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Now a little more YIMBY, plan to scale back new developments in Seattle lowrise areas moving forward

This 5-story microhousing development in a Lowrise 3 zone at 11th and Republican is the type of development new zoning rules would attempt to restrict. (Photo: CHS)

This 5-story microhousing development in a Lowrise 3 zone at 11th and Republican is the type of development new zoning rules would attempt to restrict. (Photo: CHS)

A bill designed to scale back the size of new housing projects, including future microhousing and townhouse developments around Capitol Hill, is finally moving forward with the Seattle City Council after nearly two years of wrangling between neighborhood residents and pro-density advocates.

However, one provision was left out of the bill after members of the mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Committee said it would discourage developers from maximizing the living space inside their buildings. Then-City Council member Sally Clark initially proposed to remove an existing 4-foot height bonus and another floor-to-area ratio bonus for developers that included basement units in their projects.

The HALA committee, along with the developer-backed group Smart Growth Seattle, argued the bonuses were key to getting developers to build cheaper units and better amenities inside their buildings.

Basements provide space in projects for storage, mechanical spaces, laundry, bicycles, parking, as well as relatively affordable housing units. Removing the FAR exemption for partially below grade basements would encourage developers to create buildings without useful functional features and/or to move features from enclosed space to the building exterior and roof. This change could also discourage creation of less expensive market rate units in the partially below grade story.

Smart Growth director Roger Valdez said he was happy to see the provision left out of the current bill. “It doesn’t do the damage that the previous legislation would do in Lowrise 3 (zones) … It’s better, because its not going to wipe out a bunch of units,” he said.

Council member Mike O’Brien is slated to introduce the bill during Monday’s council meeting. The Planning Land Use and Sustainability Committee will have its first hearing on the bill on May 19th.

The plan will establish an upper-level setback on street-facing facades and restrict the size of rooftop structures in order to prevent their use as additional floors. It also makes smaller tweaks to the calculation of the floor-to-area ratio, which compares interior floor space to the size of a structure’s plot.

The proposed zoning adjustments are a reaction to Clark’s 2010 changes to the multifamily zoning code that allowed for bigger buildings in areas zoned for lowrise development. Many neighbors later complained that new buildings were too big and too tall. Where lowrise development is generally thought of as three to four-story townhouses and apartments, some developers have used incentives to create five stories in tightly packed apartment and microhousing buildings. In response, Clark put forward a set of code adjustments that were then approved by the Department of Planning and Development.

In October, the Seattle Hearing Examiner rejected an appeal from Smart Growth Seattle, which argued the new adjustments ignore increasing demands for development in the city.

Last fall, the City Council passed new legislation to better regulate microhousing in a set of rules that left the door open to more of the aPodment-style buildings to be developed in areas of Capitol Hill and the Central District.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory Committee is on the clock for its May deadline for delivering recommendations for a plan to make Seattle a more affordable place to live.

UPDATE: Related to the discussion around the new legislation and the city’s affordability efforts, the Seattle Times posted a report this weekend about where population density is increasing fastest. You can check out the report and the interactive map here. “The densest census tract in Seattle — and for that matter, in the Pacific Northwest — has about 53,000 people per square mile. It’s located on Capitol Hill, just west of Cal Anderson Park,” the Times’s FYI Guy Gene Balk reports. Can we just put those “Belltown is more dense than Capitol Hill” arguments to bed now?

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The map displays the percent change in population per square mile since 2000 — View full map

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16 Comments
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Oneway
8 years ago

Whats YIMBY? The article doesn’t explain. “Yes” in my backyard?

pod
pod
8 years ago
Reply to  Oneway

Yaks

Jules James
Jules James
8 years ago

Sure would be nice to see the one parking space per one residential unit requirement returned to the Single Family, Low-Rise and Neighborhood-Commercial zoning code. No park buildings are not compatible for families with kids and the comfortably-retired — two essential community-building groups — because their typical personal transportation requirements of all-weather, cargo and passenger-hauling type isn’t going away. Housing exclusively for bike/bus riding singles is both planning that ignores reality and housing segregation. 1:1 parking please.

pragmatic
pragmatic
8 years ago
Reply to  Jules James

If a developer decides it isn’t worth building parking, that means they don’t think their target customers want a parking spot badly enough to pay cost build it. People who need a guaranteed off-street parking spot are free to pass on a place that does not provide sufficient parking, or just rent a spot from the many available in the neighborhood. People who don’t need an off-street parking spot get the cost savings by not paying extra for a parking spot. With these decisions happening all over, the market will figure it out. If you’re worried about having increased difficulty parking on-street, just ask the city to put pay meters on your street to free up parking spots. Or are you just really demanding free, available off-street parking?

CS
CS
8 years ago
Reply to  Jules James

Because Capitol Hill should be more like Bellevue!

Biking neighbor
Biking neighbor
8 years ago
Reply to  Jules James

I’ve seen plenty of families with young children and older people around the world getting around in all sorts of weather on bikes or on foot. And they’re not fat, and they don’t need electric scooters to get around, and the kids don’t need to be on ritalin.

Steve
Steve
8 years ago

As a part-time single parent – there is no way the schedule works without a car. It’s just not possible.

Wes
Wes
8 years ago
Reply to  Steve

Because that’s what you require, all families must meet those same requirements. I know plenty of families that are surviving fine without a car. Only in America and maybe Canada or Australia does this mindset exist.

hmm
hmm
8 years ago
Reply to  Wes

Your anecdote trumps his anecdote.

Except my own anecdote is that I too know plenty of families that require a car. So my anecdote plus that other guy’s anecdote defeat your anecdote.

(Except for Neighbor, below, who put the carless family anecdotes ahead. Damn.)

You’re accusing the family person of forcing a car lifestyle on you by forcing your own non-car lifestyle. Good job! Also, you might want to look into car ownership in England, France, and… hell, all of Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita

US is up there, but not first. You’d probably be shocked—shocked!—that a lot of those cars are owned by families, because families like to travel together to places that aren’t always reachable by bus or other transit options.

Neighbor
Neighbor
8 years ago
Reply to  Steve

Works for some single parents I know.

Steve
Steve
8 years ago
Reply to  Steve

But i LIKE my anecdote!

Ok, ok, here is some data on how far away we are from being a truly car free city. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-your-citys-public-transit-stacks-up/

We’re still transitioning to real transit based city. Until then, can we still get parking spots underground please? Walking the hill and seeing a land use sign proclaiming “12 units, zero parking” on the car laden street is a bit depressing.

Timmy73
Timmy73
8 years ago

They should just rezone to allow for taller buildings in areas that make sense. A true LR3 at 11th and Republican would have been a waste of space. Just a few blocks from major transit and retail shopping, this is where we need 5 floor buildings (and taller ones along arterials). This and focus on the developers who cheat the system and not allow them to do so.

Anton
Anton
8 years ago
Reply to  Timmy73

Absolutely agree. How many times do we get to rezone? If all we get is 3-4 floors that won’t be enough for long and Seattle will keep becoming less affordable.

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[…] costs and housing limits, have seen little political success so far. In fact, it appears the Lesser Seattleites are a larger constituency and winning the political battle. Urbanists are faced with a […]

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[…] reported in early May on the attempt at strengthening the Lowrise 3 restrictions without stifling the creation of new housing being offered by […]

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[…] after members of the mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda Committee said it would discourage developers from maximizing the living space inside their buildings. Clark initially proposed to remove an existing 4-foot height bonus and […]