Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. I'd like to call this September 3rd, 2026, the Planning Commission meeting to order. And we'll start with a roll call. John Bachman. Here. Syed Safavian. Here. Mazi Ponwala. Present. Hesham Al-Khawad? Here. Mike Bresco, I'm here. Two of our members who we expected to be here haven't yet, so Suda and Ajay, so hopefully they'll be able to show up in a little bit. But in the interest of time, we'd like to get started. First, we'd like to check the agenda. Are there any changes to this evening's agenda? Okay, seeing none, consider the agenda approved by common consent. And the minutes from our July 23rd meeting, our last meeting, July 23rd, any modifications to the minutes? Seeing none, I'll approve those minutes. All right, so now we have non-agenda public comments, so three minutes. And as a reminder, tonight's agenda is really old business, the housing capacity study or strategy. So if it's something besides housing capacity strategy, three minute non-agenda. Anybody? Okay, Paul Stickney.

Hello Planning Commissioners, Paul Stickney, Sammamish. I sent in a comment today that I sent to City Council. If you watched the Council's meeting, you can hear the first part of my comment and lots of interesting members of the public came regarding that application that's not complete yet for this urban oasis. The room was filled. You may want to watch that. A lot of good things were said. my email today i use the word uh juxtaposed and to me that means compare contrasting effects so i'll just say that and you can look at at at the first email i sent i didn't have time to finish what i wanted to say and comment one at city council so i'm going to pick up what where I left off. I've been talking about adding 5,000 market rate houses to the comp plan with roughly a quarter of the effect of students in schools. The larger portion of those, not the affordable part, but the market rate part, would be what I call type B housing, which is prices from $500 to $1.5 million. here are three types of housing that i've identified after a ton of research for a year and looking at over three to four hundred comps in in sammamish isaac and bellevue the first is 3q it's condominiums that are quiet Quality and quaint for ten foot ceilings. You don't hear a neighbor lots of square footage big parking spots the next is ESW townhomes townhomes with a mini elevator town homes with storage and town homes that are wide. They're making many of these too narrow and they're not house-like. Now, I have a lot more on each of these, but this is what came out of all that research. And these would be sized from 1,000 to 2,500 square feet at a wide array of price. and the last is ms2y cottages that stands for modestly scaled and by the way i had said that before i saw the urban oasis that was not modestly scaled so there's a combination there and the two is a two-car garage The Y is a yard. A couple cottage projects in Kirkland. I heard from two different listing agents that the largest mistake they made was only doing single car garages and making them too small from 1,000 to 1,500 feet. And those go appropriately on our one land. So in... Centers are the condos and townhomes and on our one modestly scaled cottages and that's what I wanted to add But I didn't have time on Tuesday Thank You Paul and you see Mary starting to head over Good evening Planning Commission Mary Wictor Sammamish for 25 years I

So I'm just going to show stuff that you guys already have copies of that you've seen before. It is not from me. I bring it forward. This is from Urban 3. They do things nationwide and actually worldwide to take what the cost is for a city and what the units are and show that basically when you have single-family homes, it doesn't fiscally, financially pay for itself. And when you have like townhomes or the Sky Apartments where they're multiplex units or even just a hamburger joint, you end up making more in city tax. So just to remind you, when we'd gone through these before, so the Highcroft development, which is right up from the cottages, they... only make about 6,800 municipal tax per year, where the municipal tax per, excuse me, municipal tax per acre, the municipal tax per acre for the townhomes is 18,900, so almost three times as much. The municipal tax per acre is about $43,000, so it's seven times as much. So when you densify, you get more funds. It doesn't cost as much. The roads for this one, Syed came over to me and he goes, Mary, it only says 176 feet. And I said, that's because you drive down the road, you go into the building, and there's a parking garage incorporated inside. So there aren't a lot of roads. There's less roads, less pipes, less cost, more people. And the reason that you need this in town center if everybody's together and you have commercial people will shop and they will go and your transit will work and you'll have a lot less car trips. So I think it's really important to look at the types of houses and just to do rough numbers if Town Center is capped at 2,000 and you build 1,800 or 2,000 single family homes in it, it will be like building 8,000 homes because people will have multiple cars, they'll have multiple family members. So it's not the number that you're putting into town center or the other centers, it's what type of housing. So if 2,000 single family is like four times as much for schools and transportation, according to many records Paul's presented and actual traffic studies have been done over the years. It's like having 8,000. So 2,000 is 8,000. No one wants 8,000 homes. We don't want the big single family to build all over the only town center that we'll have, which will be still pretty small. And then if you take and build 3,600, of the units that Paul's talking about, they have 1 fourth the impact. So 3,600 divided by 4 is like 900, right? So it doesn't matter the number of houses. It matters the type and what you can do with them. And I think that's so important. And then just because people are having trouble reading this, I kind of blew it up. And then I remind you that one acre is like a football field. Go stand at East Lake High School, take off the end zones, and that's an acre. Thanks.

Thank you, Mary. Evan, anybody online? Yes, we have one preregistered online commenter. I'm promoting them now. Feel free to begin whenever you're ready, Peter.

Yeah, I'm just trying to get my video to work here. There we go.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Peter Brennan, Vice President of Land Development and Innovation Realty Partners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight and the time you dedicate to serving our community. Our regulations need to match the policies you've already adopted. The comprehensive plan, town center plan, development code, public work standards, and infrastructure plans should all be working together towards the same vision. Currently, these documents are often at odds with each other. As an example, if the goal was to simply build the town center exactly like the site plan as represented in the town center plan, it would not be code compliant. It would require departures and deviations from day one. When these documents are not coordinated, the applicant does not have the ability to implement the vision in the enabling documents, creates unnecessary review cycles, subjective interpretation, and ultimately an inferior design. The city therefore needs to support the use of deviations and departures because the documents are not in sync. This is especially important in the town center. Good code and standards support good planning. Good planning sets the vision. Coordinated regulations help turn that vision into quality design that balances community needs, site conditions, and the public good. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Evan, anybody else? Okay.

So that'll close our non-agenda public comments. And we'll move into old business. So the housing capacity strategy.

And Evan, I think you're going to be switching hats.

Yep. As he moves over, go for it.

