A flat fee-in-lieu of $150,000 per unit is included in the strike-draft that was released on April 3rd. My understanding is that this is based on the effective cost of creating affordability for an apartment, but offers tremendous profit potential when the lot is large enough to allow each individual unit to be ~5000 square feet. Imagine a 10,000 sqft duplex! This fee is far below the 50% of lot value that would be the upper bound for adding two units to a lot that could otherwise have four.
In the March 12th meeting Commissioner Vilaveces advocated for allowing vehicular areas to count as open space, since cars would only be driving through in the morning and evening and kids could play there in the middle of the day. As a mom, I thought this was a hot take, but there is a new line in the April 3rd strike-draft saying that for “cottage housing with four or fewer units, area used for driveway access may be utilized as common open space.” In Seattle, their materials specifically say that vehicular areas cannot count toward the open space. Bellevue’s open space requirement was tiny in the first place, only 100 sqft per cottage, whereas it is 250 sqft per cottage in Salt Lake City and 300 sqft in the Washington state model code for Middle Housing.
Massive increases for FAR for lots less than 10,000 square feet were added. In the March 20th draft, a fourplex would have received 0.7 FAR, and a sixplex 0.9 FAR. For comparison, the megahomes that are frequently built now are 0.5 FAR. In the April 3rd strike-draft, fourplexes are now 1.0 FAR, and sixplexes 1.5 FAR. Note that ADU interior space and up to 250 sqft of parking/unfinished storage space per middle housing unit are not counted toward the FAR total, so that is bonus space. You can expect the new structures to be about 3x the mass of the biggest single family homes that are going in now.
Walking distance now includes a “physical impediment” term. This may be worthy of further clarification, but freeways are an obvious one, and I have been told that the greenbelt will also be considered a barrier between much of Woodridge and the upcoming RapidRide K route. It is disappointing that there is still not the use of the actual walking distance, since there is no incentive to create pedestrian cut-throughs if developers get the higher density whether it’s a long walk or not. The use of this terminology may create confusion for people who do not have an inside scoop.
Cottage housing developments are now only expected to have 1/4- 1/2 as many trees as other middle housing types. This undermines all the community’s work to develop the Tree Code. On a 10k SF lot, there could be 10 tiny trees, two trees over 14″ in trunk diameter, or one tree with a 24″+ trunk diameter. Realistically, the tree protection zone for the larger trees would create a large unbuildable area, so it is most likely that the developer will opt to pay the $13,000 for ten tree credits instead, and we will have zero trees, as seen on developments of this type in Seattle.
Edit: It was just pointed out to me that if the fee-in-lieu is not tied to inflation, there will be a gradual erosion of our ability to create affordable apartments using this money.
I had based the items above on my read of the new strike-draft and the Staff Report (which is dated April 9th but doesn’t seem to have been updated since it was released on March 20th). There is also an agenda memo, where I now see that there are a couple other changes I didn’t notice initially.
- Alternative replacement option where a qualified specialist can indicate that the standard replacement schedule would result in a poor outcome for the on-site tree health.
- Additional lot coverage increase of five percent for cottage housing projects.
For item #1, I can’t find this in the strike-draft, though I do see that the Director may waive the requirement that both property owners consent to the removal of a property line tree if it is deemed a danger by a tree professional. Hmm.
For item #2, it is on page 28 of the strike-draft, and I missed it because there’s no comment tagging the change. The current lot coverage is listed in the 20.20.010 table as 35% for homes in R-1 through R-4, and 40% for R-5 through R-7.5, going down to 35% again for R-10 through R-30.
The strike-draft lot coverage is 40% for LL-1 through SR-3 and 45% for SR-4 and the LDR and MDR zones, and then adding 5% to that produces 45% and 50% for cottage developments in those areas. It would be nice to have confirmation that the previous assessment about adequate stormwater handling still applies under this modification, released only six days before the public hearing.
