Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the July 8th meeting of the City of Bellevue Planning Commission. This evening's meeting is held via hybrid format with both in-person and virtual options via Zoom. Tonight's meeting will provide an opportunity for public comment during the oral communications portion of the agenda. All written comments that have been submitted prior to 11 a.m. today, Wednesday, July 8th, will be summarized into the record. We have two study sessions on the agenda tonight. Staff will be requesting that we set public hearings for both projects. The first is a review of the full draft of the Eastgate Neighborhood Area Plan Comprehensive Plan Amendment, which is seeking approval to set a public hearing, and the Bell Red Look Forward Land Use Code Amendment. Now let's move forward to roll call. I'd like to note that Commissioner Kennedy is attending remotely. Do we have Commissioner Kennedy on screen? Not yet. Okay. I'll move on with the rest of the roll call for now. Vice Chair Villavese's. Present. Commissioner Kanlu.

Here.

Commissioner Ferris.

I'm here.

Commissioner Goeppel. Here. Commissioner Nielshian. Here. And I guess we and I see Commissioner Kennedy online. Wonderful. And Council Member Bhargava.

Here.

All right. And I am Chair Liu. Can I get a motion to approve tonight's agenda? So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

I'll approve the agenda. Say aye.

Aye.

All right. Let's move on to reports of council boards and commissions. Council Member Bhargava, do you have any updates from the council?

Actually, today is a really easy day. Not much to provide updates on. The council's been off last week and we're off this week as well. And so we'll be back on next week.

Congratulations.

Yeah. Glad to see you guys getting a break. Yes. All right. Zach, are there any reports from the boards and commissions?

There are not, but just one note, Bell Red is not asking for a public hearing to be scheduled this evening, just so you know. Good to know.

All right. Let's move on to oral and written communications. Zach, can you provide a summary of the written communications we received?

Yes. And sorry, I do want to note just our upcoming schedule. Okay. For the next meeting, July 22nd, we have three public hearings for Evans Plaza, the Transportation Conformance EPA, and the Parking Reform LUCA. After that, we'll be on break for the month of August. And then once we return for the first meeting in September on the 9th, there'll be two public hearings, one for the Eastgate Neighborhood Area Plan CPA, and then for the Bell Red LUCA, as well as a written update for Bellevue College LUCA. In terms of our communications, we have received seven written comments. Three came in after the packet was published, which are in your materials, and one was received after the deadline today, and that'll be part of your materials for the next meeting. Of the comments received, one comment was for the Great Neighborhoods Program. However, this is in relation to the Factoria plan that was reviewed last time. And it will be part of the packet for the public hearing when that happens. And then six comments for Bell Red relating to tree credit requirements, FAR allowances, lot coverage, commercial catalyst program, the street grid requirements and the amenity tier structure. And that is all.

Thank you. All right, let's move on to oral communications. So we have a total of 30 minutes for oral communications. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak. Staff liaison Zach Luckin will call on speakers in the order in which they have registered, either in person or online. If anyone from the public has missed the 6 p.m. registration deadline, you may still provide public comment if there is remaining time. Please use the raise hand function in Zoom if you're attending virtually or motion to staff if you're in person to indicate that you would like to speak. There are rules adopted by City Council limiting the topics about which the public may speak during our meetings. Under Ordinance 6752, the public may only speak during public comment about subject matters that are related to the City of Bellevue government and are within the power and duties of the Planning Commission. Additional information about the rules of decorum governing conduct of the public during our meetings can be found at Ordinance 6752. And I'll just know that I think we have 10 people signed up exactly. So we may need to extend time if we see folks sign up after the 10. With that, can you call our first speaker?

Sure. So we have 10 people who have signed up online. One is virtual. The rest are in person. Nobody else has signed up in the room. So we're going to start with our virtual attendee. We have Leslie Geller. Leslie, if you want to try to speak. Leslie, can you hear me?

Yeah. Yeah, I can.

All right. You have three minutes. Go ahead.

Okay. Hello, Planning Commission. It's very weird to not see an image of you. I just see the timer. I'm Leslie Geller. I live in Eastgate, and that is what my comment is about. And I'm also the president of the Eastgate Community Association, and I have been involved in this process very closely since actually before its inception, I have given comment at every step of the way. And I dare say that, well, anyway, so I wanted, I have some pretty strong thoughts about the neighborhood area plan and the process.

And I,

First of all, I think you should take with pounds of salt all of the statistics that you've heard from Zach and other people in planning and the number of people that they reached in their outreach efforts versus the actual number of people who gave more than just passing comments. In other words, really thought about it and gave meaningful feedback. As I said, I've done it throughout the process, and I would bet money that what I contributed surpasses all the other people who gave feedback. My big issue with the NAP is how will it be used? I mean, I've asked this question of Justin and Brooke. I know it's a guidance. But will it actually have an impact on realizing the goals of the policies? I have strong doubts that it will. And for reference, some of you may know about the fact that Lithia Motors, who owns the property of Sunset Village on the north side of I-90, a couple of years ago, they were moving forward with application to tear down all the existing retail there, the small businesses, and to build another auto dealership that went completely against so many of the policies that were in place of the Eastgate sub area plan, which at the time was only the north side of I-90. And so I really question the value of the NAP and this entire process. I have very low expectations of it. Thanks.

Thank you.

All right, our next speaker is in person and it is John Marasco.

That's fine. You'll still only have three minutes, but you can substitute. Sure.

Yeah. We're both on first. I just thought we'd have Paul go first.

Sure. That's fine. Yeah.

Remind me. Thank you. Good evening, Planning Commission. Thank you very much for getting the opportunity to speak tonight. As you know, this is the third time I've been here. And you know that I represent Albertsons on the Spring District land. Nothing has changed. not a solitary thing. And I find that deeply, frankly depressing. I wonder why we're going through the process. The grid pattern that's proposed is still in place. That is going to encumber our land forever. I ask you, please, please, please do not do that. This is a development-crushing proposal, a grid pattern. I think the Romans were good at that. We've surely moved on since then. You've seen the plan that we produced. We were going to propose a creative plan which will give excellent pedestrian access, which will be creative, will be very well landscaped, And of course, as any great development team would do, we will hire a very good traffic analysis company and we will provide a road system that meets the requirements that is necessary to meet the traffic standards of Belmont. Bellevue, sorry, I was in Belmont yesterday. Anyway, that's my very simple answer, my very simple question. and I hope that we can take some action here before the next meeting. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, and I will now call John Maresco.

Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for letting me speak tonight. I'm John Marosco, and I represent the Albertsons' interest. I'm going to read from my phone here my notes, so I'm a little quicker than I was last time. There's a proposed framework for allowing a private road in lieu of a public street required by the street grid. This creates an administratively burdensome process that provides little certainty or predictability for the future development of the site. The staff has also stated in the comment tracker that it's exploring a development agreement pathway for larger sites such as the Albertsons' property. This is similarly burdensome, requiring extensive negotiation and adding significant time and expense to the entitlement process. These proposed mechanisms for preserving the street grid on this site are nonsensical. I would implore the Commission to consider a performance-based criteria as opposed to a prescriptive approach. And lastly, LUCA includes a provision for development in a parking garage where there's a minimum 10 foot floor to ceiling requirement, uh, which again, I believe is onerous and costly for the developer. Uh, if you must have a 10 foot section, it should be 10 feet floor to floor, not floor to ceiling. And I would argue for a parking garage, you don't need that much clear space anyway. Um, so you could go with, uh, a narrower floor-to-floor section. And those are my comments for tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Brady Nordstrom, followed by Leila Kademi.

Greetings, commissioners. It's good to see you all. Good evening. My name is Brady and I'm the associate director of government relations and policy. I'm here to comment on Bell Red. First of all, I'd like to just thank staff and all of you as commissioners for the work so far. I don't think it should be lost that the code has made incredible progress since the start. And a lot of the concepts have been carried over from Wilberton. In particular, from the affordable housing perspective, we support the staff-recommended requirement approach as the only option in Bell Red. There's consistency with HOMA and Wilberton. There's the size of the up zone. There's other code benefits like FAR exemptions. And then there's MFTE that council will also be pairing with this in the future. So we urge you to continue to see affordable housing as a top priority in Bell Red. After all, if we prioritize everything, then nothing is really prioritized. And also, when we tie affordable housing and market rate development together, code-based cost savings become an affordable housing tool. So the rest of my comments are about, um, how we make affordable housing and bell red work for artists, workers, families, and all of these other folks that are necessary for the vision to be completed there. Um, so I, this is all in, uh, leading to street grid. Uh, so, um, so, um, HTC signed on an East side housing round table letter in may urging you to seek out bold solutions around the street grid and then other code-based cost savings like stream mitigation that are going to be discussed, I believe, in the fall. So we still support a shift away from a street grid network to a more flexible performance-based standard that can deepen multimodal connectivity while maintaining flexibility. There's also some other things like the street frontage requirements, bringing those from 75% down to 50. I think that was the intent in the code, but reflecting that and then some of the other widths, and especially ones that aren't on main arterials or key streets, thinking about how we do that. But if the decision is to move away from this to some sort of a middle ground with a still with a grid overlay and then we strongly support nondiscretionary or the least discretionary waiver process as possible to replace these required streets with private streets where appropriate. So the staff proposal with criteria is a starting place here. The key is to remove uncertainty. And the more discretionary a process, the more likely it is that project financing isn't going to be possible. So that's really the key there. And I know that there's ongoing conversations and debates around this. So finally, with the amenity incentive system, there's some updates in the recent code drafts. We appreciate that the Wilbertson structure has been carried over. And we continue to ask for the dedication of some portion of amenity fees, but probably won't be possible to do all of it, but some portion to affordable housing, which can complement fee-in-lieu from the affordable housing requirement itself. So thank you all very much. Thanks, Brady.

Our next speaker is Leila Kademi, followed by Alicia Ruiz.

All right. Good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Layla Kademi. I'm a land use attorney at Hillis, Clark, Martin and Peterson here tonight providing comment again on the Bell Red Luca. While staff's comment tracker reflects meaningful progress on outstanding issues, we haven't seen complete code language yet. So these comments really focus on what we saw in the comment tracker. The proposed street grid remains a significant barrier to redevelopment on affected properties, although staff has introduced some flexibility by allowing sites to provide private roads in lieu of public streets when specific conditions are met. This approach is administratively burdensome and does not provide owners with sufficient predictability. Existing tools like block size limits and flexible pedestrian and bike connections go far enough to reach the city's connectivity goals. Staff should also reconsider the requirement for on street parking along local and green streets. The additional impervious surface area and vehicle dependency encouraged by on street parking are inconsistent with the intended purpose and character of these streets. And in addition to revisiting the street grid requirements, the amenity incentive system should be expanded to better reflect some of the community priorities over in Bell Red. The AIS should also include publicly accessible sports and recreation facilities, community serving uses like childcare facilities, grocery stores and other neighborhoods serving retail, amphitheaters and performance venues that qualify as outdoor plazas, broadened critical areas improvements, incentivized family-sized housing units, and access and connectivity improvements. And consistent with the commission's direction during the last study session to strategically incentivize medical and life science uses in the MU-MH zone in lieu of the staggered residential FARs, which I did see are no longer staggered in the new draft, the LUCA should include a medical and life science use catalyst. This catalyst should mirror the existing Wilberton program by providing a reduction in affordable housing fee in lieu obligations for the qualifying uses. upcoming draft should also include a height in far exemption for affordable housing projects located on land formerly owned by sound transit and finally the non-conformity provisions should be updated to reflect bell red's industrial past existing warehouse and manufacturing uses should be allowed to modernize and expand without triggering proportional compliance if there is no net increase in off-site impacts We've provided staff with suggestions for these provisions, and you also have a copy of my testimony that has these suggestions right below. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alicia Ruiz, followed by Diana Leo.

Good evening, Chair Lewin, members of the Commission. My name is Alicia Ruiz, and I am the new Policy and Advocacy Manager at Habitat for Humanity, Seattle, King, and Kittitas Counties. And I'm here tonight. I want to take a moment to introduce myself. And although I'm new to the east side, I am not new to land use. I previously represented market rate middle housing builders in Seattle. I'm excited to now be advancing Habitat's mission here in Bellevue and beyond. Habitat builds and preserves affordable owner-occupied homes for working families like teachers, caregivers, first responders, and others who make this community run. But they are increasingly priced out of it. As Bellevue continues to grow and reshape neighborhoods like Bellred, we see real opportunity and real responsibility to make sure that growth includes a path to home ownership for families at a range of income levels, not just market rate rental developments. I look forward to working with this commission, city staff and our partners in the housing community as the Bellred plan moves forward over the next coming months. I'll close by asking that as the amenity incentive system and fee-in-lieu structures are finalized, that a meaningful portion of those funds should be clearly dedicated to affordable housing, since that is and should remain a central goal of Ballard's redevelopment. Thank you again for your time and this ongoing work, and I look forward to continuing this conversation. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Diana Leo, followed by Ben Mickel.

