The Broadway face of the new mixed-use development above Capitol Hill Station
By Lilli DeLeon, UW News Lab/Special to CHS
As Seattle continues to grow, the city’s neighborhoods have adapted for more development, greater diversity, and higher density. Yet as neighborhood organizations and local committees continue to work at having a say in the kind of development that is proposed, the process of providing community input and guiding how that development will look has increasingly come into question.
In 2015, the Seattle for Everyone coalition was instrumental in advocating for what we now know as Mandatory Housing Affordability which provides much-needed affordable units in new developments, while also offering development incentives by allowing more units to be developed on a given lot.
The group describes itself as a broad coalition of affordable housing developers and advocates, consisting of “for-profit developers and businesses, labor and social justice advocates, environmentalists, urbanists, and neighbors.”
More recently, this group has turned its focus toward changing the way the design review process happens in Seattle.
Seattle for Everyone chair Jack McCullough worked in 2015 with then-mayor Ed Murray on producing the MHA and advancing the HALA, which he believes to be some of his proudest achievements concerning the coalition. But when it comes to the issue of design review in the city, McCullough views the process as antagonistic toward furthering development. “There is no question it’s a barrier to entry,” McCullough said. “The city of Seattle is not quick about these things and it’s actually a process that contributes to the unaffordability of housing.”
McCullough is regarded as one of the top real estate and land use lawyers in the city, a partner at McCullough Hill Leary. He explained that his goal, with other members of the coalition, has been to speed up the process of design review. With multiple meetings included in the process, he says that projects can become increasingly expensive. “(If) you make development a little more difficult and expensive, you’ll have fewer new projects and then existing, lovely, old homes will get bought and fixed up and become really expensive,” he says.
Renderings from the July proposal of a project at 12th and Olive, where PPUNC expressed a lack of support for the design and encouraged community members to submit comments for design review via Facebook
“When you make development easier in an area, that is gentrifying, and you’re going to have lots of potentially near-term displacement effects. But you’re also going to be creating a greater supply of housing.”
Some community groups, however, are skeptical of Seattle for Everyone’s motives for changing the design review process. John Feit is a Capitol Hill architect, an occasional CHS contributing writer, and member of a local land use review community group known as the Pike/Pine Neighborhood Council (PPUNC), and one of many community members who is wary of certain members of the coalition.
Feit believes that Seattle for Everyone and its coalition members are hyper-focusing on design review as the paramount issue blocking development and constraining the construction market in Seattle, instead of addressing it as one aspect within a plethora of other major city-wide issues, including an under-staffed city and an overly hot housing market.
“There are definitely people who are involved in Seattle for Everyone whose goal is to provide more affordable housing in Seattle,” the architect said. “ But there are also members of Seattle for Everyone, those architects, trade unions, and for-profit developers, who have other interests as well. They help build housing, but they’re private, for-profit, investment-oriented, profit-motivated folks.”
Feit said questions arise around members of the coalition who are with for-profit development, because Seattle for Everyone is financed by a lobbying group known as NAIOP, a commercial real estate development association. Concerning larger architecture firms and for-profit developers, Feit believes they can use the housing crisis as a kind of smoke screen, saying, “Some of them definitely want to get rid of design review because it costs them profit and it costs them time. It also does delay housing getting built.”
Other members of the coalition, he said, “just want to get rid of it altogether so they can rush projects through faster, which is a profit motive.”
Feit says it is also important that the process not leave neighbors behind. “One of the cornerstones of the design review process is involving the neighborhoods where the projects are going on,” he said.
Mackenzie Chase, director of policy at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, is a relatively new member of Seattle for Everyone. She said that “design review is mostly about balance” and “making sure there is an opportunity for residents and neighbors to have a voice in the process, while also ensuring that a design review isn’t so onerous that projects are never allowed to move forward or that we don’t build additional affordable housing.”
She explained that most of the outreach done for communities has been through meetings and social media, some of which became difficult during the pandemic.
The Seattle for Everyone coalition, meanwhile, hasn’t made its push for reforming the design review process a secret. In September, it posted a documentation of its efforts to shape new proposals for a more streamlined process.
“We believe it is time for the City of Seattle to meaningfully reform Design Review to be more efficient, consistent, and predictable,” the group’s statement reads:
- Design Review delays are growing. The delayed process adds direct costs to housing and future rents.
- Discretionary processes are inconsistent and unpredictable and have a direct impact on project schedule and delivery of housing units. This includes well-documented instances when high quality projects are held up for subjective reasons and/or despite having broad community support.
- Design Review is being misused as a tool to stop or slow development rather than encourage good design.
- The boards themselves often lack diversity of perspectives, despite the stated intent of boards to represent a range of perspectives.
The group is asking city officials to consider proposals including revising the thresholds so smaller developments don’t trigger the full design review process, keeping online design review meetings “permanent, continuing post-pandemic,” streamlined design guidelines, limiting the number of meetings required of a project, and “slim down design review package requirements” to “dial back the cost.”
Any changes in Seattle will come in the new year with new mayor Bruce Harrell and a new version of the Seattle City Council. But with one major overhaul moving through the city’s legislative pipeline only two years ago, Seattle for Everyone seems to be pointed in the same direction as Seattle City Hall.
The University of Washington News Lab gives advanced journalism students an opportunity to build a dynamic clip portfolio by reporting for any of 70 client news outlets in the greater Seattle area. CHS is proud to work with young journalists and feature their work. You can learn more here.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
Getting rid of Design Review is a horrible idea, especially the public meetings – but changing the leadership at Design Review is not, nor is changing the scope of the things DR can address, which is limiting and ultimately frustrating for those in the community who care about design and development’s place and affects on our neighborhoods. One place that public DR is not applied but I think is worth a discussion as to why, are the often derided townhouse boxes that are popping up everywhere – these are the built “things” people seem to complain about the most as the overall design is often out of scale with the neighborhood and the small developments don’t address the street (neighborhood) in a way that encourages community.