All right, here we go. Good evening, Planning Commission. For the record, Evan Fisher, Senior Management Analyst with the Community Development. And tonight, we're going to continue the conversation about adjusting the citywide capacity that we started at the end of July. So as a reminder, the city is required to demonstrate that we have adequate planned and zoned housing capacity to meet both our growth target and our housing allocation. And as you remember, the comp plan that we certified at the end of 2024 demonstrated an approach for meeting those requirements. And one of the things it hinged on was a certain amount of planned capacity, future capacity in the town center sub area. And again, just this is to help set a backdrop to the whole presentation that what we're trying to make sure we achieve is that we can demonstrate that we have this planned in its own capacity for the housing types we need. And again, as a reminder, the city's affordable housing allocation is the chart on the left. We're very familiar with this one. And what it's telling us is that we need to demonstrate we have capacity for twenty one hundred units of affordable housing across different income ranges. And the majority of the income ranges we need to show the housing units we need to show we have capacity for are in those extremely low income ranges. So the zero to 30 percent of area median median income And on the right, you see a chart from the comprehensive plan that shows Washington State Department of Commerce guidance saying that to meet or to be able to demonstrate you have capacity, you need to show that you have the ability to accommodate low and mid-rise building typologies. Currently the comp plan shows that we do have that planned capacity in a couple of different locations. It would be in the city centers, which you can see in green. We have four, Town Center, Inglewood, Pine Lake, and Klahani. And then also we've been able to demonstrate capacity through our bonus parcels programs on those public or faith based on parcels. And those are the yellow dots you can see on the map. And really what we're talking about tonight is the comp plan envisions the town center really taking a big share of that capacity for low and mid-rise housing. We know now through a change in policy direction that we don't anticipate the town center to develop to that level of intensity. So we need to figure out how we're going to redistribute that housing capacity to different parts of the city to maintain our compliance with state law. This framework helps to spell out the problem and the approach and what we're trying to accomplish. Again, capacity is concentrated. We intentionally put in the comp planning process most of our capacity in the town center because it had yet to develop. And there's a reasonable amount of developable acreage in the town center. You know, the community raised concerns. during our town center planning process about the scale of intensity and too much of it going in one location the council's directed us to you know reassess the distribution of that capacity across the city's multiple centers we're trying to strike a good balance here about an effective way to show that we're meeting our state requirements while also hearing the community's needs and the desired outcome is to create a feasible and acceptable you know distribution of that capacity across the city centers and that will require us to update the sub the town center sub area plan our zoning controls the development regulations and some adjustments to the comprehensive plan So on July 23rd, the commission heard a presentation we had a discussion about this capacity issue and kind of about the town center's role in accommodating capacity the feedback we heard from you that night is uh summarized on screen and it was really the town center should you know meet minimum minimum middle housing requirements we should comply with our state law requirements but really we should try to stick to you know the the anticipated number of housing units around 2000 or what was planned for initially with the town center plan And that would result in us adjusting the role the town center plays in the city's overall housing strategy. And through the work, we want to make sure we're complying with the other state law changes and we would simplify the town center planning code to make it more effective and easier to implement and clarify its intent. that would result in us reallocating or redistributing housing capacity to different centers in the city and as part of that work we'd analyze the impacts of that shifted capacity and it would result in again comprehensive plan amendments zoning control changes and ultimately you know confirmation that we are able to demonstrate our compliance with state law So we wanted to present some food for thought and a discussion item for the commission tonight. So at the top is the feedback we heard from you and kind of the proposed direction. An alternative that we wanted to present that staff we think makes some sense is what we're calling standardizing an approach to the centers. And what this would do is we would adjust the zoning in all of the centers, all of the city's four centers to create a uniform highest density. So for example, we, you know, say R24 would be the highest density allowed in all four of the zones, whereas the top approach would result in a lower maximum density in the town center than in the other centers. So it would be kind of a uniform, creating a uniform approach for the centers across the city. We'd also apply an affordable housing overlay. This is another tool we could use. It would function much like the bonus parcel overlay, but it would be a mechanism for us to demonstrate capacity. And we estimate that if we took this approach, we could probably it would result in a capacity of the town center around 2,200 units and lessen the distribution of the capacity to the other centers. And then we'd also like to include the option of evaluating commercial space in the town center, adjusting the commercial space allowances to create more flexibility for applicants. we see this project as one project but ultimately resulting in two work plan items the first would be updating the the town center sub area plan and the town center code and regulations and the second item would be driven by what is decided to do in the first item and that would be limited updates to the comp plan and other zoning changes primarily to the community business office and possibly neighborhood business zones and Yeah, they're driven a little bit by each other in the amount of work. We see these functioning concurrently, a slight delay in item two as we figure out what the scope is from item one, but we're shooting to be able to wrap this work up in early summer of 2027, and we think we can get there. And our public engagement plan for this work is, you know, we would use our built in standard tools of our planning commission settings, our city council meetings or public forums. We also use utilize the project email list that we had with the town center project to let people know that this work is going on and that how Excuse me, let them know that they can follow along through the process. We'll have to do public notice boards and mailings as part of our analysis and We'll also develop a project website that is specific to this housing allocation strategy more of a citywide look rather than just a specific town center project site And we'll also be able to use feedback we heard as part of the 2425 Town Center plan update work that was paused. But there are also some optional enhancements, and we'd be curious for your input on this. You know, using tools like JotForm or other online tools to collect feedback, or possibly, you know, considering additional public meetings or open houses with the understanding that if we were to do these, it would add time and budget and resources. So a little, just something to note when thinking through those options. So the questions we have for you tonight are, what feedback do you have, particularly regarding the alternative that we presented and any public engagement efforts? Did we capture the feedback you provided on July 23 accurately? Is there other useful information that you think we should include in our presentations that could help move this issue forward and help the commission and council make informed decisions?

is there anything else you think the council should consider or know about this topic okay thank you um what i'd like is uh just to go around once starting with john and syed and mazian with any questions or responses you have to the questions that evans presented and then we'll open up so john would you like to start please sure um

I'm gonna do this so that we really focus our conversation on the questions at hand. So I move that we adopt the alternative balance center's approach as presented by staff.

Second.

Let me clarify with you. So you're looking for direction, not necessarily decisions today, right?

I don't think we're taking any formal action, but we'll be taking the feedback. And if the feedback's formalized through motions, that's fine, but we'll take the feedback we heard tonight. We're meeting with the council in a couple of weeks to fill them in on what we've heard from you guys. But we haven't planned this as a formal action meeting. We haven't noticed it as a public hearing. So just-

Would you like to modify your comments then, John?

I'll withdraw my motion and start with just straightforward. My position is the alternative. And I don't really have any questions because we beat this horse into the ground a couple times. And it's the approach that most closely aligns with what we were visioning in the comp plan. And a big concern of mine is kicking the can down the road too far to the other commercial centers. Subarea plans are expensive and time consuming and the outcomes are very uncertain. If we do not do something in the town center, according to what we've heard from staff, we're going to end up with town homes because the current zoning just does not work. So I think core key question for us tonight to focus our conversation on is where are we going to go with the zoning in town center? Then the other pieces can fall into place. That's all I have to say.

Thanks, John. Ced?

Before getting to my comments, I want to ask a question, a clarification from John. When you said that you wanted, you proposed initially, suggested that making a motion, town center. Town center and what kind of housing, number of dwelling units? Because there are so many numbers, 2,000, 2,500, and even 5,000.

So maybe David, yeah. So there's a number up there, 2,200.

Right now, there are two. One is at 1900 on the top, and then the 2200.

I was suggesting the second alternative to maximize the potential of the town center because we don't know what might or might not happen in the other commercial centers after going through lengthy sub area. And it has the greatest potential in short term to help the city's budget, meet the state requirements, and follow what we visioned in the comprehensive plan.

So I just want to, John, just to reiterate, understand what you're saying here. The second plan that you're pointing to is saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, Evan, is capacity for approximately 2,200 units is across all the centers, not just town center. Is that correct, or is that number for town center? That's for the town center.

Yeah, but that includes the built-in pipeline units that we talked about at the last meeting. So the remaining capacity plus built-in pipeline would equal approximately, I don't want anybody to get too married to the numbers, but approximately 2,200 units.

Okay, so 2,200 units in town center and X number of units at the other places. Sorry, thank you.

So just to clarify, you're talking about 200 over the originally approved 2,000, that's it, right?

Somewhere in that range. We want to be clear that we have not done a final calculation, so this is an estimate.

So where is that 1,900 coming from?

1,900 comes from the units delivered and built today, plus the pipeline units that are under construction and in the process of being delivered, plus the remaining buildable land that is multiplied out by the allocated density per zone, per the land available, right? Minimum, oh, excuse me, minimum middle housing, right. So again, I'll restate that. That's the units delivered, already delivered and occupied, the units that are in the pipeline in process of being delivered, plus the units that would be generated from the remaining buildable land that is set to the minimum middle housing densities, which we believe would be somewhere in the range of R-12 or R-18.

So the first thing that I thought that kind of caught my attention, Evan, you're using the word capacity. I don't think that we were talking about a total capacity of the housing units that you can actually build no matter what the regulation is. We had that discussion a long time ago, and I believe that you reminded me that the capacity, either you or David, that the capacity of the town center is substantially more we're not going to go all the way and build into the capacity but then still in here we're using the word capacities and that is something that probably should be clarified so it is the capacity the the issue with the town center

One of the issues with the town center code is that in order to calculate density there are multiple ways to get to a capacity. This capacity is calculated using the minimalist approach to calculating density, which is simply taking the the acreage that's buildable and multiplying that by the R factor which is the allocated R factor without consideration of addition of any bonus units or TDR units right based on the current zoning based on a proposed minimal proposed minimal middle housing zoning which some of the parts some of the areas are r12 and some of the areas are r18 and

Thank you.

Go ahead. Hopefully that helps explain that. It's complicated.

I have more questions, but let's go around.

Yeah, I have a lot of questions. I'll go again in detail later, but I just had one question here on these numbers that you have. These are just market price units, or these are market price plus affordable units, or there's a separate number, or is it a percentage of that?

It would be market built and it would require 10% affordable and 80% AMI. That's currently what the regulations say.

So in the plan one, it would be 1,900 units would be 190 units would be affordable and the remaining 18, 17, whatever would be. And same thing will apply to 2,000 plus 200 units would be affordable.

That's correct. unless we included some other incentive to build deeper affordable units. However, that is not something we're planning to do at this point. Minimum is 10%, basically. That's correct.

I have other questions. I'll come back later. Go ahead.

