Planning Commission

[Music] we're live uh 7 o'clock happy Solstice uh I'd like to call the order the June 20th meeting June 20th 2024 meeting of the Bellingham Planning Commission he can you call our role M mcy I am here Scott Jones here Robert plaset here Russ Whidby here Ed blue here Mike Estes here Ros Le th is excused okay uh over email we received four copies of minutes uh from March April and May um I hope people got a chance to look at them any objection to approving prior minutes from recent months Speak now or else they will be considered approved um okay minutes are approved public comment uh somehow people had better things to do tonight is there anyone on Zoom who would like to do general public comment uh go ahead Carri 3 minutes is as usual please thank you I'm not sure can you hear me yep wonderful thank you for allowing me to speak during public comment uh my name is Carrie bernside and I'm the Silver Beach neighborhood association president and an organizer with the Bellingham Tenants Union and I am advocating for affordable housing and encouraging the Planning Commission to uh pursue all means necessary to support affordable housing and the development of housing at the zero to 50% Ami where that's our biggest need and also encouraging you to look into build for zero that's a successful model that's being used across the United States in about 114 different cities um it is an offthe shelf but is very adapt to individual communities and they're again seeing a lot of success with

that so I encourage the Planning Commission to familiarize themselves with that and ideally start it here in Bellingham and I am asking for inclusionary zoning and any ways that you can support bringing inclusionary zoning thank you for your time and have a good night thanks Ken uh anyone else on Zoom raise your hand for public comment going once going twice uh okay we'll close the public comment period uh tonight's meeting we have a work session to discuss uh hear updates and discuss um Bellingham plan um couple topics on the Bellingham plan so we'll turn it over to staff uh Chris take it away sorry about that good evening Commissioners again Chris behee with planning and Community Development um joined Again by Elizabeth Erikson our senior planner and project manager for the Bellingham plan uh this is a uh session where we're specifically talking about middle housing um we'll be kind of splitting this into a a two pieces with a discussion in the middle and then discussion following um I'll be starting off talking about some of the design standards and different aspects of of design for Middle housing uh some of which if you've been at our recent public sessions you'll have seen on some of the information boards and also in the table discussions that we've had um we'll be looking at some of the some of what we heard from the community at those sessions and then we're also looking for additional feedback from you uh before we take a deeper dive into that and start to look at

uh things from more of a a policy angle and then also eventually that that will lead into code updates that will run in parallel and follow the comprehensive Plan update and then I'll hand we'll do some discussion on that and then Elizabeth will discuss uh the state legislation specifically with respect to how it plays into residential densities um and then look at some of the specifics for for Bellingham and how that relates to our land use map and potential changes for that and then finish off by looking at some uh specific examples about how those kinds of things how adding additional units to already developed properties uh could and might happen and uh get you kind of thinking along those lines um also with an aim to kind of get some additional feedback and comments from you before we kind of again start to March down the policy path and start to develop ideas a little bit more fully so um that being said um and you'll you'll see later as we go through some things um Bellingham along with all of the other cities in the state are still really in discovery mode on some of these things uh there was a lot of legislation passed last year and then some additional pieces this year and um a lot of it is connected around middle housing and adus and design standards and and other related topics so we don't pretend to have all the answers yet and we're working with other cities to try and get uh a better lay of the land as we again move toward um actually developing code that would

that would Implement these so with that I'll I'll start off House Bill 1110 uh you've heard us talk about it uh quite a bit in the last six months um and there are uh are nine housing types that are uh laid out as a menu in that bill to choose from and uh the requirement is that we need to choose at least six of those to include in whatever uh middle housing code we end up adopting as a community you can see them um listed their and six Plex are combined that's how you get the the nine out of what you see up there um but again just a um a variety of what we call those middle scale housing and that's again everything that's kind of sandwiched in between a single family detached unit and the larger multi-story uh multif family what we think of as a like an apartment building kind of [Music] format and then to um relate this to what we already have in our building code uh you're familiar with the infill toolkit which um Bellingham passed in 2009 and really had kind of a slow uh uptake in the community it was something that um Builders weren't really familiar with and um over a number of years uh right around the time that the current comprehensive plan was adopted 20156 it was when we really started to see infill toolkit projects land in our in our community we had um a few good examples that kind of kickstarted things and now we have a lot of those housing forms we've approved over 600 of them so far under those development regulations um but the uh infill toolkit allows the

different ones you see up there um with the exception of adus adus were in the original 2009 um uh ordinance and then when we uh subsequently passed a specific Adu ordinance in 2018 we pulled it out of the infill toolkit and now as the note says up there adus are allowed in all single multif family zones so so you can see that when you look at what the state will be requiring us to accommodate we already have a good number of these housing types in our existing development code um we don't allow them everywhere and we'll talk about that in in a little bit here but we we are becoming more familiar as a community and certainly our builders in the community are becoming more familiar with the the variety of things you see up there specifically Town Homes those have been the by far the most popular form that we've seen I think out of uh 600 and some units two-thirds of those have been town homes that have been built um and I think 200 a little over 200 of those have been on individual Lots so they're town homes that could be a for sale product um as opposed to more of the the multif family [Music] format so these are the areas uh today what you see in purple on the map there is uh that's the residential multis zoning it's the Urban Village areas and then also the residential single zones that have a cluster provision um so those are the areas where the infill toolkit is applicable today the yellow areas that are on the map are the residential single zones that don't have that

cluster provision so those would be the the residential zones where you currently cannot build INF full toolkit housing and so that would be again the kind of the key piece the state would have us change is to to expand that set of rules or a similar set of middle housing rules into those the areas that are shaded yellow on the map you can see we've also got the lake watcom Watershed the the Silver Beach neighborhood circled um and that would also apply eventually to the Geneva or the Britain Road areas of our growth area once once they were um annexed that's an area that we haven't colored in on the map and the state does allow Provisions for communities to exempt areas that have special Environmental Protections or things like a watershed protection area um as an overlay or a a set of rules within your development code so we haven't we haven't colored that in on the map um that's not a decision that's been set in stone yet but that's something that we've just anticipated that um because we do have the Silver Beach ordinance um as a protective measure already in our code and then to finish off just the gray areas on the map would be all of the other um public zones institutional zones and Industrial zones in our community so basically areas that do not typically don't include a residential component to look at some of the projects that have landed uh in our community in the re last probably 10 years for the most part you can see um that we we've got a variety of examples

here some of these you'll be familiar with um these are the the project overrun Peabody which is a um combination of some Town Homes uh in a duplex format and some um in a Triplex and then they have uh garages behind them with uh not all of them but some of them have accessory dwelling units above the garage so incorporating a couple of different things there um this unit on the fronting on Peabody actually has uh an internal um accessory dwelling unit within the uh envelope of the main uh townhouse or duplex unit as well so kind of a a variety of about three different kinds of infill housing happening there um we've got the the town homes that are just across the street from Bellingham High School another um example of infill on a a lot that had set um underutilized for quite some time and then um again you can see examples of kind of smaller homes uh duplexes um and variety of other kind of kind of units spread um around in different neighborhoods around the city this is an example over in the Roosevelt neighborhood uh these bright colored ones here um where there were uh two single family homes previously and those lots um got redeveloped with six uh smaller kind of cottage scale homes um fronting on on Texas and Queen Street and then again more examples of duplexes and town homes um this example here is a duplex that uh is very hard to distinguish from the neighboring single family detached units uh I think it's over on Ellis Street in the uh Columbia neighborhood so

again just giving you a flavor for kind of the variety of formats and combinations that you can get with the infill toolkit so design review is an important part of House Bill 1110 um and there's a couple of of kind of key components to that one is that if you do have a design review component that it must be administrative design review um so in other words you can't um add on a series of of uh neighborhood meetings for instance for design review where um things can can get delayed significantly um also uh if you do Institute design review standards for Middle housing those standards cannot be any more restrictive than those that you require for detached single family homes Bingham currently doesn't have any design uh design review process for single family detached housing so that would be something we would consider is do we do we develop a set of objective fairly simpl to administer design criteria that apply to single family and middle housing and what what would that look like so again that's that's a key piece of what we're looking at and then of course uh that whatever design standards are applied must be clear and objective um so that there's there's no subjectivity to that it's very clear from the the applicant and Builder um that there are are things like clear uh menus of choices and you know five things you can do pick three or something similar like that where you identify um through pictures and very clear graphics and descriptions exactly what is expected and

then that those um permits when they come in for review are reviewed in a very consistent um manner um when one project after another comes in so again all all aiming at um Fair efficient and consistent review and with an aim towards getting more middle housing built sooner so to just look at some of the things that our infill toolkit um has built into it just I know um some of you are fairly familiar with it but others may not be um some of the main tenants of the infill toolkit are that it's it allows for flexibility on challenging infill lots and so that's that was what was what the um city had in mind when they designed these rules was were lots that maybe have sat undeveloped for a very long time for reasons of maybe strange geometry of the lot maybe um different you know things that they're adjacent to um challenging ve vehicular access scenarios whatever it might be um and then also another another uh tenant of the regulations is that they provide uh Clarity of design intent and encourage uh use of a variety of housing forms including like that Peabody Street example you can do a couple of different or several different kinds of infill housing maybe on a single lot doing those things like town homes with maybe inside adus or adus above garages behind them or um combining town homes and triplexes and duplexes within the same project or Cottage housing and some other kinds so any of those kinds of varieties and then you can see just this is an illustrative graphic right