The City’s leadership team at DR has been slow to address diversity, overly committed to “professionals” being the backbone of the boards and too wed to discussing projects primarily within the scope of “land-use code” – this team has let developers have too much leeway in terms of what constitutes community engagement and relies on these same developers to listen rather than implementing some way for neighbors to not only have input but for their input to matter.
Most development teams don’t live in the neighborhoods they work in, heck, many aren’t even based locally – and of course projects are often sold after being leased, so allowing the community to have some voice seems fair and somewhat equitable.
Lastly, it would be great if the City could have informative meetings about zoning – the recent upzones have exacerbated a problem that has existed for some time and thats the line between higher zones and smaller scaled residential (single family) – there is not much in the way of transistion zones.
I’ve long thought that Seattle needs a innovative/dynamic City Planner who is not a part of the building department but functions through the Mayor’s office. – Look at the work Maurice Cox has done in Detroit and you’ll see what I mean. This office would be able to act as a public advocate for thoughtful urban planning and its potential make our City a better place for everyone.
If you’ve read all of this thanks – sorry its so long
Thank you for a very thoughtful and cogent response. The most salient point for me is “some way for neighbors to not only have input but for their input to matter.” I gladly welcome density in my neighborhood, but I greatly object to being dismissed by developers as an ‘uninformed busybody’ and various other more reductive terms which imply that I have no appreciation for the ‘aesthetics of modern design.’ Seriously? I do know ugly when I see it and being told that I have to accept a proliferation of repetitive, unimaginative Hardi-board boxes as the solution to density is an insult.
Why should you get to tell someone else what to build? If you have an ugly car should I get a say on that too?
If you don’t like how they look now, you should blame the city design codes.
Seattle for Everyone = Astroturfing National Development Corporations for Increased Profit Margin
The one thing that’s usually missing from these industry analyses and recommendations is the most obvious suggestion: that the applicants bring better designs to the process to begin with.
Since they started, the accurate description of their organization is:
Seattle for Everyone Who Makes Six-Figures
Or more simply:
Seattle for Everyone Wealthy
I like it, but it is not an accurate description since the leader of the group and many of his clients don’t live in Seattle
Developers are bad because they work for profit. I’m trying to sell my house for a $1 million dollar profit because I deserve it and I have one of those liberal slogan yard signs out front so don’t call me a hypocrite.
LOLZ. So true.
I recently was looking at plants at Bert’s in Madison Park and complained that, as a Millennial with a good job, I will likely never be able to afford the home I want. The Madison Park Karen I made the mistake of talking to then told me about how her property tax — on the single family home she lives in alone — is just insane and she shouldn’t have to pay it.
I then looked at her and was like “yeah, your massive asset appreciation is something you totally should be able to take advantage of without a single penny of taxation, and it’s totally acceptable in a city with a housing crisis to have a single female living alone in a 3000 sq. ft. single family home. You’re so right…”
She, of course, looked at me like I’d just puked on her shoes.
Seattle is funny. It’s full of the signaling of progressivism, but if you scratch the surface Seattleites are all just cosmopolitan conservatives — they love the economics of conservatism as it benefits them personally, but find the fact that the larger conservative movement has subcontracted social policy to the most regressive, backwards segments of American christianity distasteful.
So they virtue signal with BLM yard signs while supporting things like the racist Sawant recall and nodding approvingly at whatever garbage Knute Berger has barfed up this week.
So gross.
The people who lived here for years have seen their property taxes increase hugely , even double and it forced those on limited incomes to sell – shouldn’t citizens that paid taxes for years have been protected instead of forced out?
Also the increased affordable housing this article says the MHA created – never has been created. Somehow the author missed that in the research.
What’s funny is you consumed Madison Park Karen is a progressive.
What’s gross is conservatives suddenly complain about capitalism when they can’t afford a home and don’t want to feel free to move and buy it in a more affordable area.
What’s funny is you assumed Madison Park Karen is a progressive.
What’s gross is conservatives suddenly complain about capitalism when they can’t afford a home and don’t want to feel free to move and buy it in a more affordable area.
So, a 60 or 70 or 80-year-old person on a gradually or suddenly reduced income should automatically assume her obligation is to sell her fairly recently highly taxed house (where she might have lived for 40 or 50 years), leave her neighborhood, family, & friends, and move WHERE? Where is more affordable in the Puget Sound region? It’s GROSS that an old lady or old man should want to continue to live at HOME?
And you think the way Sawant acts is acceptable. Just a tad hypocritical don’t you think?
Can you report back on how your virtue billboarding works in increasing your street value?
“(If) you make development a little more difficult and expensive, you’ll have fewer new projects and then existing, lovely, old homes will get bought and fixed up and become really expensive,”
I want to add to this, because in my experience, it’s not simply that houses get fixed up. Instead, they often get torn down completely (even when they’re perfectly fine already) and rebuilt, using all the same trappings of modern boxiness that people complain about in new apartment developments. The difference is that none of this is subject to affordability requirements or design review. So we impose a significant financial penalty when a someone wants to build houses to fit more people in our rapidly growing city, but go completely hands-off when a (definitionally wealthy, given that they’re a homeowner in Seattle) person wants to build a bigger castle for themselves. How does this makes sense? It’s not like the latter case is some bastion of communitarianism – architects, real estate lawyers, and contractors all cash in on these fancy rebuilds. So why do we levy all this bile against some “developers” while providing de facto protections for others?
The building code has, fairly recently, been revised to limit the size of new single-family houses.