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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHearing Examiners Decision Appendix A - Renton New Life ChurchThis transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 1 of 7 Appendix A July 9, 2024 Hearing Transcript New Life Church -- PR24-000146 Note: This is a computer-generated transcript provided for informational purposes only. The reader should not take this document as 100% accurate or take offense at errors created by the limitations of the programming in transcribing speech. A recording of the hearing is available at the City of Renton Community and Economic Development Department should anyone need an accurate rendition of the hearing testimony. Examiner Olbrechts: (00:19): Get this. Yeah. Alright. Okay, so for the record, it's July 9th, 2024, 12:00 PM I'm Bergs Hearing Examiner for Renton. We are considering now at this time in the application for conditional use permit, site plan review and two street modifications for an office building for the New Life Church campus. Hearing format will be, we will have a presentation from staff. Mr. Morgan Roth will give us an overview of the project. Once he's done, we'll move on to applicant comments. It's not required, but if you want to add anything, you'll have that chance and we'll move on to public comments. If we have any members of the public who are participating today, we'll certainly give them a chance to express their input after public comment and go back to Mr. Morgan Roth. To complete the record and answer questions the applicant gets. Final word, I get 10 business days to issue a final decision. And at this point, just want to ask Mr. Ros to go ahead and flash the exhibit list on the screen. And let me, going to try to, I don't have video yet, so I'm going to, would you like Speaker 2 (01:28): Me to read them off Mr. Brooks? Examiner Olbrechts: (01:31): Yeah. Put up the exhibit list and I'm just trying to get on right now. Okay. There we go. Okay. I see now there it's, okay. So that's a total of 12 exhibits, Mrs. Ros, or is that just the partial? Speaker 2 (01:42): There are 20, we have 20 environmental review report. Examiner Olbrechts: (01:47): Yep. The site plan and civil plan drawings, landscape plans, architectural drawings. They have an ARBOROUS report, true retention memo, a geotechnical analysis, drainage reports, street and discrete modification, requests of traffic analysis, transportation, concurrency review, and comments from the tribe and so forth. So at this point I just want to ask if anyone, oh, sorry Mr. I know we have to add the other three there as well. Speaker 2 (02:13): Yeah, this is for the hearing. All This transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 2 of 7 Examiner Olbrechts: (02:14): Right. We have the staff report and 21 and the termination that no environmental impact is necessary a on hold letter. And then finally final three is the staff PowerPoint, the City of Renton Maps available on the city's website of the project site, which includes zoning, aerial photographs, that kind of thing. And then Google Earth. Also a photographs of the project site. So we have total of 26 exhibits. Anyone have any objection to entry those into the record? Mr. SROs, did you see anybody objecting? If you do object, just click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. And Mr. SROs, do we have any objectors or Speaker 2 (02:53): We do not. Examiner Olbrechts: (02:54): Okay. So we'll admit one through 26. Alright. Mr. Morgan Roth, let me, sorry again, just raise the hand. Do you swear affirm to tell the truth, nothing but the truth in this proceeding? Speaker 3 (03:03): I do. Examiner Olbrechts: (03:04): Great. Go ahead. Speaker 3 (03:06): Okay, thanks. Let me get my screen up here. Make sure everyone can see it. Oops. All right. Can you see that Mr. Examiner and Jenny? Anyone? Examiner Olbrechts: (03:33): No. Come up any yet? Speaker 3 (03:35): Oh no, no. That's not the answer I was expecting. All right, one second here. How about now? It's Examiner Olbrechts: (03:46): Not the view we want to see Speaker 3 (03:49): Not how about now? Examiner Olbrechts: (03:52): There we go. Speaker 3 (03:53): This transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 3 of 7 Okay. Oh man. It's like I don't need another tech problem. Alright, awesome. Thank you. I'm Alex Morgan Roth, the principal planner with the city of Renton. I'm going to be making the staff recommendation for the New Life church office building. This is LUA 23 dash 0 3 3 0. A little about back out of here, a little about the project site. So the site there, the map is on the bottom of the PowerPoint slide. So the site is on the south side of Maple Valley Highway, which is also state route 1 6 9. Address is 1 5 7 1 1 1 50 second Avenue Northeast, which is a little road on the east side of the site. That's how the site is accessed. That road is accessed via Maple Valley Highway. The site is split zone, so it's R 14. And then resource conservation zoning districts. The resource conservation district portion of the site is all on the south side where it's undeveloped. (04:52): So for the purpose of the staff recommendation and the staff analysis, just looked at the R 14 zone and the development standards there because all the work is taking place in that zone. Same thing for the comp plan, land