from our development code and it talks about the kinds of things that are um what we would call design elements that are encouraged um to provide some of the you and you'll see in the following slides some of the things that those criteria are getting at things like roofline details um how porches are oriented how garages are um uh deemphasized compared to the front entry of a house those kinds of things so again um a clear purpose and goal statement this is focusing on what the um pedestrian oriented development which is the the acronym pod there what that stands for and so the example you can see these two pictures um and and there's you know any number of these in in a lot of different communities but what we're looking for are more you know clear pedestrian realm protected from the street by trees um you can see the the homes are located close to the sidewalk and they all have porches and doors entries that are oriented towards the street so it creates a certain a certain feeling when you're walking down the street as opposed to something where you just have um what what you see from the street is really the garage um the front doors aren't very obvious um and things are farther from the sidewalk so those are kind of the some of the key components of that um again here's an example where you have very similar scale and style of building honestly but there are some key differences one is um this example down here has the vehicles loaded off of the street side as opposed to

maybe a rear-facing alley and so what you end up with are a lot of curb cuts that cross the sidewalk and there could be potential pedestrian vehicle conflicts there as vehicles are are pulling in or pulling out of those garage spaces underneath the buildings so again that's just an example where how how we treat vehicle storage and vehicle access as a key component of that pedestrian Realm in the updates that were done in 2021 to the infill toolkit there were um some specific things around pedestrian oriented development that allowed um allowed you to have uh infill tool kit homes that were facing each other around a common pedestrian pathway where you don't have to actually have vehicular access or a street or a lane going between those units youve got a couple different examples here one where it's a common green space with walkways on either side one where the green space is associated with each unit and a a common walkway that just goes right down the middle um or in some cases you can have a very narrow area with uh some landscaping and then a narrower path going down the center so different ways of providing interior access to individual units and maybe a a shared parking space or just uh street parking off of the end of the project and then again getting back at the idea of minimizing the presence of garages and impact of driveways um doing some things that are fairly simple and make a big visual uh difference in the street experience and that is like setting garages

back from the faces of the units having the porches and pedestrian access to the units be the most prominent piece having adequate landscaping and then keeping the width of driveways uh to a minimum including the curb cuts and then having Landscaping facing those so that when you're looking down the street you you really don't see the presence of those driveways and garages and then again some just specific guidelines around how vehicles are stored and vehicle access is handled this is an example of um between the garage and the drive lane we allow a very short distance where there's no physical way you could get a vehicle parked outside the garage door without being fully in the lane so you basically would park in the garage or maybe out on the street um and and so what you are avoiding are these kind of situations where you have a vehicle that's filling up this space and partially hanging out into what would be a travel space for vehicles to get in and out um so driveways can either be very short or they can be long enough to fully Park a vehicle but not that kind of awkward in between space okay so that gives you kind of a flavor for some of the some of the design standards we currently have in the infill toolkit and some that um just kind of get you thinking along the lines of in particular how vehicles are treated what The Pedestrian realm is and how some standards can be used to protect that and encourage a more functional space for people these are four boards that we

had at our housing types in neighborhoods event um uh last month and uh they deal with the modulation and articulation uh architectural details building orientation and then Landscaping I'll just step through each of those and give you a just a quick quick summary of kind of what the what the feedback was so modulation and articulation are two kind of architectural terms think of modulation as being big pieces of buildings where you have pieces that alternate their orientation or how high or tall or how far out they protrude and then articulation being a little bit finer grain smaller pieces of buildings like roof lines uh roof Gables maybe bay windows and things of that nature um so those are kind of the kind of just two different scales of changing the shape of a building and and uh they have a difference for the the feel as you're walking down the street and so you can see that we we got a variety of feedback but the um the main uh uh main pieces that people focused on for their comments with the notes and then where the stickers were were ones that dealt with making sure that the uh streetcape is kept as a pedestrian friendly realm uh using the building lines and then um that using that with modulation and articulation and then keeping things relatively close to the street not having things set way back um and then again just aiming for that that pedestrian friendly uh streetscape environment taking it a little a little bit further architectural and exterior details which

is where you start to get into kind of the look and feel of the building once you get beyond the establish the the overall shape um and the uh the kind of the main pieces that we looked at that that that were emphasized in the comments were an emphasis on porches uh specifically uh and also looking at uh smaller things like uh Gables and uh windows and doors and how they were treated and then also really emphasizing um where uh how vehicle access is handled and deemphasizing garages visually so that's really was seen as an important piece kind of those those examples of maybe setting garages back um and then doing things with the uh like the trim on a garage door to make it blend more with the building so it's not as obvious um as a separate like a garage door kind of thing and then the building orientation um again is a a really important piece with uh just overall site design and that can get fairly fairly complex with the infill toolkit projects where you may not have a lot of space to work with on the property but the the um basic takeaways that we got from the public feedback were again Orient buildings closer to the street having the main entrances to buildings uh facing the street and then again for vehicle storage having that be secondary to the building hopefully behind if there's a vehicular access or at least uh at the rear um compared to the entrance of the building so again just kind of the main orientation um entrances facing the street buildings close to the

street and vehicle storage being um secondary and and and behind the building and then landscaping and outdoor features um that's dealing a lot with things like uh common space on a property because these are oftentimes projects where you've got um multiple residences in close proximity and they could have Courtyards and other shared amenity space and the focus of the comments there and the most um most uh um response we got were around emphasizing The Pedestrian connections through those spaces whether it be uh paver Pathways or paved Pathways and then also um complimentary Landscaping that would provide like visual interest and also some some level of kind of visual protection and privacy through those spaces um so like screening from the street and then also just connections between residences so there's a sense of community within those within those [Music] projects so that's where we're going to pause for a little bit here and what we would really love is just to hear General discussion if you have specific questions um maybe some of this you've seen at I know I've seen um just about all of you at either one or other of our recent events um so there might be things that you've already been thinking of but we'd love to have feedback from you on the general idea of kind of design thinking about what objective design standards might look like and if there are um you've kind of seen some of the the pieces that the members of the public weighed in on through conversations and

information boards but hearing from you kind of where where you might be on that just in your current thinking and again these are these are not official recommendations we're just kind of taking your temperature and looking for ideas and feedback from you before we um go back and start developing things that we would bring forward later as um for you to actually consider as recommendations and through the the normal kind of public hearing and recommendation process that you'd go through comments questions go for it I've got um four to start with the the map that showed the yellow zones so Le streets and York I think have the smallest Lots consistently across those neighborhoods um how what's what's the conversation about infilling on those small Lots related to bus service so if I'm if I'm understanding you correctly what's the for um middle housing in particular how um how does that relate and when you're talking about bus service are you talking like in relation to um different standards that might be applied to housing in those areas like for parking or what are you mostly it's a density question right cuz first of all doing anything with a small is going to be a challenge right so you're not going to have parking lots on many of those lots um and if if my if my futur looking self is correct given today's price on a building lot in the city of Bellingham all of these lots are going to be multif family from now on I don't think we're going to see many single family houses

built anymore cu the building lots are going from 400,000 and up now for dirt right so they're going to be multif family which means you're not going to you're not going to put four parking spaces on a 5,000 ft lot reasonably um somebody could figure out how to do that I know that but most people aren't and a lot of the new regulations are tied to bus service we don't have enough bus service so I'm just curious about that connection between the density we're after and the bus service that's either lagging or non-existent and um do we still need the uh infill toolkit in um 2026 I'm I'm sorry can you repeat well after the after city council adopts all the new all the new rules all this is done do we still even need the the infill toolkit so I think one of the things we're considering is just our our ways to modify the infill toolkit to be our response to house spill 111 so it's not so much a question of it still being in use it's of it evolving to meet the need uh to meet the state requirements and so that again it's you could see from the the first couple slides that we already have uh you know we only need to add a few different types to the allowed uses and then we do need to again like this graphic shows here there are areas where it's currently not allowed so that would be um at a minimum those two things need to change and then um and again the the other pieces are the what we're talking about here are the kind of the design standards that would be attached to those and

not just in relation to Middle housing but if we do have those standards that they would also apply to uh single family detached housing which would be a new thing for us as well so my my curiosity on that question is so the infield toolkit was a kind of a work around right so it didn't apply broadly and then it did apply broadly and now this this to set a new standard right so that standard achieves all the goals I think or most of the goals the toolkit in the first place so if all that's kind of already in the new the new starting point that's my question do we even need the infill tool K if it's just going to be that's just going to be the standard from now on right so I I don't because it it doesn't need to be a standalone thing anymore but maybe I'm looking at it wrong yeah I think that's a good way of looking at it it becomes kind of the that becomes your you know you still have your uh Urban Village Development standards in those specific areas with the associated master plan for each Urban Village and we have our residential multi um development regulations in the RM zones and so this is where for what today we call Residential single but in the future you know we don't know what we would call it it's neighborhood residential or some other some other term that captures what would be allowed there there would be this this set of rules would be appi applied across all of those areas yeah okay so yeah um can we can you look at the info tokit slide it was the first one