Good evening Chair Liu and Commissioners. My name is Diana Leo and I'm the Vice President of Government Affairs at the Bellevue Chamber. Speaking on behalf of Chambers, Plush Committee and the Bell Red Properties Owners Group. First, a quick correction to the record. Our July 7th letter was written against an outdated draft, the May study session version, rather than the corrected working draft dated June 26, which city staff shared with us this morning. We appreciate Christina and Nick and their team for catching that and communicating quickly and transparently. That kind of responsiveness has defined this whole process. Having reviewed the corrected draft, several of our concerns have been addressed, including the active use frontage standard, but four core issues remain. One, mandatory street grid visibility. The code still doesn't allow a map street segment to be eliminated when it's physically or financially infeasible to build. The grid has been proposed since 2009 and remains unbuilt because private parties can't deliver it alone. If the city wants it built, each segment needs a real feasibility analysis. Two, private streets that meet emergency access standards should be allowed outright if the goal is genuine flexibility. Three. The code still lacks any shared use or low vehicular street typology, even though other cities have already done the work. Four, mandatory affordability requirements remain in tension with project feasibility with no offsetting cost relief. Underlying all of this, the draft is considerably more costly than the Wilberton code. Properties absorbing street grid or stream restoration obligations get little credit elsewhere in the code and upfront electrical infrastructure costs compound the burden hitting hardest the lower profitability, higher affordability projects this code is supposed to produce. We're meeting with staff again soon and appreciate their continued engagement. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ben Mikkel followed by Jesse Clausen.

Hello, my name is Ben Mikkel. Tonight I would like to talk about bike safety in the Bell Red Street Grid plant. In the April engagement report, safe biking and walking infrastructure was identified as a top priority for the community, and I know this commission wants Bell Red to be a safe place to bike. We have active transportation corridors, which are great, but they will not connect together. The local and green streets make space for cars, parking, pedestrians, and trees, but no space for bikes. Adding bike lanes to these streets is one option, but I'm proposing another option. Use modal filters to block cut-through traffic. For example, imagine a one-block street segment, such as Green Street. Block one end of it with bollards. Now cars have to enter and exit from the other end. They cannot cut through. This eliminates most of the traffic. Now it's safe for biking. And since bikes can use either end, it's also useful for biking. Apply this treatment to all the green and local streets and the whole neighborhood becomes a biking paradise. Unlike bike lanes, modal filters don't increase the corridor width and therefore have minimal cost to developers and property owners. They can even be done without bollards for better emergency vehicle access. For more details, please watch the short video I sent you in an email this week. At the last meeting about Bell Red, city staff told you the local and green streets are unnecessary for traffic throughput and their only purpose is to provide access to local buildings. In that case, there's no reason not to use modal filters on these streets since they fully preserve the intended function of vehicle access and only inhibit the unnecessary function of vehicle throughput. Modal filters are not really as exotic as they sound. They're mostly just ped-bike friendly cul-de-sacs. We use cul-de-sacs all over the country. They are highly desired places to live for the safe, quiet environment they create. You won't find any cul-de-sacs on our high injury network. That safety shouldn't be a luxury reserved for single family neighborhoods. It can be and should be enjoyed by residents of neighborhoods like Bell Red. Studies have even shown people form more social connections with their neighbors when they live on low volume streets like this. The benefits of modal filters go way beyond bike safety. They would truly be a treasured feature of the community. Please put a modal filter plan in this LUCA. Thank you.

Thank you.

And we have two more speakers. Next up is Jesse Klassen followed by Bruce Wanta.

You can share. Jessie Claassen, I have a handout for you tonight and we've been talking a lot about the street grid always and I think a picture helps a lot. Jessie Claassen, So on the first page you see my great Microsoft paint renderings but we're talking about the heidelberg site, which is a concrete plant that is kitty corner from a light rail station. And that is outlined in green. You can see in the yellow above the Vecino, which did do half street improvements all around it. And that is roughly where around the Vecino, where the north-south streets that are required in the current draft of the code are supposed to go all the way through. down to eventual Spring Boulevard and where the light rail line is. The Heidelberg site, you can see there's a huge wetland marked with a W. North is up in this picture. And then there are Xs in other locations where there are steep slopes and then also intervening properties where no development is happening today. So these are places where this street grid is not going to happen unless the city comes through and does it or decides that a street should go in a wetland. On the second page, you'll see a City of Bellevue map from 2021, and I don't know actually where this came from. I found it on my desk today, where it talks about where some local streets are dotted and or dashed, I guess, and they're identified as challenges. And the Heidelberg site is circled here. So that western north-south road is identified as a challenge because of the wetland. And then on the third page, the bell red street grid that is in the current draft and the Heidelberg site is circled. That same north-south street that is identified as a challenge is required by the code. The fourth page is the actual code language. And I know we keep talking about the code language, and I think it's really worth a read by everybody to see that even though we have a wetland in the location where a street is called for in this code, this modification language does not say, hey, you get to not do this street. Basically what it says, it does not say that you can waive a street. It says that you can modify it. You can choose to do a private street. And it still has to meet certain general intersection alignments, is generally consistent with the map, and meets certain standards below. And I think that that's what you're hearing in all the angst with people talking about the street grid, is that you still have to do the street, even though it's actually impossible, I think, in this particular location. so we're hoping that you know i know this is a longer discussion and we'll be talking about it into the fall but i just wanted to show you a picture of what i think helps illustrate it thank you thank you and our final speaker is bruce wanta i'll say in advance you all have a sheet sitting on your table

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Bruce Wanta. I am a 54-year resident of Bellevue. So I'm here specifically to talk about a site that I own. It's the PB&K site and how it is affected by the street grid. You can see in the center of that first page the green square. That's my site. It's bounded by Northup on the north, Bellevue on the south. 130th on the east, or west, excuse me, and 132nd on the east. That's where we sit. And the train station is only 160 feet away. What I want to tell you is that with the current street grid, the way it is aligned, there will be no development, new development on my property. And I want to explain why. If you flip to the second page, you'll see a zoom in of that area. The PB&K site sits right above the L-shaped Sioux Development site. And then Blue Sky Church and Raffin above me. The Spring Street station is right at the bottom. As you are aware, the station has fencing on both sides, so there is no way to cross from either this property to either side of the station without going to the ends of the block already.

There's no pedestrian access.

The other important thing to understand is the geography. If you look at the PB&K site and the one below it, there is a 20-foot bank between those two sites. And in 160 feet, the only way to build a road, this red road that is shown, The only way to build that road is to build a 20-foot high berm at an angle all the way up to my site, fill it in with a bunch of dirt, put a road on top so it'll bisect the Sioux development where they're trying to put three or four towers, destroying a bunch of land there, also destroying a bunch of land on my site. The road is actually much wider than this, so bear with me. So the interesting thing is the road provides no additional access. If you're going westbound on Spring, it's the only way you can go. You could take a right and go up and around back onto 130th, but you wouldn't save any additional commute space or commute distance, but you'd make two additional turns. It actually impedes traffic. The other important thing to understand is that the Blue Sky site and my site have a common fire access between the two properties, so the shortest route from either of those sites to 130th and 132nd for fire is already covered. I've just documented in the upper corner on the next page, the elevation change. So the ultimate key to all of this is that at 273 units, which is what I can build or what a developer can build without this road or with this road, this means I'm not a seller. I can't afford to sell the building because my building's already more valuable than the site would allow. With four to 500 units on the site, we get... four to 500 units of housing and dramatically increased density, 160 feet from the train station. Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody else signed up to speak? That is it.

And our time is up as well.

Great. All right. We can open it up for additional comments. Does anybody else in the room want to speak or anybody online? Great. Okay. With that, let's move on to the study session. The first study session is the Great Neighborhoods Program, the review of the full draft of the Eastgate Neighborhood Area Plan Comprehensive Plan Amendment. The Eastgate Great Neighborhoods Project was designed to develop local policies to address issues and opportunities to help Eastgate grow in a unique way. Neighborhood priorities were identified through extensive community engagement. Please welcome Plane Director Tara Johnson and Senior Planner Justin Panganiban to provide the presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Liu, Vice Chair, Commissioners, thank you for having us this evening. We're continuing on with our comprehensive plan amendments for 2026. At your last meeting, as you may recall, we went over the full draft of the Factorio neighborhood area plan. And so we're bringing forward the Eastgate neighborhood area plan this evening. So a result of many, many months of community engagement, dialogue, and then also previous touch points with the Planning Commission. So very eager to go over the East Gate policies before you this evening. We'll start off. First thing we want to talk about is the direction we're requesting tonight. So first off, we'll walk you through the policies in the proposed policies in the Eastgate neighborhood area plan. And then if the commission is ready, we're requesting that you provide direction for us to set the public hearing, which, as you've heard earlier, as part of this overview of the schedule, we're anticipating for the fall in order to meet our deadline by the end of the year. So we'll start off and provide some background and context on the Great Neighborhoods Program. We'll talk about our overall review process with the Planning Commission. We'll talk about some of the modifications with our existing sub-area plans versus neighborhood area plan boundaries. We'll give you an overview of our engagement to date, which has been pretty substantive. And then we'll talk about our, this may seem familiar, we talked about it at your last meeting for Factorio, but our proposed structure for the neighborhood area plans, which really are similar to what we've done for all the other neighborhood area plans. And then we'll talk about the proposed policies as well as the overall vision statement, and then our urban design framework. So with that, I'm gonna turn things over to Justin to walk us through the presentation.

