E Union’s Heartwood was developed without the city’s full design review process thanks to exceptions already in place for affordable housing
Seattle’s next steps in streamlining its design review process will come amid an effort to “revitalize Seattle’s core” by encouraging more housing across downtown and on First Hill.
A Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection design review report that was delayed for months and eventually released this summer will be heard at the city council’s Land Use Committee this week. Part of the proposed legislation would allow for exemptions on certain types of new construction proposals from the design review process in order to accelerate development. Some worry these recommendations will harm residents by further eroding the city’s design review process. Others say reform can’t come fast enough for a city stuck in an affordability criss.
“Of course, we would have preferred issuing the report sooner, but a long session in Olympia ended in April 2023 and changed the design review landscape with the passage of HB 1293,” Bryan Stevens, SDCI spokesperson, told CHS. “This state legislative change and competing land use priorities in front of us and City Council…contributed to a delay in issuing the final SLI [Statement of Legislative Intent] response, which included the consultant’s stakeholder report and associated cover memo by SDCI and OPCD [Office of Planning & Community Development].”
Stevens said there was broad support among SLI stakeholders, including an 18-member group, for decreasing design review timelines, like rewriting the guidelines to improve clarity for applicants, the community and staff. Stevens said when considering refinements to the design review program, permit efficiency must balance out with housing production and design quality.
“We’re also continuing to respond to the call for supporting the safety and vibrancy of our downtown neighborhoods with a Mayor’s proposal under consideration by City Council to temporarily exempt certain new construction proposals from design review to streamline permitting as a part of the Mayor’s Downtown Activation Plan [DAP],” Stevens said.
If approved by the Council, Mayor Harrell’s proposal [Council Bill 120824] would apply to new housing units, hotels and research and development laboratories in Downtown, Uptown, SLU, parts of SODO, and First Hill for a three-year period.
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal comes from the design review exemption report (PDF) released in June. Jesse Franz of the council’s communications team told CHS this bill will be heard at the council’s Land Use Committee meeting this week.
“I would expect a good amount of discussion during that September 4 meeting,” Franz said.
Design guideline considerations in the SLI report include adding targeted guidelines in designated equity areas, allowing residents to create their own design guidelines, and using annotated photographs or illustrations to demonstrate the project’s intent. Land use code improvement recommendations include increasing the review threshold to ensure that less developments are required to undergo a design review.
“The Mayor’s Office and Councilmember Strauss have been clear that one of the underlying principles of the SLI was to decrease the complexity of the design review program, streamline the permit process, and increase program predictability while making public engagement more equitable—all to support housing production in Seattle,” Stevens said.
The SLI report, which concluded with 600 minutes of interviews and two months of analysis, acknowledged how the current design review process is harming stakeholders, and that BIPOC members are the most excluded from design review meetings. Stakeholders agreed on how the understanding of how systems of oppression impact affordable housing, development, and homelessness is also needed to fix Seattle’s housing crisis, according to the report.
Other SLI recommendations include setting a threshold for design review to apply to single-family homes; set minimum floor area ratio thresholds to avoid under-developing lots and the potential loss of development for housing units; and require larger setbacks for mixed-use or multifamily zones.
“We expect the legislation for these Design Review changes to be completed by June 2025,” Stevens said.
Since the report was published, Stevens said SDCI has implemented many legislative changes over the last 18 months to support housing production in the city, like the an affordable housing exemption from the design review, and market-rate housing proposals offering a Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) obligation on sites to opt-out of the design review as a two-year pilot program. At the end of 2023, there were 119 MHA units across 15 projects, according to Stevens.
“That translates to an average of 17 new MHA onsite units across two projects each year. As of the end of July 2024, 163 MHA onsite units have already been proposed across 17 projects under the DR exemption program implemented last summer,” Stevens said.
“Future legislative changes to the design review program will involve a public process before consideration by City Council next year,” Stevens said.
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Can we get a link to the SLI report that is referenced here?
This one Lori Lee? If correct, it’s in paragraph seven of the article.
” …. design review exemption report (PDF)”
Wait, are you trying to tell me they review building design in Seattle?
Yes in fact, the common things people hate about the design are required by the city. Multiple materials, the exteriors that move in and out. It would be illegal to build something that looks like the Smith Tower today.
My 1st post got lost, but last thing first this time.
No matter their political proclivities, city governments seem to be hell bent on shoe horning ever increasing numbers of residents into the same fixed spaces. Why is that the imperative?
Maybe “people” have changed their attitudes again. I’m still stuck remembering the almost universal aversion my college age kids and their friends have to roommates or anything like “congregate” housing.
I guarantee the powers that be have not considered the real down and dirty details to “congregate” living. Here are four from my own experience as an apartment complex manager and one who advised and monitored a tiny house (Lowes garden sheds) homeless encampment in Washington:
Bonus Round Freebies:
No matter their political proclivities, city governments seem to be hell bent on shoehorning ever increasing numbers of residents into the same fixed spaces. Why is that the imperative?
> Why is that the imperative?
Because the alternative is more sprawl, obviously! You want to keep paving the forest until we have condos all the way up the Cascades, highways everywhere, smog, multiple hours of gridlocked commutes in every direction, the whole Puget Sound area wrecked? LA sucks – we don’t want that here! – and that means increasing density as our population increases. Fortunately, we have vast tracts of old low-density housing stock which can be upgraded.
I responded to poster Lori Lee, and then I read the PDF at the link in paragraph 7. I realized my other overly long post was mainly in response to other commenters. Apologies. What I should have posted is something more like this:
Q: WHO ACTUALLY WANTS THIS?
A: No one in this modern life.
!!!…….If one excludes the few developers and property owners that will profit obscenely. And the municipalities already too full, but willing to change existing, proven, safe and sane zoning to pursue their desire for ever more residents. And especially disregard the mooks in governance who are compelled to do it simply to have more people to govern, like drug addicts chasing that one more hit. [Keep it short and stop reading now ;) ]
No one wants to be smothered. Not the homeless, nor the housed.
Homeless people don’t want more people in their encampments. Homeless people abhor the “congregate” living of the of the Shelter model. They tend to not like the Group Home model, which is an older, out of fashion term for “congregate” housing, often associated with society’s so called treatment of convicted criminals. Some small but growing number of homeless people do benefit from their own individual living units. Self contained apartments or tiny houses. Shared space not so much. But the costs!
Housed people don’t want more houses or multi units in their neighborhoods, and especially not right next door. Housed people don’t want new neighborhoods bulldozed and built out next to their existing neighborhoods either. Not in this modern life.
Somewhere between the article and the PDF plan link, I think I saw a hint about those people existing in a Ven diagram like group encompassed by the homeless and the housed. A group that, because of their socio-economic circumstances, would “benefit” from shared, communal housing. Because they can afford nothing else. I posit these people would not readily choose the “congregate” model – but they are about to be compelled into it.
Do any of you think people want to be ever more crowded, packed and stacked in tinier “units”, divisions of the same fixed space of the city, governed by mooks who have the financial wherewithal to live however they choose and in any other comfortable local?