Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome to the September 9th, 2026 meeting of the Redmond Planning Commission. I'd like to call this meeting to order. We will start with a roll call. Commissioner Aparna. Present. Commissioner Bisht. Commissioner Coleman.

Present.

Commissioner Gagne. Present. Commissioner Gong.

Present.

Commissioner Van Nyman. Present. Vice Chair Wood here. Present. And I am Chair Weston. Commissioner Copley is absent tonight. I'd like to thank the following staff for being present. Odra Cardenas, Becky Fry, Sarah Quillentang, Christopher Gaffney, Lauren Alpert, and Chris Wyatt. I look for a motion to approve the agenda. So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. That's approved. And any corrections to the meeting summary from last time? In that case, I look for a motion to approve the meeting summary from August 12th, 2026. So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Aye. All right, that is also approved. At this point, we will hear our public comment and items from the audience.

We have one person sign up to speak, Mr. David Morton.

Great. And as always, please keep your comments to three minutes and start with your name and address.

Good evening, Commissioners. I'm David Morton, Redmond 98053. I've spoken earlier about Redmond's tree code update and the city's water programs. I want to point out two items in tonight's urban mixed use or UMU master plan briefing. First, staff's things to consider slide names an issue I've raised repeatedly this year, the critical aquifer recharge area or CARA. Second, another slide points out an existing tree preservation area protected under a development agreement. Naming those risks early is the right approach. Converting big box stores and parking lots into buildings with 3,700 new dwelling units is exactly the kind of redevelopment that needs real baseline groundwater data and real tree canopy verification before ground is broken, not after. This kind of shift to dense development is exactly what my earlier one-water review flagged as a monitoring gap. That review found Redmond's 2013 watershed management plan hasn't been updated to reflect this scale of growth. And Redmond's unreleased stormwater and surface water systems plan doesn't yet model how several thousand new housing units will affect recharging the CARA. I'd ask this study to close that gap, not repeat it. This UMU study is a 2027 to 2028 budget candidate. Another budget candidate is a city arborist position to independently verify qualified tree professional reports. Soil and groundwater PFAS testing near Evans Creek and the former all-wood recycling site is also a budget candidate. These are not competing line items. They are the same infrastructure. A study that names the CARA and tree preservation as things to consider still needs environmental testing and someone on staff. not a developer's consultant, to verify what's found there. That independent verification capacity doesn't currently exist in the budget. As you take up the UMU briefing and later the budget, Please treat environmental soil and groundwater testing and a tree canopy verification staff person as foundational to the study's stated objectives, not as separate competing requests. Understanding environmental impacts is an explicit UMU objective. Once formal UMU scoping begins, I encourage the Commission to ask staff how groundwater and tree canopy baseline data will be collected and by whom, given that this site is located in CARA 1 and is in a tree preservation area. I'm glad to share the PFAS and tree code materials that I've already compiled. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We don't have anyone else sign up to speak.

All right, thank you. At this point, we have new seats at the table. So I would like to welcome our new commissioners, Commissioner Gong and Commissioner Bish. What I would prefer is if you could each take a moment to introduce yourself, maybe your grade level and an interest or interesting detail about yourself. And yep, mic's on.

Hi, everyone. I'm Radima Bish. I'm a junior who goes to a private school here in Redmond, and I've lived in Redmond my entire life since I was born, and I'm really excited to be here, and I'm really happy to meet you guys.

Hey, everybody. My name is Ziwen. I'm also a junior, and I attend Eastside Prep in Kirkland. I've lived in the Seattle area since I was one. I moved to Redmond when I was 11, and I'm absolutely stoked to be working with you guys.

Lovely, thank you for joining us and providing a youth perspective and also for the upcoming hard work and civic engagement. Okay, so a little bit of mechanics just for the rest of us. The way this is going to work, since this is a new program, we're going to have the two advisors joining us one per week. They'll be alternating weeks throughout the school year. They're not going to be voting members, but they will participate in all of our conversations, and they will be adding things to the issues matrix. And I'm going to co-own issues matrix items in case they need to be closed. But does anyone have any questions?

Commissioner Coleman. You just said bi-weeklies, right? Once each bi-week. So once a month, effectively.

Correct.

And Vice Chair Whittier.

I'm welcome.

I don't have a question, but I do have a heartfelt welcome to the both of you. I'm really excited to have you. I think all of us are excited to have you, and we can't wait to see the impact that you contribute.

So welcome, and thank you for being here. With that, we are going to move to business. Start by concluding our work on the update to the Planning Commission rules and bringing up Becky Frye.

So, hello, Commissioners. I'm glad to be back in front of you. It's been a while. I'm also excited to be stepping in as the Interim Planning Manager for the Long Beach Planning Team. And in that role, I'll be taking over for Jeff Churchill. And he is actually at a conference today anyway, so I'll be covering for him even otherwise. So... He did explain in his packet a couple of the changes that have happened since you last saw the rules and procedures. And he... went and explained some of the changes that the planning commission was wanting to see with legal and the clerk's office and so we've made a couple of minor adjustments um about the mayor's uh decision making and then it'll mirror the appointment process if it's an unemployment removal um so i believe that we are ready all of the issues matrix items have been closed if the revisions that have been made are ready to go we can just make a recommendation today and move it forward yep i think that's basically where we at so are we ready to vote on a recommendation yes okay i'm seeing nodding um in that case um i look for a motion to approve the updated planning commission rules and send them to council

So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Great. And that is approved. So thank you for that. Next up, we're going to keep Becky up here and also bring up Sarah Quillentang and Christopher Gaffney for a briefing on the Urban Mixed Use Master Plan.