Great, thank you, Tara. So as a reminder, the Great Neighborhoods Program seeks to develop neighborhood area plans, which are developed to be consistent with city-wide policies in the comprehensive plan, while at the same time identifying neighborhood-specific policies that are relevant, community-driven, and reflective of neighborhood identity and unique neighborhood conditions. And we learned this through extensive community engagement. They are meant to serve as guides for decision-making as to how the city partners with others to realize that vision, whether that's through potential regulations, programs, or partnerships. Many different inputs inform the staff recommendation of the plan for discussion tonight. Community engagement comprises kind of one significant portion as a daylight community values, opportunities and challenges that should be foundational to the plan. We also hear from boards and commissions on policy areas that pertain to their areas of expertise. We're responding to state and regional requirements that require us to plan for future growth. And we're also working with staff and other departments to align these plans with investments identified in their functional plan updates. As we look ahead to the fall, after the public hearing, the planning commission will review the plan against final review criteria established through the land use code before making a recommendation to counsel on the draft plan. So the present day East Gate neighborhood area boundary reflects updates that were made actually back in 2015 to revise the city's sub area boundaries to better align with neighborhood characteristics. So what you see here on the screen is actually the older East Gate sub area. The Hatch area is now part of the East Gate neighborhood area, while the areas in white are now part of the Lake Hills and West Lake Sammamish neighborhood areas. To ensure consistency between these different plans, we are amending the sub area plans to ensure that relevant policies remain in effect where they won't get superseded by the new Eastgate neighborhood area plan. And so that means we're taking a look at not just Eastgate, but also Richards Valley and the Newcastle sub area plans to ensure that those are adequately covered in the Eastgate neighborhood area plan. The areas in white will be addressed during the Lake Hills and Westlakes and Namish neighborhood updates, which are anticipated to be initiated by council later this month. And once those plans are complete, the Eastgate subarea plan will be repealed in its entirety. So looking ahead today to the present day neighborhood area boundary, it is a geography that largely follows the I-90 corridor and includes areas both north and south of I-90. It's made up of a variety of different land use characteristics, including residential neighborhoods south of I-90, and then a mix of higher density residential, affordable housing, human services, light industrial, commercial, and educational uses to the north. I think Bellevue College is probably the more notable one north of I-90. Both sides share the similarity of having retail and services clustered kind of around the I-90 freeway interchange. I also want to point out that the northwest quadrant of Eastgate is identified as one of the city's mixed-use centers and is expected to have significant growth in transit investment, including a potential future high-capacity transit stop. As I mentioned earlier, community engagement comprises a significant portion of neighborhood area planning, and we use different strategies at different phases to collect input. So during the discover phase, our outreach activities were exploratory. We were wanting to better understand the values, opportunities, and challenges that shape and inform neighborhood identity. When we transitioned to the defined phase in the start of the year, we distilled those exploratory ideas into high level visioning elements and policy priorities. And we also use interactive workshops to understand the types of improvements that people want to see in their neighborhood. And now we are in a refined phase and we've shared policies and these concepts that more concretely describe what the city will do and where we want to see them happen. And since early May, we've welcomed input from the community in terms of understanding where there are gaps and whether or not we are achieving desired outcomes. We also just want to underscore that this is a plan shaped by community, and we've heard from diverse voices and perspectives across many different neighborhood settings. And I think key to this has been adapting our outreach process so that we are reaching many different segments of the community. And we've been very fortunate to work with community partners to be in community spaces like Newport Way Library, the community center. We were able to visit different schools like Tai Yi and Bellevue College. And we even had an opportunity to connect with affordable housing and human service providers at the Eastgate Housing Campus, which I know was a priority when we started this process late last year. In the refined phase, staff conducted public engagement around draft policies through an in-person open house, as well as an online survey that was shared through various city channels and social media. And the format of these engagements were really to understand kind of what policies community felt supported the goals and vision for the neighborhood and what policies maybe were less effective at doing so. As a whole, across these different forums, there was a general support for Eastgate's policies and particularly strong reception to policies that focused on neighborhood beautification, relieving traffic impacts during construction, being able to access the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trail, which runs east-west through the neighborhood, as well as expanding active transportation infrastructure. We also noted areas of more mixed support, including around affordable housing, expanding capital facilities, and the development of a regional aquatic center as part of the Bellevue Airfield Park Master Plan. And later in this presentation, we'll talk through how we've dived through these areas of concern and how staff have reconciled those comments. This slide might seem familiar. We've also consulted with various boards and commissions for their feedback on how these draft policies relate to their areas of expertise. And overall, I think similar comments were shared between Eastgate and Factorio. The Parks and Community Services Board really appreciated the focus on walkability in these policies and encouraged staff to focus more on how to incorporate neighborhood history and identity in public safety. For Arts Commission, they appreciated how the concept maps in particular, were able to pinpoint identities opportunities around cultural investments, and really encouraged how we can continue to further those community partnerships. And finally, with Transportation Commission, they focus on how staff engaged with the community around transportation issues, and encourage us to think about how congestion is prioritized within the policies. So to break down the neighborhood plan, it's comprised of a vision statement that articulates a desired future state of the neighborhood, includes background narrative and imagery that describes the community context. It has a urban design framework that describes opportunities for public space improvements with companion concept maps to illustrate where those are. We have a neighborhood policy summary for the five different sections of the plan, which we'll walk through in a bit. And finally, those goals and policies that really help to achieve the neighborhood area vision. So the plan narrative is kicked off by that vision statement and it articulates a future 10 to 20 years out. And it really builds off the values and assets that were identified by the community. So to kind of just read this verbatim, Eastgate is a convenient, safe, and welcoming neighborhood where its diverse residents, businesses, and student population can thrive and build connections with one another. Its tree-lined and well-maintained residential areas are the heart of the neighborhood, and people from all stages of life are seen walking, biking, and taking transit to experience the area's natural beauty, outdoor recreation, and retail and entertainment offerings. Mixed-use areas on both sides of Interstate 90, as well as Bellevue College, anchor the neighborhood as vibrant hubs for living, working, gathering, learning, and fostering community. And with that vision statement in mind, the goals and policies that support this vision statement provides direction on the different investments and partnerships that could take to support the future state. So to start off with the first section, we have neighborhood identity, and these policies seek to reinforce Eastgate's convenient, green, and welcoming qualities. And it builds off the assets that make Eastgate unique today. It has a diverse community, it has excellent access to recreation and wilderness both within the neighborhood as well as outside, it's mature trees, as well as access to regional transportation. And so one example of a policy that really underscores this is N4, which provides direction on supporting and expanding the beautification of East Gates public spaces. And three policies in particular that staff further reviewed based on community feedback were N1, N5, and N8, which I will walk through in this next slide. So to begin with, we have this policy N1, which is focused on opportunities for recreation and tourism. And this is building off of feedback that we've heard about having more recreational and entertainment options within the community. And this also, I think, complements strategies within our economic development plan to support revitalization of vacant office areas. As you may know, East Gates Hotels, as well as Bellevue College, brings visitors into the area. So both cultural and sports recreation has a benefit to the neighborhood for both folks who are visiting as well as folks who live there. There were concerns raised on neighborhood impacts, as well as how these uses would benefit the community at large. And so staff took a look at this policy. And we really want to clarify that these kind of the intent of these facilities were meant to be focused on East Gates mixed use areas where we envision kind of significant redevelopment happening over the future. And at the same time, wanting to recognize that these facilities are meant to broadly serve the community. So making sure that was clear in the policy. Another policy that we expanded upon was N5, and this was mainly to kind of articulate what we meant by distinctive feature. As you know, creative elements like public art are really key to neighborhood identity, so I wanted to just make that more explicit in terms of how we intend for this policy to really celebrate and recognize Eastgate's gateways into the neighborhood. And then finally, with N8, which is our affordable housing policy, we had a number of comments regarding impacts to neighborhood scale and safety. And just kind of similar to what we talked about with Factorio, which had a similar policy, this really reaffirms both regional and citywide direction on addressing the entire spectrum of housing need across the city. And so, this type of policy does support many different implementation strategies, and we feel that this policy is important in ensuring that our affordability goals are met. Moving on to Eastgate's mixed-use and neighborhood centers, these seek to strengthen our mixed-use areas, and this includes the Eastgate TOD area north of I-90, Bellevue College, and the surrounding area as places that are accessible, vibrant, and provide a range of goods and services. And so these are qualities that are inherent to Eastgate today. It's also inherent to its designation as a countywide center, which requires the city to plan for growth and transit. And one example of this policy is N14, which focuses on how the city works with major institutions such as WSDOT, Sound Transit, and Bellevue College on comprehensive land use and transportation planning in the area to realize that mixed use vision. So the one policy that we did want to focus on, there was a general support for the policies in this section. I think there was some questions or concerns regarding N9, which provides direction on siting and expanding city-owned capital facilities to meet future needs. Just to clarify, when we talk about capital facilities, we're talking about our public services like fire, police, and utilities. And those are really essential to maintaining the quality and responsiveness of services, not just in Eastgate, but across the city. And we expect this need to grow over the next 10 to 20 years. And we're also realizing that we're often challenged by a lack of places to site city facilities. So just wanted to make sure that we're clarifying in the policy the demand for public services to really underscore why a policy like this is important to fostering Eastgate as well as Bellevue's future growth. The next section is on Community gathering spaces these policies seek to improve connections to nearby trails and parks. As well as support new parks and gathering spaces that are lacking in the neighborhood today. And so, one example of a policy would be and 24 which looks at East gates more mixed use areas such as the area around the East gate park and ride and looking how to incorporate public space opportunities and cultural activities like markets or festivals. And some of the policies that we took a look at as part of this were N23, N26, and N29. So the changes in the first two policies, N23 and N26, were actually considerations that were raised by the Parks Board to improve direction around parks and open space investments. Bellevue College came up quite a bit. This also came up with Arts Commission. They recognized that Bellevue College is a community asset that could benefit for some more universal access. They have a number of existing spaces that could host arts and cultural events. And so we want to make sure that when we updated this policy that we were reaffirming that community partnerships is a big part of how we affirm Bellevue College as a cultural and community hub. Another policy that we want to focus on and take a look at was N29. There were concerns regarding kind of the facility's impacts on traffic and the natural setting. For folks who don't know, the regional aquatic facility is part of the council adopted Bellevue Airfield Park master plan to help meet needs around this particular type of facility in the city. And the city is actively working to design, develop, and secure funding for it. So I think having this policy in the plan really furthers having direction at the neighborhood level. It's currently currently don't have a policy around this in the current Eastgate sub area plan. And I think having this in concert with policies around neighborhood identity, parks and open space, the environment, it really helps benefit how this facility can be planned and designed to fit with the neighborhoods land use transportation and environmental context. Moving on to Eastgate's mobility and access policies. These are focused on creating a safe, complete, and convenient transportation network. And I would say that many people who we have engaged with today note that they currently rely on their car, but appreciate the opportunities to walk and bike safely within their neighborhood as many of the streets there today lack sidewalks or crossings to do so. I think Eastgate's also very unique that it has a lot of regional connections. It has a park and ride. It has a regional trail, potentially one day a high capacity transit station. So policies really support how the people can move around the neighborhood to better connect to these things that help them connect, not just within their neighborhood, but to the broader city and region. And based on our survey, I would say that mobility and access policies had some of our strongest support. Policies such as N30, N33, and N36 were very well received in terms of addressing things like traffic constriction impacts, accessing trails, as well as thinking about how we make local streets safe and complete for people. So based on parks board feedback, we updated N35, which is our wayfinding policy. And we just want to clarify that the thresholds or the gateways into the neighborhood are a key opportunity for wayfinding. So wanting to make sure that was part of how we explore those opportunities within this policy. And then I just also want to note, just kind of similar to the factorial study session, congestion was a policy priority for the Transportation Commission, and just want to, again, reaffirm that the policy direction and the tools that we have, such as the mobility implementation plan, helps to establish some additional clarity around arterial gaps, targets, and ways to address congestion. We know that transportation is a tricky exercise in terms of we have limited right of way, a lot of different priorities. And what we hear from the community is a strong desire to feel safe as they walk and bike and access destinations in the community. So safety is a key priority as we were developing the policies. And we recognize that the set of policies here works in concert with our comprehensive plan as well as with our functional plans to ensure that a comprehensive approach to transportation planning is taken. And to round out the policy sections, we have the environment, which seeks to promote the health of Eastgate's natural systems. Eastgate has many different streams like Vassa Creek, Sunset Creek. It's, I think, very much defined by those creek systems. And there's an opportunity for those systems to have both passive recreational and educational benefits. So the policies are really geared towards how to make that a more integral part of the neighborhood identity. And so an example of a policy would be N41, which is really exploring the different ways that we can really think about stream improvements as a way of leveraging different benefits to the community as well. I would say again, strong support for environmental policies. We took a look at N42. I think there were a couple of comments looking at the survey around kind of how does that impact current wildlife conditions? Are there examples of kind of nature trails in East Gate today? I think the short answer is yes. There are a couple different trails and viewing areas on both sides. And I think the main thing when we're exploring potential future trails is that public stewardship is a key part of our comprehensive plan. It's part of our open space plan as well. So as we look at integrating trails with streams and green belts, there's also a co-benefit in terms of thinking about how we can pair that with things like habitat restoration, environmental education, and other ways to really highlight and support environmental benefits. So I'll wrap up the presentation today by talking about how these policies are applied to our urban design framework. To kind of really localize this broad policy direction, we've included an urban design framework that guides improvements to Eastgate's public spaces. So like while a policy might provide direction around seeing more public spaces, the concept maps allow us to get a little bit more specific as to kind of where in the community we can benefit from those public spaces to better serve the policies and the community that would use those spaces. These concept maps are intentionally broad, they're advisory, they're not meant to be specific projects, but are really meant to illustrate policy intent. And what we hope that these maps do is that they guide how we have conversations with other departments and community partners as to how we actually implement these improvements. And the concept maps in front of you were informed by existing conditions, community feedback, as well as consultation with our SMEs to make sure that what we're showing were things that were defensible and things that we could potentially implement in the future. So there are two suites of maps that are included in the plan, the first being neighborhood connectivity. The map, if you recall, kind of similar symbology in Factorio includes opportunities to enhance active transportation connections, being able to provide through block connections on larger blocks and development sites. improving pedestrian crossings, and finally improving the streetscape experience to make them more attractive, safe, and comfortable corridors for all modes of travel. And so those improvements are relating back to policies we've established. So an example is N7, which talks about how to improve the pedestrian experience for public spaces and which streetscapes play a key part in that. Moving to our concept map, this illustrates how those policies are applied to provide a cohesive vision of the active transportation network in Eastgate. So to kind of walk through the different symbology, those thick pink lines are arterials that are prioritized for streetscape enhancements such as landscaping and lighting to make them more safe and comfortable corridors. And so this includes places like Southeast Eastgate Way, Southeast Newport Way, which are auto oriented today. We've had several community comments note speeding issues that make them not very comfortable corridors to use. The orange circles indicate opportunities to explore crosswalks and mid-block crossing improvements to better serve pedestrians crossing high volume arterials. I want to highlight that Southeast Newport Way in particular has been a challenge for many folks, especially east of 150th. There are schools, there are bus stops on either side, but not necessarily sidewalks on either side or places to cross. So this really helps focus where we might want to look at those crossing opportunities to make those safe to access destinations. The light blue lines represent potential through block connections to improve pedestrian circulation and break down larger blocks. And these are really focused on kind of East Gates mixed use areas. Those were areas that are kind of prime for redevelopment, have been updated as a result of HOMA to look at mixed use opportunity and can really provide additional permeability and walkability in those areas. And then tying those elements together are those dark blue lines, which we call our active transportation connections. So being able to identify opportunities for walking and biking safely throughout the neighborhood. I'll finally conclude by it's maybe not dark brown and from the screen, but that east-west line, that's the Mountains to Sound Greenway. It's, I think, a signature part of the neighborhood. And so I would say a lot of the moves in this map are meant to help connect people to that trail safely and conveniently to create that connected network. And then to wrap up, we have our neighborhood gathering space map. And this map provides guidance on opportunities to program and activate third places with community partners. It identifies opportunities to look at potential new neighborhood scale parks. It looks to provide environmental enhancements to natural features within Eastgate, which as I mentioned, are primarily at streams. And finally, to look at visual markers or thresholds to reflect unique neighborhood identity. And so as I mentioned, similar to the last few slides, we have a number of policies that help support those improvements. And how we apply those improvements to the concept map, we have the light green bubbles primarily on the south side of I-90. Those indicate potential new park spaces south of I-90. And those are informed by policies recognizing the need for neighborhood parks in areas that lack walkable access to parks today. There's a lot of greenery south of I-90, but not a lot of functional recreational space. And to make sure we're meeting our equity targets around parks access space, exploring opportunities to find new neighborhood parks is crucial. The pink cogs dotted throughout the map represent destinations where community and people want to see more opportunities for indoor and outdoor gathering. And so those includes places like shopping centers, community facilities, schools, places where people gather today, want a more intentional and easy way to meet and gather with people in their community. The purple circles are what we call thresholds. They mark the entrances into the neighborhood. They can be at the edges of the neighborhood. They can also be at our transit centers. Those are the places where people might enter Eastgate for the first time and experience the neighborhood. So thinking about ways that art, signage, and other creative elements can welcome people into the community. And then finally, the fuzzy green lines represent environmental enhancements. And for Eastgate, that primarily focuses on its streams, where we can incorporate improvements such as trail corridors, daylighting, and environmental education. I know that was a lot, but hopefully we're able to kind of apply a kind of a clear through line as to how these policies and concept maps support the vision for Eastgate. And with that, I'll turn it over to you, Chair Liu, to the discussion.

Thank you, Justin and Tara. I really appreciate it. I'll now call on each commissioner sequentially and just always want to have some context. We are here to decide whether or not we're prepared to move forward with a public hearing. We'll also have another opportunity of comments and direction at the public hearing itself. So just as you're making your comments, keep that in mind. That's kind of what we're working towards, a decision point on that. So with that, Commissioner Neal-John, you get the honor of starting off.

Great. Thank you. And I guess to clarify then on that, if I have wording changes, I want to make sure I save that for... No, you should suggest them here.