I have a comment and a question. The comment is... It goes back to the documents that we received. It says somewhere that the Planning Commission asked you to evaluate approaches to streamline and reduce cost. And then it goes into limited scope traffic studies and environmental reviews. I'm not sure if we asked for limited scope. The question I have is, Again, I don't want to get into density and capacity. I prefer to use a number. And I'm just going to throw a number. So let's say the target is to allow the city to have more 4,000 units. Instead of putting these 4,000 units in the town center, we're now saying the community asked that we limit it to give or take the 2,000 and spread the other 2,000 elsewhere. What's the plan for spreading them? How are we going to spread them between these different areas, sub areas? Are we going to say, Klahani, you are half the size and Pine Lake you are one third the size and we just look at the available buildable areas and we allocate the capacity accordingly. I'm not sure if that will work because then it goes to what kind of houses are you building. If I'm building apartments, I can allocate more numbers. If I'm building single-family homes, it's going to be fewer. I heard that one of the recommended approaches is the R24 across the board. I'm not sure if that will work. because of the existing conditions. We always need to keep in mind the people that they live there. We're not gonna go and just put R24 next to R1. We have to factor in how the adjacent houses, so we don't get into an issue similar what we got into two years ago here with the 13 parcels that we wanted to add more capacity next to them. So I'll just caution us from just going R24 across the board.

I'll make a couple of comments and then we'll open it up. So if you could share the two work streams, the project with the work streams, and about feedback. So update the town center sub area plan development code. So that's clear. We do not comply with state law right now. So that's a work plan to fix non-compliance, right? I see nods, yes. Partly yeah, and then the second part which I'm not sure and this is part of the feedback is clear to me Because it talks about Existing conference plan a little bit update There's there's a second call a problem to solve which is where does the affordable housing go? I? And with the desire by the community to not exceed about 2,000 units, it's going to go somewhere else. And that's what the other areas. So in terms of feedback, the way the presentation is, it confuses me a bit because I can understand we've got to fix the noncompliance part. And I can understand that we've got to do something about affordable housing and the capacity of the city to meet affordable housing allocations. I can't tell from the presentation what work is going to happen to make it available or to demonstrate the capacity to commerce, I guess. uh and not necessarily saying oh this is exactly where it will go because that's going to depend on you know development but the capacity has to do with having the zoning available and so forth and it was unclear and maybe it's just me right or you could just elaborate and explain how that

like we'll work out where that fits in the work plan if that was clear yeah i think so this graphic's trying to get at that a little bit and you're right it is a little confusing because there's two buckets of work you're right there's the state law compliance bucket and there's a lot of outside of the the housing capacity state law requirements there's a lot of other adjustments state law requirement adjustments we need to make like parking permitting design standards that stuff is that item one in this the work plan that's shown here the timelines it would be this is where the structuring does get confusing both of these item one and item two will happen concurrently and most likely how it will come to you is item one and item two will will be together on the same meeting night and the uh so while we're in the code up you know to making the zoning changes to the cb office neighborhood business zones will also be in the code fixing the parking requirements we'll be making the necessary changes to the town center code we'll have opened it up and we'll make all of the changes at once as part of item two They will run concurrently, but I see what you're saying that this is a little confusing.

Is there like an item three that says, here's how we're going to demonstrate the capacity to meet our allocation requirements?

That is accounted for in, if you go back to the two work plan items slide, that is accounted for in the limited update to the comprehensive plan. So Commerce looks to your comprehensive plan to see where you are identifying that low-rise and mid-rise building capacity to go and what your calculation is. They also then look to your development regulations to see that it is allowed by right. So that is where they would look. That's how we demonstrate that. There is not a separate document or report that gets transmitted to Commerce. It is really that they are auditing cities and they are looking at cities' documents and they're determining whether they feel we're compliant or not.

And I'll add to that quickly. It could be included. It should be included. It's just not called out here in the the public hearing portion 60 days before we have a public hearing on any code changes We submit those changes to commerce for their review for consistency with state law That's part of that portion where they'll do the final check and flag anything before we go through the public hearing process That helped I appreciate that.

Thank you it's still And it could be just me, but I'm thinking about yes, for feedback for what will get presented to council and what other people will be seeing. And if this confuses me, it may confuse others. And it's still confusing me. So it feels like there needs to be something that is explicit, can't be missed about the affordable housing capacity.

and how that's going to be figured out.

And I get it that it's wrapped up with the code changes and zoning, you know, all those kinds of things. But it feels like demonstrating that we have that capacity in a way that people can kind of separate that in their mind and say, Yep, I get that. And I have a sense of the impact that that's going to have on the city and transportation, all of those things might be helpful.

yeah and that makes sense and i think that's part of the scoping we're talking about in item one because really what you determine what we desire to have happen in the level of intensity we choose to do with the town center will drive the amount of capacity we need to shift the town center currently plans for about 1100 units of housing in the town center based on the the zoning changes we thought we were going to make affordable exact thanks paul um so if we do the approach where we we do the standardization of capacity or density across the centers and you know something like r24 then we know we'd have you know i'm doing some spitballing math but say 600 units now of capacity left in the town center and the rest would need to get shifted to the other centers and then that redistribution would be part of the review process we go through with you but

makes a ton of sense yeah it's hidden and sure it's really so yeah and that's why we that's our coded little asterisks there of selected scope of work will drive what happens in number two you're you're right it's confusing we'll work on trying to clarify this let's open up i don't know if jonathan said others if you have other feedback and you know responding to the questions that the staff has asked us so

Just sort of technical process question. I understand updating the comp plan one way or the other. Will we have to concurrently run the subarea studies as well and have that all wrapped up? Or is doing the work in the comp plan enough to say that we're going to do the subarea plans in the future?

It should be enough. All we intend to do with the other centers right now is just adjust the zoning to make sure we can demonstrate capacity. Sub area planning will be a future down the road item.

So following up with that comment, Evan, how can you look at the spreading the capacity or spreading the housing need, affordable housing needs to the sub area, to the other areas without doing the sub area planning? How can you do that?

The capacity distribution is all part of the land analysis process that we go through with the county. This is a process that started well before the comp plan cycle, and it looks at essentially how much buildable or redevelopable acreage the city has including in those centers so what we'll essentially be doing is a math exercise of all right we know we now need to shift x number of housing units from the town center to these other developable acres in the center in the other centers so what density factor what r factor do we need to allow in those other developable acres to meet our requirements So you don't need to go through sub-area planning is a different process. Sub-area planning would be essentially determining how you want those other centers to look and feel through a development process.

So we met with Puget Sound Regional Council staff, those that certify our comp plan, and we discussed with them that we need to make these changes. And what would the approach be? Would we need to do sub-area plans? How could we do that? What is the best practice for this? Their feedback was the best practice absolutely is to do sub-area plans. But given budget, those are very expensive and they take a lot of time. in absent the opportunity to do sub area plans, you can amend the existing zoning controls to change the density factors for residential in the office and community business zones, possibly the neighborhood business zones. and that then would be factored back into recalculating your capacity in the comprehensive plan we would update the comprehensive plan and then file that back with puget sound regional council and they would accept that so that that was one of the strategies we talked about with them and they identified that yeah that is something that is viable you don't have have to do subarea plans for Inglewood, Pine Lake, and Kalahani. You can instead take the existing zoning tables in the development regulations, adjust the zoning controls, turn the knobs, move the levers, and that would then result in an added capacity in those areas for residential in the form of low rise and mid rise buildings. we would adjust those controls exactly as we need to adjust them to most closely calculate the capacity that we need in those areas, not go too far. And that would then result in that added capacity for low rise and mid rise. Again, it's important to note that we are not required to build the low rise and mid rise. We have to demonstrate the capacity for it.

I have brought this issue a number of times, and I hope that I have the support of the rest of my fellow commissioners, is that recognizing the direct relationship between the land use and transportation. So how can we talk about the capacity and housing allocation, where the number of units should be, without looking back and say, do we have the infrastructure for any of those options, regardless where those additional housing is going to be, either in the town center or the other sub-areas or the other areas? We haven't talked about the infrastructure deficiencies. We haven't talked about it. Do we have a strategy and a policy that what is the implication of all this as far as the commercial side of the town center or the other sub areas? Do we have some strategy? What is our strategy as far as the town center in respect to the commercial?