So this evening, we have our summer interns here to share some of the work that they have done over the summer that is helping us prepare for an item that's proposed for the budget for next year. It is a implementation item from Redmond 2050 and that will explain a little bit of the history for those who may not be up to speed or need a quick reminder. I do want to just emphasize before we get too deep into this, that there isn't gonna be any comp plan or zoning coming out of this study as a part of the study. The study is going to inform future work that'll come back to the Planning Commission for those actions. So it'll be a little while before we actually get to anything that's gonna require a motion or a vote for recommendation from the Planning Commission. So just kind of setting that stage a little bit. And then, Tonight we'll share a little bit about the purpose and the background of why we're looking to do this study, share this proposed study area and then our interns will share some of their examples that they found about where this type of development has happened around the country and some of the things to consider from their research and then we're happy to take any questions today. So as most of you know, we have a big box retail area in the city. It was formerly regional retail as a zoning district as a part of Redmond 2050. It was rezoned to urban mixed use. It was done as part to prepare for and meet some of the housing requirements that came out of the legislation. So this was one of our big changes that we did that helped us meet those goals. The job now is to figure out how to make that transition and identify things that would need to be updated from an infrastructure standpoint, services that would be needed to support housing and people who would be living there. We have a goal to have complete neighborhoods. And so what would it take to take this commercial area and make it a complete neighborhood in and of itself? But as a reminder, one of the main reasons for the urban mixed use zoning district was to keep commercial and to still have this serve as a regional retail core and not look like downtown or some of the other areas where it's just tokenized non-residential on the first floor. And to that effect, that is one of the reasons why we're doing the examples researching and trying to figure out how it would take to get something different than what we're actually getting today. And so that's a good measure of what is coming out of the study. You see the area outlined here is just a portion of the UMU. This zone does not include the UMU zoning that's in the Marymoor Village. We're proposing to just keep it in this area so that it does not include crossing Redmond Way. It's an issue that will be studied in a separate project in and of itself. So we're just looking to transition the big box area to that mixed use. So this is the proposed boundary. As you can see, we are not including and we're cutting out those commercial areas and that includes the cemetery and the hotel. Those are not zoned UMU. but it does include the trees down, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. I'm gonna turn it over to our interns now so they can share what their work from the summer was.

Hi, I'm Christopher Gaffney and so just for some further background on the area as I mean Becky has already started talking about this area was previously zoned as a regional retail destination and it has many of the big box stores as we saw on that map. we're hoping to envision a vibrant and walkable district with a mixed a commercially focused mixed area but we really want to try and preserve those big-box stores because they are very very crucial to that area and they're also unique in the area and with that We would like to be able to accommodate 3,700 new dwelling units, preserve the existing commercial capacity. So what that means is we don't want to lose any of the commercial square footage that we have there. We want to make sure that those big box stores stay there. But there may be more commercial in the area as more mixed uses come in. And then we also would like to ensure meaningful consultation and assessment, especially with the tribes. And we're going to talk more about what that means with the tribes later, but really there's important stuff in the area, especially with Bear Creek. And so we just want to make sure that we're focusing on that.

It's not ready.

And so what we see here on this slide is basically just an understanding of what the urban mixed use zoning actually will look like. And so the building types you'll see in this area is that traditional mid-rise podiums in mixed use zones. But as mentioned, we really want to try and accommodate that big box style stores in the area with the mixed use zones in addition to other services that are necessary to make a complete neighborhood. And we'll be seeing building heights of 60 to 85 feet with about eight stories at the maximum. And then an FAR of 4.5 to 6.5 with incentives giving you up to that 6.5. And so on the right, looking at this map, you can see outlined in red the entire urban mixed-use zone. However, as Becky already mentioned, we're going to focus on this study area shaded in yellow specifically because with Redmond Way as well as State Route 520, it is kind of on its own there and it's more of its own area in relation to Whole Foods and the other commercial areas south of Redmond Way. But also as you can faintly see with the building outlines, that is where the large big box stores are along with their accompanied parking lots. So that will be a very great place for urban infill. And so some of the existing conditions we studied, one of the first ones was transit. And so this area is served by three frequent bus routes, which means weekdays of 15 minutes or less. And so one of them is the Sound Transit Route 545 with service to Seattle. A second one is King County 250, which serves Kirkland and Redmond, or goes to Kirkland and Redmond. The third one is King County Metro 269, which goes through Sammamish to Issaquah, and now with the new King County Metro update, it goes along I-90 to the Mercer Islands light rail. And then there's also a fourth bus route that's not frequent, which is the King County 224, which goes weekdays due to fall. And it's important to know this because there is transit in the area. There is frequent bus routes. And as you can see on the map, the 269 route does connect to the Marymoor Village Light Rail Station if there are issues with pedestrian bike connectivity. And then this slide basically shows, on the left it has existing conditions from the Puget Sound Regional Council study in 2018. And these numbers were used as the Redmond 2050 baseline for the projections which are on the right side. And looking at the jobs, we can see that the numbers are the same and that's important because as previously mentioned, we don't want to lose any jobs. We don't want to lose any commercial square footage. There may be more jobs as more services and more mixed use stores come in the area, but we've really, really want to emphasize the importance of not losing any commercial square footage. And then as already mentioned, there will be projections of up to or around 4,000 more dwelling units in the area as well.

