News and Analysis

In 2022, 2023, and 2024, Bellevue residents participated in many passionate meetings to arrive at a shared vision for how we can protect our tree canopy where lots are being redeveloped. Instead of requiring a percentage of the existing trees to be maintained, it set standards for how many trees should be present after development, with tree credits based on the diameter of each tree trunk to satisfy those requirements. 

There are three ways the Tree Code is being significantly weakened in the residential areas of Bellevue:  

First, we are proposing to allow cottages by the acre on our large lots.  If three bedroom, 1750 sqft + 300 sqft parking/storage cottages are built, you’d be allowed 22 for every acre of your property.  If you have an acre and a half, you’d be able to have 33 of these homes.  It is also possible to adjust the size down, and get a larger number of them. You could have 28 cottages that are 1400 sqft + 300 sqft for parking/storage on every acre. The areas that will be affected by this rule are home to a significant amount of Bellevue’s tree canopy. 

Second, there is a special loophole for cottage housing that will greatly reduce the number of trees required. The former requirement for these large lot areas was 5 tree credits/1000 sqft of lot for a single family home, and 4 tree credits for any parcel with two or more dwellings. Cottage developments are getting special treatment with the Middle Housing LUCA, and will only be required to have 1 tree credit/1000 sqft of lot area. 

Third, there is a new “tree health” provision to avoid tree crowding. Since the bar has been lowered to the floor for the cottage housing, I think they are actually unlikely to run into this issue, but some of the other middle housing types (duplexes, courtyard apartments, sixplexes, stacked flats, etc.) that still need 75 or 80% as much tree credits as a single family home may have trouble fitting them all in.  The Tree Code recognizes this and offers tree credits for $1300 apiece, which will fund tree planting and arborist work in Bellevue. Of course, this annoys developers, so there’s a new provision on page 40 of the strike-draft that will give them credits for more trees than they actually plant, as long as they are careful to build and pave over so much of the lot that it would never be possible for more trees to exist there in the future, either. 

Please come to the meeting this Tuesday, May 13th at 6pm in City Hall and tell the City Council that you still care about maintaining the standards in the Tree Code, and not to allow these changes to undermine it. HB 1110 only requires that we allow 4 housing units per lot in large cities like Bellevue, not an unlimited number of cottages! We’re getting so much capacity for new housing in the rest of the city that the limiting factor will be the number of construction teams, and we don’t need to accelerate development in our greenest and most car-dependent areas.

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There was plenty of yelling at Monday night’s meeting about Middle Housing, but one of the topics where people expressed their sheer frustration most intensely was the question of homes that are being used for co-living. 

This is currently not allowed in Bellevue, so residents have complaints where the rules are not being enforced, and their neighbors have a dozen or more cars parked all over, with an out of state absentee property owner, etc. Since the state passed a law to allow co-living in 2023 (HB 1998), we know we will have co-living, and we have until December 31st to finalize the rules around it. This would not apply to all areas of the city; just where six units are allowed by right.  

The Middle Housing LUCA, for which City Council is having a crucial meeting on May 13th (Tuesday next week), seems likely to expand the areas where six units are allowed by right significantly. Based on the requirement of HB 1110, parcels within a 1/4 mile walk of Link and current and future RapidRide stations would be allowed to have 6 units by right, whether the last two units are affordable or not. The city is proposing to go beyond that to allow 6 units by right for areas that are 1/2 mile walk from those Major Transit stations, and also create a perimeter around Downtown, Crossroads, Eastgate, Factoria, Bel-Red, Wilburton, and East Main that would allow 6 units by right as well. 

For the parcels that allow 6 units by right or are in mixed use areas, owners may create any of these four co-housing types starting in January 2026.  

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One of the most profitable opportunities under the new Middle Housing rules (please come to the May 13th City Council meeting if you have any objections to this) will be the estate form.  I had said you don’t maximize potential with only 6 homes on a larger parcel (see the Large Lot Cottages post), but these are not just ordinary homes.  

It is likely that your large, 3/4 acre lot (formerly zoned R-1) is more than 1/4 mile walk from the perimeter of Downtown, Crossroads, Eastgate, Factoria, Bel-Red, Wilburton, or East Main, and also not within the 1/2 walking distance radius of Link or the current or future RapidRide stops.  Therefore, you’ll have to pay $150,000 for each of the fifth and sixth homes you plan to build on the parcel.  This will subsidize up to two households to live in tiny, tiny affordable units in our urban areas. 

Then you calculate your buildable structure size. At 0.9 FAR for all the large lots in Bellevue, that’s 29,403 sqft, and add at least 1200 sqft for each of the two ADUs you’re allowed. Finally, each of the houses gets 300 sqft for parking and storage, and the homes that have the ADUs would get 600 sqft, which you only have to add about 150 sqft to to enable them to have three-car garages. 

Ignoring the garages for now, that means each house could have 5300 sqft.  I’m deducting 2100 SF from that because I think they should all have 3 car garages.  Then that allows each to have 4,950 sqft of living space and 750 sqft of garage. 

