The Seattle City Council’s comprehensive code update committee led by District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth can get back to the core of Seattle’s growth debate starting Thursday morning as it digs in on setting the boundaries for Neighborhood Centers, new zoning areas of the city meant to more consistently and equitably distribute growth into more areas of the city.
Thursday morning’s meeting of the committee will mark the first session since the council passed an interim bill designed to meet the state’s minimum requirements under its new “Middle Housing” laws setting the framework for expanded zoning to allow a greater range of housing types in more parts of the city as Seattle finalizes its next 20-year growth plan.
On the table will be compromises shaped after massive pushback from some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. According to a presentation for Thursday’s session, city planners have revised and shrunken the borders of 9 out of 30 proposed Neighborhood Centers.
The city turned to the interim legislation intended to form the structure of the comprehensive plan and Neighborhood Residential updates to implement the HB 1110 state Middle Housing laws after legal challenges to the planning process slowed down an already massively delayed process. Mayor Bruce Harrell’s initial 20-year plan proposal the council started with landed around a year later than planned.
CHS reported here on the attempts to reshape the comprehensive growth plan proposal as a neighborhood group sued, calling on the King County Superior Court to intervene and reverse the city Hearing Examiner’s recent dismissal of appeals against the growth proposal.
Groups have pushed back on the growth plan over the creation of 30 new Neighborhood Centers across the city including D3’s Madison Park, Madison Valley, Montlake, and Madrona. The designation could “allow residential and mixed-use buildings up to six stories in the core and four and five-story residential buildings toward the edges.”
According to Thursday’s presentation, city planners have revised the borders for the proposed Montlake, Madison Park, and Madrona Neighborhood Centers.
The compromises over drawing those lines will now come to a head as the council forms permanent legislation including the rezones for the new Neighborhood Centers, new and expanded Regional and Urban Centers, and “select arterial rezones along frequent transit routes.”
Along with the revisions to the proposed Neighborhood Centers, city planners are proposing expansions for five of the more densely zoned Urban Centers in Morgan Junction, Admiral, Queen Anne, and Pinehurst, plus an expansion of the Uptown Regional Center area where a mix of moderate to “high-density” housing will be allowed along with possible highrise towers.
The planning had already called for Ballard to be reclassified as a Regional Center and centers in Uptown and the center area covering First Hill/Capitol Hill/Squire Park to be expanded.
The plan’s 26 proposed Urban Centers, meanwhile, are shaped by proximity to light rail stations and offer “Moderate-density housing (3 to 8 stories)” and “may include taller buildings near light rail or concentrations of amenities and services.”
The final stages in the process come after years of planning and outreach and months of public debate over the draft plan and zoning maps released last fall.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
The maps included here are the originals proposed in the mayor’s growth plan. Any way to see the amended “compromise” maps cited in your headline?
It’s a lot less and permanently stops anything from ever coming forever.
These maps are the update. For example, the Madrona town center used to extend along 34th and Madrona Blvd all the way to the lake. That’s been removed in the update.
Because the closer to the water. The richer the resident. And whiter as well.
So they couldn’t get it done legally. Joy as the alt right attack dog is getting old. This is why Joy is doing this. It’s a 3rd rail and the other career politicians need her votes and corpse to beat on to gage public opinion.
The object of the game?
Redline that bitch into law permanently. Redline Seattle into the stone age.
They want all the “density” to be the burden of someone else. THE POOR. NIMBY rich people who look down on the poor. That’s most of them folks. Sorry to pull the curtain. What they “say” is simply so the family will come for Thanksgiving every year and not be upset and never come back.
And people wonder why the wealthy and the Boomers are so despised by every single generation after them? Not a single one needs Social Security.
“I paid Social Security!”
yes, to make sure the poor are okay. Not a 1.4 trillion dollar wealth transfer from the kids to the elderly every year. Big difference. And they know it.
They 100% all know their money and revenue streams. They are evil.
Honesty is good. Lying is cruel. Full stop.
good grief we need WAY MORE UPZONING
Who is the constituency that is preserving this weird little Squire Park donut hole?? I truly don’t understand