Great. But just rather than... My point is more rather than far out ideas of where we can go, I'd prefer we kind of stay on track here.

Thank you. Perfect. Thank you very much for the presentation and for the lovely materials in the presentation. That was great. I had a couple specific... policy lines that I wanted to hone in on. I guess starting with N1, I understand the reasoning for the language change. I, however, think that I still prefer the language from pre-amendment just because it was stronger. I feel like sports facilities and entertainment are something that we, at least I specifically, really want to emphasize. I think they're vital for well-being and social cohesion. And I felt like the language pre-change was stronger. I would almost want to go back to that language, then add in mixed use facilities at the end of it, just to specify that distinction, if that's what the Arts Commission and what the stakeholders have asked you to clarify. I was wondering if you can speak a little bit about that, because to me, it seems the language is a little bit more watered down now, but maybe I'm just reading it wrong.

No, that's a great question. I think that policy was kind of balancing many different kind of considerations around how to support recreational cultural opportunities. I think the community concern that we had seen through the survey in the open house was, I think, the notion that if we're supporting tourism in the area, that we're not necessarily focused on amenities that serve kind of the needs of residents who live in the neighborhood. We also recognize that facilities of all sorts can benefit both people who are experiencing the neighborhood for the first time to people who are longtime residents. So we just want to make sure that the policy is clear and how we're making sure we're serving the broad spectrum of folks who could use those facilities.

Okay.

Uh, yeah, I mean, that, that makes sense. I would be interested in exploring maybe a little bit stronger language around that. Maybe not what the original language was, but, uh, something kind of in between, uh, on end 23. In the materials provided and the feedback, my understanding is that we had a handful of people really wanting to emphasize that the partnerships with Bellevue College are meant for the benefit of the community as well. I would suggest maybe tweaking the language at the end there to reflect student, employee, and community experience, just to make that abundantly clear. I think the changes that are made are good, but I'd like to see a little bit more clarification there at the end. on and I'll leave it for this one for now for the first round, but the for n 29. I had a question on this. My understanding is that the only additional change was the inclusion of the word planned. Can you talk a little bit more about how that actually that changes the actual policy there? I understand wanting to link it to the Bellview Airfield Park. But How does the word plan specifically make that connection?

Yeah, the word plan is to really, I think, help support that the regional aquatic facility has been kind of a long piece of the conversation about how to better serve the aquatic facility need in Bellevue. I think we want to make sure that it's not something that kind of came out of vacuum. It's something that took a lot of intention, went through the council process to get that master plan approved, and that it's kind of a priority for city staff to not just kind of work through the design and the funding, but also make sure it's well integrated with the community.

Great. That makes perfect sense to me. I'll leave that out of that for the first round. Thank you.

Commissioner Conloup.

Thank you so much for good material and presentation. I go to the policy and two, I just want to write it down in a different way. Like for example, proactively increase tree canopies and go to the end. And at the end, maybe we say a little bit stronger verbiage of prevent the loss of the significant trees and all of those. If it's possible, we bring the... we bring the increased tree canopies or the proactively increase the tree canopy and just continue that one. And then for minimize the loss of trees, it's kind of like give me a wrong vibe. I think it's good to say like prevent to loss of the, and go with like a tree canopies that we have a significant and mature and, you know, landmark trees, like something like that, if we can do that.

Just really quickly, for the record, you meant N3, not N2, right?

Oh, sorry. Let me see. Yes, thank you. Sorry, I need to wear my reader glasses. Yeah, if we can change that one that way if the commission wants. That's one of the things that has come to my mind. And then the other thing is for N17... I kind of understand the spirit of that, but I still, I'm a little bit stuck with it. I don't know how we can change it. And I'm seeking opinion from the commission if they feel the same. I kind of get it, but on the other hand, I'm like, It's kind of blamed for me. I don't know how to make it better. I might think about it by end of this round and I come with something. And then I think last one for this round, for traffic and 31 and 30, all of those, I personally have a problem. I think last session I was struggling. I'm struggling with traffic calming verbiage. I don't know what to do with that. I understand we can use other verbiage that we have maybe in the comprehensive plan. That's another thing that I'm a little bit struggling with. In general, in traffic section, I'm wondering we can think about congestion and all of those and come up with something in those to have it there. And again, I'd be happy to provide some. I stop here for, and I save a couple of questions if others didn't ask that.

Sounds good. Commissioner Conley, maybe for the benefit of the commission, can I kind of provide some additional perspective on those two policies? Yeah. So just to kind of build on N17, which is the policy focus on Eastgate Housing Campus, so for folks who don't know, that includes Polaris, Porchlight, as well as Plymouth. They have been, I think, a key stakeholder throughout the entire process. We know that it's an area that is part of Eastgate's mixed use center, but is very far away from a lot of the amenities that they could benefit from, not a lot of public spaces or walkable access to services and retail. We also hear a lot of concerns regarding Eastgate Way in particular and how it's a challenging place in terms of lighting and safety. So as a portion of the community that is kind of needing to access those services and making sure that it's an integral part of how we plan for the mixed use center, I think it was important for us to call that out in the policy. And then just to kind of build on N31, that's something we could take a look at. I want to just verify that in our transportation element, we do define traffic calming. I think there's a benefit to having consistent verbiage in the policy, but we could certainly take a look at see how to better address that comment.

I trust your expertise. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Keppel.

Thank you, Justin and Tara. Great presentation. I think this is close. I have three areas though that I wanted to just probe a little bit more. The first had to do with something that came up at the last planning commission meeting where we were talking about how it would be useful in this neighborhood plan to try and anticipate with some of the development that we're doing now, the future possibility of light rail transit coming through. And I don't see that in the policies. Am I missing something on that?

So we have the policies that get to that a little bit more directly are secure policies.

Because I'm looking at the mobility policies and I don't see that because I would love for us to build towards that to help enable that and make that part of a longer term vision over time for this plan.

Yeah. And actually, maybe it's maybe not the most intuitive section. So it is N18 in our mixed use center section. It's currently housed there, one, because it is located in the mixed use center and two, because the considerations around high-capacity transit kind of transcends not just the transit aspect, but also thinking about what are opportunities to leverage siting, alignment, and other kind of opportunities when we plan to think about future open space, amenities, housing, et cetera.

Yeah. And I think that's a good start. I'd recommend strengthening that so it's not just coordination, but it's really helping to... um build in anticipation of you know of the future high capacity um transit projects um so i'd like to see more in there you know coordinate and you know once once um things are looking more um certain you know work towards building those things so that we can actually meet them when they're available and make them successful so strengthening that would be helpful A second thing, which you may have addressed in your presentation, has to do with I-90. Because I view the whole prospect of trying to cross I-90 in that area as a pedestrian or a cyclist as terrifying. Yeah. And I'm wondering, you know, the map that you showed earlier, is that going to be an emphasis for trying to address that for this neighborhood? Because it's really a barrier as between these two sections of Eastgate.

Yeah. Yeah, I would say that is the intent regarding this map. And I think the comments about I-90 is a barrier is very, very clear with the community as well. I can point to one example. There is currently a ped bridge, kind of a long 148th and 150th that is not well lit, probably doesn't kind of meet any type of expectation around pedestrian safety or connectivity. And so those are the opportunities that we really try to daylight with concept maps like this, trying to figure out like where are we kind of really reconciling some of the challenges in terms of that barrier and seeking to better stitch together both sides of the neighborhood. So we're hoping that the concept map does point and provide direction on that.

Okay. And then the third and final comment that I had was just the, when it comes to traffic congestion, that was something that was flagged by the Transportation Commission as a concern, and it's not addressed. I think in separate plans we also raised that in relation to Factoria, and it's a real issue, I think, for the people in this neighborhood. If there's a way that we can address it more broadly, that would be useful. I know you have a broader vision for the future state of mobile transportation and the like, and that's great, but people live in the current age where they have to deal with that. So if there's a way to address that too, that would be useful.

certainly Commissioner Geppel. And maybe to build on that point as well, I think we can see how both the Eastgate and Factory policies can provide stronger policy support around that. I would say for N30, as it relates specifically to Eastgate, I know there have been a number of projects such as the Sunset Creek project culvert improvements. There's currently ongoing construction on 150s as well that have resulted in traffic impacts. So I think there's kind of some degree of, I think, construction impacts, I think, are very really felt by the community, which I think was the intent of N30. But to your point, I think there is also broader direction around congestion that we can certainly explore as part of this plan.

And maybe that means adjusting the language of N30 to broaden it, I don't know, or some other place. Okay, that's it.

Thank you. Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and all of the work that's gone into this proposed set of policies. I am just going to echo my fellow commissioners on a few items that have already been brought up. I wanted to support strengthening the language on N3 to ensure that the tree canopy is robust and maintained. I also wanted to support Commissioner Geppel's proposal to explicitly incorporate light rail. It sounds like N17 was intended to do so. I think that's critically important. And my third comment was that on the map of the neighborhood connectivity concept that you just had up, I think there are – I'm really, really glad to see the strengthening of the active transportation connections that flow up through and by Bellevue College north of I-90. Just ensuring that there is an ability to get from the neighborhoods that are south of I-90 to – third spaces and gathering places and encouraging the development of those places in areas where it seems more possible. Glad to see the Airfield Park is going to be seeing some additional aquatic centers and opportunities. There's a lot of opportunity for development around that Michaels Toyota that's just south of I-90 here. There's always been a series of, there's cafes and Bellevue College has great opportunities for similar connecting points that seem to come up frequently in comments. And so I just wanted to bolster those comments and the opportunity to create the connectivity and opportunity for those third spaces to thrive. So that's it. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Commissioner Farris.

Thank you again. I'm gonna reiterate a couple of points that have already been made. I would suggest, and there's been a couple of the commissioners that have said this on specific items, but I think just like we did on our comprehensive plan, where we looked at each one of those action verbs and tried to make it much stronger. So every time there's a word like explore, support, coordinate, I would say pause and see if you can strengthen that to make it more action oriented, if that's all right. So that's a general comment. Also, I was struck there was comments from the community. I think it was on page 70 of the comments that were in our packet. And it talked about how there might be an opportunity to identify different sub neighborhoods. That struck me. And I have made this comment before. This neighborhood is very unique because of I 90 and just completely severing the connectivity. And also these areas have different needs. So being able to identify those sub neighborhoods and directing specific policies to those neighborhoods, we just were talking about the housing complex that has some unique challenges. So being able to identify that rather than making it general for the entire neighborhood, I think would make some sense. And that person, that commented on that had some really good ideas for naming conventions, I thought. And lastly, to also do a plus one for Commissioner Gopal, I would like to see a separate policy specific to improving the connectivity over I-90. To me, that is so important. We have more housing that's going on on the south side. We now have more housing on the north side, both in that office park, and there's no way for that group of citizens to to access some of the services that are available. So I would like to see a very strong separate policy specific to that. And then lastly, just add on, I would like to also see something very specific about connecting to the South Bellevue Park and Ride. I think it's really important that we connect to that as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Chair Villavesis.

Thank you. Thanks, Justin, for the presentation. I'd like to, I think most of the comments have already been addressed. I'd like to plus one Commissioner Farias and Commissioner Goppel's comments about the connections between and across between the two north and south neighborhoods within Eastgate and the connections in particular across I-90. There's two items here, like the connection across, or to get to the park and ride, and the connection on 150th to 148th. I think policy N37 is talking about improving opportunities for pedestrians to safely cross arterials. So I don't know if it's a separate policy that needs to address specifically these two items. There's also, if you can go back to the image, There is no bike path across I-90 on 150th and 148th and I think it's important not only just because it's a major pathway but Robbinswood Park is right there and it's a urban park it's dragging people from a lot of places and the connection there I've done it it's really hard to it's really kind of scary to cross that so I would I would like to see that being addressed specifically because this I mean it's it's There's two points where we can connect those two halves of the neighborhood and we should make sure this is included in the policies. Besides that, I have no comments. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. A lot of what I want to talk about has been covered, but I also want to take a moment. And the more I think about Eastgate, the more I feel that it's an area that's really defined by a lot of public and private partnerships. I mean, we look at there's Bellevue College, there's BSD, you know, nobody's mentioned South Bellevue Community Center, but there's a Bellevue Boys and Girls Club partnership there. We have Porchlight there. It's so many kind of unique public privates that are all set up in the area. And I think having just essentially like one policy cover the breadth of that is a little tough for me. So N14 I know covers that. And I know you have a specific one for Bowman College as well. But I would like to see some breakout here of some of the major partnerships that are there and have the policies define the goals of those partnerships. I think you've already done that with BSD. To some extent, you've kind of done it with Sound Transit and King County Metro. But I think, you know, South Bellevue, or sorry, Eastgate Park and Ride has for so long kind of served as that, you know, transit central point for South... people that live south of I-90. I think that's worth calling out, but I just want to emphasize, I won't, you know, do that whole exercise right now, but finding some of these major partnerships, defining the goals of them, and then having those as separate policies, and then maybe encapsulating some of the smaller partnerships into a kind of catch-all policy for collaboration, I think would be great. This area just serves such like a unique spot for anybody who's grown up in South Bellevue. Like this is where you meet and where you you know, do a lot of kind of like, uh, just collaborative activities that I think it's worth emphasizing. Um, and then separately, um, I really want to plus one, uh, by sure via basis is comment on the, uh, the bike path. I've done that a couple of times, uh, going South and it's really scary. Um, that ped path that you talked about, uh, is a good start, but yeah, it's not well lit and it's also a huge incline to get up to it. So it's a little bit tough to traverse. Um, Um, so I just want to kind of emphasize those, uh, the, I think the last thing I had was covered. So yeah, I'll just stick with those two. I'll do another round, uh, for everybody to give comment. If there's nothing else, that's there's a, an additional one that wasn't been covered. So I'll go back in order, uh, commissioner Neil John.