I don’t think you can build them as single family homes, so this will probably be three duplexes, and that should still allow plenty of space for gardening and outdoor entertaining. If we add 4950 and 750 and divide by three floors, you get 1900 sf per level for each house.  The garages are likely to be the only part of the homes that actually touch, so you’d probably get a little more space for the ground-floor ADUs above and beyond 1200 sqft, maybe using the full 1900 sqft on one level, and then allowing the average estate size to be 233 sqft larger. 

You might have 1900 sqft on the ground floor and then some entertaining space on a deck on the second floor that’s about 230 sqft. 

If the footprint is 1900sqft on the ground floor plus 750 sqft of garage, that’s 36.5% lot coverage by structures (good thing the proposed rules for middle housing allow 40% lot coverage). The proposed rules for middle housing would also allow up to 50% impervious surfaces, which might be tight depending on how much driveway space you need to reach all three of your estate duplexes. 

One of the best things about these homes is that they can have super high ceilings since they get 8′ of height that ordinary homes do not. You can divide 38′ by three stories to get 11 foot ceilings even after you have a couple feet for high-grade, very solid construction.

There is also a tree code requirement for middle housing that’s 80% of what is required for single family homes, but since you’re presumably clearing a lot that was almost entirely forested before, you would only need to find 132 tree credits, which might be seventeen 20″ trees or twenty-two 16″ trees, and you can always pay toward the street tree fund if you don’t want to keep the trees on your site. 

Good luck! 

Edit: Note about parking added below.

This cottage scenario has 16 cottages in four rows of four, with a central strip of common open space in the center, and 6′ walkways in the other spaces between the rows. Within each row, the cottages would be 2 feet apart (this assumes that both structures will be built with fire rated walls, which is not possible for a typical ADU being added alongside an existing structure). Each cottage uses the full 38′ height allowance. Cottages will have some storage for bikes, but only the front four cottages have any potential for driveway access.

(diagram to follow)

If there were an agreement from the residents to not park cars on the street (see the Culdesac Tempe car-free project), along with room for delivery trucks in the driveway space, you’d be able to mitigate impacts on the streetscape. Neighbors would still have loss of tree canopy and probable A/C exhaust and reduced natural airflow, as well as privacy concerns, and it could be a workout for emergency responders with so many stairwells (48 flights of stairs on a 10k sqft parcel).

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The limit on the number of cottages that are allowed to go on a large lot is based on the FAR, which for all parcels in Bellevue over 10,000 sqft will be a 0.9 multiplier.  If we do the math for the large lots, let’s see what can be produced: 

At 1750 sqft each, 22 three bedroom cottage homes per acre (this is the largest cottage you’re allowed to make)

At 1400 sqft each, 28 two bedroom cottage homes. 

Each also gets 300 sqft of garage storage space, so that you have room for a car and some other garage storage. 

How tall will these be? They could be up to 4 stories, since the height limit is 38′, but at three stories, you use 30% of the lot area, which is under the 40% lot coverage limit for larger parcels in Bellevue’s proposal. 

Impervious area will depend on how much driveway you need, but it shouldn’t be hard to meet since the draft code offers wide latitude to add driveway as needed by increasing the size of the porches, up to 25% of the area of the lot, and then putting more mass on the third or fourth story of each building. 

A 3/4 acre lot that was formerly R-1 is not large enough for lot splitting, so it would otherwise be able to have six Middle Housing units plus two AADUs. If I wanted to maximize its potential with cottages, I’d put eighteen 1633.5 sqft cottages on the parcel. 

If you’ve seen one of our signs or received a flyer, you may be interested in knowing what’s changed, especially since there were a bunch of changes at the April 23rd Planning Commission meeting.

First, there was a vote to count any detached DADUs toward the unit count, so if someone builds two DADUs, they would then be able to build only two or four Middle Housing units (depending on the area and/or if they pay a fee-in-lieu of $150k per unit). There will still be some advantages to building an ADU, such as reduced fees, but they are allowed to be 28′ instead of 38′ tall and are only up to 1200 sqft + 300 sqft of parking or storage. That 300 sqft is up from the 250 sqft that had been in the draft prior to the April 23rd meeting.

Attached ADUs are still allowed in addition to the four or six units. I think there could be an 8 unit building where all units are the same size, or, more likely, 6 homes that are all the same size, at least two of which have an internal ADU. While it’s likely that the AADU is not sold separately, it is a bit of future-proofing that enables more flexible uses in the future, and might be a nice way to share a larger home as a multigenerational option. Large homes like this wouldn’t uncommonly have wetbars on some floors anyhow, so it’s not as if that extra kitchen requirement is a waste. An attached ADUs does have the possibility of being more than 1200 sqft if it is all on one floor.

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Hello Robin Cookies is now in Bellevue! This is a great new option for rounding out a trip to Downtown Park, with cookie flavors like lemon glazed poppy, molasses, snickerdoodle, s’more, salted butterscotch, vegan chocolate chip, birthday cake, and lavender milk chocolate. They also have a kids’ special that’s a cookie and milk for $3.