all right um and here we are continuing our existing conditions analysis with the complete neighborhoods analysis which was done in thank you 2023 um and you see a heat map there on the right um we selected this the highlighted parcel to represent the umu zone as a whole And this really just goes to show how separated it is from the downtown amenities. It shows within half a mile. So the purple there is the downtown amenities. And you can see that our zone is quite, well, it's not purple. Yeah, here we have just a layout of what we amenities are within half a mile of the zone. We have a good mix of retail and transit and restaurants. And here we just highlight the amenity gaps that we've noticed, which just really means more studies will have to be done to see which of these amenities we actually need in the area and what supports the vision for the UMU.

And so, moving on to the examples that we've researched, this first one is down in Los Angeles. It's a mixed-use Costco, which is under construction, and it will bring in 800 rental apartment units, which include 184 dedicated to low-income households. And the Costco itself will have about 400 new local jobs. And what we really wanted to emphasize with this project is that If Costco, which is probably one of the most well-known big box warehouse stores, if a large company like that can do it, then we can use this example to show the current property owners. And we can also use the example throughout the study to show that this has been done. We can do this. And so, yeah. And along with that, up in Vancouver, BC, there's a mixed-use Home Depot, which was completed in 2008, which is very cool because there's a Home Depot in the UMU zone. So this will be a great example to bring to the Home Depot there. This one in Vancouver has 92 live-work rental units. And then on the ground floor, there's a Home Depot. But in addition to that, there's a grocery store, there's salons, there's a cafe. And then on the rooftop, there's a park next to all the live work units. And this is just a great example of a creative way to use the area and making sure that the residents as well as visitors have plentiful amenities. and then more local over in Mount Lake Terrace. This is next to their new light rail station. It was completed in 2021 and it is 426 residential units as well as ground floor commercial split up in two different buildings. And what we really wanted to highlight here is that one of the commercial spaces is a sky zone trampoline park. And it's a really cool opportunity for entertainment because entertainment, especially like a trampoline park, is not usually found in mixed use TOD zones. And it would be a cool entertainment option that we could use an example for entertainment that we could see in the area.

TWO MORE HERE. ONE IS MOSAIC DISTRICT IN FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA. IT WAS COMPLETED IN 2012 AND HAS A 31 ACRE MIX USE DEVELOPMENT WITH APARTMENTS, TOWN HOMES, RETAIL, OFF-SPACE HOTELS WITH APPROXIMATELY 1100 RESIDENTIAL UNITS AND ESTIMATED 300 DEDICATED to low-income households. And it's just a great example of a large area that was transformed into a space that's vibrant and walkable. And it's like the vision that we have for our master plan neighborhood in the UMU. It also has a target, which we also have in our zone. And then also in Virginia, we have the Capital One Center. And in that we have the Perch, which was completed in 2021. And it's an entertainment hub that's just packed full of amenities, a performance hall, a rooftop park, which we see there, mini golf, sculpture gardens, grocery stores, hotels. And it's just also next to a light rail station. And it's, again, just a good example of a dense live, work, play setting environment that's just full of amenities for people. So here is just a small compilation of what we've learned from these examples. They all showcase an ability for creative mixed-use designs. And they all showcase the importance of beginning to plan early before implementation. Also including a range of stakeholders in the planning process, including parks and entertainment and services and transit so that everybody can access the space and enjoy it like we want them to.

And so going forward as we continue this study, there is important items that we want to consider. And so the first one is tribal connections. And so as mentioned earlier, it's in the Bear Creek site, but it's also next to the cemetery. which there are mentions of possible burials in the area. So we, it's important to know these things as we move forward because local tribes, it's highly likely that they'll have important items that want to be studied more. Last week we met with the Snoqualmie tribe and they already mentioned some things including LOOKING INTO GROUNDWATER PENETRATION AS WELL AS POSSIBLE HABITAT RESTORATION. SO WE REALLY JUST WANT TO CONSIDER THAT GOING FORWARD AND MAKE SURE THAT THAT'S STUDIED FURTHER. NEXT THERE'S AIR QUALITY. THIS ZONE IS NEXT TO STATE ROUTE 520 AS WELL AS REDMOND WAY AND OTHER BUSY ROADS. SO IN ADDITION TO NORMAL COMMUTER TRAFFIC THERE'S ALSO FREIGHT traffic, especially with the neighboring southeast Redmond industrial zoning. So that will be important to study further as we move forward. And then with those major roads, it will be important to consider connections across those for pedestrians and bicyclists and more. Just make sure that the area is actually connected to the rest of the city and especially to light rail stations like the Marymoor Light Rail Station, which is the closest light rail station to the zone.

Continuing in the things to consider, our critical aquifer recharge area lies right under the entire UMU area. And it's just going to be an important thing to consider as we think of our drinking water and environmental impacts with construction and such. Noise pollution in relation to the highway, which like the air quality as we're having more people come in, making sure the air is healthy and noise is not too loud. Competition between pedestrian and vehicle traffic is important because as we're, again, planning for more people to come into the space, considering their safety along with what's already there and trying to get the right balance for that. And then providing infrastructure and amenities is gonna take some significant planning to make sure we can have our complete community.