Yeah, most of my other comments have already been addressed, and I just want to plus one a couple of things. I want to plus one Vice Chair Velazquez and Chair Liu's comments about the bike path across I-90, especially, as Vice Chair Velazquez said, connecting to Robinswood Park. You know, I think that's a very popular destination for a lot of people. I go there all the time, so I Improving connectivity from South Bellevue over to that area is great. Also with plus one, Commissioner Ferris's comment on changing the language in certain areas to strengthen it, like specifically N34 is one that I noted where it says work to obtain. I think it'd be stronger if it just said obtain, just cut out work two altogether, but just doing little things like that as you work through it. And then I'd also plus one, strengthening N3 as well.

Thank you. Commissioner Kanu.

I think I want to emphasize two things. For data-specific N17, I think if it's porch lights, it needs to be named. For me, even someone who's memorized so many policies, it doesn't give me a wipe that we are talking about porch lights and polarisks. I think as Chair Liu was mentioning, like if you want really specific partnership to be highlighted, let's not be shy about that and do it. And the other thing about the verbiage that we need to have more strong, I want to you guys look at N44 and N45 for environment too and see because it's kind of like really like collaborating, coordinating, same thing that we were talking about, comprehensive plan and most of the thing. Let's make it, I'll say, a bit proactive because I feel if everybody is collaborating with each other but nobody is initiating, that's going to be just the policy level. And then the other thing was on page 10, I don't see this equitable table engagement really clear. Like, for example, when I'm looking, the only thing I'm seeing is just like, oh, 42% of Eastgate community are older than 45 years old. But like 45 years and older, it's like a big range. I really want to see this as be like in like... I remember we had a really high... engagement of the school. If I remember, I was in two events, which is great. I think we need to have that category here too. Like if we have, I don't know, 60% of the people between 14 and 21, we should just include this one. This charter results a bit, and I didn't see anything else in details here. I want to see like really a good, um, charge that it shows who has been attended those because it's really bringing it clarity for you for me when i'm looking at it it's also but i'm like okay 42 percent of eastgate people are 45 years and older that's all i get pretty and then mostly what i'm seeing apparently is a single family household if i remember correctly when between the lines that'd be i think interesting to look at it too thank you thank you all right commissioner keppel

Yeah, just a couple of plus ones on strengthening and three. And then also, I like the idea of a separate of a separate policy, as Commissioner Ferris mentioned, specifically just on the end, and I 90. You know, access and enhancing that because that's one of the biggest challenges. And your maps are a good start towards that, but even having it more formally in a policy would be a good thing.

Commissioner Kennedy.

I support everything my fellow commissioners have been raising, and I don't have any further comments. I was reminded of a question that I had in reading through given Commissioner Conlow's comments on the percentages of people that were commenting on this and that were polled and surveyed and spoken with in preparing these policies. And one thing that caught my eye was the percentage of people that use public transit in Eastgate. I was impressed, and I was curious how that compares with other areas.

Good question. I don't have an answer right off the bat, but to your point, I think there are a number of local bus services that I think are pretty well used by a variety of community members. 271 connecting folks from Seattle all the way to Issaquah is an example of things from the Eastgate Park and Ride, so I wouldn't be surprised why transit ridership is pretty high.

Is high. And what it emphasized to me is supporting greater connectivity in this area. It underscored that for me even more, that we're seeing a lot of ridership and usership and active transport and opportunities here. And people are engaged and actively trying to use it. So thanks. That's it.

Thank you. Commissioner Ferris.

No further comments.

Thank you. Vice-Chair Vivesis.

Just a minor one. And following up on Commissioner Kennedy's comment about the amount of people that use public transport, the connection between the Eastgate Park and Ride and the bus stop across part of I-90 is It's a bridge, but it's really like my mom came to visit and she was very kind of paralyzed about crossing. She's still youthful. She's not like an old lady. But the height and the movement of the car, it is scary for some people. And I think there should be somewhere... Somewhere in these policies should be that this access is to cross I-90 or across to Eastgate Park on the right. It should be fully accessible and must feel safe. There's no way she can fall, but it doesn't feel safe. And that is going to discourage transit usage. And it's going to discourage for, I guess, a broad section of the population. Besides that, no further comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Most of what I wanted to say has been covered. I'm just going to use this opportunity to ask for one thing, which is I suspect that the transit usage has somewhat shifted with the light rail coming in. A lot of people who are equidistant between Eastgate and South Bellevue are probably veering towards South Bellevue now because of light rail. It would be very helpful for us, I think, at a future commission meeting, if possible, to see what the changing transit landscape looks like so that as we are going through these types of policies that we can see, like, you know, should we be shifting more focus towards one or the other? That was a lot. Do you want me to go through my sheet of every comment here or do you feel good about what you've got?

I think you're able to take some good notes.

Yeah, I'm happy to go through it if you want. I took a bunch of notes, though my handwriting was really bad, so I'd prefer not to go back through that. Yeah, so all right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the presentation and the engagement here.

Chair, can I make a motion that we direct staff to set up a public hearing on the state plan? Second.

All right. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Looks like we're approved. Thank you. Thanks.

Can we take a break, Chair?

Yeah, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in five. That thing is still off. Let's go 8.05.

around the medical innovation district. That's the one 16th corridor. We received direction from you all to equalize those base FARs. So we also want to start thinking about what are the ways that we're going to really achieve some of the policy outcomes we want there, knowing we've provided sort of equal footing for medical office and for residential. um so we'll get into some discussion there um we also have a lot of follow-up um first i guess just to at the top um there was a bit of a mix-up in the draft publication that we had provided as noted in earlier comments that was flagged really today so we had uh republished our may draft um when we had put a lot of effort into making some adjustments to it based off of feedback from you all and from the stakeholders so We had corrected that error this morning, very late. Apologies for that. But we have been making progress and we have been very much listening to you all and to our stakeholders. But we also acknowledge there's a lot more to get through. So you all had identified a number of areas you wanted some follow-up on. These were not light areas. There is a reason why you did not direct us to come tonight for a public hearing. So we're really using this as an opportunity just to check in with you all, let you know where we're at with some of the status of that May 27th request. We've also got more work ahead of us and we're looking forward to a September study session. So not looking for direction to schedule a public hearing. And then I know in your schedule, it also noted a public hearing in September. that is going to be a study session. So that's when we're going to really move through the meat, I think, of the local streets. So while we'll welcome any comments or ideas you have tonight on that topic, it's a big topic and you all have shared a lot already. So we're happy to kind of just put our collective brains together as staff and with our stakeholders to just get to some more progress on that front. Now we've got our slides up. So let's turn it over to Christina, the project manager, and she'll walk us through the deck with Corbin.

Thank you, Nick. So as noted, this evening, our direction is simply for the Commission to provide feedback on key components of the LUCA. We will be following up on a few items from last month's meeting. We'll bring in Corbin to share some more considerations and context around the 116th corridor and our priorities there. Uh, and then we will, uh, work through a bit of a check-in on some of the high level, uh, higher priority items in our comment tracker. Um, what are topics that are resolved? Uh, what is still under review and what are those topics where, uh, we are at this time, not recommending further changes. We are still hearing requests to change, but, um, our, our answer is that we want to hold firm on the staff recommendation. So just to provide a bit of framing to start, we wanted to kick it off with a recap of what flexibility is in place in the current grid. I mean, in the current street grid proposal, just to understand what other options could there be. Uh, so, uh, the, as it stands, we have a grid that has been reduced from what it is currently in the code. Uh, a number of known problematic segments have been removed or shifted to better align with property lines. Uh, and then in addition to that, we have expanded code language to provide additional flexibility to shift segments and intersections through the development review process. That's not a departure or another. separate kind of permit it's reviewed through development review. Um, And while we do hear a lot of requests for performance-based standards with that, we do stress the importance of the development review process because this does provide an opportunity to review flexibility that's fully site and proposal specific. Fundamentally, if we're going to define a metric or two based on performance, those will be more conservative to be able to be broadly applicable. So, you know, you can maximize for flexibility, you can maximize for predictability. It's really, really challenging to do both. We would love specific suggestions on how to do that. We continue to welcome them. But, you know, that's what we offer up here to say it's a good thing to be able to look at this through the development review process. That's what really provides the opportunity to look at a transportation analysis, look at the design, That's there. So there's the flexibility to kind of move around that site plan where those segments and intersections are located. That's one piece. For areas where there's no defined public grid but you have a large site, we have a number of private street options available to break up blocks because we do still have that provision to break up blocks. That includes active transportation, so non-automotive options that are narrower. And the projects have flexibility to select those options. The most recent option we've introduced are the set of criteria to propose replacing one of those public local streets with a private street, again, through development review. So that's what's on the books now. We are currently thinking through some options for how to offer some form of amenity credit or other specific bonus for those projects that are providing a public street. So that's kind of the first layer. Um, which, you know, as I was getting at, it's, it's, it's really challenging to point to, okay, so what are other areas that we can bring in specific flexibility? Um, one option that's not currently in the draft, but that we do employ in other situations around the city. And we, we did previously in the spring district, um, would be to provide an additional development agreement pathway. Okay. So development agreements in general are tools that give the ability for the city to negotiate public benefits directly with developers in exchange for modifications to development standards and other provisions. This is ultimate maximum for flexibility, but they're really complex, time-intensive, resource-intensive for everyone involved. So it's not a tool that's probably going to make the most sense for every project, but it is an additional option that could be on the table. If this were to be included, we'd recommend limiting it to larger sites that do have public street requirements. And then an important piece there is for us to establish our kind of non-negotiables and desired public benefits that we'd want to prioritize with that option. So just for a little food for thought, I know it's come up a lot in the past as to like, so how did the Spring District happen? How is it possible they did this and this? Well, we can talk through, we did have a development agreement pathway there. So those original criteria that we'd established for eligibility in the land use code were that projects would need to be located in Bell Red, larger than four acres in size, achieve an FAR greater than two. So this is, you know, again, think back to 2009. That was we really wanted to make something bigger happen. And the complete master development plan had to be submitted shortly after the East Link decision. There was also a minimum bar in terms of developer-funded public infrastructure per acre of land. So you can see in this eligibility what that's reflecting. This was about the city said, OK, we want to incentivize a large master plan project as soon as possible after that Eastlink decision. and uh really get some solid investments in public infrastructure so you know you're not trying to maximize everything that's you know that's the priorities kind of setting things up there um and so you know in 2009 of course the city knew it's gonna be a while before light rail we don't want properties to just sit um there's a real value in getting development moving And so the specific modifications that were set out on the table as negotiable for the DA in this case, the city offered up reduced amenity fee in lieu, an extended vesting period, relief from proportional compliance requirements, and flexibility on standards for dedicated parks so that they could be a little smaller and still get bonus points. So these were the options that Bellevue set up to say these are things that can be negotiated in exchange, which again, you can see with the extended vesting, with proportional compliance relief, that's really reflecting this, okay, we're trying to get projects spurred, but we know that they might take a longer time than the typical NDP. So again, you're kind of seeing the context and the priorities reflected in the DA options. But, you know, really solid focus that got us a great result. So one option there. Next item of follow up. Another kind of potential option for flexibility on streets and helping to kind of reduce the impact was whether any of the required components could be smaller if we could get some flexibility there. So for each of our street typologies, we have a mixture of components. So a vehicle or active transportation areas, parking lanes, curbs, amenity zones, and sidewalks, kind of different configurations for each type. Some of those have a little bit of flex. uh and some not so much so we are working through some additional flexibility for on-street parking requirements right now on-street parking is just required with the local streets and green streets and we do have some language in the code that provides flexibility on the location and quantity, but it's a little vague. So we're working on firming that up, thinking about some additional kind of incentive opportunities to reduce that. That could provide some gains for your developable area for sure. which kind of leaves the greatest potential in reduction of widths for those amenity zones and sidewalk widths, neither of which we would recommend. So the amenity zones are really important. These are areas where we have a street tree planting requirements. It also provides opportunities for landscaping, green infrastructure, other amenities. Right now, in most of the types, we have a minimum width of five feet. If that kind of reduces below five feet, there start to be trade-offs for tree planting. Perks best management practices will have some more challenging requirements for ensuring soil volume through more complex kind of through more complicated, more expensive means in order to accommodate adequate soil volume in a narrower area. So there's tradeoffs there. Right now, the sidewalks we have at a minimum width of eight feet. Those can theoretically, those can be reduced to six, but we would stress that really comes at the detriment to the pedestrian experience. So that's, With both the amenity zones and the sidewalk, we'd say, you know, I think there's areas that it can be shaved off, but is the trade-off going to be really worth the benefit to the project? And we would say likely not. A couple of other considerations with that six-foot sidewalk. Common practice is usually, you know, that's a minimum you'll see in lower density residential districts. In areas with higher foot traffic, like TOD district with mixed uses, the recommendation is usually at least eight. Our transportation design manual as well, that's also assuming that there's some kind of a buffer between the street. Our transportation design manual sets six feet as the absolute minimum for sidewalks. And if there's nothing between the sidewalk and and the road or the parking, we require an additional two feet to allow for your door swings, for people passing each other, just to keep it safe. So really recommend eight feet minimum, especially if there's no buffer there. But to kind of look at it in a little more visual way, you know, one thing that strikes me, you know, looking at these measurements over and over is that there's sort of like a sticker shock when you hear 60 feet wide. But when you start to break it down, and especially when you experience it in person, I do feel like we tend to kind of. uh underestimate how wide that is you know it sounds a lot wider than it than it does in actual practice so uh here we have a shot from northeast district way in the spring district in front of gix um so what you're looking at we don't have the whole street in view but this is about a 60 foot wide street for comparison so it's actually in design other than the fact that it has curbs our green street typology is curbless In width and components, it's pretty similar to the Green Street typology. So we've got a 20 foot vehicle lane in the middle. So that allows for two way traffic. Then this 12 foot amenity zone that has some nice wide planting areas with that parking kind of embedded in the middle with an eight foot sidewalk. So another view of that same street down a block and in better weather, you can really see what that more abundant landscaping contributes to the street, really providing some solid greenery and planting. If you were to take out that landscaping, it would feel much different. Um, another consideration here too, is that our street grid requirements, um, all apply in places that are zoned for high rise development, allowing up to 250 feet. So, you know, looking straight down the street at this angle, um, that's 60 foot width. Um, you know, even on the right side of the street here, it's a lower intensity, the left side, that's still what a mid rise. So if you can imagine mid rise or higher on both sides, um, that 60 feet starts to feel quite comfortable. And if you start to reduce that further, it's going to start to feel pretty claustrophobic. So another consideration there too. So just one more going further down the block now towards Bellevue Brewing. Just another one here so you can get a closer view of that parking. Let's see what else I have here on the notes. So that's actually a 10-foot sidewalk on the right side, so a little bigger. And again, we've got that maximum 12-foot wide planter. So again, just, yeah, can we shave off some space? But where do you want to do it? Food for thought. With that, I will pivot to Corbin Hart, a business development manager with Economic Development, to help share some more about the 116th Corridor.

