Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. The Puyallup Planning Commission meeting for July 8th, 2026 is now called to order. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Thank you. Item number two, approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda for this evening?

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Third item on the agenda, approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion for approval of minutes?

Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Moving quickly, item number four is citizen comments. The chair will call on those who have provided their names in advance. Then the chair will call for other citizens who wish to speak. For the record, please state your name, address, or city council district in which you reside. Please be advised that each speaker is limited to three minutes. The clerk will provide verbal notice when only 30 seconds remain. As a reminder, this portion of the meeting is the planning commission's opportunity to hear from the community and not a time

I don't think we are allowed to have questions at this point, but we thank you for your time and you definitely came to the right agenda. Thank you. Are there any other folks present that would like to speak this evening? I'm going to take that as a no and we'll move on. Moving on to the public hearing. The next item on the agenda is proposed code amendments. Urban agriculture uses in single family residential zones. First we will open the public hearing for public comment after public comment period has ended. Um, we will close the meeting. So if there are any other comments that are addressi

I'm confused. Give me just a sec. Thank you. So the public hearing is now closed and the commission will now have a staff presentation followed by commission discussion.

You're just trying to move the embarrassment from me.

Vice Chair, I saw your flag go up first.

Okay, thank you. So, A couple of the – this is a verbiage issue. It's a wording issue. It's like it wasn't quite clear to me, and I just want to see. So the vacant site, according to this, should be subordinate and incidental to the owner's residential use. But, of course, the very – HAB-Jacques Juilland, Definition of a vacant site is there's no residents there so right there's no residential use on that lot.

Okay, well, thank you. The other thing that I was curious about in the wording is horticultural activity includes personal use and incidental sales or distribution on site activities. And so could you explain what incidental is, please?

But it could be, for instance, I understand incidental could mean seasonal, for instance, if you're growing daffodils, and then that stops. Right. But if you've got chickens, you might have egg sales all year round.

So incidental does not mean you can't have, let's say, a farm stand on that site. Right.

OK. All right. Yeah, I was just trying to understand what these terms mean in this instance. Thank you.

So I have just a couple of comments and I'm definitely in favor as well. Um, but I just wanted to provide a little, get a little clarification. I was at a, I attended a city council meeting last night at the city of Sammamish and the sort of backwards of what I'm asking now, um, they are granting a one time per owner. remodel and rebuild. But the question was, how do we track an owner? So if they wanted to do a remodel per owner and then the wife wanted to do a remodel, they just do a quick claim and now we have a new owner on the house. So my question is sort of the opposite of that. If we ha

So basically, though, it would come down to if there's a violation. If there's not a violation, then somebody living outside can continue business as usual.

I think that was all I had. Anyone else? I believe that is going to take us to, we have had a request to approve this. So do I have a motion to approve the proposed code amendments, urban agricultural uses in single family residential zones?

Aye. Any opposed? We have a unanimous pass. So the next item on the agenda is item number six, work session topics. Starting with 6A, phase two zoning code and map amendments package six and senior planner Kendall Walls.

So I know that you're looking just for some conversation around this and feedback. I feel like this is a good place because that was a lot of information so far, maybe separating out the residential element would be a good time to just sort of get a little feedback. Personally, I just have a couple of questions. Do we have any idea how prevalent the RS-8 is?

So, I mean, it looks, I mean, it's kind of sparse, right? I mean, not horribly. I would definitely be looking at option two. I don't know if it's A or B yet, though. What am I doing? Yeah, go ahead.

Has anybody thought about the option of just going to six and eight and eliminating 10? That's also an option we can. Yeah, because where I live, I was a 10. And then we got changed down to eight, I don't know, eight or nine years ago.

Yeah, my opinion is I would like to see this not changed. And the reasons are, number one, the state has now decided that we can have lot splits. Okay. Number two, the state has mandated that every house can have two ADUs. And number three, we have... I would say six different kinds of housing, middle housing allowed in any residential zone. That is a lot of density that's being mandated for us. And I know there are some people who are perfectly happy with their small lot and maybe don't do a lot outdoors. Other people have children. They'd like a place for them to play. They have pets. Maybe

I think I saw yours again first, Commissioner Washburn.

I'm a little on the other side from Mr. DeGroote. I see that property owners, first of all, nobody has to do it, right? It's a choice. It's a choice. And secondly, if a property owner has maintained the property for decades and they want to realize more income from it, they should have that right, the right to do it. And the second thing I wanted to make sure I'm understanding is that not every lot in the city can do the ADUs because you have to be out of the hazard zone, right? And we have 24% hazard zone.

Well, but in the Lahar zone, it's allowed one.

Any other thoughts? So for me, from a permitting standpoint, I love the idea of streamlining. All of our zones, I think when you get too many, it just gets too convoluted and it makes it harder for a homeowner to understand what the restraints are. And it also makes the review timelines much larger for staff. But that's just from a logistics standpoint, not from a human standpoint always. So I think that's all I have.

Does anybody have any comments? Vice Chair?

