes in code, when we study as architect sites, there's a crash between those two. I know staff is working really hard to resolve those now. But right now, in the cottage code, we're allowed two curb cuts, but not on anything else. So if we call something an ADU and we don't call it a cottage just because it works better in the in the code, we can't have a second curb cut to get to that other unit. But when we all drive by it, it looks exactly the same. It's used exactly the same. Just during the planning process, we call it something different. So we can't do that.

And I think these are some crashes that would be nice to kind of fix. If we talked about impervious area possibly as a different number, and curb cuts as well, and multiple curb cuts. Thank you. Thank you, John.

All right. Seeing no further comments, I just want to confirm there's no one online who's raised their hand in the meantime. That brings us to the end of our agenda, and this meeting is adjourned.