It's up for discussion. That's what we're here to collect feedback on. So what I'm hearing from you is that that would be an important consideration.

I think that it should be. Because again, depending on how much of, what is our strategy? What are we gonna see town center is gonna be from the commercial side? Is it gonna be a neighborhood center? Is it gonna be something a little bit bigger than the Safeway or QFC side? Are we talking about a center that is gonna serve the city and even beyond to support the commercial needs of the adjacent community? neighborhoods outside the city so we haven't talked about the commercial side i think i think you've asked the exact question there that staff have been asking for years we have been neglecting it and probably the most important tell us tell us what you want there The infrastructure is probably number one in my mind because we have to look at and make sure that wherever this housing is going to be, no matter if it is affordable housing or R1 or whatever, whatever changes that we're making as far as the land use, we have to look at the implication of it as far as the infrastructure availability. And for clarification, when I say the infrastructure, I'm not necessarily talking about transportation. I'm talking about anything, utilities and all the things. I know that park-wise we're in good shape, but... Could you go back to the options slide?

The good news is, is that if you simply go with the minimal middle housing approach in Town Center, it's less than the 2,000 units that was studied as part of the EIS for the Town Center, and there's no more environmental review done. It is under the 2,000 units that was originally anticipated. So there is no further study needed.

And do we have the confidence that we have infrastructure to go to the 2,000?

You could go there today. It was already studied. And that's a whole other question of if you as an individual are saying we should restudy all of that all over again when it was already studied, I would be looking to the city council to see if they want to fund that and if we want to take the time to do that.

And this is what seems to be the issue that has been in the mind of all the citizens, that they come clearly and say that we have some problems with the way that the traffic study analysis showed that the delay of adding 2,000 or 4,000 is going to be four seconds per vehicle, when every day they observe so much of congestion on the roadway that serves the town centre.

In my understanding is the city may be starting some form of a public works committee or something that would be the appropriate place to talk about that. Evan and I are not traffic engineers and I've said that before.

I bring it up because I don't think that it would be appropriate to talk about that. I'm not suggesting don't proceed with that. I'm saying that we have to keep that in mind that we have to have the infrastructure to support the changes in housing. or I shouldn't say change, an increase in housing.

One thing I would just point out is that the comprehensive plan did a lot of that work. The comprehensive plan was certified for planning for 2,100 units of new housing across the city and it looked at utilities and roads and the TMP. So a lot of that work has been done and there is a plan for infrastructure to support that growth. There might be some noodling depending on where the growth happens but

the comp plan has accounted for that work so sorry just just to make the point i think what said is trying to say and i haven't read it here is that yes we're not arguing the fact that it was done the question at least from the citizens in sammamish is the question of trust whether that was done correctly and those numbers can be trusted we're not saying it was not done you It was done. But as I said, the four second, whatever number came up, people say, oh, you say four second, but we are sitting in traffic for minutes and hours here. Not hours, but at least minutes. That's a question of trust. So that's where I think, Syed, you're going, right?

That was a focal conversation during the election. Yes. Number one issue.

The whole council changed basically on that point. Yeah.

And I think what we're dealing with here is a product of the community's input. We're talking about a much different version of the town center than before the election. I mean, that feedback came because we were talking about 4,000 units in the town center.

Now we're talking about- No, even with the 2,000. Even with the 2,000, there was concerns.

I'm just saying the point of tonight's, I'm trying to get us back a little bit to the point of tonight's conversation of talking about a much pared down town center, a different approach to the town center that considers much less intense growth and distributing what we have to to the other centers and how we want to handle that.

Yeah. And so what I would suggest, because you asked for feedback for the presentation and how to prepare for council, is what Syed brought up, and we've talked, you know, has been a hot button issue. So somewhere maybe in the presentation or in the comments that you're making should touch on some of the infrastructure that, you know, it's covered in the comprehensive plan or we've done studies or whatever, just anticipating the questions that would come up and addressing them ahead of time in the presentation. That's good feedback. Yep.

I also think that David actually kind of brought it up, too, is that we don't really talk that much about the commercial side of it. First of all, I ask that question, do we have any strategy as far as the commercial use of the town center?

Well, I think that's part of what we're asking the commission for feedback on tonight is would you like us to reevaluate the commercial how commercial is considered anything about it i don't know you guys you've heard about it sure one i think that's that's a good conversation for you to have do you want to talk more about commercial space because right now commercial space is capped there's an arbitrary cap and how much commercial space can be developed in the town center we're proposing let's analyze that and potentially remove the cap and instead create different controls for how much how commercial would be built and then let the market drive between the commercial and residential And I would say this is a great that's a great question to pose to your fellow commissioners so we can help give your feedback to the council.

And also the other thing that again we have heard from particularly from Mr. Stickney a number of times why we don't do any market analysis. Let's see what the market analysis says as far as what kind of housing do we need not only in a town center but in other areas in the city.

And that's good feedback. We've addressed that several times with the council. We don't build the housing. The market today may not be the market tomorrow. We do not see any real benefit in doing a market analysis for housing because the market is going to build what the market is going to build. And if the market's not there to build it, they won't build it. I don't see the benefit.

You don't see any benefit. I do not see any benefit in doing that. But do you see the benefit of looking at the commercial side and talk about a strategy, talk about the plan and the right balance between the commercial and residential in the town?

That is an important conversation. But as to the market demand for different types of housing currently today, we're already seeing it change since we started talking about the town center a couple of years ago. The economy's changed. What people are interested in has changed. It's always evolving. So doing a study today for a plan that will be put in place for 10 years, I don't see the benefit to that. The other thing that I want to highlight here, and I really appreciate all the feedback, especially about the infrastructure and studying these things, is that if we, and I'm saying this in part to benefit our city manager, because we want to make sure that we are properly budgeting in terms of time and resources to get this work done. And the bigger this project gets, when we start studying a housing number that was already studied and is already in effect today in the town center, 2,000 units, and if we're restudying that all over again, that is a huge cost to the city. I think we also have a council member in the room. And as we're looking at budget constraints and we're starting to look at now studying things that have already been studied that are already in effect today that is a big burden on the city and especially on you know as we try to balance our budgets and we've heard recently from council members that we don't want to just keep doing planning and doing studies we want to actually put stuff into place and move on okay since these sub areas

going to happen sometime in the future maybe five maybe ten years can we somehow add to our levers and dials the option for the city to study and make adjustments at the time of building these sub areas to accommodate the city's needs let's say the builders the developers between now and the next five years they build everything as town homes. And we do studies and we find out that no, we don't need town homes anymore. We need apartments. Is there a way we can just include it in our plans that at some point before these sub areas are built, we can go back and make adjustments? Because again, we want what's in the best interest of the community. which sometimes might be not what's in the best interest of the developer, but we are here to serve the community. We are not here to serve the developer. And if the developer chooses to walk away, that's their call.

Also the interest of the state, right? So there's the three interests, the interest of the developer, the community, and the state.

The state is working in the interest of the community.

At times.

No, no, no, not at times. These are public representatives of the communities. I'm not going to say at times, all the times.

So the challenge is we have to show by right zoned capacity for the housing allocation number of low-rise and mid-rise building typologies. We can't defer that to a later date to put it into effect as buy-right zoning. So this is really the predicament is that we have to show where in the city that capacity exists, and we have to demonstrate that our Zoning controls allow it by right to occur at the numbers and at the scale the the building types that are that are that they look to that that is that is Positioned somewhere in the community is the instead of it's either my way or your way and

All what I'm saying, can we put in our plans some kind of a control that allows us to respond to community needs now and in the future? When I hear comments from someone like Paul, who has done this for so long, and again, he relies on data, real data, and he says this is what we need. How can we take the data that Paul provides and implement it in our zoning, in our capacity, in our density, and all the good things that you guys do to make sure that we provide the things that the community truly needs. I mean, he presents this with backed up data. How can we take this information and put it in our codes so it benefits the community in the best way?

Well, I think if we got... if and when we get to the point of sub area planning that would be part of the process is hearing from the community the desires of what that sub area should be and part of that would be you know considering what what the what what kind of housing types does the city lack realistically what would happen is the city would then let's say we we decide we need housing typologies that accommodate condos and apartments. We create the zoning controls for that. And then once we've zoned that and allowed that use, then it's the market. And then we've done all we can control and in a lot of these places those those options in the city already exist like in in the cb zone if you group density you could create an apartment building that option already exists it's just the market hasn't driven us to that point so i think a lot of the work we do is creating the opportunity somebody else has to walk through the door

Let me kind of follow up.