that had a this not this um and it had a row of of snout house the the houses well the garages that one uh that one so on the bottom I'm I'm going to guess what happened here there's a setback problem right in the upper one um like in in most areas of town we got a 20ft front yard setback from the RightWay right the upper one if that's 20 fet is to the curb clearly not right and the lower one 20 feet from the right away that's how that happens so if we want the this do we have to go through the entire city and say to get to this and not this we have to change that front yard set back rule across the city I think that's part of what the infill toolkit does is it relax it it allows that um and in some cases requires that setback to be smaller yeah so yeah I think that's exactly what but again the infield toolkits kind of like a workaround right so we're limiting the this by only using the infill toolkit even though we want the this more around the whole city right I I have a problem with setbacks as right yeah so so that's a that's a good question it's something where the infilled toolkit would apply for um infill development on Lots um it remains to be seen what the if you just wanted to build a detached single family home on a single lot and you weren't interested in adding other forms of housing along with that um that's a question we have yet to answer about what the approach would be for that so that's a that would be something to okay talk about further would be yeah

would would the would today's residential single detach development code would the setbacks change to match the infill toolkit or would they be um the same as they are today okay we do have that added wrinkle of there there would be if we have design standards for Middle housing there would be the introduction design standards for those residential single units detached um and the setbacks could be part of that yeah so that that's again it's undetermined but definitely needs to be addressed yeah so r on that if we're talking about essentially merging infila into the new Universal neighborhood residential whatever it's going to look like and if someone if someone comes in on an empty lot and builds a duplex that would be under these infi toolkit rules and we're talking about lower front set back top picture there but if someone comes in next door to that and wants to build a single detached low density unit do the old bottom rules apply like could that happen side by side and how would we I guess are we saying it'll apply to single units and infill multi-units in a uniform way or is that 2bd TBD TBD I I I think some of it's to be determined the what the House Bill 1110 is pretty clear on is that the standards cannot be any more restrictive um or rigorous for the middle housing units than they are for the residential single units so I guess that's a that would have to be part of that evaluation is are are just are just having different setbacks just that are they just different

numbers or is it a more somehow a more rigorous standard to have a smaller setback so that's that's kind of a to be determined but that's also part of the conversation final thought on this before um and now I'm done so and this this relates to setbacks rways is an issue too so I think I've mentioned before that Sunny Land has 8 foot 80 foot rideways so for context if you want to know what that looks like Alabama is an 80 foot rideway all of the Interior streets in Sunland neighborhood have 80 foot rideways the same as Alabama which is get no sidewalks room for five lanes and two sidewalks right so so with an 8 fo rideway I don't I haven't looked at all the other neighborhoods but if we've got these enormous rways and the setback problem then we're really constraining the the opportunity for Middle housing design to really do the infill this as we're seeing on the screen versus the the not this there so it's just something we got to I think we have to tackle so that might be something to to consider is depending on the width of the RightWay maybe the setback varies yeah um that's a good idea yeah that could be something that could be we could look into um continuing on that the there's some theme of design regulation of like matching the character of the design language of like the nearby houses on the street I think it maybe has to do with like roof pitch but I'm thinking of the setback issue is like if you go into some of our oldest neighborhoods you see it doesn't look

modern like the top but you see a closer setback I'm thinking a lot of areas of Sunnyland a lot of non-conforming um yeah you see nonon for me but you also see like front porches fairly close to the street and then you get into like the 80s and 90s and you see building like the bottom with longer driveways now if we're if we're talking about Greenfield that's one thing but if we're talking about in integrating into existing neighborhoods does one set of rules make sense in a neighborhood that already has short setbacks and a different set of rules in a neighborhood that is built out with long front setbacks like how much does matching the neighboring houses on an actual info lot matter versus being uniform for all new builds no matter what Rose you've been waiting let's go remote yeah thank you I think that's that's a line along the the line of thinking that I wanted to ask about and so when um I've been thinking about these design standards for a minute um and in particular the the concern around creating too many design standards um or rigorous design standards that we then would have to apply to single family and how sometimes it can um sort of squash creativity uh and add um unnecessary costs so when I I'm looking at these things and there are things that I think are important you know I think the design of our homes is critical and particularly if we want people to love and honor these infil homes uh you want them to look nice and and to sort of um be uh like

longstanding so the things around parking and access those to me make a lot of sense in terms of like um trying to create a standard that we could apply to single family as well when it gets into Gables and things like that and that um along the lines of the how does it match the character of the existing neighborhood um we have seen architectural Styles change a lot over decades and not everyone loves every single style but a lot of people do love certain Styles right um and so I know that there's been instances of more modern style homes and some people just don't like that type of root pitch um but other really do and so what I don't want to do is create um design standards that either add additional cost that is unnecessary and and also create sort of that um cookie cutter situation where everyone looks the same and um that we get creativity in design um I'm I'm concerned about ugly boxes for sure um but I my you know my talking points here are around how do we create it make sure that they're very simple and allow for creativity just curious about um floor area ratio and in terms of like currently with single family you know how are we enforcing floor area ratio and then if we're enforcing the same rules on both single family and and infill toolkit homes what's our thought on for area ratio I think we also have to look into the difference between the design components and the the envelope allowances which can vary based on the type of housing being created and so we

could have different f um allowances for some types of housing as others um whereas we couldn't say that you know you have to have these eight design requirements if you're doing middle housing but not if you're doing single family so I think there's a differentiation there between you know the setbacks and kind of um hiat and F and and those things versus some of the design things that are often um kind of subjective now and they're trying to get us to be more objective just on lines of the floor area ratio for the like higher density zones like commercial and multi-residential um are we by any chance considering mod mod ifying Flor area ratios for the infill toolkit types of projects in those [Music] zones we've been looking into the question of whether any of our FS need to be adjusted as far as what we currently allow today um so that's something that you know we're open to discussing um it's not something that has come up a lot as far as the infield toolkit is concerned we've talked to developers and mostly they've brought up um some of the like the the F being a an issue in some of the larger scale housing developments but not necessarily the infill toolkit yeah I guess I mean theoretically you could have like people who would want abnormally large units of certain infill toolkit types and so I feel like in some ways we're kind of restricting these larger houses larger residences um in those building types um not to say that I'm really condoning you know giant uh forp

plexes with 3,000 foot units but I mean that would be kind of an example of like you know something that might be yeah some people do and some neighborhoods might you know it might make sense um I have one more question then I'll pass it on but I was just curious like you know all these neighborhoods are different and a lot of it's going to be infill so like you know in lines of the setbacks uh comments and things like that we're going to have precedent of neighborhoods I'm just curious like as a whole in these areas that are not currently covered with um infill toolkit that are going to all of a sudden have these housing types um are there a lot of these neighborhoods that are missing Alleyways to give access to behind um the lot and kind of like what's our thoughts on like some neighborhoods are going to have Alleyways and some aren't and so dealing with this garage upfront kind of question and then are we going to be able to enforce single family garages and uh infill tool kit garages in an equal playing field I think that's one of the big questions that we need to answer as far as this sort of design question goes I mean as Chris pointed out one of the really big components of the infill toolkit is how we treat The Pedestrian realm and the conflicts with cars and when you have an alley that's much easier to regulate and you know separate but it's a lot harder in the neighborhoods which we do have quite a few that don't have alley access and so that's a big question is

when it applies to everyone including single family homes what do we priorize and what do we allow a quick follow up on the Alley the alley issue I I know you know looking at um ownership Maps which I do a lot for my job I see a lot of alleys that just aren't built but they're still public property has there been any conversation about bringing those into service for new for new um or reused properties yeah I mean that's that's a great point and that's something we've been having staff conversations with um planning and public works and to some extent Parks about exact I mean a a variety of infrastructure questions that deal with um what like what an expanded infill toolkit might bring up but alleys have definitely been part of that where where do we have minimally improved versus uh just completely unimproved alleys um and would that be something we would look at at prioritizing improvements if there were significant gains to be made for you know for hous from a neighborhood design standpoint it helps achieve some of the goals the broader goals of what the people were putting dots on um because you can put all those other you know you've talked about a million times put all those services and other ugly things in the in the back right and and I know not every place has alleys but it does offer if things can slide forward then you can use that back space right yeah yeah um just Billy on the F thing we did see before the RM project a couple years ago we which um restricted

building single family in multif family um we did see large single family boxes getting built in multif family zones and as part of this unification we might lose that no like minimum density of like not disallowing single family Construction in multif family because that that line will have kind of gone away so I wonder I I do worry that the the lack of far on single attached and far on infi missing middle types might incentivize someone to build those large box single family homes where in areas where we do want the density uh Scott you've got your hands up yeah thanks Mike uh regarding the setback and this might have been discussed so I apologize but is there a reason or could you talk about why the public wants the porches and and the building itself to be closer to the sidewalk I know that uh as a parent I'm often enjoying of course the porch near the sidewalk for pedestrian access for U more socialization with my neighbors but also play space in the front and especially with uh more multif family in one location to have more families being able to play in the front yard versus a porch stepping up right onto the sidewalk so is the setback being less so that you could put more density in the back or is there going to be more backyard space or what's supposed to be in the back now that the building is more closer to the front of the lot I I guess what I'd say is what we heard from the public is is a variety of responses so there's no real clean answer there but I think the