So again, this is a proposal for the next budget cycle. There's a lot of things that we have, we're hoping to get out of this study, including understanding the environmental impacts. It was part of Redmond 2050, so it was a part of the SEPA, but we just want to take another closer look, see if there's anything, any other mitigating measures that we want to do to help this transition through. but also to identify specific updates that need to happen to our code, updates to project lists for our transportation impact program, our capital improvement programs, so that we can actually get all of those things funded and trying to figure out how to make that work. Also working with other departments, we already started those conversations because we're going to need a level of service analysis to figure out, you know, what kind of park and where, and do we need new fire and police because of our level of service standards and just reevaluating that again at a really much more detailed level than what we were able to do in Redmond 2050. So just moving that forward another step. And again, continuing a lot of those conversations with the community about a complete community and the tribes is going to be super important. So that's our summary for today, I believe. There's a couple of other informational slides in your packet after the end, but I just want to say thank you to Sarah and Chris for all their hard work this summer. It's been kind of a really quick thing to do over a summer to get us ready for this. But they've helped with community conversations, department conversations with the Snoqualmie tribe and helping draft the charter. And so they've actually done a really good job for the summer. So I want to thank them for their work. This is their last week with us today. Their final day is on Friday. So we wanted to make sure they had a chance to come to you before they left us.

So thank you. All right, so thank you for this. I feel like people are going to have comments. We're welcome to maybe have one comment or question each, but because this is just an initial briefing, we're not going to go into huge detail. So if anyone has anything, Commissioner Van Nijmen.

So you already hit on one thing, so I won't use that as my comment, which is this, the pedestrian.

Within, I think, seems fine, pedestrian, but it's between. Mm-hmm. Getting elsewhere. That would be the issue.

But the one question I have is like how does that Home Depot in BC and how would a Costco Where they're receiving very large items at 3 in the morning How Do you deal with the noise?

Yeah, and that's actually going to be some of the conversations that we're going to have with them. And one of the trickier parts of Sarah's work this summer is trying to figure out who in those big box companies are the people that we need to connect with. We've already made a connection with Kohl's, for instance, which is great. But yeah, so we're gonna need to figure out the freight routes, the loading docks, the deliveries, all of that, what kind of screening and buffering can be applied. But one good thing is, as you saw, we did, find examples of where Target and Costco and Home Depot and even Lifetime Fitness, we found an example of them. They just moved into the Fred Meyers. So we have found where these companies have already moved into those models. And so they can bring their lessons learned and the things from those other projects and share them with us. And hopefully we'll be able to learn from them But it's also nice that we don't have to go argue, hey, do this for the first time. We could just say, hey, you did it over there. Can you do it over here too? So it's going to be a much easier conversation. So it's nice that we were able to find examples from a lot of those.

Yeah, that's great. Going online for a moment, Commissioner Parna.

I just wanted to thank Sarah and Chris for this. This is great work. I actually had a question for you all in terms of what did you find what do you see as the most significant challenge we are going to face based on all your research? What is the one thing that each of you would want to keep an eye on in terms of when we're talking development?

I would say the CARA, the Critical Aquifer Recharge Area. Because you can't really dig down. So where's parking going to go? That's been my question, but something to think about as they continue.

Yeah, that is a concern for us.

I would say pedestrian connectivity across Redmond Way. There are mitigation measures on the streets on either side of it, but You kind of have to go all the way around the zone to get to those. The Home Depot kind of abuts the entire border of Redmond Way. So it'll be interesting to see what fixes we can find to make sure it's more connected.

Thank you. Commissioner Coleman.

First things first, amazing work. It must have been a fascinating project, and hopefully you get some good feedback when you bring this elsewhere. My question I was curious about was with a lot of these, and it sort of goes a bit to, you've got Home Depot and Target, big, big companies who have an established place there that are making revenue on, and then we would go and ask them, hey, can you not do that and do it a different way? I'm wondering if you've seen any examples in all the research you did of a place where there was one of those larger, particularly Home Depot is a particularly tricky one because of all the wooden stuff like that, where they'd actually transitioned from one type of unit to another in the same place. It's different from building something new. I was just curious if you'd seen any of that and your thoughts on that.

I can't say that I've found anything where there's a very clear transition from a previous big box store to mixed use. But I think as part of the whole long range view of it, this is just the very beginning. And so as they go forward, this is an option for them.

Thank you.

I'm gonna jump in with one comment. Oh, and then I see Commissioner Gagne. So I loved this. It's great to see what you're working on. And I think this, you did a really nice job of bringing together a lot of the themes that we talked about in here. One thing that I actually would encourage, I did opposite reaction to Commissioner Van Nyman. I actually find it very difficult to walk in that area as a pedestrian within the space itself. I find that it really encourages parking in front of one store and then moving your car to the next store and then moving car to the next store because it's actually very dangerous to cross as a pedestrian across that big center road. So I loved what the city did with Overlake where before the construction really started, there was kind of a mapping out of interior roads. And I think this is another space where that might be considered because I don't think it's quite safe as is now.

Yeah, that's exactly what is planned for this, is that, Charette isn't right, the word, because it's like a two-year project, but yes, that is part of the master planning for the area is to try to figure out what those loops or routes would be. and acknowledging that the people-oriented things might need to be separated from the freight-oriented routes, right? And so there's going to be a lot of working to try. It's a relatively small area, all things considered, but there's huge parking lots out there, so we have some capacity to play with the space.