Mazira, do you have a couple? Yeah, I would like to have some kind of focusing kind of conversation, too. So go ahead, please.

Can I? Yeah. I've done some more research on this, so I'm just going to try and talk about this here. Some of it may be reputation, and Commissioner John, I appreciate your thoughts here, saying that, yeah, we're beating this dead horse for a long time. So some of it may be reputation, but I'm the new guy here, so give me a little moment here. So we talk about HB 1100 and then the other one is the modification of that 2321. And in that context, what I understand basically is it talks about middle housing, which is where we're talking about right now. The final law requires qualifying cities to allow combinations of all these middle housing types to achieve specified minimum densities. Okay? And the law also imposes important restrictions on how cities regulate them. For example, local governments cannot use subjective design standards, excessive setbacks, unreasonable fees, and more importantly, development standards more restrictive than those for detached houses. Correct agreement there? So what this means for Sammamish? I think Sammamish needs to ensure that its residential zoning allows the required middle housing types and densities as a matter of right, rather than merely allowing them through discretionary process. So my questions to you gentlemen here is, do we have a zoning map or something that demonstrates exactly where middle housing is permitted today in Sammamish? And for each of the residential zone, what is the maximum number? Is that R24? Is that the number we have units permitted on a standard lot? And then which of these standards are objective versus discretionary? Do we have that information?

Yes, we do. It's in the comp plan and in the zoning controls, which have been in place since January 1 of 2025.

Okay, so I'll have to go and look at that?

Yep, I'm happy to meet with you and provide it. I met two people today and provided an extreme amount of information on that, so we have all that. Okay, very good. I have some other questions. I'll let Dennis come back.

So I have...

Back to the set of questions you had for us and the feedback. And one thing I want to be clear about, so the work plan, the two work streams that you've presented, you're looking for feedback so you could get going on these so they can be completed by, what was it, June next year. And there's a fair bit of work. Some of that work is going to be coming back to the Commission. There's a lot of detail to work through that to affect the code changes, to figure out the allocation of affordable housing in Town Center and therefore elsewhere, right? so our role this evening isn't to try to solve those but is to enable you to get approval for the work plan and do the work plan in a smart way if you will so if that means you know doing some sort of assurance that infrastructure has been thought through and it's in the comprehensive plan and communicating that that would be feedback that you'd take and build into the work plans or presentations so we're not we're not coming up with what the allocations are or the code changes we're providing feedback in how this two-step plan right now or two-track plan is going to get implemented approved and implemented is that Is that right, basically?

Yes, and I would also point out that for us, we have worked really hard to try and simplify this down to what is the minimum we have to do. And we've taken direction from the City Council that we are kind of exhausted in spending money on planning and studies and that we really want to minimize and... and simplify what we're doing. So in this work plan item, the general sketch of this work plan item is really intended to simplify updating the town center plan to be compliant with state law, looking at what then the capacity is for low-rise and mid-rise in the town center, and then looking at what additional capacity or what remaining capacity we would have to shift to the other areas.

So when you play back the video, mark that right there, because that summarized exactly how this presentation should have been put together. OK. We wanna keep it really simple. And one of the things that we have to do is fix the code compliance in town center. That was the first thing you said. Then we're gonna determine how much capacity there is in town center for affordable housing. And from that, we're gonna figure out how to allocate it elsewhere. That's three things, very simple. and it's i'm sorry i just really when i went through this i was i had a sense of that i mean we met earlier in the week uh it didn't come through in the presentation so We'll work on that right up front. It's simple. Just like you said. You nailed it right there.

So in the mind of keeping things simple, is there consensus among the commission as to the two alternatives for the town center that, Evan, can you go back to the boxes? I'll just call them 1,922 just because that keeps it simple. Is there consensus between these two? Because picking one of these two then drives what happens elsewhere. So if we can give our feedback informally to council that we prefer this option, then that helps council and staff.

It gives us a great starting point.

Simple starting point.

since you're looking at me you know i um i'd need to know better uh how those two numbers like what's what factors in to get to the 1900 and the 2200 and the implications of the 2200 given that there was the community feedback against the 4 000 with an assumption that Why don't we stay with 2,000? So John, to answer your question, I'm not sure I could say one way or the other without a little bit more discussion and information.

Well, I think David said that the 1,900 is kind of where we landed. The 2,200 is to accommodate and think about what the state's requirements are.

The 2200, it comes with the condition that you're going to make all the other sub areas the same, which earlier I said it will create a problem because they are different.

There are other iterations of this. These were the primary ones that when we were brainstorming this that floated to the surface. So to be sure, the capacity for approximately 1,900 units under middle housing compliance. And I've heard some good feedback, you know, that I remember at the last meeting, the point was made that the whole town center isn't surrounded by R6. There are some areas that are R1, some R4, some R6. um so it varies right and we want to be sensitive when we are readjusting the densities to the zones in the town center to make it compatible with with what's adjacent to it so the the 1900 is a composite of the different middle housing densities. So what we're looking at doing is taking the town center zoning map. And one thing that we have to remember that we cannot do is we cannot go backwards. We can't down zone property. That would be a takings of someone's property rights. But the good news is the starting point is very low right now. It's R1, R4, I think it's R8 and R16 based on the TCE through TCA. So long as we're not going backwards, we're okay. But we would feel that we would need to go up in almost all cases to some degree. The biggest opportunity is in the TCA where it's surrounded by the town center, and that might be the easiest to raise it up to somewhere like R24. What we're looking at doing also is possibly doing away with all TDRs, aside from they're all accounted for today, so we're not going to add more TDRs. We're not going to add more bonus units. We're going to simplify things.

If I can just add a little bit more to this. I'm looking at these numbers, 1,900, 2,200, and you're talking about these numbers here. I think it would help if we had a table with TC, Pine Lake, whatever, and say, hey, if we do 1,900 in TC, then this is where we need to do the other growth. If we do 2,200 in TC, then these are the numbers everywhere. And I would also challenge on, The fact, I know you said that some of these other areas may seem smaller, but actually if you look at it, the town center area has got a lot of greenery around it, so you've got to account for that. That's not all buildable. But in the Pine Lake community area, for example, or the Safeway, we've already poured concrete. It's already there. So you are just, that's 100% usable area. There's not, I mean, of course, parking and all, but you can put parking underground. You can do, I mean, it's expensive, but it's doable. It's not that it's not. So if you zone it correctly, you can do that. I mean, that's what Redmond Town Center area did, right? They had all those single... floor strip malls they made them into four plus one four plus one or five plus one whatever they did all around where all those new restaurants are they good places i go to usually but yeah that's that's the kind of thing we could do here right but q the same qfc you're talking about because that's the pine lake the house is next to qfc those are r4 so can we go from r4 to r24

Why not? You could, but you could also add requirements to the zoning controls that are simple that require transition areas.

That's why I'm saying they are not the same. Right. If you go back to the map, some of those sub areas are larger than others. The larger one, it will allow you to taper and get to the R24 in the middle. The smaller one, if I look at the Klahani one, and I just compare it to the Englewood one, these two are completely different in size. I cannot taper to get to R24 in Klahani the same way I can taper to get to R24 in Englewood.

Right. So there are some well-tested tools regarding transitions. Bellevue has some really great tools that they have used that require building massing, be moved to different areas on a site. What we're looking at is how do you harvest density across the entire site when considering commercial and residential? So for example, if you had a five-acre property and we had R20, just to make the math easy, R-20, you would be able to do 100 dwelling units, right? And if you had a 1.0 FAR for commercial, you would then also be able to do, what is it, five acres, like 250,000 square feet of commercial. So you could do both, right? So you're able to then cluster the residential in an area where it meets transition requirements. And then you're able to design the commercial in a manner that is similar to what's there now at a lower level commercial. But that is something that we would definitely want to make sure to infuse into the regulations. It's simple and it's effective.

