The first in a series of meetings of a stakeholders group convened to produce recommendations for speeding up the process and addressing economic and equity issues in Seattle design review will take place Wednesday.
Organized by the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections, the sessions will not be open to the public but will be recorded and made available by the city. You can also add your comments and feedback to the sessions planned to include architects, designers, and developers from across Seattle’s spectrum of market rate and affordable development as well as representatives from SDCI and the Office of Planning and Community Development.
The city says the stakeholders group with SDCI, and OPCD will “conduct a Racial Equity Toolkit (RET) analysis of the city’s Design Review Program.
SDCI and OPCD have been tasked with providing a report to the Seattle City Council including the outcome of that analysis later this year.
CHS reported here late last year on efforts to speed up and reshape Seattle’s inefficient, inconsistent, and unpredictable design review process with 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 working to “slim down design review package requirements” to “dial back the cost.”
The more technical discussions of design and architecture requirements could also be separated from the community issues that more frequently come up in public comment by creating a new, less formal community review process to focus on neighborhood issues like height, noise, and traffic.
Some efficiencies could also be continued from the pandemic when Seattle allowed affordable housing projects to move forward without the slower, more expensive public design review process under emergency rules passed in spring of 2020 to help keep design and landmark reviews on track during the COVID-19 restrictions. These major affordable developments on Broadway are continuing forward under that streamlined review.
Around Capitol Hill, the design review schedule had slowed even before the pandemic. One recent Capitol HIll project currently going through the process is the E John Safeway redevelopment that will create a new, 50,000-square-foot grocery store, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail locations and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars, according to the design review proposal. But the days of weekly review sessions are gone along with the booming economy of pre-2020 Seattle.
Publicola reports the stakeholder process is supposed to be wrapped up by June 30th but was being planned to be extended “to ensure the process is thorough and complete.”
Stakeholders are now preparing for a series of seven meetings to help the city departments nail down their recommendations.
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“CHS reported here late last year on efforts to speed up and reshape Seattle’s inefficient, inconsistent, and unpredictable design review process with proposals including revising the thresholds so smaller developments don’t trigger the full design review process…”
Smaller developments are already exempt, and SDCI provides loopholes by which developers can redefine a larger project as two small adjacent projects in order to avoid design review.
This is a push by large out-of-state developers and the more basic architecture firms to weaken design review so they can maximize their profits by building cookie-cutter buildings with cheap materials, small windows and lackluster retail spaces. Any cost savings will go to shareholder profits not lower rents.
Uh what?
If you are for design review then you are anti-housing and are therefore a fascist.
Must be nice to be able to fit the whole world into two, maybe three drawers…
(and just in case you’re trying to be “ironic” or “funny”…it’s not working)
Look, cities like Houston show this is true…in a way. If you’ve been there you know: virtually no restraints put on developers, poorly planned developments made of cheap materials, no cohesiveness to the city. Houston is a nightmare, I know of no one who is like “I want to move to Houston, because I hear it’s so nice there.” No one.
But the issue in Seattle is in many ways the exact opposite. These design review boards are unaccountable, they hold up valuable projects for the most ridiculous of reasons, and they allow members of the community to bring development to a halt by repeatedly bringing up bad faith objections.
Case in point in the Capitol Hill vicinity is the proposed PCC development on Madison St. in Madison Valley. A group of wealthy homeowners, mostly in Madison Park and Washington Park, banded together and made bad faith objection after bad faith objection — and virtually killed a project that would replace a low-density nursery with a grocery and housing (a nursery, in a core neighborhood along transit in a city with a housing shortage, btw, should never be allowed…what a waste of precious space).
Ditto with the recent hold up of a multi-story housing high rise in the former Tim Tam Thai building in Queen Anne — the lot the building is slated for is mostly empty (as in nothing there) and the Thai restaurant building is a dilapidated midcentury single story. So what’s the hold up? The PATTERN OF BRICK ON THE ALLEY-FACING SIDE OF THE BUILDING.
The pattern!
Now, you might say, “good, it’s great that the city thinks of esthetic concerns,” and you’d be right!
But the cost? It’s estimated the delay will add between $800K-$1M to the project’s cost!
I mean…that is UTTERLY INDEFENSIBLE.
Ditto for the risible actions around the Madison Valley PCC project. There **needs** to be some middle ground where developers aren’t given carte blanche, and voices like the bad faith actors in Madison Valley are disempowered.
Among other issues, the developer for the proposed condos/PCC used an alternative slope calculation that reasonable people think was clearly inappropriate for the site and contrary to the intent of the land use code, but allowed the proposed building extra height. The neighborhood’s interest in preserving the many trees on the site is genuine, not in “bad faith.”
Would it be preferable for the thousands of gardeners in the city to have to drive to the suburbs to reach a nursery? Why should nurseries serving city dwellers be placed far from transit (even development-oriented transit like the Madison RapidRide)?
“they hold up valuable projects”: Is that true, generally? What percentage of projects now go through full design review? What percentage have more than two EDG meetings? What percentage are appealed to the Hearing Examiner?
The Madison Valley project was delayed because of an appeal to the Hearing Examiner as part of the Master Use permit application, not design review. The Queen Anne project likely had a sh*tty developer and architect to have face-planted the design review process more than any other project in the city! Poor Safeway and Graystar! Lol.
Just abolish design review. It’s basically just a venue for backbiting architects to sabotage and delay each other’s projects.
https://publicola.com/2022/05/03/is-it-time-for-seattle-to-do-away-with-design-review/
A local architect once described it as a process by which developers extort Code concessions by threatening to build really bad buildings.
The Publicola editorial:
“Because that process is built around public input, it’s relatively easy for residents who oppose new multi-family housing to use design review as a platform for an array of complaints—some that are within the scope of design review and others, such as parking, that are not—and to delay permits for so long developers sometimes back out.”
First, criticizing the proposed design of a multi-family building does not equate to opposing new multi-family housing. Second, a citizen can’t delay a project in design review on the basis of parking issues, because parking, as stated, is not within the purview of design review. For the public to really delay a project usually requires filing an appeal and paying lawyers, which is not “relatively easy” for most of them.
It goes on to state
“And although the boards are required to have a mix of representation among local residents, architects, landscape designers, and developers”
Note that most of those folks make their living in the building industry; the board members representing local residents’ interests are a small minority and have little power, and are sometimes also in the same industry. Presumably, the building industry folk have an interest in efficient design review that will benefit their own projects when the time comes for them to be reviewed.
The article’s contention that SDCI has a bias against putting individuals who favor density on design review boards is risible, but SDCI may very well not want to put individuals who don’t believe in design review on design review boards.
“If we’re going to reform design guidelines, I would probably lean towards trying to eliminate every aesthetic design guideline we possibly can,” Ostrow said. “Because if you look at the results, Seattle is not known for its beautiful midrise apartment buildings. It’s actually known for its ugly ones. And this is under a system where we are legislating aesthetics. So clearly, that’s not working.”
That’s funny. These complaints about design review never suggest bringing better proposals to the first meeting. The bad aesthetics are never the fault of the project team.
The Seattle for Everyone study cites increased permitting times without breaking them into the many components of permitting, but blames the design review component for the increased times.