Do you want to drive your own slide? Yeah, sure.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, Commissioners. Happy to talk a little bit more about the 116th corridor in the life sciences industry in Bellevue overall. So, last time I was actually at Planning Commission, we were midway through our economic development plan update, presenting our data analysis on that project. We now have an adopted economic development plan, so we're pretty happy about that. And one of the core focuses of that was diversification of our economy. here in Bellevue throughout that process. And also historically, the life sciences sector has been identified as a really strong potential for Bellevue, a sector we don't have a huge weight in right now, but have a good potential future for. So we have that policy identifying the 116th corridor as having those foundational elements for a nationally competitive cluster. And that really feeds into the overall Comprehensive Plan employment targets. So as the Commission knows, we have a 70,000 additional job target by 2044. Not only is that an aggressive target in the total amount of jobs, but it's also considering what jobs those are. So you see on that graph on the right-hand side, The professional services and tech sector makes up a not insignificant portion of our current employment. And when you consider the additional jobs that we're adding, a lot of the general office space that we might be adding in the city is really going to be suitable for those type of jobs. When you look at the gold section, the life sciences and healthcare sectors sort of combined there, there's really unique typologies that we don't see a lot of growth and development in right now. We hope to in the future and have some proposals currently actually that we're hoping go through, but we're hoping to even that ratio a little bit by 2044. So that's sort of some of the background rationale for a lot of this. So to that end, one thing we're doing here in economic development in the city as a whole is really trying to promote sort of a medical innovation district here along the 16th corridor, including Wilberton and then also the Bell Red portion of this. map on the right hand side is not meant to be definitive by any means. What this is really meant to show is national hubs for this industry. San Diego, Research Triangle, Boston really have three to four concentrations within them across the metro area. Seattle area currently has two being South Lake Union and Bothell. um so there really is space for a third within our region once 16th corridor has really good proximity to talent we have actually a lot of workers um who are who live in the kirkland redmond bellevue area uh they work in sulfate union or bothell however uh we'd love him to work here uh And really great transit connections, as Commission knows, and complementary organizations. So a lot of those anchors that are sort of foundational to this type of work being Overlake, Kaiser, Children's, Swedish as well. And as I referenced before, there is currently some private market interest in projects progressing in the area. We're not 100% sure if they're going to move forward and execute, though. It's definitely not a done deal at this point. So we really wanted to highlight some of those risks and why we want to really focus on highlighting the unique strengths of the 116th corridor. I highlighted all those great foundational strengths we have in the area. That's not to say that there isn't heavy national competition. So the Seattle region as a whole is about the 10th largest corridor. buster in the nation, definitely not like we are in the tech sector, the second or third worldwide sort of location. And Bellevue specifically really isn't well known in the industry. We have some programmatic stuff we're working on in the economic development and cultural and economic development to help change that. But we really want to work with DS Commission and the city as a whole to make sure we have some intentional planning to promote this industry in this area. You know, tying back to the overall policies, we really want to make sure that we have those diverse industry clusters to meet our overall employment goals and to make sure those goals have a diverse makeup. With that, I'll hand it back.

So now we'll pivot to an overview of the comment tracker. There's a lot there. So we're just going to touch on some of the higher level topics to highlight. So first, starting with items that have been resolved since the first version of the tracker. We've provided those criteria to substitute public local streets with private streets. We have updated the residential base FAR in the 116th corridor to be consistent on either side of the street. We have expanded the types of projects eligible for the stream restoration amenity, though we've got ongoing work there. A few more. These are items where we are committed to the change. We've got language in development that we haven't shared quite yet. Uh, so as touched on before getting some additional flexibility for on street parking on required public streets, uh, we want to, we're working on a performance based standard for stream restoration eligibility, making it based on, um, the improvement to function of the stream so that we don't have to get into, um, whether or not the improvements go beyond the, the critical areas ordinance requirement. We are working on a change to allow projects, multi-phase projects, daylighting in a later phase to be able to draw on bonus points in an earlier phase. We've got, of course, other components underway with the amenity system, but we are not proposing any limit on the use of fees in lieu to earn bonus points. And finally, we're also going to be offering up some clarifications, which we see as quality of life improvements to provisions around man-made steep slopes in the critical areas ordinance. So lots of, I think, really lots of stuff in the mix here that is really getting at a lot of pain points that have been shared with us. Other items that are under review as to how we might want to address them or if we want to address them, thinking about providing some form of amenity credit for required public streets. We've also gotten a request for looking at bringing forward the commercial catalyst program that we provided with Wilberton, a variation of that to target life sciences and medical uses as one option in the 116th corridor. and also that development agreement pathway option for projects subject to local street requirements. Finally, this is a batch that we do keep hearing about, and at this stage, the staff recommendation is that we would not recommend further changes here. First, for us, again, we're not asking for the decision this evening, but we do recommend against eliminating the required street grid entirely. uh we also strongly recommend uh keeping the amenity zone requirement with the enhanced shared use path um that uh 14 foot again you know that enhanced shared use path can be used to break up a block uh so again high-rise district with a block broken up by 14 feet is really not going to provide that meaningful block delineation in a comfortable environment We are also not recommending introducing new carve-outs to our non-conforming code for manufacturing and warehousing in areas that were formerly zoned Bell Red General Commercial. And we're also, while of course we're kind of reorganizing Wilburton, we're not opening up more substantive and also Wilberton-specific provisions, just for scope creep reasons with the Bell Red Code. So kind of again, checking in where we are on schedule. So as Nick noted at the beginning, you know, this is our third study session, our September study session, we're going to be coming back with a big wrap up on a lot of these items. Following that moving forward with a public hearing or more review to follow, looking at council review and action likely early next year. So with that, thank you. And we'll stop for questions.

Thank you. Appreciate it. I'll call on each commissioner sequentially like we did before. And again, just keeping in mind that there are several components of this that are being worked on actively. And so if you could keep the comments and questions to kind of what was presented today, I'd really appreciate that. All right. Commissioner Ferris, would you like to kick us off?

Great. Terrific work. As you listed all the things that you're working on and some of the things that you've decided upon, I support all of them. I would just want to highlight a couple of them. I would love to see a stronger amenity program for those property owners that have to develop streets. I think I've mentioned it before. It doesn't strike me as being totally fair that you can have two sites and one of them has to do a street and one of them doesn't have to and there's no differentiation in terms of what they get. So I'd love to see an incentive program there. I also support the development agreement for large sites. And lastly, I think about the amenities in terms of the sidewalk widths and all of that. I strongly agree with you in keeping that, is that we only have one shot at this. If we diminish the sizes of those sidewalks and amenity zones, we'll never get them back. And I think about a six foot wide sidewalk, I'm pushing a baby stroller and walking my dog. I have taken up the entire sidewalk. So anyway, I strongly support staying with the standards that you've established. So thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Kennedy.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you, chair Lou. And thank you for the presentation. Um, A few questions. I think on a – I can't remember what slide it was that you were presenting the changes for alignment with the CAO in stream restoration requirements and for – thank you, man-made steep slopes – The second bullet here, can you possibly just elaborate on what this is referring to in the text and if this is in the new revised redline?

Yes, it's not in the red line, but it is coming in the next draft. So the reference to the text, this is so in the amenity incentive system, we offer an incentive for stream daylighting and restoration. And it's based on you get bonus points based on the amount of money spent on those activities. So under the current code, like what's adopted today, we have a very confusing structure where it's kind of like in some cases you only get credit if you're providing improvements beyond what's otherwise required by the CAO. And of course, that can be really hard to define. And so we've made some progress initially in trying to clarify that, but we still had, okay, if you're just doing like a basic kind of buffer restoration, it has to be in excess. But then we had in talking it through internally, one of my colleagues had the idea to say like, well, we have analysis to define how much improvement to function in stream health is happening. So can we just say your eligibility is based on achieving a certain threshold of improvement, and then that project is significant enough to get credit outright? So that's what we're working on now. We think this is a, I think, could be seen as a performance-based standard that would be a lot clearer. Yeah.

But I just try to restate that, and I'm sure we'll have more clarity when we see the language. But effectively, what you're saying is this performance-based standard would work with the CAO in a way that if a property owner were to do a stream restoration project that exceeded the requirements of the... performance-based or innovative mechanism that is newly instituted into the CAO in being able to track the performance of those projects on the stream, and it performed even better than that, you would see an incentive here.

Oh, it's a bit simpler, actually. So basically what this would do is in saying which projects are eligible for, because right now the problem is like, it's unclear if your project can even get amenity credit. So we're saying you can set aside entirely what you're required to do by the CAO. Instead, we're saying these are the types of improvements, you know, whether you're what is the level of improvement to function of that stream happening through that project? And then if it's above a certain reasonable threshold, then we can say, all right, you are, you can get that bonus, which that will be backing out from, of course, daylighting is always going to be eligible. It's really just to say, okay, If this is a really kind of minor project that really is doing something you're going to be required to do anyway, perhaps that's not something that should get bonus credit, but we don't need to get into splitting hairs on really substantial environmental projects. Does that help? I know it'll help a lot when you see the language.

I think I'll read the language and come back at that time with additional questions. I appreciate the explanation. Just to... ask the question though, this is not a way to get around the CAO requirements. You would have the CAO requirements and then you would have this. It's not an alternative.

Correct. Correct. Okay. But we don't have to do like a complicated calculation of like these improvements, the cost of these you didn't have to do. And you know, it, it just gets really complicated having to work with that threshold.

That makes sense. And I look forward to seeing it. And I appreciate the effort to come up with something innovative, like a performance-based standard. So I look forward to looking at the language. I wanted to ask for my second question, just can you walk through, I read through the language in the most recently revised red line and your slides and explanation at the beginning helped. But I'm still, I'm not clear on what it looks like to do a development review. What is that? And where would I get clarity on that if not in this section of code to better understand, okay, if I want to do a private street, these are the things I would need to prove. And so I have certainty. Is that there or are you saying it's intentionally not there? It's not in another section of code. A development review is a review by the director, as is stated in the red line.

So, yeah, and when I say development review, I'm just speaking to our standard permitting and review processes here. So, what we're just saying there is under kind of this would provide for within the standard review of your project. This can accommodate, you know, looking at transportation analysis to understand the impacts of an alternate proposal or moving around your street a bit, just because that's a process that allows for, like, really looking at the specifics of the site and the proposal. And if it would help, like, you know, we could come back with maybe a walkthrough of how, how this works for typical projects. I don't know if you have like a 90 second, but it could be anyway, but yeah, we can explain like what kinds, cause it's also, you know, there's different things that they're going to be looking at with different types of projects. And yeah, we can provide a better kind of example there.

That would be incredibly helpful, I think. I would very much appreciate that at the September study session. One of the things to incorporate in that would be not only how I would get my design through, but one of the things I noticed was still not in the draft is language that brings clarity to how have to operate that street in perpetuity to meet the city's standards. It says I need to design it, for instance, to enable emergency access, but I didn't see clarity on what does it mean to actually provide that access in the way that is expected of a property owner. That's just one example, but I think that would be a helpful aspect to include in the walkthrough and where that is in the code. Thank you.

All right, Commissioner Keppel.

