Redmond Urban Area Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

Good evening. This is the Revenant Urban Area Planning Commission meeting for Wednesday, June 24th, 2026. Call to order. Roll call. Tobias Cloven and Mercedes Cook Bostic are excused. Commissioner Heather DeWolf?

Here.

Commissioner Schultz? Here. Commissioner Michael Rogers could be attending virtual. Commissioner Tom Coon?

Here.

Commissioner Ben Schmoller, absent. And that's it. So there's some citizen comments. Is the next thing on the item? Is there anything out here from a citizen that would like to speak that's not on the agenda? If not... The third item was a public hearing that has been canceled. It was for a mini storage assessment access amendment, Redmond Development Code tax amendment. Do you have any comments on that, Kyle?

Yeah, just so you know, the applicant withdrew their application on this. It was a property off of Hemlock over by the pump track. They were interested in developing that piece of property with the mini storage. under our code right now, it would require a conditional use permit. And with the conditional use permit, there's additional standards that have to be met for mini-storages. And one of those is that a mini-storage access, access to the mini-storage can't be provided via a local street. It can only be provided via a collector or an arterial. And given the nature of that property, the only access point it has is off of Hemlock, which is that little cul-de-sac there, sort of like a parking lot, too. And that's considered a local street. So basically, they wouldn't be able to apply for a conditional use permit to develop that property as mini storage because they couldn't meet that standard. So the applicant was proposing a text amendment to change our code to change that standard to make it basically very specific to that property to essentially allow an exception to that rule or that standard. And ultimately staff didn't support it because it's never a good idea to change the code the text and the code for one specific project because it changes it for basically everyone, right? So in talking with the applicant, basically I let them know that staff would be supportive of them if they were to apply for a conditional use permit. We would be supportive of a major variance to that standard. given the fact that the property, it is awkwardly shaped and it's kind of locked in between the canal and the highway there. And it's actually, it was a much larger piece of property prior to the Highway 97 bypass being put in 15 years ago. So now it's kind of a remnant parcel that's sort of awkwardly shaped. sandwiched between the canal and the highway with very limited access. So it is a unique piece of property and that's why staff would be supportive of granting a major variance if they were to apply for a conditional use. So therefore we had decided that the text amendment just wasn't the best way to go. So that explains why the applicant withdrew their application. So that being said, no public hearing on that tonight.

Okay. Commissioners, any comments on that or? Okay, thank you, Kyle. The next item on the agenda is the arrest Redmond area plan or update, RAP.