most common thing we heard was not having cars in front so I I think that was probably the the main driver there was the um the building the the part of the building that is associated with people and residents coming and going having that be closer to the street and having this part of associated with vehicles being uh to the rear I think was the main emphasis I don't think the way that we asked the questions um in the public sessions we've had so far got down in the weeds far enough to address what you're talking about so but that's a great that's a great thing to to introduce into the conversation more there has been around um kind of human scale being something that people are interested in so whenever we we've brought up design elements or um you know questions for folks to consider that have to do with kind of a human scale people are really interested in them and I think that's part of what people really like about porches being up close is that when you're walking down the street there's sort of that human scale it's not like everything is so set back and there's just like open space you feel that there's you know a a set kind of public realm um that's not so large but that doesn't mean that we've specifically asked the question like should we allow front yard so that kids can play we haven't like brought it to that kind of level of detail yet people just respond to that that scale of development and those details being closer to them rather than far away and then

regarding the unintended consequences because a single family home is often smaller than say a quadplex um it's going to feel larger as it gets closer to the sidewalk and so to recognize that a single family home at 20 feet away from the sidewalk versus a quadplex at 20 ft away from the sidewalk will look much larger and maybe won't have that human component so we're gonna we have a second just remind we have a second half presentation and more discussion to come but um uh so comments welcome now or later um anyone hasn't jumped in yet on the design components Barbara yeah um one thing that I'm noticing not seeing mentioned is accessibility um I'm looking at this this top one up here and the closer we are to the sidewalk the steeper you'd have to put in a ramp coming off those houses um I don't like the ones on the bottom but they're actually more accessible um a wheelchair can get in and out of that house through the garage um but not in and out of the houses up on the top so inclusivity and I would like to see um you know some encouragement in the inol any anywhere in any of this where we encourage developers to actually build for Aging in place um you know people with handicapped relatives you know we're not just building for the able-bodied um but currently right now our entire housing stock is only for the Able Body there's very very few handicap accessible units available in our town now and unless we start including that in all of these conversations we're never going

to get that so any other comments um if you think of them if you think of something'll have time um so Elizabeth you want to start in one a quick follow up on what Barbara just said multif family has some Universal Design requirements um would would a a 4un townhouse qualify for those requirements that's that's part of the um we didn't really go into detail here but that's part of the conversation also are you covering the 1293 and okay yeah so we'll talk about that in a moment but that that split between the residential and commercial building codes is is a is part of the conversation and and where that split is today versus where it might be in the future so just had one comment oh okay R go ahead I'm just curious on the design aspect of things um when Chris was talking about the oh I think it's Peabody I think there's six if I remember correctly that three that face Peabody three that face Meridian if I'm right um what do we consider that that design is that more of a cottage feel or I don't know the phraseology that you using foris it's it it's an it's an infill toolkit project and it just incorporates um at least three different housing Styles um you've got a kind of a a duplex town home format there and you've got adus above the garages and then there's actually on at least one of the units there's an internal Adu as well okay so it covers two or three of the toolkit uh aspects of things all right we're going to move on to the second half of the presentation but a lot

of what you all just talked about also applies to this so you're welcome to bring up design in the second conversation as well so we just talked about design standards and a lot of the legislation that might change the way we look at those but the legislation as you all know also talks about density and so we've taken 1110 and pulled a few of the of the lines of that bill onto this page to just highlight how those intersect with one another and we'll talk about a couple other things as we move in to some examples you all are familiar with the kind of main um description of at least four units per lot that that need to be allowed in these areas I think that's on its face fairly simple but when you start looking at how it intersects with a lot of other components of the way we look at zoning it's actually a very complicated question so full disclosure we're still looking into a lot of those details of how these things intersect with one another we're hoping that today's conversation will stay at the comp plan level and really more at the policy level of really what you want to see and then we'll work out how that should look in the code once we've identified what we're really aiming for so we're going to try to keep this conversation at that higher level but we'll see where it goes um but when you look at other parts of 1110 it also talks about how we need to allow sub division once we've allowed these four units per lot using those types that Chris showed you we also have to

allow subdivision where that's relevant that might not be relevant if you're doing a stacked flat for instance because those units are stacked vertically so you can't really subdivide along the edges of the units but in many of those types whether you've got you know town homes or you have Cottages or you have you know maybe you have a um a Triplex that you know it's kind of in in an orientation that is vertically divisible you could subdivide and we have to allow that um and so that's something that we haven't talked about as much with that legislation so we want to highlight that there's also a line in there that talks about not having to allow those four units per lot if the lots are below 1,000 square feet th sare feet is a very small lot so our existing Lots aren't necessarily that size but when you start looking at how that subdivision line might impact things you might start getting some of those smaller Lots so that's what we'll start looking into a little bit here we did want to highlight how these two lines sort of interact with one another there's the term at least four units per lot on all lots and in the guidance from Commerce all Lots means lots that we have today but also lots that are created in the future so if you then create Lots through the subdivision process that four units per lot can apply to those New Lots there are some instances where perhaps those lots might be non-conforming or have other ways where that would not necessarily apply because it

would not allow further devel vment so we're sort of looking into those details of you know how that might look in different ways that we might develop our code but it is important to note that these could stack on one another in certain instances so we're going to go through three examples kind of of what this might look like we're using you know potential areas in Bellingham these are not real Projects please do not you know go searching for where these um housing you know projects exist and they have not said that this is what they want to do but we're just using real example examples to make a point um but this is just showing what potential outcomes of 1110 might be and it might spur some discussion from you all about you know is this something we want to see if so what are some of the design standards we might find important or what are some other considerations that we might want to be thinking about at this high level stage before we get into the actual code development so here's an example of an existing house that you can tell has been around in Bellingham for for a while um you know it it already has several entrances but it's a single family home it's on about a 5,000 squ foot lot um and it's in an area where the current minimum lot size is 3,000 square ft um currently today you could introduce an Adu as long as it's under 1,000 square F feet um but you wouldn't be able to turn into a duplex potentially depending on which neighborhood in the city this is and if

the infill toolkit applies but let's say it's an an area where the infill tool kit does not apply under 1110 you could um create multiple units out of this so let's say someone wanted to create something larger than a th000 squ ft and turn it into a duplex they could do that under 1110 and create two units that's pretty straightforward I think we all know that that's something some people might want to do and this would allow that that flexibility um assuming that the duplex is one of those six of nine types that that we allow which is pretty likely would be so I think that one's pretty straightforward we can wrap our heads around it this example is an existing infil toolkit project in Bellingham it's four town homes that are on each on its own lot um but let's say you know they they've they've been around for a little while but 1110 comes around and and someone who owns one of these property says I want to create additional units um they too could do kind of like in the last example and maybe they want to um you know there there's their their original entrance maybe they want to add an entrance to the side and create you know a little additional unit um they could potentially do that um under 1110 but we do have to think about the fact that the original type that this was built under were town homes under the in under the infill toolkit so that had its own you know setbacks and design requirements it's kind of flickering in and out sorry about that ju just look at that one

if that happens um and so this this was designed under town home standards but as soon as you add another unit here in this configuration this is no longer like meeting town home regulations this would turn it into a Triplex and so you have to consider what that would mean and that you know we might have different design requirements for for a Triplex so we'd have to consider if this is even possible this is something that we would want to encourage another consideration which is what Chris was alluding to um a little bit earlier was that there's also some other state legislation that um might make this a little bit easier in the future um for those of you who delve into actually building buildings you would know that um there's a big difference between a town home and a Triplex as far as what code you develop under today so if you're building a Triplex today you have to build under the uh International building code which has more stringent requirements especially for things like fire um standards and so it's often more expensive to build under that code whereas town homes are allowed to be built under the international residential code and so is a duplex so really what I'm getting at is currently this would be pretty expensive to do but there is some State legislation you see a note on the bottom HB 2071 that has directed the state code Council to look at ways to make these um larger or more these multiple unit projects that 1110 is trying to encourage be built under the

residential code so assuming that continues forward this might be easier to build in the future so we want to build into our code the ability to do things like this assuming that that state change does take place in the future so this is just a a slight Glimpse at how a lot of this legislation intersects with each other and how we need to kind of think ahead as we're developing our code as well so this final example is totally fictitious very small blocks no design components really in here but just trying to think about Green Field development let's say you have a fairly large lot and someone comes in and says I want to build four cottage homes on it well it's a single lot you can build four units on it let's say cottage homes were one of the types that we allow under 1110 we we'd sayg great you can do that so they build those and they decide to to subdivide because 1110 allows them to do that and so now they have four Lots each with a cottage home on it um assuming that there aren't other things in our zoning that are allowed by 1110 to um to stop further development they would be allowed to then put more units on these so let's say they they decided to you know continue adjusting this they could get some additional units on here I've sewn these as kind of attached so these are no longer cottage homes so similar to the previous conversation these are now either town homes or duplexes depending on how they're designed so they would have to meet those new um those new