use designation, it's split with high density residential on the north side and then low density residential on the south side. Again, because the slopes on the south side of the site pretty much not able to be developed, which is the reason for the zoning there. So currently some buildings on the site include a 54,000 square foot religious institution. The main church, a 36,000 square foot church auditorium built I think a little over a decade ago, and then around 40,000 square foot private school. And then the associated surface parking critical areas on the site include a high seismic hazard area wellhead protection area zone two special flood hazard area zone, A type F stream, which is Matson Creek category two wetlands, steep slopes and high erosion hazard. (05:53): The entire bingo card of critical areas, which I'll get into in a little bit here. The project proposal. So again, the applicant's requesting a hearing examiner, conditional use permit, site plan review, two street modifications, and then the environmental review, which we already had a determination issued. It's a two story proposal, 6,400 square foot primarily going to be used for office space. So just like a traditional office building, moving some of the churches, tending to move some of their admin functions over here from the main building. It would result in the elimination of approximately 40 parking stalls. They've got 796 right now, so that would drop the new total down to 756. They're as far as street improvements, they're proposing a relocation of the sidewalk along Maple Valley Highway or SR 1 69 right now. And I'll show you on the site plan, but there's a portion of the sidewalk that's right, a budding the street instead of having a planter strip. And so we're basically having about 200 linear feet roughly, and they're going to be installing a planter strip and bumping that sidewalk back to create a little more pedestrian safety. There. Also undergrounding some fiber lines in the Maple Valley highway right of way on the north west side of the site. The site access is to remain via the two entrances off of one 52nd. (07:19): Here's a site plan. I got a second one that enlarges it a little bit. But you can see in the dashed area there's two dash areas where the work is going to occur. So you've got the Maple Valley Highway where they're installing the fiber, so you can see doing some of the sidewalk there and the dark catching you can see. And then the actual building itself is going to be on the far north side of the parking lot. The building is the little white square there, reconfiguring some of the parking. They're also going to be relocating a drain, a storm water line just around the building. And then I'll zoom in here a bit. This is the actual building footprint. So you kind of see the underlying parking there underneath that's going to be removed. And again, relocation of a couple of the planner or the landscape islands and then reconfiguration of a little bit of the parking there. (08:08): This transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 4 of 7 Here's just a couple renderings just so you can get an idea of kind of what we're looking at here. So two story building. Shed roof about 28.8 feet max height, land use zoning, landing designations in the surrounding area. So this is in our Cedar River planning area, which is a community planning area. It's in again, split zoned across the R 14 and RC zones. You can see that more clearly here. Same for the comprehensive plan, land use designation split between high density and low density, high density correlating with the R 14 zone, the low density correlating with the resource conservation zone to the east. We've got R 14 and ca zone, that city of Renton zoning. We've got King County zoning to the south, which is one of their resource conservation zones. We've got residential manufactured housing zone to the west and also some more King County resource conservation esque zones. (09:12): Again, religious institutions permitted an R 14 zone but with an approved hearing examiner conditional use permit. And this represents an expansion of that. So that's why they're going getting the CUP as well as the site plan review. So critical areas, the red dot there represents just the rough location of the building. You can see their whole site encompasses that track area. And you can see the green is a stream, the green line, you can see a little bit of wetlands to the west of the existing building. So the left of the existing building there, Matson Creek is a type F stream fish bearing stream there. There's of course analysis in my staff report on that, but the building's not going to be in that stream buffer there. I believe it's 115 foot stream buffer. But they are going to be doing some trenching in the right of way for the installation of new fiber line. (10:04): And that's going to be occurring in the stream buffer. However, it is a very degraded buffer. It's mostly mode or unloaded lawn and its right in the right of way there. And so they're going to be doing some trenching and then they have a planting plan to install native plants, improve the buffer there after it's complete. Also got the sense that it protective slopes, high erosion hazard, the wetlands, special flood hazard area, it's outside of those, the work except for the wellhead protection area zone too . So