Is that better? Whoa, there it is. Good evening, members of the Planning Commission, members of the audience. I'll be giving just a brief update or refresh on the West Redmond Area Plan. Some of you may be familiar with this. It's been in the works for several years now. It's been placed on hold, and we're picking it back up. So I've got a short presentation here, going over a little bit of the history on it. the why behind it, why it was placed on hold, and kind of some of the next steps. So we'll go ahead and get into it. So this slide here, which you can see up there and as well as there for members of the audience, shows the location of the RAP area. It's there on the West portion of town within the UGB outside of city limits, of course. And then the depiction sort of up close there on the left side. The RAP is entirely, as I said, within the UGB. It totals approximately 440 acres. The procedure that adopting an area plan goes through is essentially an amendments process, specifically a comprehensive plan, text amendment and map amendment. The area plan, once finalized and adopted would be a supplementary document or provision to the comprehensive plan. The city has got some other area plans throughout town, which I have some info on those as well, but procedurally this is what it would go through. It would be an amendments process. There we go. This slide here shows some of those other area plans and the years in which they were adopted. The highway area plan to the north, looks like the smallest one acreage-wise. The east side framework plan, northwest area plan, and the southwest area plan being the most recent. The Eastside framework plan has a little asterisk there because it's technically not an area plan. It is a framework plan. However, on the GIS layer, when area plans is selected, that one shows up as well. I thought I would include it. Kind of the main difference there is that a framework plan is even more high altitude than an area plan. And that one in particular was adopted via resolution instead of via ordinance, area plans are adopted via ordinance. But yeah, that's a good depiction of where the current area plans are. And then obviously if you recall back to that previous slide, the West Redmond area plan would be on that far western portion just outside the city limits. And by the way, I have an opportunity for questions at the end, but if any come up during the presentation, just go ahead and jump in with those. I'm gonna hop over to the next slide here. So this slide discusses a little bit about the reason, the purpose, the why behind area plans. And I'll just go through some of these. Kind of the main bullet points are to assist, or to assign future zoning to land within the area plan. to contemplate future community amenities, which will serve the residential areas, to coordinate and pace growth and development efficiently, to identify future public infrastructure needs, and to act as a conceptual master plan for each property within the area plan boundary. Another thing that they accomplish, which I'm sure fits into some of these, but on a more specific level, is identifying things like city parks, locations for city parks, where the commercial zoning is gonna be. If there's a need for an additional elementary school, something along those lines, that's the sort of things that an area plan would identify. That's kind of the why this western portion of Redmond is, you know, there's a lot of land over there within the urban growth boundary and it's adjacent to residential areas. So that's the area that's kind of been set aside and primed for that residential growth. And obviously, you know, fronting or having frontage there on 126, it's going to incorporate some commercial areas as well. So that's certainly what the area plan procedure will look at. This slide is a little bit of history on what was conducted towards this effort in the past, sort of why it was placed on hold where we're at today. So back around 2022, 2023 was probably the couple of years there was a decent amount of effort put into this process in terms of getting the wrap going, getting it up in the air essentially. And some of those efforts included technical advisory committees. Those are essentially Committees formed from public agencies, folks like BPA, ODOT, some other state agencies, the local agencies at the city level, I'm sure several others that I'm blanking on, even folks in the county were involved, the county planning department. We had a state representative from DLCD on board. So all those same folks will be brought up to speed as we pick this back up and so forth. Another thing that was done initially was community outreach that was conducted. Input was received and that's all on file and so I've done some studying there. There were some workshops and some I guess you'd call them, I don't know what you'd call them, but it was essentially there was an event at the high school where community members within the RAP were notified and asked for their input essentially on what would you like to see, what do you think Redmond needs as far as the 126 corridor coming into town, what do you feel is a priority for businesses to incorporate to have it look how it should look visually and so forth. And so that was also done in 2023. Ultimately, the main reason that it was paused, this effort that is, was due to the collection system master plan that was ongoing at the time. City Engineering was working towards that and that was a big undertaking and that was essentially a master plan specific to sort of that area to look at the needs for installing wastewater collection systems out there. And so that needed to be in place before the RAP could really be contemplated before we could start planning for residential commercial in that area, we needed to know the status of what exactly needed to happen out there as it relates to wastewater. That was finished up and adopted in July of 2025, so less than a year ago. And so when that was done and, you know, the planning department was fully staffed. Again, that was another component of it as well. It kind of unlocked the RAP for re-review, right, to work towards that once again. So that's where we're at now. This is kind of a busy slide, I see that now. These are some of the next steps. Where I'm at, kind of the flow of this whole process altogether, starting with establishing contact with involved agencies. So those are members of the technical advisory committees, as I spoke of. And then that leads right into conducting those technical advisory committee meetings. Community input will be, probably at the same time, roughly as that, but for this flow chart, it's right after it, but those will probably go hand in hand. leading out of that is to essentially take the initial community input as well as the information from those technical advisory committees and generate some conceptual maps showing where we believe that the proper zoning should go as it relates to the residential zones, the commercial zones and so forth. and essentially create a few different options. It could be as simple as option A, B and C with some things moved around a little bit and kind of take those back to the community members and get some feedback on them. and assuming it's received well, at least one of the options. From that point, we would begin to draft staff reports and work our way through the actual procedure, which again is an amendments procedure. And that would obviously have a couple of public hearings. It would be noticed several different places. And eventually it would be adopted via ordinance. And that is essentially an overview of where we're at. Well, where we're at I suppose on here is kind of the second box, which is conducting the technical advisory committee meetings. We're kind of right in that range. Aside from that, that's kind of where we're at with the RAP. We're picking it back up, we're excited. It's gonna theoretically unlock around 440 acres for annexations, master plans specific to developments and properties. And yeah, there's gonna be some challenges. Kind of the elephant in the room is ODOT with 126 running right through it. There's gonna be a lot of conversations to be had with ODOT. but that's kind of where we're at with it. So I'm available for questions. If it's too difficult a question, I'll ask Kyle, but that's all I've got for you tonight.

I don't necessarily have a question. I'm more or less just carrying the torch forward. I was at the high school event as well as the meeting with the high school students at City Hall, and the one thing that I feel that everybody really communicated as this was going to be kind of the gateway into Redmond and preserving that and those thoughts from the community is just important and just wanted to carry that forward. So you had that in your pocket.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Norm, you were there too, right? Do you recall you were at the open house that we had?

I was just going to comment on that. Okay. Um, I was at the open house at the high school and sat with a group of people and watched them participate in it. And it was evolving around what you had mentioned. What does it look like coming in from the west side into Redmond? Perceived concepts and whatnot. Are you taking those, you have a record of that that happened back then somehow because there was a number of tables that each had, we had a little task there to do with making a little thing out of pieces of paper and whatnot and having discussions and you're looking at that now and are you going to, do anything more with that? Are you going to restart everything again, like the technical group again?