regulations for that different type but this is something that they could potentially do it's worth noting that these are kind of shoved in there there's really no kind of common Courtyard or other design elements that we might want to encourage but that's kind of intentional so that you can think about what are the things we really do find important that we do want to require when we're considering projects like this so this is just kind of a madeup example to get your brains thinking um but that's a little bit on the on the parcel by parcel examples um and so we're going to with that in mind think about at the comp plan scale what are some of the questions that we want to consider on the top of this graphic are um representations of our current zoning scheme um most of our residential areas fall into one of those five categories we have a couple outliers but we have our residential single zones that are low or medium and those are based on their allowed lot sizes and then we also have residential multi which you all know went through a fairly substantial update recently to really streamline and simplify those um and that also included enabling um minimum development as well so that we we can make sure as you alluded to earlier that we can get um more development in these areas and not continue seeing single family homes in areas where multi is really what we want to see so that's our current zoning but because of 1110 even if you just allow four units per lot on those

existing lots that really changes what densities look like if you even think about you know let's say you have a residential single lot that's um that's a 10,000 foot lot and you put four cottage homes on that well suddenly you're looking at 2500 square ft per home that's already the same density as the residential multi- high is and so thinking about it in the same way we have in the past isn't going to work anymore it's not just about density and so what we really want you all to be thinking about is more about the design aspects and what are the things that we really want to be seeing and how we can encourage those things to happen so that's why we started with the conversation that Chris had to kind of get you thinking about the buildings themselves before we dove into the densities because the question really is less about density and more about design in most cases so what we've kind of put on this diagram is an example of what we could do we could combine our single and multi from the top into three four however many new categories that are all kind of in the same residential range let's say we did that and you know the residential low is basically the 1110 kind of housing types and maybe the medium is some of those but also some more kind of small scale apartments and the residential high are larger scale Apartments that's one way we could achieve this that people can kind of wrap their heads around so that's something for you all to think about this isn't exactly how

we have to do it but it's one way to think about it where it's really about the scale the design the um the types of housing that we're going to see that's going to differentiate between our different zoning uh conditions so this is our last slide for you um and this is just taking that concept and reminding you what this looks like on a map today the uh purple is our single family areas today our residential single the light purple is our residential single low and the darker purple is the residential single medium and so that shows you a little bit of kind of how we look at zoning in the areas that 1110 is meant to change today um and we actually brought this to the community at our housing types and neighborhoods event and so we had them have kind of facilitated Round Table discussions with staff and with each other about the question of whether these this this differentiation between the light purple and the dark purple is this still important given that density is not going to be the differentiator is there a difference between these areas that we should still retain we have control over a lot of things even with 1110 we are able to control which unit types are allowed so for instance we could say in all the light purple areas only six of the nine are allowed but in all the dark purple areas all nine are allowed that's something we could do we could have different design standards in those areas or we could treat them all the same another option which actually was pretty

popular with the community at that event is to consider instead of the light dark purple differentiation actually take a step back kind of lump it all together and then look at where the arterials and the transit routes are maybe that's a better differentiator than our current kind of density um orientation so that's is a question that we want to put back to you all is kind of taking that step back looking at it at the comp plan level how do we want to look at what's currently residential single today and maybe even looking at what's residential multi- low and thinking about how we want those neighborhoods to look and we want to have some variety in those neighborhoods and what kind of variety do we want so that's like six questions I just asked you all at once but I hope it made sense what we're trying to get at here so we're going to turn it back to you all to discuss that I think I to me the biggest complicating factor is cars I mean that you know it's like where do we put all the cars um um because the dser more dents we get and then we have to choose where we have Curb Cuts how we get the cars to the places and I mean just philosophically it seems like the biggest question like I don't you know I've heard that we don't have zip car here you know we ar aren't necessarily on the road to getting it soon um so it's kind of like we don't really have like great mass transit or car sharing Solutions um but yet we want all this density so I'm just curious like what I don't it's

an open question I guess is like what's kind of our our mission here um I I honestly don't even have a strong answer myself to what I think is the right answer because it's like it's so so much like trying to predict the future but I'm just kind of curious random thoughts on that sorry might might be a good time to just uh let you know we've been talking about um bringing in uh representatives from watom transit to talk to um talk to you to have a similar kind of a just a more informal uh presentation and then question answer around um Transit oriented development in general and also specifically what what wta's service model might evolve into in compelling him and that Transit land use relationship which has come up a couple times tonight um so that's something we're we're tentatively aiming for August 1st and we're also trying to coordinate with the Transportation Commission to try and pull off a a session where we have you folks and Transportation Commission in the room at the same time and have kind of a maybe a little bit bigger conversation about a lot of these things um because you're right I mean vehicles in general and personal vehicles in particular particular are are a big Challenge and it's obviously a big part of the land use discussion um that we've all been having lately so um so anyway more to come but absolutely a critical part of the puzzle to try and figure out I'm I'm super interested in this because the the relationship between where people live and where

they work um is pretty critical because we don't have a Tall City which is telling me that most people don't work in some kind of a dense urban office like some of the larger cities so the solutions that are working in Seattle maybe downtown Tacoma maybe downtown Spokane they probably won't work here yet right so getting from where we are um to that through the transition which is probably a multi-decade transition right um that's really interesting to me like finding that solution that gets us to an next step but it's not what I think a lot of people see as the next step being a solution that fits Seattle because what we need in three years is not what Seattle needs in three years or has now right I'd be very interested in chatting with the the transportation folks and see what they've been talking about and how it can relate to specifically the question you were asking there you know I mean people people know I'm I'm in favor of not having parking requirements like so if um if the market if the Marketplace demands the the the space for cars because we're still transitioning to a denser Urban environment then you know allowing allowances for that have to be there and from a design standpoint um you showed I think you showed there's three town homes and I believe they're on are they on Aster the tall the gray ones that you showed earlier with a really skinny all right so I'm currently looking at a 10t wide garage right so I know the standard that Bellingham has is 9 by8

rectangle for a car um a 10-ft wide garage is super tiny it's hard to get out of your car if you're in a 10-ft wide garage and the only thing in that garage is going to be your car there you know there's no room for lawnmower or shelves on the walls or couple of bikes right so if if we want to be flexible enough to allow the transition of people that are still using their car cars to get to their job because the transit they don't need Transit doesn't work for them but they do want to live in town then that then that relationship between what the marketplace wants and what the design is allowing is going to be a pretty big deal I wouldn't want a 10 foot wide garage I've got one car that would work in there but I got one car it's got the do almost four feet long it's are we at the comp plan level with garage widths here Mike almost we're getting there right um on the question about dark purple light purple yellow whenever I look at those Maps where the yellow line where the yellow shaded areas are where the dark purple shaded areas are it just jumps out at me how arbitrary the color boundaries are it's like a the worst gerrymandered map um so as we're trying to merge a couple different concepts together there's not an easy trans translation of the old to the new but I think the ideas of like I I just keep coming back to the idea is of proximity to XY abcdf amenity education grocery commercial job I mean there are some job centers they're not as intense as bigger cities as you

mentioned um but there's got to be some way to factor in like I think if to is less applicable here we don't have Light Rail stations we have bus stop signs but walkability is is a more permanent amenity walkability to a school a park a grocery store um and if you're within 15minute walk of X number of amenities that warrants higher density just as a general concept um and that you know gets towards maybe if maybe a family's not going zero car but they're going from three cars to two cars or from two car to one car because that walkability distance is better than other areas of town any else so here's here's a here's an interesting question so I'm looking at at um properties for sale in the city today and there's 111 acres for sale today I think in near the ug area I'm guessing they call it samish something it's 31 almost $32 million sale um how does that relate does something like that how's 111 Acres relate to this conversation you know especially up there where Big Lots no no walkability other than in your on your street I mean it's got sidewalks right walkability safety is there but no grocery store schools are a drive everything's a drive right the park is a drive um that's kind of a that's kind of a big chunk and that's that's new so that's not like trying to convert an old neighborhood or fit something in that's all potentially brand new stuff right I think that's a question that we talk about a lot as far as 1110 means that these types of you know middle housing are

allowed virtually everywhere but that doesn't mean that we want to encourage it everywhere um we do want to encourage housing we know we need more housing so I think there's the question of how much are we just encouraging housing everywhere and how much are we encouraging housing in specific locations so as we get further in the Bellingham plan conversations you'll see us you know going more and more towards what our growth strategy is and some of those growth strategies that that that we're considering would intentionally encourage more of the middle housing in certain areas than others even though they're allowed everywhere and so we might have incentives or or you know different standards in certain areas that just make it easier to build that kind of housing um so I think that's a question for you all about where are the places that we want to see these types of housing built yeah if it's out at the edges and it's 111 Acres they are allowed to build these things do we want to encourage that I'm not saying there's an obvious answer maybe you encourage it but you also encourage other things so that those amenities that you were just just discussing exist there as well there's many different approaches we could take but that's really what selecting a growth strategy is all about 1110 didn't take away our ability to decide how we grow it just makes us think about it differently are there strong like infrastructure type of um things that play that are like saying oh well

