With Pike/Pine already held up as a national example of urban preservation done right, you can think of this as this as optimization of an already good thing. But the discussion of developing a “transfer of development” potential and rights program for the neighborhood that does not include the full city’s assets is little more than a cherry on top. Legislation slowwwwly making its way through City Hall that could change the way the city develops, might end up only an auxiliary component as Pike/Pine refines the next layer of development that awaits. Below, an update on the status of the program that would grant developers the right to build higher and more densely in some parts of the neighborhood in exchange for preserving other parts of Pike/Pine — and the thoughts from a respected voice from the Pike/Pine development world in the form of an e-mail to city planners from Liz Dunn.

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We first reviewed the proposed transfer program for Pike/Pine back in May. In the meantime, feedback has raised a few issues:

• Pike/Pine is too limited a geography for a robust transfer program to develop
• Limiting the program to “housing” doesn’t embrace “live/work” concepts that could potentially be included in the program
• Limiting the program to preserving old buildings deemed “character structures” is too arbitrary

The first issue is the most significant and the City Council’s Tom Rasmussen, the driver behind the transfer program legislation, and the rest of the Council’s Committee on the Built Environment will need to decide if pushing forward the program as a “first step” to developing a citywide program is worth it. If they do, at least the zone will probably be slightly expanded from the first concepts as the area between Pike and Union around 10th and 11th Ave is slated to be included in the bill’s parameters.

Below, we’ve mapped out properties by their “transfer of development potential” potential — the bigger the dot, the bigger the square footage a developer would gain from the program in a development elsewhere in the program. Below the map, we’ve embedded the most recent memo on the Council bill and an August e-mail from Pike/Pine super developer Liz Dunn that lays out her point of view on the program. 

 

 

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Liz Dunn email to city staff from August:

First, as was discussed in the community meeting in June, this is an important first step toward a working TDP/TDR and I think everyone in the neighborhood is very appreciative of DPD and council's efforts to take concrete steps to move forward on something that we've been discussing since 2006.  However there are important issues with both in the detailed implementation of this first step, and in the larger context in which it is being implemented, that I'm hoping can be addressed:

Within the district:

-          While the receiving criteria make sense (demolition of a character (pre-1940s) building should be a disqualifier for a site to be a receiver), the criteria for sending sites is not was intended when the TDR proposal was floated by the community starting back in 2006.  The idea of a Conservation Core is one that came from City staff much more recently, and was not discussed with the neighborhood until the June public meeting, at which several community members expressed that there was never an intention on the part of the community to create different classes of character buildings in Pike-Pine, or to designate a particular zone of more conservation value. There are character buildings spread throughout the Pike-Pine overlay district area that are of equal value in terms of community character to the ones in the Conservation Core.  I suggest that the concept of a Conservation Core as the area for sending sites be removed such that all pre-1940s buildings (whether or not identified in the DON survey) within the PP overlay are eligible sending sites.

-          Likewise, any new design criteria with respect to structure and depth to reinforce the "grain" of the neighborhood should be applied throughout, or not at all.  I would prefer to see this applied throughout so that new infill matches the scale of the existing neighborhood and we can avoid the kind of large-footprint development that is replacing the 500 E Pine block; my hope is that the FAR bonus for receiving sites as well as the density bonuses created in the conservation overlay will provide adequate incentive for small-lot development.

-          I don't think that anyone in the neighborhood anticipated that the 2002 DON survey would be used as the basis for defining character buildings for the purposes of a TDP/TDR policy  -- I certainly did not.  Rather than trying to make value judgments on architectural style or provenance, it is much more objective to just acknowledge that all pre-1940s buildings are important contributors to community character.

-          I'm not sure what the rationale is for restricting transferred FAR to being used only for residential space.  I don't feel strongly about this, but I think we should consider that the nature of residential and office are changing and to some extent converging, and Pike-Pine is a vibrant live-work neighborhood to which upstairs office uses make an important contribution.  While most developers will likely create residential units above ground, some may see fit to create office or live-work lofts, and they should be able to decide based on market demand.

At a larger scale:

-          The community has expressed consistently over the years that a TDP/TDR program won't work unless it is city-wide, and there is still no clear rationale for why it is not being planned this way.  As DPD staff analysis has pointed out, there is no way for a neighborhood like Pike-Pine to absorb the excess density capacity within its own boundary and maintain its character.  However there are other owners and neighborhoods elsewhere in the city that are proactively asking the City for upzones, but there is a continuing failure to make the big link between the two policy issues. If the City is at all serious about succeeding in this endeavor, it will need to 1) create a TDR bank to mitigate the mismatch in timing between sending transactions and receiving transactions and 2) evaluate every request for an up-zone in the city as a potential receiving site. Even in cases where up-zones are perceived to be needed to make new construction "pencil out", there is no reason why a portion of the financial benefit to the owner being up-zoned could not be captured by the city to fund a TDR bank.  While I recognize that development potential transferred from urban neighborhoods like Pike Pine competes with rural TDRs, and/or potentially  adds another layer to the "inclusionary zoning" provisions (for affordable housing, cultural facilities and other public benefits) being applied to some of these upzones, it is incumbent on the city to figure out how urban TDP fits with these other goals, and integrate them.  The affordable housing, affordable office and cultural facilities provided by our few remaining "character" neighborhoods needs to be preserved - it makes no sense to incentivize it elsewhere without first preserving what we've got.

I would not suggest holding up Pike-Pine TDP legislation based on the second set of larger concerns, which will not be solved overnight.   However my personal opinion is that the first set of concerns specific to implementation within the district need to be addressed before legislation is passed, or there will be a lot of unintended consequences.   I'm cc'ing a few other folks in the neighborhood who have been engaged over the years, and may or may not share my opinion on this.

Related to all of this, it's probably a good moment to point out that PP is currently achieving 30-50 residential units per acre on many blocks and just by building out our vacant lots we are likely to double this. And this is just residential density, which I think is increasingly understood to be a very narrow metric for overall density of use.  In terms of number of businesses, visitors and 24/7 activity, Pike-Pine is already one of the  most "dense" neighborhoods in the city, and that will only be more true once all the vacant lots are built out.  Our neighborhood plan reflects pro-density goals and we have welcomed infill as long as  it doesn't come at the direct expense of the character buildings that are already accommodating far more "density" in terms of use than meets the eye.

Thanks again for all your hard work on this,

Liz