Thank you. I think this is, again, heading in the right direction. Had a couple of comments. One had to do with the amenity incentive system. And I realize that, you know, A lot of people would like to add a whole bunch of things into that one that stands out for me though is is grocery stores, in particular in areas just because I think it's important that areas don't become food deserts. It's also important from the standpoint of just reducing the number of trips that people need to take in order to get basic amenities. I think that's a win-win if we can consider that as being different from everything else people want to pile into the amenity system. But that's one that's near and dear to my heart. The other... The other thing that I was just going to talk about a little bit was the street grid piece. And I think what you've come up with is a thoughtful approach. And I think your point in particular about the trade-off between flexibility and predictability is spot on. Because if you're going to try and create something that's predictable for people, it's going to be prescriptive. And it's not going to be as flexible. It's not going to have the capability to adapt to site-specific conditions. And I don't think that's possible to have both here. And so I think you're on the right path when it comes to that approach in general. I... I think as it relates to this private street idea, I'm still a little nervous about the private street piece, frankly, because I have concerns about... the private streets being maintained with that public benefit intact long term. And I'm just wondering if you've explored any other ways to help to ensure that that public benefit you know, remains intact with with private landowners that opt for that alternative. I mean, there are a number of different possibilities to include, you know, ability of the city to do abatement or if there was some other relief that the city could get either a junk relief or you could even look at You could look at performance or maintenance bonds that also need to be posted long term. I think this is a good strategy to provide for flexibility in the short term. I'm a little worried about what this is going to look like 20, 30 years later when the current developers are not the owners of these properties, somebody else is. and just making sure that that public benefit is maintained without the city having the burden to go in and go into costly litigation to make sure that things actually are maintained. So it would be good to look at what other cities do if you go this private option route. It would make me feel more comfortable about doing that. So those are my couple areas of feedback.

Chair, if I could, I'd like to make a motion that we extend our meeting until 9.30.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right, Commissioner Nilsson.

Thank you. I'll keep my comments brief. To start to touch on the sidewalks and amenity zones, I'd like to... Plus one, Commissioner Ferris' comments. I don't think that we should be lowering the sidewalk with standards and also not the amenities on standards. I think eight feet is... It should not be any lower than eight feet. It would start to get pretty claustrophobic, especially given the high-rise construction that we hope to see in that area. I had a question on... the stream daylighting kind of multi-phase construction provisions here. I guess my question is, I'm curious about the methodology for ensuring that later stage daylighting actually happens. I think it's a good thing that we're giving these kind of bonuses beforehand. I think that will go a long way, but I'm curious if you can speak a little bit as to

So that's exactly why we don't have the language in the draft yet. We're working on it, but that's, that's the main concern, right? Like we are very much, this is, this is not something we have picked up when it's requested for other cases in the past, but we also feel this is a different scenario and you're right. It's, that's the number one thing we're trying to figure out is how do we have some kind of reasonable assurance in place that that daylighting is still going to happen. So. Yeah, we're working on it.

Great. Well, I'll leave that to you guys. I like to plus one Commissioner Kennedy's comments. I think it'd be very helpful to see some kind of walkthrough on what exactly a developer will have to do to get these get approval for some kind of alternative street. That would be very helpful in at least my decision making. And then my other question is on the life sciences kind of medical district portion of this. Um, from my understanding in Wilberton, we had shifted to a mixed use district. You know, I wasn't on the commission back when we did that. Just hoping you can speak a little bit as to what the decision-making process was there and how this area is a little bit different. I know we have more facilities in this area. Um, but is that the main difference? And, uh, Any guidance you have on that would be great.

Sure. And actually, I don't know if this could be a one-two, like Nick, do you want to, or either of you?

I think Corbin was brought in as reinforcements during the policy discussion. So he can kind of relay that and then we can talk about the LUCA if that's helpful too.

Yeah, so I think in the Wilberton process previously, the discussion was really around the portion of medical office zoning directly across from Overlake. It's a smaller area than we're speaking about here in Bellred. And I think a lot of the discussion there was we had some overall provisions that were sort of district wide around stuff like mechanical heights that are really unique to life science developments. We did sort of at the base level to allow that across the area. And the discussion at that time was really around. North of 12th, there is a lot of this specific medical office zoning at the time when we were going through the Wilberton process. So there was a desire to have more flexibility in Wilberton directly closer to the light rail station. And so we have a lot of those provisions sort of district wide in Wilberton right now, including like the commercial catalyst program that's been discussed in. And then, but it's really, there aren't any other specific restrictions. Do you have anything to add to that?

Just that one of the conversations that I recall the commission having too was questions on what's the capacity we have currently for this industry? And can that be accommodated within the Bell Red Corridor so that we can offer this flexibility here in Wilberton? And so, um, there was at least on the staff side, some concession that, you know, we think, um, there's, there's adequate area within what we are planning for in bell red. Um, so that we can see some of this area to. Uh, residential or just mixed use in general. And so it was, uh. of with that understanding too that belt red was going to be maybe the area that we're going to provide more focus on targeting this specific industry and that's also where the comp plan amendment happened to increase the capacity on 116th corridor we have a medical high-rise district now which is new a new designation and then also trying to figure out how we implement some of the policies that are specific to the 116th corridor okay great so if i'm understanding that right there

Maybe we're some concessions made there with the understanding that there's capacity to make up for it here in this proposal then. Great. Thank you.

Commissioner Condu.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I think I want to talk about, I believe we have two different landlord developers in Ballarat. Some people want certainty to sell their lot. And some people need flexibility to come up with a creative plan to build. And I think that's the two things that when we are working on our new call, we need to think about it. And I'm fine with both motivation, but I think that was something that it got clear in Wilburton for me. Then I just want to be careful about we give enough certainty in the LUCA land use code and not be so many what-if scenarios that people cannot sell their laws and go somewhere else and the next developer comes and buys. And we give flexibility that people can build. One of the things is exactly the same thing that... Commissioner Neal-Chung was mentioning. I just want we talk about high security performance bond or whatever is happening in phases for those lighter streaming. Because the developer can be bankrupt, they can transfer the ownership on all of those. I just want we don't get stuck with the half a lot, empty, no lighter streaming happen, and then one high rise, which is a big problem. ugly box because we gave all the incentive over there. Then I don't know if it's going to go be some math and I don't see math here. Some of the legal offices to just think about how we're going to go get the bonds, how we're going to go get something. The covenant is in the way that we keep the developer accountable for phase two and the lighter streaming. The second one that I have, it's about a catalyst program. I think we can use that one similar, specifically in corridor of 130 and 132, because I really, really want to see high rises there. There's a capacity there. They don't build high rise in that area, and we all know that. And I think because it's not incentive. But really, between 130 and 132, it's the best area. You can have high rises, and the station is there, really walkable. And I want to be incentive, they build it. If it's going to go beyond site, affordable housing, amazing. If not, the FIU is going to go cover for sure for that. And another one was about... Sorry, I didn't look at the new document. I did my study on the weekend. The other one, it's okay. The other one is about the vesting timeline that we have it somewhere. I think it was in the old document, LUC 20.30 V190, something like that. And that one, when the master planning come, master development plan, what is that? When that come, I think they're going to go be in conflict of each other, right? Because that's... different approach. I think we need to change those language the way that these two don't compete each other.

So the 2030 V section relates to master development plans, and that allows I think it is not 190 section for extended vesting up to ten years. And that would control kind of what the site development is vested to. The master development plan itself doesn't vest individual redevelopment sites within that plan. So if someone's doing like three towers, they have to have a design review for the first tower alongside their master development plan to provide vesting for that tower, but it doesn't provide them vesting for tower two or tower three. We want those design reviews in to get them vested.

Got it.

Yeah. Is that what you're referring to?

Yeah, that was my question. And I didn't read the new version. Maybe it's there. This is my Sunday study. And then the sidewalk, is it downtown Bellevue, Bellevue Way 10? Or 12? 10?

Yeah, it is probably 10 or 12.

I think it's 10 or 12. And still sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, how can I walk through this? And I'm not saying let's go with that as a standard, but I'm saying like really eight is like still not the best one as Commissioner Ferris was mentioning if somebody is with the stroller. And then the last question I have is about the parking, the 10 food parking thing. someone had a comment about it too I think it was floor to the ceiling right even my AI was shocked and saying is the city of Bellevue doing that because they want to turn it to the apartment eventually then I said like maybe I need to bring that my AI question to you too

Thanks for bringing that up because that's when I was like, I should have listed that on ours. That's a specific design component that was brought forward and negotiated with the Wilberton LUCA. This is an existing provision that we want to maintain and apply to Bell Red. And you're correct. Like the reason why we're setting that higher that higher standard for both having level floors and higher levels is that it can be converted to residential in the future. So it's it's intended to be, you know, a really forward thinking kind of more approachable. building sustainability life cycle kind of recommendation.

Yeah, I remember we talked about doing a Wilberton. It felt like a million years ago.

And actually with Wilberton, I think originally we'd set it higher, right? And we brought that down a bit.

I think so. Yeah, those are the points that I think everybody was touch-based saying. Thank you.

I share with you this is.

So the 10 foot height really quick. I think the comment was that is right now requiring to be floor to ceiling and it should be floor to floor. And either way is fine as long as your building heights are measured as floor to floor. So if you have 10 foot clear floor to ceiling, that means like 11 foot floor to floor, and then your building height should be able to accommodate that many floors. Otherwise you're gonna have very tall parking and you're gonna end up losing floors. Does that make sense?

In effect, we're intending to set it up so that these are floors that could be reused as residential stories. So if you're doing structured parking or you're doing residential, it's still going to be the same kind of maximum potential. Another really important consideration with the structured parking piece is that, I'll remind you, of course, next time we're going to have the public hearing on parking reform, and we're going to be removing... the um off-street parking requirement for residential and mixed-use projects in you know half a mile of light rail so another factor here too is that while there's still going to be projects choosing to build more of that structured parking the absolute amount required is also coming down so uh no my point is if you do 11 feet floor to floor there's gonna floor to ceiling

That's going to end up being like 11 or 12 floor to floor. And then if you're in a zone that allows you to do 45 feet tall building, that's usually four stories. But when you do 12, you're going to exceed that height. You're going to lose a floor.

I mean, these are all either, I think, 160 or 250 foot height limit areas.

Same problem. I think the heights that are... Used in the code, they're assuming typical floor heights of 10 foot floor to floor. Once you add 10 foot floor to ceiling, then your whole thing kind of slides up and you end up losing floor.

But that's a deliberate choice because we're saying we're reserving space to potentially be used in the future for non-parking uses. Yeah.

I don't want to dwell on this item. I just want to highlight it and we can elaborate after that. Thanks for all the responses to the comments. I think I agree with a lot of things that have been revised. I agree with eight foot sidewalks. I would even increase to 10 foot sidewalks in some cases. If we're going back to the visions, the vision here is to create a pedestrian friendly neighborhood and we need to have good sidewalks, right? One thing I would like to also commend the expansiveness of your view on medical innovation centers. Think about how this can be competitive across the nation and how Seattle, Bellevue, and Baldwin can work together to create this like cluster of medical innovation. And I would like to express my support for the Catalyst program and the medical science part. The one item that I want to really touch base on is the street grid. And we've gone through this in several sessions, also several site visits with stakeholders. And to be candid, I still don't see a convincing or compelling reason that tells me there should be a street grid that is orthogonal superimposed on this side that is anything but orthogonal, that has an existing grid that provides sufficient capacity for transit, that has streams crossing through it, and that is clearly causing problems for developers. I think that when you're talking about predictability and flexibility, I think it's a great approach. I think the predictability is baked in. We're not doing a new house on the prairie, a new city on the prairie somewhere where we're laying down the grid. We're bound by all these constraints that we already have. We have, Belgrade is a very defined district. There's existing street grid. There's a light rail location. There's creeks. There's property lines. Yes, there's going to be some properties that are going to have an issue because there's some landlocked properties. Those can be the exception to the rule. But all that is giving you predictability. The zoning code is an instrument for predictability. When you're packing on top of that a street grid, just doing this line across a property is just causing a lot of issues that it's impossible to foresee at this scale of the work. The only people that are going to be able to determine where the street will work within a property that's big enough to have streets divided is the... The team of designers that are going to be looking at the property very closely, looking at the topography, looking at the transit, looking at the capacity, seeing how they can move these things around to make sure they fit and maximize the use. And imposing the street grid on this, I still don't see that happening. argument to be convincing. And I would like to ask you, like, what would be the answer that you give to the gentlemen that are sitting behind you that are representing Albertsons? That's an example for like, what's, what's the convincing argument to say you need to have the street going through it? Like what's, what is driving that? And, and, and how do you respond to the fact that they're saying like, this is just killing my property. Like this is just creating chaos in my property.

Well, I'll start with, it's a big question that I think we're going to have more context for next time. So I'll kick it off and I'll probably pass to Nick. I do want to start with Albertsons because I think what's really hard for us is, so the first commenter, I remember saying, you know, we have a great proposal, we're going to break up our blocks, we're going to have great pedestrian connectivity, we're going to have great transportation analysis to direct to, you know, understand the impacts. And great, like that can be reviewed through the proposal we have, you know, our take is, We're saying we need a connection through here. We can be flexible about where it's located within your site. We've got options to move it around, kind of looking at all that good site-specific thought. We just need to kind of see that rationale. So that's just kind of one quick anecdote. Nick, I don't know if you want to kind of speak to the broader kind of fundamentals of the street grid. I mean, I think we've said a lot.