absolutely we need to do it here and we can't do it here just due to capacity of sewers and things like that yeah those are again some of the conversations we're having with staff um you know working with public works and you know what's the the right is there some minimum water main size where you know if you have more than 16 units on a block maybe you you need to make it bigger for fir flow or something like that um so yeah we're definitely having those conversations to figure out just in existing what what up to now had been fully developed neighborhoods um with complete infrastructure if if more development is allowed through House Bill 11 10 then are there you know certain streets where water mains would need upgrades before you could really have more development or something like that um and also just looking at the completeness of sidewalks and other other amenities um trying to figure out around the city you know which which um neighborhoods or individual blocks are maybe better set set up for additional units versus maybe some that are less that are missing you know one of five kind of key pieces of infrastructure or something like that so yeah we're we're looking at that there's no no magic answer yet but um trying to start figuring out what what are you know and again getting to what Elizabeth said are there are there things that that you might see as kind of logical places to start um kind of at that again at that larger City map scale of you know where should we

be um are there some areas that you would you know like us to look at as maybe areas to focus on yeah let's jump over to Scott thanks sub what I would like to focus on is uh maybe not just where but also what to per uh what to allow to build because in those blue bar graphs that we saw two Planning Commission meetings ago if we looked at the to 50% Ami we needed 9,000 units over the next 20 years and if we looked at the 50 to 120% Ami all we need is 3,000 units so if the conversation isn't about how to build those 9,000 units which is 75% of our overall Supply then we're not really looking at the supply itself so I'd like to really make sure we take a look at that and and then also you know 9,000 is a huge number in comparison to 3,000 but when we look at how much Supply is needed of that 0 to 50% Ami stock we need 150% more in the next 20 years than has ever been built before while we only need 10% more from the 50 to 120% Ami so 10% is a pretty small amount that would probably be taken care of even without 1110 and with 1110 it's a no-brainer it's going to happen but to build 150% Supply 9,000 units 75 % of our overall Supply is going to be a huge Challenge and I think that has to always be a part of every conversation we have so when you're talking about walkability you're kind of referring to like the urban V Village model right is that what you were kind of referring to uh I mean it can be neighborhood scale or orur Village scale yeah it's just thinking that um we've

been trying to build Urban Villages and I've been on this commission now for what two years now and um it seems like all of the attempts at an Urban Village have not panned out as well as we' hoped um I think we've kind of got kind of an Urban Village thing going in fairen but I think that it it came a l around more naturally it's not something that we planned specifically it was just something that was kind of already existing and we've made it more walkable we've put more housing in there but when we look up at Cordata we had a space for um putting in a Neighborhood Grocery Store and that didn't happen Neighborhood Grocery Store didn't show up and then we gave the property we we rezone the property for housing removing the ability to ever put a store there again and um and so I design review stuff kind of going back stepping back to that for just a second um when we talk about these kinds of things like Scott's talking about we need um housing Workforce housing and um but we need Workforce housing that works for the workforce as well so what I'm thinking is is that we're going to spend a lot of time and energy doing this but if we're not putting things in place to make these things actually happen we're going to end up being where we were with like cordada does that make sense am I being clear per perfect segue thank you Barbara um so what I was mentioning earlier about that 111 Acres right so a lot of that housing out there it's not exactly the definition of suburban but

it's looks Suburban it's just a little more dense than typical Suburban right all right so like the Cordata experience where you can't force someone to build something they don't want to build right but that area of town has zero amenities I I worked up there when I wasn't lost which is also helpful to find you know see the neighborhood um it's just a a rat's warant of of streets which I think we all know with a lot of single family detached houses relatively large Lots you know quarter Acres or larger and zero amenities at all nothing right okay um so this is a question that I'd like us to figure out how to explore how do we get that corner grocery store can we can we have a corner grocery store someone came in tomorrow and said I want to put a corner grocery store up above Lake pad in an obvious location cuz I could they do that and Hospital 1110 does not address that at all right but those are the kind of things that we obviously need to address if we want to make sure that that these neighborhoods are infilling the way we want them to infill you talking about cordada no just a lake P but but the excuse me but the excuse me but the problem they they the same problem in cordana right nobody wanted to build the grocery store so they never built it there's food co-op in cordada well there's that they don't I'm just saying just saying I thought you food co-op isn't good for the people the elderly people who are living in the in the Neighborhood Grocery Store it's not walkable

I think if you had that I was thinking of the north ug there at the top of the city if that's all greenfiled I think clearly it need it could need a commercial center um if someone wants to only if someone wants to well if you're going to add that huge chunk to the city maybe we should consider having a carve out for commercial of the size that would warrant grocery store but isn't the idea of the Urban Village where you've got like small shops and coffee shops and you know things that you know where somebody can go it's not it's not you know that we need to put a Costco in every neighborhood we need to put little little things you know somebody who can run down you know grab their kids and run down and grab a gallon of milk or package of diapers or whatever or you know get to the you know a small little tiny local pharmacy where they can you know get their prescriptions filled um after they've come home from work so I just I I guess just one thing that I've seen is that there's a lot of vacant commercial in the urban Villages that hasn't been leased yet and so you know there's a lot of like some people are saying we can't build if we have to build that much commercial just because of the excess in some areas and so I mean that's kind of been a you know the opposite is true of like we've got the space for these little shops to be there it's just whether or not you can't make people do it yeah well that's what I'm saying so so if we can't we we can't we don't build it and they

don't come and we build it and they don't come and where are we in the Urban Village idea is that even possible we want to talk about walkability and we want to talk about you know accessibility you know and you know a functioning neighborhoods for the people that both live there and work there how do we what are we missing what are we not doing that isn't making this happen one of the conversations I had at one of the open houses on Urban Villages is uh because I think the question before us was should we add two or three new Urban Village centers or or you know which strategies should we explore and I the conversation at the table made me think about the urban Villages have taken a very long time to develop um you know some of them came became zoning in effect in 2006 or 2008 um and there was you know large macroeconomic reasons why some of that was slow but we've seen it pick up a lot but it still takes decades to build a good Urban Village um and so what you see on Meridian or samish um which are the newer ones you know Fair Haven is kind of a naturally occurring room Village um is it's kind of an argument against adding brand new Urban Villages like we should let the urban villages we have selected mature and when they mature when you have a density of residential use that supports the ground floor commercial that is today not viable but in another generation of 10 years or 15 years of building intensity in an Urban Village that commercial support will be there because

there's enough residents who can walk across the street um and we don't have that that level of density in the urban Villages you see kind of spotty high-intensity Apartments but not filled in you can see what samish might look like 10 years from now what Meridian might look like 10 years from now and it would support more commercial and I think what 1110 style development begs the question is if neighborhoods become modestly more densified not apartment buildings but duplexes do you need pocket commercial in the middle of the neighborhood not on Meridian on the arterial and like that's I think one of the questions you asking at houses is what is a neighborhooda what's the appropriateness of a neighborhood Cafe a neighborhood Corner Store Nelson's Market in the middle of a neighborhood see Rose go ahead yeah thank you um yeah my my comments are and questions are kind of around the same and and thinking about the three different growth scenarios that you proposed for the comprehensive Plan and there's Urban Villages and then there was like more of a Transit orded growth and then more neighborhood um like mixed neighborhoods I think are the three um I'm the name might be wrong for the Mixed neighborhoods um but the point is is that I think we need all three and that um we do like we need to have our Urban Villages and they need to be successful and I from my perspective I'm seeing them be successful we're seeing a lot of growth in those areas at least when when interest rates

were lower we were seeing those projects happen and that's really great um and we need people um for commercial so we're not seeing commercial businesses thrive in those areas and they're not being rented because there's not enough density to make them work that's similar with car shares like we don't have car shares because we have so much parking and that's you know they've been very transparent that when they do the analysis on Bellingham it's not going to work for them because it's too easy to have a car so when I think about these these decisions we're trying to make and plan for for the future we need to plan for the future and not what is existing today and so right now ridership on WTA only accounts for like 3% of all rides that's not a lot of the rides and it's hard to sort of think about planning all of our growth around 3% of rides but we're not planning for 3% of rides we're we're planning for the amount of rides that are in the future so um I I agree with um Mike that when you look at our neighborhood plans and everything is sort of this like we've drawn these lines around these neighborhoods to create them um but when but if you know those are arbitrary in a lot of lot of reasons um they're they're a bit arbitrary and we could um rethink that to be more about the uses and what's around them and um where we think Transit you know where Transit is today and yes they could move Transit um but the go lines are probably pretty safe um and we can continue to to think

about how we grow in those areas so um I like the idea of thinking about all three of those growth uh modes I think Russ I thought I saw you uh motioning for something you have anything to jump in with this is just a think I'm getting more of appreciation for staff with these issues this is just really hard to try to think out 20 25 years and all these issues um I find myself thinking I'm back in this Statistics again um the only thing I can think of is the thing that keeps coming back to to me is and it's scaring me um and keeping me up at night is the affordability Factor uh it's just getting very very it seems like it's getting very very difficult for people to afford deliv Belling in um maybe maybe that's just a nightmare or a dream I keep having and I don't know I don't know what the answers are other than to continue to formulate collaboration with our developers and keep fighting for affordability and yeah density and and whatever we can do for my planning standpoint to to encourage and and I I think the planning department is doing a great job but just to keep a forthright about just keeping the affordability factor in mind about the folks who are do and deem to to to come to Bellingham that's what I keep thinking about and yeah the and and we're trying to do these great things and think about these creative things but it just it just keeps gnawing at me about the affability seems like some folks are just going to be priced out and maybe and I'm not I'm not a