It is late to be wading into the question of sidewalk width, but this is something that could come before City Council soon, so here are the basics:

Developers hate* wide sidewalks. For every added foot of sidewalk width, the width of building adjacent to it is decreased by one foot. Therefore, they perceive sidewalks as shaving away their profits. The Wilburton LUCA does allows buildings to overhang the sidewalk, but there are limits to how much that can allow added space on the upper floors. 

In the FEIS for the Comprehensive Plan from last year, it is clear that travel speeds along 116th will be very slow because of inadequate capacity at the intersections with NE 12th, NE 8th, NE 6th, and NE 4th. Even in the Alternative 1 growth scenario (see page 232 of 1257) which estimated an added 4,500 housing units in low density areas (page 79 of 1257), the vehicle over capacity (v/c) ratios for those four intersections were all significantly over 1 during rush hour. Once you get over 1, actual results are hard to predict, but cars stack up more and more with each light cycle because the intersection can’t handle demand. It seems likely that the cars could be traveling more slowly than the pedestrians, though the analysis I did before focused on the Preferred Alternative with even higher density (See March 2024 letter and the response here). 

 Given the limits on road capacity, we will need as many people to walk in Wilburton as possible, and there should be enough density to provide useful destinations that are within a reasonable distance for the residents who will live there. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine a thriving pedestrian scene if the sidewalks end up being narrower than those in Downtown. It is important to create a pedestrian environment that is comfortable and safe and can handle people flowing in and out of 45-story buildings. 

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Meetings in Bellevue

Summaries for upcoming public meetings, and opportunities to comment or volunteer is sent out to the mailing list about once or twice a week. Here is the latest, and below are links to past mailings.

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I was just looking at this YT channel, because they posted an excellent video of the Montlake spite house a year ago, and noticed this feature about a New Hampshire grouping of cottages. See update below with added FAR comparison.

I think Bellevue residents would be really happy to see a project like the above in our neighborhoods. In a 2022 Bellevue survey with 567 respondents, cottage homes were the most popular housing type.

From the survey report, “Many commenters … would prefer to see small-scale, low-density options like duplexes or cottage homes built instead of these much larger scale single-family homes.”

Let’s take a look at the differences between the pocket village shown in the video and the proposed Bellevue rules for cottages.

Cottage height: These look like they’re about 16 feet tall, while Bellevue’s would be allowed to be 38 feet.

Cottage square footage: These are 384 sqft with a 160 sqft loft. Bellevue cottages are allowed to be 1750 sqft plus 300 sqft of bonus garage/unheated storage space that doesn’t count toward the FAR limit.

Open space and lot coverage: These have tons of open space. A common open space in Bellevue would only be required to be 15′ across, and if it’s a 15′ strip of a 75′ wide lot, that’s almost enough to satisfy the requirement for 12 units (100 sqft each).

Impervious area: Bellevue would allow 70% impervious surfaces, as long as 25% is porch area. This can bizarrely produce more walkways than needed and huge porches, that potentially account for more than half of the footprint of the buildings. In the common open area, 75% could be impervious rather than landscaped, possibly only allowing a 4-6′ strip of grass down the middle.

FAR: If we don’t count the greenbelt, this project has 44 units on about 4 acres. Counting the entire loft space toward the square footage, that means a FAR of 0.137, or one square foot of building interior space for every 7.2 sqft of the lot. In Bellevue, the FAR for cottages (on lots under 10k sqft) is 1.5, about 11 times as much, and each unit also gets a bonus 300 sqft to be used for parking/storage. Bellevue also allows each lot to have 2 ADUs that might not count toward the FAR limit (not sure what the outcome of the latest planning commission vote was).

I’ve tried to come up with cottage layouts, and it’s not always easy to use all the FAR and bonus space, even if you assume you have 4 story buildings that are build right up to the more generous middle housing setbacks.

Unlike other middle housing types which are limited to 6 units of middle housing + 2 attached ADUs per lot, there is no limit on the number of cottage homes on a lot, as long as you stay under the FAR cap. I think 12-16 on a 10,000 sqft lot is possible, and this gets particularly interesting when applied to half-acre lots, etc. 

Porches: These have nicely sized porches that face the community space, but Bellevue will have no porch requirement. You could make just the minimum walkways needed and zero porches, so people would just go upstairs to hang out in their towers, which I don’t think would create a sense of community

Separation from neighboring properties: it looks like there’s a nice greenbelt with trees, whereas existing Bellevue homes could have cottages towering over them, just 5′ from the side of the property boundary.

Space for trees: Bellevue is creating a special loophole in the Tree Code. In many formerly single-family zones, there would be a requirement for 5 tree credits per 1000 sqft of lot area if you’re building a single family home and 4 tree credits when middle housing is built, except that cottages would only be required to have 1 tree credit per 1000 sqft of lot size. Ten tree credits are equivalent to two 14″ diameter trees on an entire lot, -or- five 6″ diameter trees -or- ten saplings with 2″ trunks.

In the interest of “tree health” there’s also going to be an allowance that gives out bonus tree credits as needed, so that middle housing developments don’t have enough space for trees to *ever* exist will get credit for more trees than they plant, allowing the developers to get out of paying into the fund to plant street trees because it would be so terrible (/s) if they had to buy the tree credits at $1350 a pop.