Yeah, so it mostly will be a restart as far as community engagement, because that's been three years ago now. But I think what I can do, because you're right, I have access to all of that meeting content. It's all scanned and in the folder, so I've actually read through quite a lot of it. And so one of the things that was done last time was basically pick a prompt out of four options and elaborate on, on what you would like to see. So I may go through those and see which ones were the most prevalent at the time and sort of start there. But yeah, community outreach is for the most part going to start over.

So do you see that happening again, something along that avenue as far as getting community involvement in a high school setting like that? And because, like you had said, it's three years and things change really rapidly nowadays and we're looking at different things now, so.

Yeah, totally. Whether, you know, location, I don't think we're dead set on whether it's, you know, in one of the rooms here or at the high school. Yeah, I think the setting and the goal will be the same, though, as far as not setting what building it's at, but the intent of those meetings. It's going to be structured similarly to how it was three years ago.

You mentioned that ODOT's one of the big things in the room there. In the transportation system out there, we already have a number of developments occurring in that area, both north and south. That's going to have a bearing on maybe a different public input now to what we see and what people see.

kyle i might have you jump in here remind me odot is working actively towards a specific transportation plan based on the 126 portion right in that area correct

yeah they're beginning a corridor study along 126 from helm holds at least to 27th i think actually further up but it's they're just starting that planning um so it's it'll be a while but it's actually timely because obviously a big part of the wrap is that corridor from helm holds to 35th so it's timely that we'll be having conversations with ODOT yet again on, you know, I guess the visioning process for how this is going to look, future zoning and amenities in that area. So, yeah.

I also attended the open house and interestingly enough, I sat at a table where the topic of discussion was HOAs and having more public discussion and they did a, you know, a big poster board, I think on this, but, um, having more public amenities and parks versus all the private ones. Um, however, I did allude that that could play into property taxes on the other side. So, um, but that was an important piece of it. Um, several people were expressing frustration about the high HOA fees. Um, so, and, and the gateway, to Redmond, just having some sort of monument and really making a grand entrance was kind of important. And ODOT probably did that another study years ago, and they're probably just updating it because I feel like I hear that about every five years on that part, going to Eagle Crest. So hopefully they get it done.

All right, well, there's no further questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, thank you very much for that presentation. We'll be looking forward to some follow-up on it. Our next meeting, July 15th.

which will be a public hearing. Landon will be presenting the large lot industrial infrastructure master plan. So it's for the large lot industrial zone lands in the southeast part of town, identifying what's needed in terms of infrastructure, transportation, or streets, water, sewer, basically, and also who's kind of paying for what sort of thing. So getting that master plan adopted will kind of help unlock development potential in that area. Kind of switching gears here, just because this is zoning related, I wanted to let you guys know that there will be a hearing with the Nuisance Appeal Board, which is another committee commission of the city, on Tuesday, July 7th at 5 p.m. And this is related to the Dry Canyon Club off of Hemlock and 19th. but basically the gist of it is they've expanded the use in which they're approved for. They basically have a lot more seating than what they're approved for. And the area, we use the calculation for seating to basically come to how much off-street parking spaces they have to provide. And so when they submitted their site and design review to the city, YOU KNOW, THEY VERY SPECIFICALLY STATED A CERTAIN AREA WOULD BE ALLOCATED FOR THE SEATING AND WE USE THAT NUMBER TO BASICALLY CALCULATE HOW MUCH OFF STREET PARKING IS REQUIRED. SO THAT'S WHAT WAS THERE WAS A CERTAIN NUMBER THAT WAS APPROVED, BUT THEY'VE REALLY EXPANDED THEIR FOOTPRINT AND AS SUCH IT'S BECOME UNDER PARKED AND IS HAVING SOME IMPACTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. The city sent about a month ago, we sent a letter to them basically letting them know that there was a zoning violation going on here and that they needed to remedy it and ultimately they decided to appeal it. So it will be heard by the nuisance appeal board on Tuesday the 7th. So that would be of interest to you guys knowing that you guys deal with zoning quite frequently. That's all I have in terms of updates.

I will need to miss the next commission meeting, so I will not be there. It will be my first one I've missed in three and a half years, so I feel like I earned it.

Any further commission comments? Seeing none, motion for adjournment.

Moved.

So moved. Second? Second. All those in favor, aye for adjournment.

Aye.

Aye. We're adjourned.