Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. I will call this Sammamish Planning Commission meeting to order. She's October 1st, 6.30. All right. First, we've got roll call. Mazie Ponwala. Present. Hisham Alkawa. Here. Ajay Chakrapani. Here. John Bachman. Here. Syed Safavian. Here. Mike Bresco. I am here. And so far, we're... I'm uncertain if Suda will be walking in or not. We'll see if she does. All right. So next, any modifications to the agenda for this evening?

Do we need to add an item for a temporary chair for the next meeting?

We'll do that. Let's do that before we talk about the agenda at the end. All right. So... Have a modification to the agenda. And the next thing is the minutes from September 17.

OK, seeing none, minutes are approved by common consent. right so first on our agenda this evening is non-agenda public comment uh and as a reminder the agenda topic this evening is uh guidance to inform the center's housing strategy project so if it's something besides that on non-agenda all right

Nobody else in here? So anybody online? No? All right. Moving to, actually it was considered old business, it feels a little new, but no. It's very old business. So Evan, you're gonna start the presentation, is that right?

And this is for direction and guidance, we're not making any motions, anything like that, but it's more than just information, so you're looking for dialogue.

Can I, actually, I was going to ask about simplify, because I know that came up during the council meeting. I'd seen it in the deck. And so I really appreciate it. That's very helpful. But if you could elaborate a little bit more, because part of what council members are saying, like the word optimize came up. And if you think about optimize, then it's like, you know, doing traffic studies and a ton of other stuff to like, what is the... I'll call it, quote unquote, exact numbers that we should enable in each of the centers so as not to overwhelm infrastructure, for example. And that sounds li

So, before we go to details on the individual centers, maybe think about some baseline things. One really important one for our community is minimize impact to single-family neighborhoods. That's a baseline. that we don't diminish access because right now and for the foreseeable future, people are going to get in their cars and drive to QFC or Safeway. So they need that transportation. But at the same time, overlaying that with more multimodal in the baseline. And set that for all of our centers before we go off into having an area for food trucks. And then I had another question about going b

I interpret that was that that would be nice to keep it at that, but to optimize, we might be higher or lower. A little bit, yeah. But the main thing was take a look at the city as a whole and how best to allocate housing across the city. So in my mind, hearing that, that didn't free up to 4,000, which you said no. Yeah. But maybe that 2200, you know, that seemed, nobody said hell no to that.

Yeah, and because the downside is those if those aren't allocated in town center they have to go somewhere else and that could be a steep climb even you know i understand david you're talking very minimal increases in the density but still has to go through our wonderful process

I have a question. And then I'll then I'll take a shot at answering the questions. And then we could maybe go around and get answers. So for the first one, about how to distribute housing capacity among the centers, David, when you're describing that we're almost there, how would that how would we control the distribution? That there's maybe more housing that gets put in Klahani because it's closer to, you know, newer highways or more road capacity and less over in Inglewood because it's tied close to town center. So if you can answer that for me, then I'd be able to run through and say how I

So I think, and I looked at, you know, you all, several, you sent various criteria. They got long. So I would keep it to just a couple of things. And I would probably look at the area of the center, because that will lead to capacity. The ability to handle additional traffic, so a transportation component. you know, maybe something else, but probably not much more. So keeping it really simple. How much space do we have? How big are the traffic issues in terms of how to distribute among the four centers? And my starting point would be a relatively even distribution. And I heard and I get what M

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's part of the character of the city. It should be an easy sell for folks. As far as, like, specific characteristics, it would be so cool if, like what you were saying in Bend, I don't know how we can really do that, but I would start with there's a common look and feel and put that as above everything else, then try to really wedge into here's our entertainment area, And here's our little, I don't know, sports center area or whatever. And one thing that I think, and this maybe ties to one of the other questions about mobility and all that, but we really do

My understanding of those elements which we're doing, this is the first one, is that that provides guidance in terms of the overall code and design and all of those kinds of things. But I don't, frankly, I wouldn't complicate, to keep it simple, I wouldn't complicate the distribution of housing based on the four criteria that we're looking at, including economic development. And part of that is because it's not that complicated based on, you know, the buy right housing allocation. So why analyze the economic elements of it and the mobility elements of it and all of those other things, mobility

You know, I'll jump in. My, I'm almost positive this is true, I could be wrong though, that the Totem Lake, the strip malls that were Totem Lake that's been redeveloped, that was something that Kirkland wanted to see changes of for easily 15, maybe 20 years. Longer. And they were working, you know, with the developers and all of that. And eventually, you know, it came to pass that, you know, there was a whole new redevelopment. And it looks great. I mean, it's meeting a lot of needs. It went from a really crummy-looking kind of strip mall that somebody thought was paying the bills, but... anyw

We should see if anybody else wants to answer four questions and go through that so we can move to the next set. But I think that we've done a lot of general stuff and should make sure we're answering questions for you guys and giving you directions.

