Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening, everyone. We'll call this, what is it, the July 23rd, 2026 Planning Commission meeting to order. And we'll call roll. John Bachman. Here. Said Safavian.

Azi Panawalla? Yeah. Isham Al-Khawad? Here. Ajay Chakrapani? Here. And I'm Mike Bresco. I'm here. Sudha is unable to attend this evening. So next is the agenda. Are there any changes to tonight's agenda? We've got basically one major thing, which is new business related to town center. Okay, hearing none, agenda's approved by common consent. And the minutes from, what is it, June 18th, last meeting. Any changes to those minutes? Okay, seeing none, minutes approved by common consent. And we have a new, like what, you're the interim acting city manager? Welcome. Glad to have you here. And is the

You know, one of these days you two will have decided that ahead of time, so you don't... Oh, there we go.

Thanks Okay, thank you Mary I'm not seeing anybody else on the list for non-agenda public comment. Is that correct? Okay, and anybody online? All right, so David I think you're up on our new business for this evening

Thank you. Was that a great warm-up? Great lead-in, right? It was a great comment. Thank you.

So the numbers on the last one is that that's been in the I guess the history of town center.

Illustration of the proposed zoning for town center.

All right. I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was looking at because I was confused if you could get back to that prior. So the current density, I thought that the left side of that illustration you just had up with the two figures

And the 1250 is not for the remaining land. Is that right?

I'm not pounding on you. Sorry. I've been leaning forward a little bit. Just how many more slides do you have?

Yeah, I'd suggest doing that because I think one of the things is I'm not sure that the problem we're trying to solve is 2,000 to 4,000 here. Really, at the core of it is where do we put and how do we incentivize and all those other things to get to the 2,100 affordable units? and clearly town center has a role to play with it and we need to do something with the codes but that won't be sufficient or maybe but there's other options just like you were all like building 120 and so forth so if we get too hung up right now in the two to four thousand without saying How do we get to the 2,100 affor

Well, that's what we need to talk about. And the feedback, I think, that David's getting loud and clear is if we try to put it all in town center by increasing town center capacity, it would move it up beyond 2,000. People are going to balk. And they have. They've spoken through the election process.

I was focusing on trying to ask a question. I didn't hear it. So when you say affordable housing, is that The way I read the zoning differences would be actually maybe more correct to say mid-rise focus, and some of those units would be affordable, some wouldn't necessarily. It's just the number of units, and they may be built as affordable, maybe not, or they use incentives, right? So it's- Sure. Virtus capacity for mid-rise focus not that they'd been built out as affordable, right?

Hey, I have... Just a question for clarification and then a suggestion here. You said option four, that there was a lot of, I think, expense or cost or effort or something with that.

So I guess hearing that suggestion, because I said two things. And so the second thing was that, really, what are you looking for from us in terms of direction? And here's a possible example of that. So how I was understanding this in terms of capacities and so forth and what the community has said, and some of getting a sense of what some of the comments are, if I was to give direction, I would say we should consider how we could use essentially option four to disperse some of the capacity for affordable housing, which means that density. And option four probably has a couple of sub-options.

But so anyways, from a direction standpoint, it'd be really good to hear from everybody. Like, I would suggest that we build out scenarios where we do disperse some of the density needed to meet our affordable housing allocations rather than try to build them all into.

I'd like to jump in because I want to back up to policy because there's baseline is we have tension between community interest, traffic, state mandates, but the one we've left out is fiscal. The city's facing a fiscal cliff, which means we need to figure out In fact, Mary, in her handout today, talked about that sort of thing. Seattle Times article in the last couple of days talks about Clyde Hill going out of business because of our state tax structure. The city's ultimately going to face questions similar to that. And so we have to be pretty strategic in our planning and zoning. And the firs

So just to be clear, I'm not selecting any one of the four options. I'm just suggesting that we focus our energy on which option we're going to go with.

I would actually appreciate and glad that you brought up John what you did because in my mind was there's some also essential things we have to do in town center for the middle housing for sure but also if you look at what was proposed for the land use and to move and consolidate that hasn't been really built the code to support what we'd really need to accomplish so to work towards increasing the density the zoning to allow more of the you know the mid high rise in town center is a you know if you just think about sequencing of work that's something that needs to be done really sooner rather

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Sorry, David, I just wanted to make that. See you next time. Okay.

That was a great summary. One thing that would be helpful, I think, if I were to see this again, or maybe the council, is I'm just thinking about some of the things that we've seen like this. Would there still be the high-rise mixed use in what you were summarizing if we just made the changes for the You don't have to answer just think through that and what what implications there would be because I'm wondering if there's a way to keep to that 2000 maximum capacity and trade off middle housing Versus right the way to do that is and again this goes back to traffic and other impacts is to increa

WE SHOULD MOVE TO AGENDA-RELATED PUBLIC COMMENT. UP TO FIVE MINUTES.

Thank you, Paul. And Mary, I forgot to thank you. Thank you. All right. Calendar, it's kind of simple. We don't have anything in August.

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Anything on anybody online? Okay.

OK. No, we adjourn. Raise your gavel. Oh, that's why I was off today. So OK, anybody opposed to adjourning the meeting? Opposed to adjourn. Second. All right. Meeting adjourned at 9.01, I think. Recording stopped.