just we have our fill standards that they bring any fill to the site they'll need to follow. (10:47): I know a little hard to see, but it'll be easier once if you pull up the exhibits after the meeting. But this is where they're going to be doing the trenching. You can see the flagging from the stream and then you can see in the blue kind of hatching is where they're going to be doing buffer restoration along there. So that's all in the right of way. And that's again for the fiber undergrounding for the new fiber to serve the building. We require any new utilities like that to be undergrounded. Site plan review. Again, access to remain. There's of course a lot of analysis in my staff report on this, but access to remain via the existing entrances off of one 52nd, no change there. The building will be kind of oriented towards both the parking lot and Maple Valley Highway. Again, a 6,400 square foot two story building. (11:33): They are protecting the existing wetlands on site. No impacts there. And we'll be improving the stream buffer area for Matson Creek. There's already pretty quality pedestrian and vehicular connectivity, although there is one condition of approval related to the pedestrian connectivity. Just asking for a little more info on that before getting a building permit. How are you going to get folks from the main building over to the new building, which is across a number of parking lot aisles safely. But other than that good vehicular connectivity, no big impacts on the existing connectivity as a result of the building construction. And then they did submit a traffic impact analysis, which included a lot of analysis on both event conditions. So there's obviously as a church, as a religious institution, there's some events during the year that draw a lot more people thinking holidays like Christmas, Easter, things of that nature. This transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 5 of 7 (12:31): And so they looked at that and then they also looked at just typical conditions. The city has gotten complaints out there for various reasons, not just the church, but it's one 52nd, a dead end road and you've got a Starbucks drive through on the other side, on the other side of one 52nd and you've got some condos and so you've got a lot of competing vehicular interests over there. And so I think it's been a little bit of a challenge. I will say we didn't get any comments specifically on this project when this public notice went out. It's just something that we're kind of aware of over there. So they looked at all that and basically found that because this is not going to create a bunch of new traffic impacts, they're essentially moving some of their admin offices over there. And so with payment of the impact fees, there was no specific conditions recommended related to that. (13:25): The conditional use permit, again, it's required due to the expansion of religious institution. What we went through the analysis of the eight different criteria listed there and found that it met all of those if all conditions of approval are met. And then two street modifications, one for Maple Valley Highway and then one for one 52nd the street that they take access off of. So Maple Valley Highway is just retaining the existing street section and then relocating the 200 linear feet of sidewalk behind a new six foot wide planter strip, which will greatly increase pedestrian safety and just perceived safety over there with the traffic along Maple Valley Highway. And then so staff is supportive of that. And then one 52nd, it's against a dead end road. There's already Sidewalk Street, mature street trees and all that. So we're supportive of maintaining the existing street section there as well. (14:22): And then again, got the analysis there and for both modifications broken out separately in the staff report. But staff did find or does recommend approval of both. Those just touched on the environmental review. So City of Renton was the CPA lead agency. We issued a mitigated determination of non significance on June 3rd with a 14 day comment appeal period. And then there was no appeals filed. There were two mitigation measures related to the geotechnical recommendations in the geotech report. And then due to, we had a comment from the Duwamish tribe related to the potential for finding culturally significant items or other artifacts and so to making sure that submit the inadvertent discovery plan, which is pretty typical in this area. So those are the two mitigation measures there. Some integral project features, again, fairly small projects on a large site, but there's still some important things we looked at. One of which is just making sure there's adequate onsite pedestrian circulation, just making sure people are going back and forth between the two buildings. There's safe crossings there of existing critical areas is key. Again, not impacting the wetlands, improving the buffer after the trenching is complete. Then leading to the stream buffer improvements and then the relocation of the sidewalk along Maple Valley Highway, which will provide a much nicer pedestrian environment for that relatively small section but near a busy intersection for sure. (15:56): I won't read through each one of these up here. They're obviously in the staff report, but we've got six recommended conditions of approval. The first is