So I got for a counterpoint Go back to what David and Evan were first talking about Kiss Principle keep it simple that for our purposes now today in this year That there's a general overlay for all well the three centers and down by the lake something different um without getting into any specifics if you have to go from r18 to 20 to make the numbers work that's what you do knowing that if major development comes you can enter into a development agreement to work out the details for ex for example at pine lake where i live close to um major problem is getting across 228 to the park and ride. S

Any others on this one? Mousy, did you want to? Yeah, okay. Want to move to the next slide, perhaps?

So I just say that particularly around the centers right now, it's optimized for traffic. So as a pedestrian, you often have to cross three streets to get across the street. So in the TIP, I don't know exactly how they're addressing that. But again, comes back to once a major redevelopment starts, there are all sorts of things at play to optimize traffic. multimodal, getting to transit, but making it possible to connect our parks and our neighborhoods, particularly across 228 being a major issue. It's like crossing Northeast 8th and Bellevue.

And actually, I don't have anything that the comments I thought were spot on about the importance of, you know, the connectivity to the centers, less so between the centers.

Connectivity within the centers. Yeah. Just like Hisham was saying. And much less important to do planning and put in costs and infrastructure between the centers, at least right now.

So realistically, because these are land-constrained and already impervious surface, any public amenities you're going to get are going to be hardscape. a park like setting, I would imagine. But the controlling principle would again be developer comes in city reaches a development agreement with them in terms of what sort of plaza or whether it's a parking space for food trucks and not try to specify it at this time, just that connecting particularly across high traffic zones like 228, making sure our schools are connected, the park and ride at Pine Lake for multimodal, rather than getting int

Yeah, actually, to play off of that example from downtown Redmond, just on the opposite side of Cleveland Street is a continuation of the trail that connects to the Sammamish Trail. Exactly, exactly. And it's planted nicely and, you know, it's not... A lot of people... And it's actually a little quieter because you're not closer to Cleveland. So having something like that within the centers, just like little walking paths, would be great if that could be factored in somehow.

Yeah, I was going to say some of the same things. I do think that, and this goes back to one of the early comments about the forested character, that how we can enhance that through some of the architecture and all that would be a common theme. all right residents love it and and it is northwest um and i like all the other comments one just since i have the floor uh and about the downtown and all of that whatever we've talked about if there could be a way and this is where you really need the developers to buy in where there really are like these gathering places otherwise it's just sort of a

Quick side stories, we'll get to this. When we first moved out here, somebody said, oh, you gotta take this side, we'll hike that to Franklin Falls, and it was a drizzly day, and we thought, well, we'll still go, but nobody will be out there. There are gobs of people.

art commission and see if they agree with it and that that is something that he can do relatively cheap and all inexpensive but all in a sudden that brings identity hey this is the downtown this is a gateway to the downtown so we're often damned if we do and damned if we don't we've got the 228th problem but look at issaquah which was literally built around cow pass and what they have to deal with so you And look at how beautiful Trump Street is. So building some overpasses.

Well, I know, but for transportation to create better connection to get across our traffic problem. You deal with what we got. Yeah.

So one thought here is because we've been talking about community identity and the problem of just our geography and the way things have developed is that we don't have a single town center. You've got the town center. But in our branding and design standards, we create many town centers. I mean, I'm not suggesting many city halls like some cities have done, but at least create the visual sameness at an entry point for each one of those centers. So you know that you're branded with the city. Since we all know this is the exact center of the universe, we just want to make sure everybody knows t

Well, and if we're doing the British thing, change the spelling of center.

Hey, I have a comment on the economic thing, and then we could maybe move on. So it would be nice if we could have more tax revenue coming from commercial business, not just residential. And so one of the things that I wonder about here, I would like to see, I think you could do it is like there's trade offs between the housing capacity and commercial capacity. And if we could play with that a little bit, then I think I would have an opinion about whether we should provide some in the code, you know, this amount of space, square footage, whatever, in these other centers be devoted for commerci

Yeah, no, I think this was a really great conversation. I think we did well. So I'm sure we can continue that with some agenda-related public comment. Yes. So why don't we move to that? That sounds good.

Okay, so agenda related, public comment. Anybody in the room? Oh, hi, Paul.

Anybody online? nobody else in the room either all right so that ends our public comment agenda related and so we have one other item on our agenda since chair and vice chair will be unavailable at our October 15th meeting we need to appoint a acting chair for that meeting Mr.

Do we have a second? Okay. Any discussion? John, are you willing? All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, John, you're on tap for the next meeting. Hand him the gavel. Oh, I didn't. That's why I felt off. I felt off today because of it. We didn't officially gavel in, but we're going to officially gavel out unless anybody sees any reason to continue this meeting.

Sorry to be missing the meeting. All right. Thank you, Evan, for that. All right. So we'll see. Some of us will see you in November. Yeah. All right. So we adjourn the meeting. Motion to adjourn. Okay. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you all.