pessimist I'm ultimate Optimist but that's way I've been feeling going through this kind of process and thinking about it so uh I'll talk to my therapist about it and get back with some comments so scottt Scott brought up a a point a little bit ago and I I wrote a note about making things easier and following up on what Russ said one of the answers that has got to be included is that the connection between the long range planning and the the the permit counter has got to be connected right because um I miss my job that's what I do right and these conversations are awesome and then when the rubber meets the road downstairs to the permit counter it it gets hard right so um what are those conversations that you folks I don't to answer right now but those conversations right what what are you doing between these big giant goals and the rubber meets the road the permit counter because a lot of the stuff like I had a lot of clients are like hey should I wait till 20126 I'm like why are we waiting till 2026 we know what coming it's just let's just do it right um so a lot of things that are people are anticipating to happen putting off for a couple of years um because the rules are going to change right but if it's just as hard in two years then people are just going to walk away they're not going to do the projects right it happens to me every week someone says it's just it's too expensive it's too much hassle you know you tell them it's going to take six months to get a permit

they're like are you kidding me like no could be 12 months you know so that's a a big I think a big concern is making it easier so that the intent of hb110 um actually you know finds fruition in in in the real world right yeah I think a big piece of what longrange planners we are doing is making sure that we are having those conversations regularly we take part in the current planners uh meetings and a lot of these conversations that we're bringing to you we're actually bringing to current planners as well to hear the barriers that they see because they're ones at that desk talking to people who want to build projects they're the ones who when our code doesn't allow something they have to say you actually can't do that right now and then they can tell us you know people want to do these things but we have to tell them no is this something that you know we actually want to allow that's something we should address in this update so identifying those barriers that we have today to getting the types of projects or the design elements or whatever it is that we want to be seeing is a huge part of this update um so you know hearing from our our permit counter folks but also hearing from people who are actually on the ground building these things um all of those you know perspectives on what the barriers are today big part of it one other quick question too on on the um the the sort of the neighborhood scale where you've got the the larger neighborhoods that don't have that they

don't have the Nelson's Market anymore right mostly because it's zoned out of existence um there is the macroeconomic problem right so yeah I want a corner mark Market in in my neighborhood well it turns out I have one because it's on a very busy street gets a ton of traffic you know both not as much foot traffic as car traffic but it does get foot traffic as well um that works there right but is is there a is there some kind of way in our zoning codes where we're not forcing someone to build that corner market right but when the density allows someone to do the math and think okay I could open a quter market here because people are entrepreneurial you know I read the other day that 99.6% of all jobs in this country at small businesses they're not forun 500 companies they're you know 100 people or less so people are entrepreneurial and they'll they'll take that risk and lose their shorts because that's what we do right um so that would I would be very interested in making sure that that there's some kind of tie there so that those things can happen if some entrepreneur comes along and says hey I want to do a corner market yeah that's something that we've heard a lot from the community a lot of interest in um as Rose mentioned our third uh growth alternative um definitely incorporates that into something that folks are very interested in we've been calling it The Complete neighborhood's approach but you can call it whatever you want um but that's something that you know no

matter what grow strategy we choose that's something people are interested in incorporating but definitely that component of allowing it but not requiring it it is pretty essential because the economy shifts it changes um it's really hard to write rules say You must have a grocery store in the spot it might not there just might not be enough visitors to support that use and so allowing things enough flexibility is important so that's a topic that we know is on a lot of people's mind so we'll be coming back and having a conversation of its own on that topic with with you all um I want to just visit that one for one second again you said it takes a while for a Urban Village to mature right so going back to cordada for a second they they gave that piece of property they waited nine years and part of that nine years was through covid so when we set up these things and then we go back on the zoning you know in a short period of time we haven't given that property or or somebody the chance to be able to come in and and use that property so that's the other thing I'm thinking is is that whatever we decide I think we kind of got to stick to our guns too about like not being you know sticking with our strategy and not backpedaling you know a few years later because you know somebody came in and decided they could make more money off the property by putting housing in there instead of allowing a store to go in you know cuz I don't think 9 years was long enough especially with Co in the

middle of that right right am I am I wrong about that n years um a reasonable amount of time for to I wouldn't say wrong but the propert I mean the property owner didn't want to do it right and there's other empty lots but we zoned it we zoned it for that we zoned it for that to encourage an Urban Village and then when it didn't happen in a short amount of time oh yeah yeah we backpedal you see what I'm saying we cord is cordada an Urban Village there was a single parcel that we had an hearing on like two or three years ago that had an urban no it had a designation that sounds like Urban Village a neighborhood center yeah and we've removed the neighborhood center overlay right that's right but it's yeah the area is not a village yeah and and to to Barbara's point I think that there's like how can we create adaptive buildings so that um we can get use out of them um and have flexibility for the future so that when things come up we can um adapt and reuse and get the neighborhood groceries that we need um but without that um without leaving them vacant and blank for what could be a very long time yeah we had a um a change before this body maybe five years ago regarding samish way and developers were coming forward saying we can't do do these ground floor commercial it's not feasible we don't have demand for it and so we compromised and said you can do Residential on the ground floor but you need to build it to a standard that could be converted to commercial in the future so 10

or 20 years from now all those buildings on sish way you see some vacancies right now but some of them did get built commercials but um all of those could be converted in those five six St buildings to commercial down the road and that's a that's a was a good example of a compromise of meeting today's needs but planning for a generation from now um hopefully these buildings stick around what about what about U an existing house in cordada um because this was in the news last week existing house in cordada and a company opens a bagel shop can can they do that so that's definitely tied to the conversation around kind of small scale commercial uses in more residential areas um and you know how flexible we want to be so um we did pose kind of a question around are those the types of things that we would like to see um and got some pretty clear answers from the community members who weighed in on that question so we do want to come back to you all with what we've heard from the community about that topic and start posing what some policies might look like around that and hear from you on you know are we in the right place are there some things that you'd like to see I think a lot of folks like the idea of being able to convert um residential uses to something small scale neighborhood friendly you know accessible flexible like that so it's more it's less about should we do it and more about how we should do it because it is something that people seem to want so this this is a this

I mean this is a really huge topic because we go for several thousand years of cities just sort of growing in a way that that either was very organic or very top down because there was somebody in charge right um if you like Paris today very top down because someone was in charge um different parts of larger cities across the world though just grew organically and then we got into this zoning thing and the conversation we are having right now is saying well maybe we'll we'll move away from this exclusionary zoning thing right that's a big deal and a lot of people who are alive today that showed up at City Council meetings in this very town the last four or five decades are they still have the same opinion about it right so moving away from that very exclusionary Sony conversation into this more inclusionary which is more of the traditional form of urbanity around the world um you're hearing a small snapshot of the community's thoughts at these public meetings are you worried you're not getting enough of a snapshot of the bigger picture Community maybe they should send out a survey they did yeah I think in general um we've heard from a lot of folks and I think we've heard from a broader swath of folks than we often do there are always going to be people who sit on either side of any issues that that we consider and we want to make sure that we kind of as we move that needle it lands you know more where a lot of people want to be and that we're considering those who are most

impacted even if they're a minority if they're impacted by any decision we we we make a larger amount considering their opinions as well um so it's definitely a fine line as far as how we do community engagement but I think there has been a shift in community opinion um to questioning whether you know having very separate uses in very separate areas of the city is the right approach um and I think that that's a shift that a lot of cities are are thinking about but I think Bellingham in particular has really expressed um a love for our small businesses an interest in being able to incubate new small businesses and so this is a way people have really um LED on to I think when they kind of think about it as a way to not have huge impacts on neighborhoods but to achieve some of those priorities that the city's found do we have um I'm just curious do we have sort of a I feel like everyone in this room might have a different idea of what the city might look like in the future um a few minutes ago I heard us compared to Spokane Seattle and Tacoma and I'm like um no I don't want to see us do that I don't want to see us go that route I don't think our community I don't think our community would survive it um uh but don't know what it should look like um we talk about growth and you know I'm I'm kind of pulling back and kind of trying to look at the bigger picture and see what the actual vision of this town is are we are we looking at a town that in 20 30 years is going to be filled

with skyscrapers is it I mean what what's the vision I think that's kind of the point the comp plan so we would turn that back kind like to hear what each one thinks I mean I don't want to compare this city to I'd never want to compare this city to Seattle Tacoma or Spokane you know I'd rather compare it to Port Townsen I I think like to me it's like that's what those workshops are as we're seeing what you know it's like what's the average person want it to be and I think like what you're talking about with affordability is like a huge thing you know and access and all that kind of stuff because that's like the majority of the population here is average right you know so um you know it's harder and harder for average people to live here and so like how do we accomplish that um how do we make does that mean skyscrapers are the answer that's what I'm saying that's what I'm asking I mean I guess it's like my opinion would be like similar to roses I think density has a lot to do with it um access to transit in areas that are dense you know and and that density is the way that we get affordability in a lot of ways I mean in some cases you just have to have smaller and have to have the ability to not have to have a car um to be able to afford it a place especially if it's a place like Bellingham that's beautiful and people want to come here yeah but I mean it's beautiful because it is the way it is and if we start putting skyscrapers in our middle of our town it's not going to be