So that's great. Commissioner Gagne and then Vice Chair Whittier.

I had a follow-up question after your response to Adam's question. The spaces that you've looked at before where it's been successful with Home Depot and Costco, was it like ours where the retail is in place and then you'll build up? Or were the examples that you offered situations where the space was developed and from the very beginning, the residential and the retail were built at the same time?

I can't say for the Home Depot, but for the Costco, it was part of the development. The whole thing was a mixed-use Costco. So, yeah.

I think they're all a little bit different situations, but in most of these cases, the mixture was planned ahead of time, and the impetus behind some of those spaces was actually the big box retail. So like, for instance, Costco was the one that proposed in L.A. to add housing on top of them. They didn't actually have to deal with somebody coming to them. They actually went to the city and say, hey, can we do this? So that was a really interesting thing to see the corporation leading those conversations.

One last from Vice Chair Whittier.

I want to first say that I really love this presentation you've done. I especially like the examples which enables us to visualize how your thinking can come to life potentially here in Redmond. The question that I have is, have you considered an option whereby you're able to deliver on the housing units that you've referenced in this document, but also increase the jobs? And the reason why I ask this question is because we're already exceeding our capacity on housing within the city of Redmond.

as it aligns the GMA in 2050.

And I wonder as we start to convert that capacity into production, there is the potential of displacing some of these jobs and some of these businesses. And so really being able to understand the trade-offs in terms of how we could increase housing and jobs and retail preservation is something I'm curious to understand.

I'll take that one, yeah. So the actual allocation to this area was a part of Redmond 2050, but the actual development could look a little bit different. And we anticipate that that might be the case because we need to deal with like buffering against the freeway, right? So we might put into play or recommend no housing within X number of feet of the freeway. So that would be other uses, right? And so that number may change and grow, but we're not changing the allocations at this time. We won't change the allocations until the next periodic review. But as we start to look at the area and what we might want and how the mixture of uses plays out, we do anticipate that that number of actual jobs will increase. We just didn't allocate an increase to that area.

And the allocation is our legal requirement. Is that that we have to show there could be a path? Yes. Great. All right. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. And then our last item tonight is going to be our briefing on the update to the design standards with Odra Cardenas.