And it needs some studying because I'm saying this because I'm responding back to John when John asked, can we pick one of the two options? And I was saying to John, I cannot pick option two because there's not enough information that tells me that there won't be unintended consequences.

right and we we need to study both of them to be sure yeah and now now is not the time to pick one or the other sure and and to simplify kind of each of the concepts really the top row one the one the commission gave a head nod towards at the last meeting would mean you would reduce the town center's role considerably and increase the other center's role considerably so just as an example you'd be taking the maximum density in town center say setting it at r18 because you've done that that leaves less capacity in the town center so you have to increase the maximum density to a higher point in the other centers say r40 so you can demonstrate you have capacity the the standardizing approach is finding that magic number where every center has the maximum density so no other center sort of gets pinpointed as the next

problem the problem center as long as it has the maximum density that's applicable to the sub area right correct yeah i'm fine with that i i think we are in agreement to shift capacity and maximize the land use but not necessarily standardize the land use all the way

Well, and that's the question for the commission is do you want to standardize across or do you want to put greater emphasis? Because the 1900 puts greater emphasis on the other centers, so they'll get higher density, whereas the second alternative equalizes the intensity of development. And at a highest level, the numbers will come back to you. We'll have plenty of other meetings to drill down on those.

One of the concerns that we have is, you know, we heard a lot from the community about the town center and about planning for additional growth. And I think Commissioner Bachmann pointed out at the last meeting that that could just repeat itself in any one of the other centers. So one of our concerns is that if we then shift development to the other centers, that neighbors around that center will come out and identify that they're not happy with that. Why doesn't it go in the town center? So one option is to smooth it out appropriately, try to find the right controls, but so that nobody feels like they're being picked on. Right. I mean, we're all doing our part here as opposed to, no, put it in Pine Lake or put it in pointing the finger at the other center where that neighborhood wants it to go somewhere else. We don't want NIMBY. That's what usually happens.

We should just learn from what we did with this town center that did not help with the community and avoid it in the other ones. I think we will get more cooperation.

some good lessons learned there, so yes.

I have two questions that kind of indirectly related to this discussion. David, refresh our memory. We have had some discussion about Mr. Eastman's property to be a sub area, right?

It is docketed to be a future neighborhood center.

Could it be potentially an area that could absorb some affordable housing?

Not on the timeline that we are currently on.

What happens if he takes the lead and I have some experience in the other jurisdictions that the developer would take on the responsibility of funding the studies that needs to be done to create a town center, to create a sub-area plan?

The timeline for creating a neighborhood center sub-area plan would in my mind be anywhere from 18 months to 24 months.

Even with the help and financial assistance from a developer?

Even with the help of the financial assistance of a developer.

So that's not going to help us as far as this discussion, as far as allocation of housing.

Plus, when considering simplifying things, which is one of the the overarching objectives not doing new plans not doing you know new work again right not doing new studies that that aren't you know that would go down a different path is is that area also is undeveloped currently and it's not like taking the existing asphalt and replacing it with a you know low-rise or mid-rise building so there is that complication this approach simplifies it because I think it was pointed out and we 100% agree it's already paved. It already is connected to transportation infrastructure. We'd have to study that we you know, we're not trying to shy away from that. But creating a whole new sub area is not within the bookends of simple and getting it done within the timeline that we have in front of us.

How about the argument that has been made actually by a number of council members in the past that, hey, you're wasting your time if you're assuming that some of the areas would be able to absorb the additional affordable housing because the owners of those sites, they're not willing to proceed with that and using those changes.

And that's fair. A property owner will choose to redevelop their property or infill their property when the timing is right for them. And we can't really forecast what they'll do. We've seen property owners say they're not going to sell their property, and then all of a sudden it ends up on the market. But I would also say that this is not about us really building it. It's about us showing the capacity by right so that someone could build it.

Okay, so when we were talking about this area, Pine Lake Center, as you know, there is a park and ride lot and it's owned by King County Metro. Refresh my memory, I believe at one point I brought it up and you said that the King County Metro is not willing to sell that property. Is that the same situation now?

Yeah, we don't know. We'd have to inquire with them. However, we do think that that is... Is that a feasible site? Well, that's one of our bonus parcels. right so it is already identified for affordable housing and it does already allow for a low-rise or mid-rise building to be built we know potential how many how many affordable housing we can get it we have calculated that it's already calculated in our comprehensive plan we're not planning to recalculate that that's not part of this work that's already accounted for as part of our housing capacity for before deep affordable through low-rise and mid-rise typologies

so the public know that that option is available to us?

It's listed in the comprehensive plan.

Thank you.

Mike, can I go next? Sure. Thank you. So Commissioner Syed pointed out earlier about, talked about infrastructure and not forget that. I think the argument we seem to be making all the time is we don't want additional density because it will increase traffic. And I think that's I mean, it may be a consequence of that, but that's not the right way instead. And again, this information may be in master transport plan, and point me out if I'm missing that. But could we probably take an approach where we say, here is the specific transportation, water, sewer, stormwater capacity deficiency. And then here is the measured capacity. Here is the projected additional demand. And here is the five-year capital improvement plan. And here is the state authorized mechanism for addressing the deficiency. Have we done this? Do we have this information somewhere?

Right. That's the general gist of planning is that you don't have to have the infrastructure built in order to pass the plan. You have to have a strategy for delivering that infrastructure alongside or concurrently with the delivery of the housing units. or the commercial space.

And that's exactly what the problem is. That's exactly what the problem is. We have a TIP. We have a CIP. You look at that, it shows that we're dreaming. We have $300 million worth of the roadway infrastructure improvement, and we have $30-something million in the pocket. So, yeah, in a paper, you have the interest structure because you've got a plan to show that, but you don't have the money to build it.

But can we not work with the state government and get funding for it? Well... They want us to build the housing, so hey...

That has been a big challenge. Every city is asking the same question. And I will say that, per your comment, that that is not uncommon for cities to have in their comprehensive plans. That is true. It is, I would dare say, normal.

Yes, but we have a kind of very unfortunate unique situation, very unfortunate situation, because most of these fundings that goes to infrastructure improvement, particularly transportation, They are multi-modal. The first thing that the federal government looks at it to give you some funds, say show me that you have a multi-modal system. We don't have it. We don't have state facilities. We don't have state highways. We don't have the infrastructure. And we have not been successful. I'm not blaming the staff. We don't have.

But doesn't commerce grow? Sorry. We're starting to drive down really deeply into things like transportation and infrastructure that isn't providing the feedback that staff needs from this. No, I'm responding. I know there's challenges. I'm sure you know there's challenges like this. So it will help you in terms of next steps in preparing for the council to get direction on the 1,922, like alternative or...

and to be clear you don't have to have a final decision when we go we think we think the alternative makes sense that will kind of be where we land as staff as far as a recommendation as a starting point but we can certainly give feedback that the commission hasn't

come to a consensus or settled on which approach they make they think makes sense and we can continue to talk about it well hearing just to say and provide that and then maybe talk a little bit about commercial space in a few minutes but hearing the discussion i said earlier i didn't have enough information but i think directionally that the 2200 in anticipating the kind of questions and challenges that the city residents would have, that may be a better way to go. And when I said earlier about not really having the information to provide good guidance, part of that is also saying in your presentation, there's some thinking that you've done that gets to that 2200. It might make sense to share that with the council or make that available to the public. Because for it to just sort of show up there, you know, it's well you got questions from it. So But if I were to and I think John was saying much the same that there's there's rationale behind the 2200 that I think is thinking holistically across the city and the planning that's needed across the city to meet the the state requirements for you know the various bills as well as our housing allocation that seems like the way that would be most effective in the long run or relatively short run, I should say, the next year.

Just a quick note on the infrastructure is we don't know where things are going to get built or when they're going to get built, so we can't just throw it in the budget. And then the secondary thing, if there are impacts, development has to mitigate those impacts. So money would be flowing to mitigate stuff. We don't know where it's going to go on the ground. You would hope so.

I will say that Sammamish, prior to its incorporation, when it was under King County, has a very long history of requiring development to do environmental studies. A good example that I recently had to read was the Laurels subdivision, which was stopped because the county thought that it required additional study for transportation infrastructure, and it was stopped until they were able to figure out a phasing plan to put in place the necessary road improvements to move the project forward. So state law is structured so that a development is proposed, there's an impact identified, there needs to be a remedy identified for that impact, That is how the development permitting system works. That's why we are not required to find that solution for prospective growth when we're planning. We're planning for it. We want to make sure that everyone's aware of it. All of the providers are planning to provide for water and sewer, stormwater, transportation, albeit maybe there are long capital projects lists to make sure that the services are maintained. But that's the process.

So for clarification, Mike, you said that you're supporting 2,200 within the town center?

In terms of direction, what I just, yes. For the town center?