I mean, just to note, I mean, we are responding to policy. I appreciate the commission has been very thoughtful in how you've wanted policy to be formed. You've also been very intentional on how strong some of the language should be so that we have clear direction to move from. And this is kind of that example of how we move from policy. There was a lot of intentionality on introducing flexibility to the local street grid where it makes sense and where there are constraints to the site. And that was a lot of the intention behind the nearly two years of kind of taking a hard look at this was figuring out where where should we be dialing this back? How can we be responsive to the policy that you all were very thoughtful around? And so It does feel like the question of whether this should be eliminated altogether or not has been asked and answered in some ways when the policy was formed and adopted by the council in October of 2024. And so we are really trying to respond to that, realizing that this is really integral to the vision for Bell Red. And it's it is about, you know, access and being able to provide some other kind of equity concerns that we have with some of these properties being landlocked. But it's also you know, we're we're having conversations internally with our fire department with our utilities department. they have concerns over kind of going private and how are these sites going to be serviced. So there's a lot more that's tied in with this, and we're happy to kind of bring that full picture for you all together in that September study session. But, you know, we do want to make sure it's clear there's a reason why we want to hold the line here and maintain some semblance of a grid here. and then figure out where does it make sense to introduce the flexibility and where does it make sense to exercise that flexibility. And that we're viewing as most appropriate at a development review application so we can see what are the real trade-offs with that project and what are the considerations. And it is moved a lot because previously our transportation department couldn't review a proposal and just make a decision to go private. They'd have to meet some higher threshold that this, you know, is impossible to engineer and it would be a really strict deviation process. So just it's come a long way just in terms of how we can even entertain those types of requests and what the replacement should be. So do you want to acknowledge there's been a lot of effort to try and you know, respond to the policy and build in that flexibility. And, you know, we hadn't seen those proposals that were shared with you all today, got a chance to look at it kind of after they were shared. And I think we have some responses there too, which we're happy to kind of address at that September meeting.

Is there a policy that says that we need to have a street grid? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so we can also recall some of the policy language for you all if it's not included in the memo tonight. But we've had some other focus on what are we, where are we moving from when we're bringing this LUCA forward, the Land Use Code Amendment forward for you all. There's specific policy language that is asking for us to look for those opportunities to provide flexibility with the local street. Um, there was no, um, uh, effort to delete references to the local street to shift that policy decision. The, um, look forward was really a refinement in acknowledgement that there's been some challenges and we haven't been shy about that either. Um, and so the policies was was enabling some ability for us to address those challenges.

Thank you. So. In this image that we got today, I see a title here, and I don't know if this is formal or whatever, but it says a street network preferred alignment. And last session, we talked about, hey, if we want to keep a street grid, that could be an option. And that's fine. That could be the preferred option. And then we should have a performance-based option that sets out some criteria as to what needs to be Connected to what, right? Leila Kademi's letter today says something very clear. Existing tools like block size limits and flexible pedestrian and bike connections go far enough to achieve the city's connectivity goals. So the criteria that those tools need to meet should be enough to proceed with a performance design. If you do choose not to proceed with a preferred design, street grid is this the direction that we're heading like two options you choose which one both are valid and that's good or are we the impression that I am under and correct me if I'm wrong is like this is the option you have a street grid not necessarily this map but you have a street grid and if you want to deviate we're going to need to do some additional reviews and that's that's what's causing me concern because there's no certainty in the fact that those additional reviews will be And that's just going to cost people to spin their wheels, spend a lot of money and time to get developments off the ground and might even discourage people to do that. So is this a two option thing that we're talking about or a one option with some alternatives in the case there's hardship about the property? Does that make sense? The question makes sense?

Well, I mean, the criteria that we introduced in the draft is that option to explore how you might get some relief from the strict local street standard. So that's the process that we are trying to use here to address the flexibility people are desiring.

And I'd also call back to what Commissioner Geppel was noting about when we talk about that tension with predictability and certainty. That's really what we're talking about. It's like we totally understand that people want to have some certainty to say, okay, if I can hit this metric, I know that my alternative grid will be approved. the the problem there which we'd welcome suggestions on what those could be but like we mentioned if we're going to define that marker for this is what it needs to be for something as complex as a grid because the big thing with bell red is that it's a scale challenge like i think i'm going to bring some maps to show a comparison of downtown and bell red because when you look at just the public grid that we have now the amount of area in bell red that has no public streets Or, you know, and it's just kind of held together with a framework of like connected parking lots essentially is like the size of downtown. Like it's a big area where we're going to be negotiating. And that's kind of where things get really messy in Bell red, which is all to say, if we're going to define a metric to say yes, without, you know, almost without reviewing it, you can be certain it's going to be conservative because it's going to have to be something we can be super complicated. I mean, super confident can apply for almost any project. So that's the big trade-off is we could think about things there, but I don't know if that's going to be what projects are looking for.

I'm going to, I'll cut in and just say, I think a lot of this will be deferred to September. And I think also at the public hearing, you know, you can make a motion also to eliminate your regret if that's of choosing. So I think for now it'd be good if we get another round in and then a number of these things, you know, I think staff has direction to basically provide answers for a lot of that. But if we do another round.

That makes sense. Thank you. Thank you.

Great. All right. For myself, I won't belabor the street grade part of it. The two things, I guess one question for Corbin on the medical and life sciences section. Are we thinking of this from just a large company perspective or are we also incorporating policy or some requirements for different sized companies? I say this from the perspective of If you look at from what I can see, a lot of the venture capital activity around here is focused on is medical and life science. And so there's going to be there's a lot of incubators. So there's a lot of potential small, like small, medium sized companies that may be coming out of the region. And I hate for us to lose the opportunity to keep those companies in the region. So if you could speak to the kind of size of company.

Yeah, for sure. We're definitely focused on a diverse range of those companies, and actually we see more potential on the smaller sort of startup area initially. Actually, a lot of the life sciences companies we do have right now are that sort of startup ecosystem in various different random places across Bellevue right now. As you look at building out that ecosystem, the life sciences industry is very unique in that you need – specific types of infrastructure in place and highly capital intensive infrastructure. So there are a lot of property owners and developers who are focused on serving that specific niche. So think about a coworking space, but it's a lab essentially. So that's what we see having a lot of potential actually within Bell Red and is when I was referring to some of those programmatic interventions we were talking about earlier. We're hoping to attract more of those within Bellevue and encourage developers who are already here to look at that model as well. So yeah, that's a great point.

And I guess maybe the follow-up for staff is, is there a specific policy that we could do to encourage smaller life sciences, whether it's through incentive programs or even just land use code that allows for smaller subsections? I don't know if it's already in there, but it'd be great if we could include something along those lines. Um, second point here is, uh, I wanted to ask about the fee and lieu that we, uh, that you guys have proposed for, for bell red. And I, I know we talked about this last time too, but you know, it seems like we're mirroring Wilberton, but it does kind of feel like the dynamics are a little bit different with bell red. So could you kind of walk through, you know, whether it's more or less, I, I don't, I don't know what the right amount is, but could you walk through kind of your thought process for establishing what that fee and lieu was?

Sure. So we don't have the specific fee in the draft now. The way it's set up, we have defined amenities, which are all kind of set up with the exchange rate you get for bonus points for providing those amenities. But you basically have... an off-ramp we're proposing essentially in Bell Red, which is the current approach to say you can choose from the defined menu of amenities, or you can provide a fee in lieu to get bonus points that goes towards defined amenities. Or a mixture of the two. So if you want to do some on-site provision and then pay in. And then what that's going to look like is that that fee will have a split between, it will be housing, parks, and arts. That'll be our proposal. um, as to, you know, the specific pools that that gets funded toward.

Wait, sorry. I guess I thought I read the 13. There was. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Okay. I'm glad we distinguished that because yes, the mandatory housing is completely separate. So, um, yeah, the, the, that's the, that's the same as Wilberton.

Yeah. I guess like my question is why is it the same as Wilberton? Um, or if there's a thought process for, should it be more or less than Wilberton? Um,

Um, well, uh, the, uh, I think it's just one of those areas where, um, Because we did have some analysis you can do.

So a similar scale that's being enabled, though, in the urban core in Wilberton, you can get up to 450 feet. So there is some difference there. But also the nexus and proportionality study did analyze kind of what's the max, which is not saying what's feasible, but what is maybe justifiable. And so we did also take a look at that as well. And it, you know, there is some benefit to try and set those as equal. But that is a policy choice and discussion that the commission can have, especially in light of some of the concerns that you're hearing around cost drivers. It is again, all about trade off. So I'm happy to tee up a discussion for you all to if that's helpful.

Yeah, I think from direction from us perspective, or at least from me, I would like to have that discussion. I think it's worth exploring whether or not the fee should be the exact same. I understand the predictability of having it be the same as Wilberton, but I do think that there are different dynamics at Bell Red versus Wilberton. So I think having that as a discussion point and maybe a staff proposal on what you think the right amount should be would be helpful for us to discuss. All right. I'm going to do another round. So, and again, you know, a number of these things I think will be deferred until September. So let's try and keep our comments focused on with that in mind. So Commissioner Farris.

Nothing more for me.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Nothing more for me.

Commissioner Geppel.

Yeah. The only thing I was going to mention was, you know, during the, The public comment today, the PBNK site and the conditions related to that concern me a little bit in terms of feasibility. So, I mean, if you can just think about how the program that We're coming up with with address things like that that would be helpful. I mean, I think one of the things that's important just for context, too, is that, you know, when we look at what the street grid is now that's being proposed, it's been scaled back a huge amount. So it's not where it started. But I wonder if there are outliers like that where we need to take another look, because that grade is a pretty difficult thing to deal with. So that's it.

Commissioner Nojohn.

The only further comments I have are I wanted to plus one Commissioner Goebbels' point on the amenity incentive program and potentially including grocery stores. I also think that we should include childcare facilities, but you know, I, I see the argument of trying to limit it a little bit. Um, but I would support adding those two. Um, and also I plus one, uh, chair lose comments about a staff proposal at the next, uh, study session on this. I think that would be very useful as well. Thanks.

Great. Commissioner.

I think I don't have any further comment except I just want the landlords in Barrett see the two paths. If they want to develop, what's the path? If they want to sell it, what's the path? I have seen a couple of people they want to sell and they're literally waiting for us to take it to the council, which I'm hearing it's going to go between 27 for them. I just want we come up with the solution that if they want to sell their land, it's not going to go be super conditional. Just like, you know, a person who's buying it doesn't know what's going to go happen. Is it going to go be any street on it? Needs to go through the studies and all of those. I don't know how we can make that easy. To just help the people who wants to move forward to do it and who doesn't want to sell it and stick with the process. They can have an easy path. And the second thing is, again, I'm totally fine with the private streets. There's so many private streets in downtown Bellevue. Not so many, but there are, you know, two. what about two oh yeah and then some of them are not straight actually uh they're really carrying stuff and i think if i think if it was a straight street the way that we are describing here it was losing so many immunity public space and the number of the units then i think developer did a good job in my opinion the design was really good and that's the flexibility i think we need to give it to them But again, I trust you all to negotiate about those and figure out a good creative process. Good luck.

The last question I guess I have is, for these streams, Is there any provision for connectivity between adjacent parcels that face a stream and daylight that stream such that when the whole development is created, you can take your bike or walk along those streams? Or is that going to be each project going to have its own little stream redevelopment? Does that make sense?

Are you getting at, like, can a stream be daylight across different sites? Or, yeah.

The streams cross Bellred at different points. And I'm thinking when this is done, it would be very nice to be able to just go work your dog and just go across the entire length of the stream. Is there a provision that would prevent that or that would allow a developer to just do their own little daylighting of the stream that is not public? Is the stream going to be public? Or is there a connectivity requirement between...

There's so there are provisions around encouraging trail access to the greatest extent possible. There are some tricky bits and accommodating, you know, protection of critical areas, but we do have provisions that can provide for creative projects that go across different sites. You were like

I mean, just to note, you know, the code as a reminder isn't requiring anyone to daylight a stream. We are trying to build in that strong incentive. So it's possible, you know, you may have a property owner that's really bought into that as a vision and isn't seen as a huge cost driver chooses to do that. the neighbor property may not feel the same way. And so we don't have anything to compel that neighboring property to do the stream. It's just as similar if someone wanted to do a private street, maybe a shared use path that's a bike-only lane, and then their neighbor isn't required to do that because the code says, hey, it's flexible, whatever you want to do there. That could just be a dead-end bike lane. Great vision, didn't coordinate it with other properties, nothing in the code to make them do that. So that's kind of the challenge that we're always having to contend with. If you want that outcome, certainty around it, it's requiring projects that are adjacent to streams to daylight the streams and then provide those amenities and coordinate with the neighbor. So it's basically like a local street version for streams if we were doing that.

Is there a way to somehow incorporate that?

incentivize i mean it would be it's we have a strong incentive now or that's the feedback we've gotten um but it's it is completely optional and i think you would you would probably hear the same amount of resistance if that became a requirement it will just shift kind of yeah what what the angst is around okay and uh i guess a final quick one is we talked about shared parking

Bell Red specifically, I understand, has poor soils. So underground parking would increase costs. So I don't know if it's an option. It would be great to see some capital projects of mixed use shared parking buildings so that people could live in the property and then walk a few blocks to their car or to the train and then park. and then go away to work or wherever they need to go. But it becomes a more pedestrian city that enables development of projects at a lower cost because they don't need to provide parking because it's provided somewhere else across the neighborhood. So just something else. That's it for me. Thank you.

great thank you i won't have anything to add but i think just going through this uh we talked about a stronger amenity incentive program uh and large site developmental review programs uh i think everybody was on board with sidewalk widths and not going a little bit uh more than eight feet uh we requested a overview of the developmental review process uh and Grocery store incentive and bolstering that. I think you mentioned security bonds. I think both of you mentioned that, but just exploring that would be great. I think everyone was supportive of the life sciences proposal, commercial catalyst program, and then fee and lieu, I think covers most of it. Connectivity of streams if possible, but I think, yeah, without making that a requirement and then shared parking.

Awesome.

Thank you. All right. Appreciate you guys. Next up, would someone like to approve the minutes for my turn?

I'd like to make a motion that we approve the minutes of June 10th. Second.

All right. Any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye. I'd also like to make a motion that we adjourn our meeting.

All right. All in favor say aye. Aye.

I want to say it was actually you. Did you second or that? Yes. Okay.