just making sure, meeting the mitigation measures for cipa. And then we got a second one submitting an updated landscape plan, just making sure they're complying there. It was just a little issue kind of when doing the analysis during the land use review. Same for refuge refuse and recycling. Just want to make sure that's all sized appropriately. Bicycle parking, again, just kind of want to verify these things before issuing a building permit, lighting plan, making sure we've got adequate public safety on the site. And then the site wide pedestrian circulation plan just so we can identify a connection between the proposed building and then the main kind of This transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 6 of 7 campus area. And there already are against some pathways there, but it's just unclear exactly how those are going to tie into the new building. So recommending approval of the new life church office site plan, CUP and two street mods, subject to the six conditions of approval in the staff report. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Examiner Olbrechts: (17:08): Okay, just one, a minor one was Morgan Roth on the utility line. It's going to go through the critical area buffer from what I recall, that's an authorized activity within Buffers, is that right? Speaker 3 (17:18): It is. It's in an existing right of way, which it is. It's in the Maple Valley Highway right of way. Examiner Olbrechts: (17:25): Yep. Okay. Okay. Does the code require any restoration or anything in a case like that? Speaker 3 (17:31): Yep, we do. So like I said, they did hire a wetlands biologist to come up with a restoration plan and so they're going to be going and replanting with native plants and that's something that staff will go out there and verify once it's complete. But yeah, certainly right now it's just kind of gravel, tall grass, weeds, blackberries and so it'll certainly, while we never like to do trenching or impact a buffer, it'll definitely be functioning at a higher level per the consultants review of it once they install those native plants. Examiner Olbrechts: (18:05): Okay. Sounds good. Great. Thank you. Alright, applicants at this point, your turn to speak if you want to say anything, you don't have to, but now's the chance. Anyone, any takers out there? Speaker 4 (18:18): Yes, I'm Cal Carpenter. I'm the executive pastor and CFO of New Life Church. Examiner Olbrechts: (18:24): Okay. Mr. Carpenter, let me swear in. Do you swear Affirm tell the truth, nothing but the truth in this proceeding? Speaker 4 (18:29): Yes I do. Examiner Olbrechts: (18:31): Okay, great. Speaker 4 (18:32): Go ahead. Just background, we purchased the property in 1980. The first building was the school building and the gymnasium, we occupied that in April of 1995. We built, the school began to occupy in 1995 as well. And then the auditorium expansion, which is the 38,000 feet is the newest, that was 2010. This transcript was exported on Jul 23, 2024 - view latest version here. Renton New Life Church (Completed 07/23/24) Transcript by Rev.com Page 7 of 7 So we haven't really done anything since then. This office space is just for our in-house staff. We are currently in a place where we need more space for the staff. We don't believe it will have any impact on traffic. Our high traffic times, of course, our Sunday mornings and special events, we do the best that we can to be good neighbors in those events. We have full parking teams in the parking lot helping people find parking places. We also give priority to the neighbors as they come out when there's a traffic log at the turnaround there, they get first chance to get into the line and get out of there. It's also one of the largest auditoriums in the Renton area. And we host civic advance funerals, et cetera, things like that. So basically what this does is give us the opportunity to have a better workspace for our staff. Now we're spread out all through the building, it gets us together and it does not make an impact. We believe on anything that happens on a day-to-day basis and especially on the weekends. So that's the reasoning behind the building and we hope that it will serve us well for a long time. Examiner Olbrechts: (20:30): Alright, thank you Mr. Pat Carpenter. Okay, at this point I think we can move on to public comments and Mrs. Mero, since I'm only participating by phone, I don't have access to the participant list. Is there anyone, if anyone wants to speak at this time, raise the virtual hand button at the bottom of your screen, click on that and that'll let us know that you want to say something. Any takers there? Mr. Speaker 2 (20:53): There isn't anybody from the public. Pardon? There isn't anybody from the public at the meeting. Examiner Olbrechts: (20:57): Okay. Alright, well that makes it pretty straightforward then. Mr. Morgan Roth, any final comments? Speaker 3 (21:04): No sir. Nothing else. Examiner Olbrechts: (21:05): Okay, well that makes it even simpler. Okay, I'll go ahead, close the hearing then and well, it's nice to see the church community thriving to this extent and it's a pretty innocuous addition to the church campus. So that should be, for me, an easy approval anyway, and I'll get that out in the next couple of weeks. So thank you all for putting up with a little tactical difficulties, but we got through it and have a great day.