Yes. Okay. So one thing I wanted to point out, we all, I think anyone who reads the paper or whatever knows about power consumption and water use for data centers, especially serving AI. Right now, the data center that's on that site is a 24 megawatt data center. It's already there. AI serving data centers, according to what I've read, can range in size from 100,000 square feet to 1 million square feet. The entire Benaroya property is 86 acres. And if the proportions in the map are correct, that parcel is about 18 acres or over 786,000 square feet, even with 85% lot coverage. the site could ac

I'm going to concur. I also made a note that data centers, warehouses, equipment sales and rentals and storage yards seem excruciatingly out of place in that area. I remember when the Lowe's was across the street and that was all just open land. The first few times after the Lowe's opened, there were deer in the parking lot all the time. Because we keep encroaching on that space. And I would be highly against all of it at this point. I think that daycare centers are completely fine. Accessory retail, depending on what it is. So I don't know that we can stipulate that. Multifamily residential I

Vice Chair. Okay, my first concern is about approving an overlay with no master plan and no concise or complete list of permitted actions. The use of IE, which is something like, or for instance, but it doesn't actually, unlike some of our other zone designations, it's very nonspecific, and it's extremely broad. And

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That allows, yeah. The other thing that I'm concerned about is the non-contiguous parcels in particular that are surrounded by residential areas. And so if that very broad spectrum overlay is placed on those sites. You know, we don't know at this point how that would affect neighboring residential... You know, I'm very... I'm very always in favor of the homeowners who are around there, who live there, who have their homes there, and possibly their economic futures in those homes. And I just hate to see – you know, the fair is a big organization. I know it's nonprofit, but – T

And next topic will be 6B, Phase 2 Zoning Code Amendments, Chapter 20.31, Mixed-Use MX Zones.

So I have a question about going back to outdoor dining specifically. Because if we're requiring a 15-foot dense landscape buffer for this type of development, it seems like it should carry through for that as well. I mean, it's sort of a noise buffer. on things so I just feel like five feet on the side for outdoor dining is pretty darn close when you're saying that a typical setback and I realize there are different things for structure versus activity but if we're retaining a six foot side Just as a setback, then having five foot side for dining and no landscape buffer just seems intrusive.

Vice chair. I just have a few questions actually. Regarding from page 55 regarding uses prohibited uses in UCX zones. I just wanted to make sure that I understand this correctly, that road service uses do not include auto sales, rental or storage. Others that they can like repair shops or whatever, but not for UCXO. Yes.

Oh, right. Yeah. I just wanted to make that distinction. On page 57 of our booklets, there was a paragraph that had been added and then crossed out and it had to do with the discontinuation of use for auto dealers. Can you just kind of tell us about that a little bit?

Yeah, thank you. I did have a question on page 61, and this is 2031-021-1. It says, one half stall may be provided. may be provided. And I'm wondering, shouldn't that be one half stall shall be provided? And an earlier meeting had it, oh, I'm on, this is page 61. Yeah, we had some discussions at an earlier meeting about the difference between may and shall. And this one seems like it's leaving it as an option.

They could put maybe nothing in if they chose.

Yeah, not clear to me. I didn't understand it that way. So yeah, but we've got smart people who can take care of that. I have a last question. And on page 68. And this is 20.31.031. Off street parking bonus palette. I am not familiar with that term. So does a bonus mean that fewer parking places are required? I just don't. I never heard that phrase before that term.

Additional parking reductions. Additional... That's what I was trying to understand because it uses the word bonus, which sounds like more, but it's maybe a bonus to the builder. But it's because it's a reduction in the required parking spaces. I mean, I'm just trying to understand it.

Yeah, I didn't quite get that. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Kendall, similar to Commissioner DeGroote on the off-street parking bonuses, how does green roofs and solar energy collection tie into parking bonuses?

I think you're still up with a staff report. You can't sit down yet.

And that brings us to Commissioner comments. Commissioner Barney.

Thank you, Chair. With all this zoning changing that we're doing in Puyallup, I'm still not seeing any strategy of infrastructure with all our failing streets. And it seems like we're doing things backwards. I kind of mentioned this the first day I spoke, but I'm not seeing any infrastructure on strategies with all the density that we're trying to increase. We're trying to get to 60,000 by 2044. And I don't want to go back to 2044 and have to go in some kind of deficit because we're in an emergency. So I would like to see more strategy on the infrastructure, the lighting, some street cul-de-sa

I think Commissioner Crosby hit it on the head there. Got a lot of plans, but if we don't have the infrastructure to support it, um, 24, 2044 is going to look a little ugly. Um, but with that being said, Kendall, congratulations. And, uh, man couldn't work for somebody or with somebody better.

Thank you. I, um, I'm also really, uh, in fully support of, of, uh, of the comments about density and infrastructure and so forth that Commissioner Crosby made. That bit of seriousness aside, tomorrow evening is the first of the summer concerts. And for people who like pop music or jazz, I'm not the best one to ask. It's a great community gathering, and we've certainly gone down and enjoyed it, and so I encourage everyone to do so.

Stole what I was going to say. I was going to mention the night concerts as well starting tomorrow. Thank you for all you've done. I also concur that I really wish the state before passing this bill had implemented some sort of infrastructure alignment with density. That's one of my frustrations also. um one last item and just because it hit me was i was walking here i was crossing the street right at the crosswalk and there's a big construction sign just to the left of the crosswalk if you're crossing from the park so just to the north which blocks any pedestrian visibility whatsoever so i'd