Gridline, Capitol Hill’s most recent residential development, opened in 2023
The Seattle City Council’s session Tuesday afternoon will include a vote on a proposal hoped to help buy more time for developments bogged down by challenging economic conditions.
Under the bill, developers would be eligible for a two-year extension on existing permit applications and issued permits for projects approved under the city’s old 2015 or 2018 Seattle Building Code requirements.
“Projects with permit applications vested to the 2015 or 2018 codes would need significant redesign should their applications or permits expire and more recent Seattle Building Code provisions be applied to the project; the redesign could add significant cost to the project,” the council’s analysis explains.
The Seattle Building Code has been regularly updated “to address new technologies, safety improvements, and construction methods.” Currently, projects working through the city’s permit extension process have 24 months to complete the review and approval process before they must restart.
Permitted projects are also on the clock. Once permits are issued, they are valid for 18 months and may be renewed for an additional 18 months.
The bill set up for approval Tuesday afternoon would allow developers currently facing restarts to extend permits for two more years. To qualify, property owners must attest that the project has been stalled “due to financing issues.”
The original proposal would have required developers to have requested an extension prior to November 12, 2024 — the effective date of the latest Building Code — but the council’s land use committee amended the legislation to open up the more generous extension process to more recent projects.
CHS reported here on the slowdown in construction and development activity across Capitol HIll as developers blame climbing interest rates and economic uncertainty for the disappearance of construction cranes and design review meetings from the neighbohrood.
According to the city’s analysis, there are more than 3,000 distinct project addresses with projects vested to the 2015 and 2018 codes that could be extended by the legislation including projects that would create an estimated 34,000 housing units.
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Sounds like developers subsidizing their lack of will and resources with our valuable time and neighborhood land!!! We can’t afford delays people.
These buildings need to be publicly owned and built in order solve the problems we claim to want them to solve. Our increasing homeless population is proof that private development cannot help because it will not help. It consistently and loudly refuses! Where’s the affordable housing that’s always supposedly coming?? Surprise! As fake as Tesla full self driving. It’s a canard that distracts from our obsession with treating shelter as a commodity and not a utility. It’s a sickness. Private developers will only ever care about the profits they can make off a build and the tax breaks they can get from it, not how good or efficient they can build the much needed affordable housing for our citizens who need it. We need a new Public Works Administration to solve this. I repeat: Private developers will always fail to solve this problem, and we don’t have time to just sit around and wait for them to scrounge together couch change to stave off bankruptcy due to the economic policies of Trump (who we all know the private development class voted for anyway). What a joke.
The pit next to city hall was public land forever. Still a bit 25 years later (though private now). The city will never effectively build anything because that is the opposite of what the city is designed to do. Private isn’t perfect, but public is a disaster.
If we want remove barriers so that developers can build as soon financially feasible, which I think we do to address the housing crisis with supply, this is an important extension. It’s but one thing we need to do as a city and a state to figure out who to get momentum back to an industry that is almost completely stalled due to rising interest rates. But all pieces of the puzzle count.
the goal of those in power in the city/state is to limit housing production in order to enrich those that own housing. This is basically the sole principle left in the Democratic party.