It's more of a concept of leveling or standardizing density across the four centers rather than 2,200 units. The concept is more important than the number.

I like, and that's how I interpret it because what I also heard was for the, I hate to say, the 1900, more or less, that pushes more capacity elsewhere.

Right, and will result in higher densities.

And although I think it's good to disperse that capacity, It just doesn't get so much stuff so centered.

Is there anywhere we tell the community how much more are we talking about? We keep talking about 19 and 22 for the town center. There's no reference about how much more.

We need to study that and come back with some actual numbers, right? Yes, we agree. That's part of this exercise is we first need to understand what we're doing with the town center to understand how much more has to go in the other centers.

Because you're saying you would rather tell the community 22 because it means it's lesser numbers that are going to go elsewhere. How much is going elsewhere? Well, it's shifting. And you don't need to give me a number now. You're going to study it.

These numbers are reasonable estimates so far. And it's shifting a total of about 1,100 units of capacity. We'll keep some in the town center. How much we keep depends on which alternative we go with. And so some other distribution will have to go as well.

My recommendation is just tell the public how much are we talking about. Just around, approximately. And if you can stay with the 2,000 number, that again was part of the election. I think it would be in the best interest of council. Council came because the community did not like anything more than 2,000. Why are we putting the council now in a position that we are going above the number that the council was elected because they said this is the number?

Well, the thought was just a moderate increase above 2,000 could help stay future frustration that another center like Kalahani is getting too much density.

But we don't know how much. You see the point? So I think what I would say in the best interest would be, Evan, would be that you have A, B, and C. 1900 in town center 2000 in town center and 2200 in sound center and then what happens to the remaining plan based on that and then we present public and say hey you want 2000 which means klahani will get i don't know 400 homes but if you go with 2200 klahani may only get 250 homes so they might say you know what yeah we'll have 200 here then 200 more you know whatever so let's right we give we give the numbers without the data it's difficult to say what we're we're just shooting in a dark year

And what I'm hearing here is there's a missing piece of the puzzle. Yes, exactly. Is what happens in the other areas. Exactly. Without that, it's difficult to know which way to go. Thank you.

Is that 300 between 22 and 1900 makes that much of a difference?

not as far as it could in a limited area i mean it really just it's what we will part of this conversation is what additional information would be helpful to know that is absolutely an important piece of information that we'll make sure to bring to the surface on the commercial space since you had that and said you wanted

yeah moving on um so why wouldn't you why wouldn't we do that analysis is there cost associated with it or and what is the issue with the current allocation say in town center for commercial space i mean we recommend

doing the analysis and lifting i mean i think we want to get rid of kind of the arbitrary cap and find a different control for how commercials handled has there been any it's a heartburn just i'm sorry it's just a heartburn does that idea give you a heartburn should we limit commercial to what it should we leave it how it is and limit commercial in the town center to that that cap or what is my understanding is that it was um

kind of pulled out of the air originally. And so to take a look now under current conditions and analyze and, you know, be a little bit more intentional about it seems to make sense if there's capacity and staff to be able to do that.

Also, what does commercial mean? Does it mean retail or does it mean storage? I mean, it is all commercials, right? I mean, you're going to put warehouses in there? You're going to have people up in arms if you start putting warehouses in Sammamish, you know?

You could tell us what you don't want there and we could start there. And you don't have to do that now.

Let's not do that now.

Can you remind me what's the restriction on commercial now?

of total square footage. It's a total square footage. It's like 600.

It's broken out by by zone and by sub zone. So, for example, the TCA has the A1, A2, A3 and A4 and each of the A's, the A zone is given an allocation and that is further divided out that allocation by the sub zone. It's a it's an artificial cap that doesn't reflect the square footage of a property, it is also challenging because you might have different ownership. Previously, we did. Now the ownership's consolidated. It's a little bit easier to handle. But if you had different ownership, then the different owners are arguing over who gets that allocation because it's not assigned by square footage, by actual property size. right so we we propose and you know initially there's a lot of different ways to do that we propose what is more of a traditional control which is an far you just get a certain amount of floor area for your developable area if you have a big property with lots of developable area you get more commercial it's the same ratio you get a small property you get small amount it's simple so for simplicity

There is no commercial part in a townhome, right? In a middle housing, there is no commercial part.

There is not, however. The Ichijo development down the road here, the Sammamish townhomes, there are something like 17 live-work units that account for something like 30,000 square feet of commercial space within that.

In the townhomes?

In the townhomes.

Yeah, they were created like you could have a studio down and you used to live up. That's the kind of homes they were built in.

okay i just i've just pulled so it's like it would become like an office for someone yes to have their office we find generally that people don't use it as an office um in different parts of the region so in seattle there are many townhome developments that are built their front arterials in a you know across from a business district or something and they they might be lined with Offices like someone has piano lessons in their office that they're a piano shop or maybe there's an accountant or an architect or Some maybe a nail salon and then they live above it.

They own the unit They own their commercial space and they operate their business out of it And that is a trend that you see a number of cities They proceeded both all started with that allowing commercial in residential neighborhoods And actually traffic wise you spreading the traffic does much better. I

So if I finish my thought, knowing that it exists in town homes, the way I was thinking about it, that commercial will exist when you build the 511s. And if we look at where are we building 511s, if we put just the ones as commercial, it will help the city, it will provide the service needed to the community. Is there a limit to those?

you could set a limit to um no no currently is there a limit to just a single story commercial

No, no, if you have a 5.1, similar to the skyline.

There is a limit in so much as there's a commercial allocation, right? So that's part of the equation. So to put together a 5 over 1 development, you would need to show that you have the commercial allocation and the density to build the residential units, right? And those go together. The TCA in the town center requires ground floor commercial today. One of the state law compliance updates that we have to make is we can no longer require that. oh the state is saying you can no longer require that you can no longer require ground floor commercial and what is what is the reason what's from from their perspective was justification they see it as a hindrance for putting in place residential projects in certain districts that are tagged for mixed use they want to see they want to allow the flexibility to build its housing at the end of the day so again i go back to what i said earlier

What the community needs versus what the state dictates can we go to the state and we say we are adding 2,000 more people these people they need Shops to go and get groceries. They need a place to go and see a doctor They need a place to go and do piano lessons. So we need to add these commercial spaces. The city needs revenue it's It shouldn't be black or white we can add the commercial space in

That is absolutely within the city's range of options is to change how we manage commercial space in the town center.

But I thought you just said the state won't allow it.

Well, the state said you cannot require that commercial space is on the ground floor of a mixed-use building in a mixed-use zone. You have to allow standalone residential. low-rise or even a mid-rise that's just stick-framed or something, right? That's the difference, right?

So I think, David, what you're saying is if we shift from the commercial allocation model to an FAR model, then the market can respond in whatever way the market wants to respond, where the allocation model could end up unintentionally restricting someone to put in a donut shop.

So David, if I understand correctly, you're referring to SB 6026, right? The one that came out in 2026. I have that in front of me. It says that cities generally cannot require mixed use or ground floor commercial as a condition of residential development across more than 40% of the total acreage. So there is some allow. You cannot have 100% required, but up to 40% you can allow. That's what it says.

Inapplicable commercial mixed use areas subject to exceptions. Right, so your zoning that allows for that type, you can't, not more than 40%. 40% is what it is.

So it's no, absolutely no, it is. 40%.

Yeah. It's not 100% or 0%, it's a 40%. But we don't have enough of a pedestrian-oriented commercial core to warrant even requiring it from our perspective.

Why do you say that? I don't see that in the law. Why do you say that?

Yeah, does it require that? In 40%, you can require it. That's what you were saying. We can have this conversation later. We're going down a path that we don't need to go down.

so i think unless somebody else would say that they there shouldn't be the analysis to potentially make the changes then you're recommending uh john you clarified really nicely why it's important i think it makes sense uh and if if you just think about currently how we've got tca and b and sub a and sub and you know all of those various allocations it's freaking complex So if you can analyze it and simplify it, it makes a ton of sense. so part of that keep it simple you know so unless anybody else has different feedback for the evaluate the commercial space question that staff was asking so are there other comments and actually we should maybe do a quick look at the questions you had at the end and then ask you all is there anything that we haven't provided in some way or another feedback to address the questions that you had here You've heard a lot about feedback.

It'll take watching the video again and distilling a little bit, but there's definitely a request for more information. We'll get numbers and tables to help clarify the issues, maybe restructuring the presentation a little bit to depict the work items.