Thank you. Let me just share my screen real quick. Okay, so the design standards update for the cycle of 2025-2026 is part of a bigger effort that we've been doing to implement Redmond 2050. It is actually the third phase of this implementation and it started back in when we were doing all the community outreach during Redmond 2050. It is an effort done by long range planning. It is led by long range, but it is also supported by a lot of staff, like people from public works, sustainability, transportation, communications, development review, So it is basically an effort not just done by long range. It is also the edits are supported by a team of consultants, a multidisciplinary team, which includes an architecture firm called Mithun and makers, which are experts in editing codes. So this is the first touch with the Planning Commission. We are just bringing this as an informational session, a briefing, just so we are prepared for when we come to the adoption process, you already kind of know what we're talking about. So we are presenting today the purpose and scope of the project, what is our timeline, and what we have done up to now. And then we'll touch a little bit on our next steps. So as I was saying, this is basically the third phase that we're working on. So we started and the phase one was basically community outreach having, we were actually doing a really fun activities during Derby Days, like asking with pictures, do you like this or do you like that? So it's trying to do a little bit of fun architecture design outreach to see like, what does the community want? And then just a reminder, probably a bunch of you were here during the adoption of Redmond 2050. We did a little bit of code edits during phase two. The last one was in June of 2025. And there we did a very extensive restructure of our code of our 2158 section, which is our design standards. And we pulled a lot of design standards from all over the code and kind of consolidated it into one section for ease of use. We also adopted purpose statements and some green building standards. We had some pathways, specific pathways of design like mass timber, a small building alternative, and there was another, oh, inclusive design. Of course, a big chunk of that was inclusive design. So now in this section, we are continuing to implement Redmond 2050. We are actually trying to test out our code. So seeing what we adopted in phase two, how does it work? Are we seeing any gaps? or duplications. We have a lot of edits that we have to do because of our legislative requirements. Specifically, there's three bills that we need to comply with. And also trying to update a lot of our illustrations. Currently, we have illustrations for different areas. So if you go into our design standards, you see even photos so you can see, oh, this is like a 90s photo. So it is very, it is a mix and match right now. And now we're trying to unify everything. So we have a very clear code to interpret, to apply, and also to review. So what do we want to do with this 2025? Like what is the scope or the goals of this project of this phase three is of course implement our Redmond 2050 comprehensive plan priorities of sustainability, equity and inclusion and resiliency. We are transitioning to more urban and pedestrian friendly transit-oriented forms. So trying to leave those suburban codes that we still have in our written zoning code. We wanna test out how it is performing the way it is written right now. As I mentioned, updating our illustration and also complying with our legislative requirements. The scope of the edits, it is informed by different things. So the first one is we did a lot of robust community engagement during Redmond 2050. I was reading today, we did around 10,000 people were reached with all these events that we, We had during Redmond 2050, I think we have around 100 events that we attended. So a lot of those, we've got a lot of comments on design standards specifically. So how does the form or the design live right now in Redmond? We also are informing this scope by questions from our development community and also from our development review staff. So when there's like applications, sometimes they come and some, we have been invited to several of those and they, where they have specific questions on design standards and how to apply them. So that's, and also, or were they asking for specific deviations on the code? So alternative design compliance. So based on that, we're trying to see, okay, where do we have those gaps? Again, the scope, we have to comply with certain legislation. And then more edits are based on work that we already are doing, which is a comprehensive audit of our section on design standards, which is 2158. And also the testing out of the sections that pertain to building form specifically. So all the work is built out around six tasks. The code audit is already done. And right now we are working on these four, which is the testing, the edits, research and public engagement. And the final task would be updating all our illustrations based on the that we're currently testing out. So the testing right now is divided in two phases. Phase one is testing the code as it is right now to find those gaps and duplications or things that are not clear enough. And we have a second phase where based on the testing, we make the edits and then test out how these perform. We also started, we have our research component where we're trying to implement two more pathways into our code, and we also started the public engagement. So this is our timeline. Again, we're coming from the Redmond 2050 design standards update, which we completed last year in June. And we started like last year, having like a charter, choosing our consultant by the RFP, getting approval. And in January, we actually started doing the work with the consultant and with our internal team. We've completed the audit. We have developed a graphic prototype and started to do the auditing and the testing. And right now we are basically at the middle of the project where We've done the first phase of testing and we are doing like edits and the research part. We're planning to come back to planning commission with the final drafts on all the code and the illustrations around the first quarter of 2027 and looking to get the code adopted by the second quarter of 2027. And then we will pass the baton to the next phase, which is phase four, which will be more focused on inclusive design, placemaking, and cultural districts. So some of the highlights on our code audit is we found minor organizational adjustments where we have like duplicated code in several sections. Sometimes it's in the same 2158, sometimes it is outside of 2158. So trying to find all of those little gaps and duplications. We, the alternative design compliance, there's like some requirements that need to be adjusted because they don't work very well. We want to meet legislative requirements. So that's basically using that lens is how we found a lot of the issues in our code. And of course we found some process improvements that we need to take care of. And of course, all of the illustrations that we need to add that are new or update right now. So the next one is the code testing. Why are we testing a code? So it's basically to find where it is hard to implement if we're getting what we want from the code, or sometimes if there's conflicting sections of the code that do not work together. And the way we're doing the testing is using these 3D models where we actually test the building form. So those are the sections that we are testing right now. And then another thing that is really important to test out is do these design standards align with our development regulations, like our height, maximum height, and also with our construction methods. Let me see. So, The way we did our testing is we chose four sites in urban centers and also in our TOD areas. So trying to get a maximum yield in our buildings and trying to, of course, apply incentives that did not affect our building form. And the typologies we were testing were the standard typology, a mass timber building, a podium building, and a tower. So of course I was saying we just tested, we basically tested the building form standards, which include roof lines, courtyards, corner lots, weather protection, towers. So all of the ones that could be reflected in a 3D model, those were the ones that we were testing. And some of the highlights of results of this testing is that there is a minimum impact of the design standards into the yield, and that can be compensated using our alternative design compliance. Why are we talking about the yield? It's because our legislative compliance, we need to make sure that our design standards do not affect the yield on our buildings. So we also found stuff where there's like conflicts between standards, for example, maybe the courtyard does not work with the corner treatments, stuff like that. And then we also found some interesting results on the green construction methods sometimes and mass timber specifically does not work with the height that we have in our regulations. So we need to adjust that height. So those tall stories that you need to make a project in mass timber. to pencil out so they can get to that. So it was really a mixed bag on all the things that we found, but it's really interesting because we also are just testing out the design standards. We did not go into cost or going all the way to designing a whole building. So here we can go like really quick on specific sites. The first site was very interesting because it is a smaller site and we wanted to see how the design standards perform under constraint situations and it did not work. for the typology that we were testing out. It really gave us very, very low floor area ratio yields. So it was basically, that did not work for us. So on the phase two, we are redesigning this test to do like a small building alternative, which is, having just, we have in our code right now, having buildings that are smaller that do not need to do any modulation or step backs, but it's only up to a certain height, depending on the zone. The mass timber was also very interesting. As I was saying, it requires taller floor to floor heights because of the structure. So we have these huge beams, wood beams. So we need to take into account that those floors are higher. So to get to the 12th floor to pencil out the mass timber, then we did not have that. We did not allow those 150 feet, right? Another thing that kind of jumped out at our open, like the open space that they could use like the rooftops, that was on one of the things that to comply with the open space requirements. The corner treatments were also kind of difficult to implement because we have a curved parcel in here and we did not, the code right now does not specify what to do with a curved parcel. The FAR replacement, what we're talking about here is when you have a FAR, a corner treatment, you basically take like a Lego and take that corner out. And what we allow right now is taking that area and put it on top of the building. So you get a little bit higher and you get that basically back, the developer gets that area back. And... It was kind of interesting to see that the areas were really small, so it did not really translate into more units sometimes. It would translate like an amenity space. So sometimes the developers would not create these because it is really, it doesn't give you the return to have like more units. Let me go back. The next one was the podium where we have this concrete podium and then the structure on top is wood. And we tested this one out in Marymoor. And I think this one, the main thing that happened here is that some of our courtyard standards conflict a little bit between the open space requirement and what we want into the design. So here you can see how it changed from having the enclosed courtyard to having like an U shape. So it could comply with those regulations. And I think that was the bigger, the biggest issue with this site, this podium. Another thing that we were talking about is having more flexibility in the facade break. So when you have a certain distance and then you cut the plane of the building, those standards are kind of very deep, one would say. So maybe having a flexibility in having them different dimensions or having more flexible being in dimensions there. Let me see. And then the last one is the tower. And this was also very interesting to see because this is the only site that is not in the CARA. So they can go underground to do the parking. So this one was a little bit more ambitious and having much more yield, having a lot of units in here. And I think this one worked a little bit better than the others because they get, it wasn't restrained by the parking. I think one of the issues here is how they combine, how these standards combine with each other. And here we see there's the arcade that we were testing out and the corner treatments, sometimes they don't align perfectly. But I think this one was the most successful test of the four. And then other updates that we are currently doing is we are drafting edits based on all of these sections and the testing and the audit. And then we are preparing for the next phase of modeling. So once we have those drafts done, we will do a second pass of the testing just to refine more things that we found. We also have a research task underway. So this is to implement two pathways. One is the living regenerative building and the other one is the universal design. So these are pathways that if you go over the baseline of green building and you do an actual living building, then you get to not do certain design standards. And what we've done here is we've had meetings with experts that actually build these buildings and also trying to find where there could be some friction in our code to the implementation of these pathways. And finally, of course, the illustrations, we are trying to get a little bit ahead of this because it's gonna be massive, the illustration update. We've developed a graphic style and a prototype, and we've also checked with the communications that we are aligned with our design standards on communications. And then finally, we've started our community outreach. We opened Let's Connect in mid-August and we're receiving some comments in there. And then we're planning on having a developers workshop by the end of the year. And next steps, again, we will start our formal review in the first quarter of 2027, where we will bring final drafts. And that's it for now. We can open it up to questions and any feedback that the commission has.