so beautiful anymore I mean density doesn't necessarily have to be skyscrapers I I'm I'm being fous the reality is is like five over one or like you know just multif family housing that's about five stories tall or four is probably the cheapest way to build density so I mean that's kind of what you got you got how how tall can we go with these midrise that aren't skyscrapers skyscrapers are kind of costly so I don't think you'll ever see that but yeah five story buildings I mean that's that's the transition that's decade transition from where we are a two-story town to a five-story town and if you look at look at some if you drove down I5 20 years ago through Seattle you saw mostly fivestory buildings right and some skyscrapers downtown or tall tall buildings downtown but I think that's our transition right so from my perspective that the transition making sure that I call it the skeleton right so if we get the if we get the bones right then the rest of the city it's going to be because everybody owns every little piece of property and wants to do their own little thing right so mandating it thing which the University of British Columbia proved us does not work when they built their cool little village up there right what they demanded to happen didn't happen they had to get flexible and start letting things organically happen right but they got their bones right they got the street in the right location they got the right pipe size in the ground the biggest challenge for

Bellingham in the near future is probably the water and our sewer system right we got a billion dollar treatment plant he's upgraded you got 20,000 more people coming where's all that going right those are the biggest challenges cuz that's the transition so I I don't we're not going to have skyscrapers here right I mean not not anytime I don't think anytime ever but you can build a skyscraper today down you can do it today I know there's no height limit downtown anyone jumping up and down to build but I mean like you know six units on a on a residential lot and being able to subdivide it and sell it is to me like great you know if we can thousand square foot Lots you know that's that's pretty cool yeah I mean the presentation we saw tonight was not about skycrapers um and I think no I didn't I didn't think it was but we you know the question was posed you know where where are we going in the future and what should and one thing that was said was what should we allow and what should we not allow and so I was just curious to see you know kind of where we are I mean you got to room full of people that are all making micro decisions and everybody's got a bigger idea of their macro decision of their macro view then we could be you know not cohesive so that's that's why I'm asking the question and I think the we have a future meeting where we're going to dive into the three strategies in in detail and this exactly kind of what we're having that conversation right now we're going to

continue that well yeah we'll definitely be back to you with that conversation in Greater detail with the growth Alternatives and trying to hone in on what a preferred alternative might be um as we move forward with the you know we need to we need to do that before we can dive deeper into the policies that would be supporting that new land use map whatever it might be looking like um what you've given us tonight has been super helpful around the middle housing and design conversations and kind of what the what what the what we call today the residential single zones could evolve into so we really appreciate that and we will be coming back to you with more so that's a we're trying to trying to hit you with slightly narrower conversations than kind of the the bigger updates we've been giving you so that we can kind of get a little bit more productive conversation like this going so we appreciate that I think to Barbara's point though we talk a lot because of the state requirements around the 20-year Outlook and that that's what the comp plan does but in order to look 20 years out we really do need to think 50 100 however far out many generations and so you know as you're looking at these choices in front of you make sure you always keep that in mind I think you can get bogged down in in the details but really the comp plan is about that big picture yeah I think this is an above average uh intensity of change in one comp plan because changes so it I think it is bigger than 20

years like this but whatever comes together here is going to have an impact for a lot longer than that is there any specific questions you had you feel like we didn't touch on I think so no I think you what you guys have been feeding us has been really helpful um affordable housing question so SC Scott you're here right Scott um you mentioned some numbers about 70 what wasn't it 70% of Ami or something you know up to whatever that was what what does that look like in dollars in bars dollars money dollars 50% is essentially uh $20 an hour or less and of course a lot of those folks are underemployed meaning they don't work full-time you have to break it down by um family size three four Matrix essentially if we're talking about the connection between house 1110 and the actual again on the ground reality um and I looked at something today as a 6,000 foot lot with $4,000 price tag on it right and there's another one on coolage it's 380 they they don't want four houses next to them so I don't think that's going to happen over there but um that's uh that's if you if you broke up that 6,000 foot lot that's 1,500 foot Lots at $72 a squ foot I don't know what the math is on that one but you know they're $150,000 Lots then you got to put a house on it you know is that even going to get is that even going to get to the the the number that Scott's mentioning so just allowing it so when it comes to these Michael when it comes to these numbers a person at that level 0 to 50% Ami is not

looking at home ownership period no I'm talking rentals sadly it's just not these are rentals yeah they could afford it's this is a topic as the city has mention needs okay it needs help more than just Supply to create these housing units it needs zoning reform it needs inclusion area zoning it needs subsidization it needs uh those types of things it can't just handle it with Supply that means that 75% of our supply is going to need our help Chris this this we'll dive deeper into that connection you know I think we kind of had an aside at the last meeting and and I'm I don't know if you were standing rest talking with with Blake about it but the connection between you know the the the the rule the regulation and the reality right so just allowing it doesn't mean it's going to happen like the grocery store we allow it but it doesn't make it right I mean we can come back and do a deeper dive um into the the what will be really in our housing chapter and I mean strongly supported by what's in the land use chapter and linked to it obviously but but in the housing chapter the the portion that will um that will address the requirements for House Bill 12 20 which is the housing for all incomes um piece that was passed in 2021 and and that will I mean like like we said before and like you just um repeated house buillt 1220 requires us to plan for make sure that our regulations are not in the way of housing that would be uh appropriate for all the incomes on our community um it

doesn't it doesn't uh require us to build the units at those price ranges um it's and you all remember when we looked at that graph the the below 30% of median income category is really only a subsidized product is the only thing that's going to meet that we don't have anything that anybody's building in Bellingham that would meet that income need and and and we we're doing the best we can right now with that um but again we're not anywhere close to meeting the need so um there is that reality of we we need to plan and make sure our regulations aren't in the way that's our our job as the city and then also to the extent that we've um decided as a community to tax ourselves and direct and leverage um federal funds and other um relationships with our our nonprofit Partners in the community that are building the units you know kind of pulling all those levers to do the best we can to build the the subsidized units that we can pull off um there's just enough of a need that you know we're not able to we're not able to get to zero and and to to satisfy all of the need there so but you know we'll keep we'll keep moving forward on it keep doing the best we can we have a sibling commission uh Community Development board that deals with Al way recommending um allocating those dollars for subsized projects but Mike let me just pitch there real quick a lot of this is not about 0 to 30% it's the 30 to 50% and that's 3,000 units of the 9,000 and that can be done without subsidization that

can be done with u zoning reform inclusionary zoning type activities and that's much more accessible to this body than it is to taxing residents I look forward to having this conversation um during that housing chapter um because this is a very complex issue that has to do with market dynamics it has to do with a lot of factors and what we don't want to do is suppress Supply and I am a big proponent of creating affordable housing I just took the executive director position for cul Community Land Trust which I'm very excited about um and I know what it's going to take to make those projects go and it's very expensive and it's hard even at 80% Ami or 120% Ami to make those projects so just by doing inclusionary zoning um cart blunch doesn't mean that it'll get built um so I'm very excited to have um a more robust discussion at another another time okay um I did have one more just one more question so um and I ask this every time but when we first started seeing these um and I think just about everybody has gone to at least one of these sessions if not several um here on on this committee and um I want to know that you have people signing in and you know they I want to know how many of the people continued to keep coming back and how many of those troubled um unreachable categories did we were we able to get to to participate more in these you know we were working on that the the renters the lowincome people and the bipot community um were unreachable when we first started this

and I want to know what progress we've made on that yeah I think once we close out this phase we'll do kind of a summary presentation to get you some some numbers and kind of an idea of all those things I think you know we've given you a few of the examples of the kind of specific actions we've seen um we have seen some um outcomes from some of our community based organization um Outreach getting to some of those groups so definitely some folks um through um Northwest Youth Services and through the hearing speech and death Center a couple of those groups have been um kind of spreading the the word for us so that I think that's helped a fair amount in our last couple of sessions get more folks out that have never participated in um these types of events and we did hold an event entirely in Spanish last month as as well which was really great we really haven't seen that type of event um before and we had about 30 35 Folks at that event taking part through the entire two-hour event um and really having some some great conversations with staff as well so definitely making strides we're not you know perfect yet but definitely making um making a difference more than we were in the first phase and learning from our our actions as well um why don't we wrap there and close the work session um any calendar notes other administrative updates no I think we'll get um an invite out like I said explaining what the content and format for August 1st might look like um joint session again with

you folks and Transportation Commission um we'll have uh Tim and Hayden from watom transit Association uh wat watom Transit Authority presenting for part of that and then just participating in a what what we hope is another kind of just back and forth conversation like this um kind of digging deep into the the transportation land use connection and how that plays into um you know the middle housing into urban Villages Transit oriented development and the land map so I think that's it though so again really appreciate the conversation super helpful thanks everyone okay we will adjourn good night good night [Music]