Also, I think I think so, at least from my perspective, there was some of the comments about useful information all that would be beneficial for council to hear. So it kind of has been wrapped up. So any other questions that you all have for us? Clarifications?

I think right now, we'll get plenty of other bites at this apple.

So then we should go to public comment agenda.

The council is scheduled to pick this item up on the 15th.

So soon.

So we'll have a fairly quick turnaround. What are they going to pick up? I mean, we don't have the data, right? So

going to further the conversation on the work plan for this based on your feedback here. And and sort of will then we'll come back to you again. So you'll get to continue to work on this lovely topic.

All right. So we have five minutes for agenda related public comment. I see Mary standing up. Did you? Mary, did you get the the nod between you and Paul for this? Okay. coordinated, coordinated, not not. Okay.

Good evening. I'm Planning Commission and staff and interim city manager Mary Wichter. I've been Sammamish 25 years and have been participating in the town center stuff for a couple years now. First of all, I also attend water and sewer district meetings. I've been doing that for 10 years. And I will tell you that they did their wastewater comp plan, their water comp plan. They passed them all in 22, 23, etc. They were adopted and I believe the Sewer number was like 13,000 units could be added so you don't have a problem there. I also know that the Water District upsized the things in Brixton, which is in the town center area, from the pipe, the 8-inch pipe that they needed to the 12-inch pipe, paid for half of it just to plan. I don't think you're worried on that. For stormwater, we have pretty good stormwater now, because we went years, particularly where I live, where we didn't have good stormwater. And I also know that they've already started their regional stormwater, which only serves one area. they're doing things. So I don't think those are your issues. I think the traffic and I think the schools, and again Paul Stickney's done numbers over the years, single-family homes cost four times the amount of those that a smaller unit does. So I think you need to think about that because you do really want to have this smaller stuff, a lot of it in town center and some of it in the other centers. I'm going to speak to a couple things here. So FAR is Florida Area Ratio. Just for those people listening that don't know what it means. David had also responded to Hisham's question about the R24 and how you can kind of blend it and make it go. I would say I think the Issaquah Highlands is an example of that. So if people have never been there, you should drive around Issaquah Highlands and see And then smoothing it out appropriately I think is hard to do. I think James Eastman's property really could do things but it's a neighborhood center so it's not part of this sub area plan. But we should try to use it as an opportunity to see what types of things you can develop there. Because he's got a hundred acres accumulated very different in topography and other things in other places. I think the one thing I want to talk about, because I just got an email from the city that I've had a TDRs for transfer of development rights approved since 2019. But I had to wait for the comp plan. I had to wait all for this other stuff. And it's going to be coming up. And David today said, no more TDRs, which was not a very happy sound for me. Transfer of development rights. The reason it came up is Sammamish was made as an urban growth area, and around it we had the Emerald Necklace, and King County owned a lot of that. And King County was like, hey, we want you to buy these or get these from us, and then you can put your density in town centers. So I believe there were 80 TDRs, if I remember correctly. And it was like 80,000 each. But anyway, they were all used up. So to build a... There were some different pools, and they were all used up. The affordability was 1 in 10. The TDRs were, you could buy, I think there's 75 of them. And STCA had actually put a first right of refusal on them so they could get them. And then you couldn't actually do more TDRs until those were used. And I think we're at the point that those are going to start to get used with the brownstones east or west. The idea that I had is I live in an area that's landslide hazard, erosion hazard, steep slope hazard, and Inglewood is too. There's a lot of those lots in there that when you ask the staff about the permit, they don't want to talk about it. They don't like those permits because they're really hard, because they're really hard to build on. So we have something called reasonable use exceptions where people say, well, I own a parcel. I'm going to build on it even if it's a place that's unbuildable or I'm not supposed to. And the problem is those houses can take 10, 15 years to build. They have a lot of problems. It's a big hassle. So King County has said that everybody needs to use TDRs to make sure that that's the one valve that you can use to say, we don't have to develop in these unbuildable places. We'll let you transfer the development right into town center. So I think if you did that and you set up an in-city TDR, which is a novel idea and people like it, and I have it as a docket item and it'll be coming up, you need to let it be in Town Center or other centers in Town Center first just because it'll be the biggest one. Then you can take the places that are undevelopable and that really have problems and don't have the water sewer or the stormwater in the area, you can put them in and you could make up some wacko numbers, like I'm just going to say them here, If you do one TDR, maybe you get three middle housing units and a smaller unit or a bigger unit. If you make it incentivized enough, people will do it. And then they'll buy those lots that have 45 trees on a single quarter acre lot that are getting ripped down, torn apart, and just shredded for 10 years or 20 years and not built on. Those can go in the town center. So we really do own it to do transfer of development rights to alleviate development in highly constrained areas that really aren't buildable, should not be buildable. and those should go in centers, particularly town center. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary. I see Paul Stickney here. I've got a wee bit.

Paul Stickney, Sammamish. Can't cover everything, but I'll lay down a lot of things to whet some appetites. And on what I sent in today, those two PDFs, there is a lot of upfront, very clear positions, different than what's here, juxtaposed to what's here. But they are based purely on local, internal, city-side housing needs over time, and wants, and consequences, and outcomes, and fiscal benefit. And you don't have to do the work. I'm not being egotistical. 80% to 90% of all you'd ever need has been turned in over 20 years. And it's important to look at that whole record to recognize that this is kicking the can down the road. You want to face an 800-pound gorilla? Here it is. The needs are real. The consequences are real. But how will the community decide to act on that? That wasn't a part of this election. This election was 2K or 4K with no data whatsoever. Now, it's easy to go the negative route on that. But what would people say? If they could have market rate housing they need at a quarter the effect of single family with huge benefits across the board for every aspect of the community. These questions are studied. The data is there. All this needs to be put on pause, which is what I wrote. We need to do a clear analysis. Excuse me. Wrong. I was going to repeat. Let me... erase that we need to figure out city side needs and wants over time we can do that how much goes in town center and what are the effects for doing it or not then we have community consensus now we don't and we never have ever now a couple things to be helpful Redmond Town Center never had anything torn down. They had the advantage of doing land to build the residential around the commercial. Residential downtown tore down old commercial and put up new, to be clear. Why we have issues is because King County put 85% of the houses here. And at incorporation, the people were so pissed off at that much growth over that much time, they cut how much housing Sammamish built way back. So we added 15%. percent of the houses here but 85 of that 15 was single family it wasn't market driven there are ways to turn the dials see this is about getting the community to want the outcomes of having housing that is matched to their needs over time and i'm talking primarily upper end market rate housing people sell the 2.5 million dollar house we have plenty of 900 000 to 1.5 condos and townhomes and cottages which we do not have i'm talking about the band cheap trick i want people to want this that song um i and And it's too bad, from a Star Trek analogy, that none of us are all Vulcans, because you could walk up one at a time and touch my head and say, oh my goodness. But we can't do that. There's a lot to this. It's not simple. It's not complicated. It's complex. There's a lot to it. Let's talk for a second about the sun. I've talked about this. No one wakes up pissed off about a number, 93 million. That's how far we are from the sun. What do we like? We like the habitability zone of it. We like the effect of that location. We haven't studied the effect of the right mix of housing in different parts in our community and what it really means to our community. 4K has never been accurate. Now, a couple facts. I don't say this to piss anyone off. The 2007 EIS planned for town center, the council in 2008 chose 2,000 single family, 400,000 commercial, 200 office. The traffic counts were overstated in that plan, and there can be far more trips than that plan allows. I'm not talking the 2004-05 issues. That's a whole different kettle of fish. But what the 2007 plan called for was exactly what the city built. So there's ways to add housing with no impact, And we need to talk more about this. Just read some of the stuff I've turned in and consider a juxtaposed approach to shake it up and get it right.

Thank you, Paul. Evan, anybody online? All right.

So calendar. Yeah, looking ahead, we will be bringing, I know we have a discussion coming up around the docketed building 120 issue. It will also likely, we have it as TBD now in early October, revisiting, if needed, the capacity strategy stuff. And then again, another docket item conversation later in the fall, so. We'll see you in a few short weeks. We'll talk about Building 120.

All right. Is there anybody who does not want to adjourn the meeting? All right. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. A little bit early. This is two in a row.

You didn't hold a motion to adjourn? And council may take action.