All right. Thank you so much. We will start with Commissioner Van Netman.

So what is the actual testing mechanism? Are we talking about plugging something into software? Are we talking about people playing with Legos? What are we doing here?

So it's a little bit more technical, but we first go into the code and the typology and based on the parcel, we decide, okay, this is how we apply our zoning code first. So first the development and we create that box, right? On what can we put in here? Then based on that box, we carve out based on the design standards, like, okay, we need to have modulation every 30 feet. We need to, if we have, we need these, this much open space. So it's not an automatic input. You have to first read the zoning code, read the design standards and interpret them, and then go into a drafting. And we use Rhino, which is a 3D software, but you have to input like a person. It's not like an AI or whatever. I don't know if that answers your question.

So you're effectively developing a building and then testing it against your standards.

We are actually building the building based on the standards.

Yeah. And what does your building end up looking like is the output?

Yes, but not going all the way to design a whole building, but just looking at the building massing. So anything that is carving out of the space or requiring an inset or outset or those types of things. We're just looking at the bulk and massing of what could be built on that. And they're all just theoretical too. So some of these sites are underdeveloped. At least two of them are underdeveloped because Mass Timber site doesn't take full advantage of the max capacity of that because it's just a really big site. And then obviously the tower is underdeveloped too because we could go up to 30 stories on that and we just didn't bother. We just said only model up to a certain height, right? Okay. So they're just all representative, just trying to give us a, like the legislative requirement is don't have any design standards that make it to where you have less unit counts because of the design standard, right? And that was a big thing. It's like, well, how do you tell? We needed to try to figure out what that spatial impact of that code was. And so that's one of, not the only reason why the code testing is, but that's one of the things we were just trying to answer. Getting the answer to that was mostly green light was great. We're not even all the way through that process and we already have a lot of really positive impact.

It seems like there's an infinite number of combinations and you're only testing a few.

We are just, I mean, we're not designing the whole building. It's just how all these design standards work with each other. So if it's, and it changes depending on the size of the parcel, on the setbacks, and more you have to do, you have different types of streets where you have to, like, give some right away. So it is... stopping at the actual form and not going all the way to designing the whole building. Because, of course, I'm an architect, so I know this would be just a conceptual thing, and then designing the actual building takes many more iterations and more design.

One of the other things that we were trying to figure out too is if the code and the alternative design compliance options allowed enough flexibility that just within the way it's written that there's plenty of pathways forward that don't impact the unit count. And so we didn't need to test every single one and we were just trying to figure out that there is a pathway to move forward. And so that was also super critical. And there's a lot of options. We built in a lot of flexibility last year as like, you don't have to do a step back for the entire building frontage. There's a percentage you could do. So do we test 10%, 50% or a hundred percent? You know, we don't want to test everything. There's limited. So we just did a representative example, again, just trying to get a good take for what the overall impact of our design standards are. were.

Great. Commissioner Aparna.

This is fascinating. I'm kind of really hoping I could see and be part of this next year. I actually had a comment based on the last time we saw alternative design compliance standards come forward. So if we want to design for beyond yield, basically, it would be nice to know what each of those ADCs would accomplish in terms of our priorities as a city. So would it be universal design? Would it be sustainability? And also, is everything desirable everywhere, right? Like if we want yield, but we want it to be not cost prohibitive, Where do we go? What do those ADCs look like? So keeping in mind the idea of cost and the idea of what we're aspiring to do with that would be really nice. I don't know if that's making sense, but I often find that these things are in conflict with each other. I mean, our aspirations come at a cost sometimes. And that cost means that we are not going to get affordability. So for me, that dilemma starts right here when we're defining it. So can you please see that you keep that thought process is made transparent when it comes to the commission?

I think that there's some great examples of that. I mean, some of the things that Odra's worked on specifically for the last couple of years are the architecturally integrated art, right? And so we're now just helping to refine some of those things. Like we're looking at window transparency requirements. If you take out the place that has art as your baseline total space, it frees up some of that math, right? And so you have a little bit less to do. So she's actually done a really great job of trying to look through that and keep all of that in mind and trying to figure out where we can be flexible because building in that flexible actually makes people take those options because, hey, they make things easier over here if you do that way. And that's where we want them to be anyway. So great. Yeah. So a lot of that is happening. Oh, that's wonderful.

Sorry. That's wonderful. Another thing that we were hearing constantly during Redmond 2050 is that everything looks the same. So if you are in Redmond or in Bellevue or in Kirkland, all the buildings look the same. So we're trying to put that flexibility so we get something that is different and giving pathways to architects and designers to be more creative. And our alternative design compliance, if you fulfill the purpose of the design standard, then you can propose something different. and also other things that we are embedding already into the code and that the community wants and that we've heard constantly from city council and planning commission is for example, integrating green walls and having these green roofs. We are getting comments that yes, we are building more out with our mill housing, And how is that going to affect our tree canopy? Can we have more amenities and green roofs to kind of mitigate some of the, for example, the heat islands and stuff like that? So it is a balancing act to get all what we want into this section of the code. And also when you start working on code like this, you kind of take a little thread and then it kind of builds and it's a mess. So you are just, instead of a sweater, you have like a ball of yarn. yarn and now it's trying to rebuild it so it works better for what we want to get commissioner thank you

My question sort of goes back a little bit to the conversation we had in the past about looking at the wood for the trees. Because I think the design codes and the fact that we're trying to look at different types of designs and not make it all look like, you know, Samesville, USA, I think is great. The other conversation that we had as well was asking this question around, I'm trying to think of the right analogy. The only analogy I can think of is some pointillist painting like the Seurat, where you look up close, and it's actually sort of colour you want. But when you step away, you go, oh, I actually see the greater story here of what this picture's about. So as we think about building out across the city further... do we stop, what point do we stop to say, hey, yes, this fits the design scenarios that we've agreed, but you know what, it doesn't really fit with the way we want this part of the city to now look. I'm curious about how we both look at this design as appropriate in and of itself, but it doesn't fit into the environment now, given the rest of the building that's happened. How do we think ahead at that sort of helicopter level?

So you're talking about existing buildings?

I'm talking about future building as well, where we've got new different types of designs you can try, but you can end up with a bit of a dog's breakfast if it doesn't feel like it all fits together, even though it might actually fit the code, that the code's been adjusted.

So fitting into basically a Redmond building, that's what you're talking about?

It's sort of an aesthetic that we want to have for the city. You can't necessarily put your finger on it. we've put these 10 buildings together and now we go, they all looked individually like different than designs that you might expect to see, but in totality doesn't seem to fit together very well. Like how do we think about that mix versus individual development?

Okay, I got it. So during the last edit that we did of the design standards in 2025, we strengthened the context design. So trying to have buildings talk to each other more and talking about design and also trying to work together. For example, if you have a corner treatment that you are required to make a plaza, well, then what if, My neighbor also needs to do a plaza. Maybe we could do a bigger plaza. So those things are already in our code right now. And we're trying to, in the audit, we've found that sometimes they're not easy to interpret or apply because our code needs to be clear and objective. So that is one of the struggles of design to say, okay, what is context? So do you have like, you have to use two of the same colors or two of the same materials. So I think we are trying to build that context design but still fulfill our legislative requirements. And that's where we are kind of having that friction on not being super prescriptive, but legislatively we need to. So it is one of the struggles that, yes, we want everything to work together, but at the same time we need to have our standards that say specifically, what do we call context design, right?

All right.

One last comment. I'm trying so hard to keep this on our agenda for tonight. I'm going to build on what because this is a first look and we're going to have a lot of additional looks at this next year. One thing that I'd really like to say for the design standards in particular, because it's so different than everything else we work on, it would be very helpful for the commission, I think, to get a little bit of guidance about what sort of feedback is helpful. And I love that you had that we're on stage three in this, but just reminding us what decisions have already closed and then what we are actually concentrating on when this comes back in 2027, I think it's gonna be very helpful. All right, so that wraps us on design for tonight. Our final piece is staff and commissioner updates.

Yes, let me put my planning commission liaison hat on. So we will be meeting again on September 23rd, and we are gonna be starting the adoption process for the tree code, which I know the commission is very curious about this. We are also gonna have two docket items on the agenda, which is the repeal of the neighborhood connections map and the TFP projects. These two are related to transportation. And another update is that the final draft of the Housing and Human Services Action Plan will be presented at Council on September 22nd. But if you want to, if somebody wants to comment, public comment will be received at September 15 during the business meeting. And that's all.

Any Commissioner updates? No. Did you want to give a quick update on the interviews for the new commissioner, or is that just continuing and we'll get another update later?

We have received some applications, six applications, and we'll be reviewing them in the next few weeks.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

All right. With that, I look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Then we are adjourned.

Thank you.