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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLUA25-00073 Willowcrest PUD and BSP Appendix A LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 1 of 20 Appendix A Willowcrest Phase II PUD and BSP LUA25-00073 December 16, 2025 Hearing Transcript 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. For those in need of an accurate rendition of the hearing testimony, a hearing recording can be acquired from the City of Renton. Speaker 1 (00:00): Excellent. There we go. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are holding two hearings today. The first one will be the Willowcrest Phase two PUD binding site plan modification, et cetera. The second one will be WASHDOT for a noise variance. So we'll do that one at noon. Do this first one from 11:00 to noon or whenever we get done, and then we will commence directly with WASHDOT at noon. If this one does not finish in time, we'll continue it and come back. My name is Emily Terrell. I am your hearing examiner today. It is December 16th, 2025 at about 11:00 in the morning. The first hearing is LUA25-00073 PUD BSP and modification for a 19-unit townhome complex located at 1132 Edmonds Avenue Northeast. As we have members of the public present, we'll run the full hearing today. So the order of operations is that I enter the exhibits into the record, and then the staff gives a presentation, and then the applicant gives a presentation. (01:13): And then any members of the public may ask questions back and forth. This is our first time I've had to do any talking today. Sorry, except a dog. And the applicant has the last word because they have the burden of proof that they have in fact met the city's codes. So I'll begin by entering exhibits one through 35 on page 56 of the very long 56-page staff report. I assume there may be a few others. We usually have the City of Renton maps and the PowerPoint involved. So let me know. Are there others? Speaker 2 (01:46): There are. Exhibits one through 35 as well as Exhibit 36 staff, PowerPoint, Exhibit 37, the CoreMaps link, and Exhibit 38, Google Earth. All right. Speaker 1 (02:00): Oh, Google Earth, of course. 37 and 38 is Google Earth. Thank you. It is always nice to be able to look at Google Earth. In that case, Exhibits one through 38 are entered into the record. If others come up along the lines, let us know. Everyone who speaks today will need to be sworn in. So we will begin with that for each person that speaks so that we ensure that this legal proceeding is in fact true to the best of our abilities. So we will begin with staff. Is that you, Alex? LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 2 of 20 Speaker 3 (02:39): That's correct. Speaker 1 (02:40): Okay. Mr. Morganroth, do you swear or affirm that your testimony today is the truth? Speaker 3 (02:45): I do. Speaker 1 (02:47): What do we need to know, sir? Speaker 3 (02:48): And then we just got Heather Bray as well. She's the engineer who reviewed this who may need to speak as well. Yes, Speaker 1 (02:56): It's totally fine. Cool. I may ask a couple questions anyway. Well, I'm going to ... Speaker 3 (03:01): Awesome. I will get started here. Let me just get my PowerPoint going and share my screen. Speaker 1 (03:11): One of the questions that maybe you can answer during your presentation is how is this formally guaranteed to be affordable since you used the term affordable housing, which is a rather term of art as opposed to a market thinker along with- Speaker 3 (03:25): Of course. And we've got the applicant here too, so I'll probably let them answer that a little. I know what they're doing, but they're in the affordable housing space and probably can provide a better answer than I can, but certainly can get into that. Speaker 1 (03:37): Thank you. I kind of figured with the name Homestead Community Land Trust that we were in the affordable housing space. Speaker 3 (03:43): Yep, exactly. Exactly. Cool. So I got it here, so I'm going to share. And please let me know when. LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 3 of 20 Speaker 1 (03:53): Yep, that's good. Speaker 3 (03:54): Coming through all right? Yep, Speaker 1 (03:55): Just fine. We can Speaker 3 (03:56): See. Okay, awesome. Thank you. Well, I'm Alex Morgenrat, the principal planner with the city. Here to make a recommendation for the Willowcrest Phase two project. That's LUA25000073. A little bit about the project site and got a map down on the bottom of the slide there. It's 1132 Edmonds Avenue Northeast, so that's on the east side of Edmonds, just north of Northeast Sunset Boulevard there. Site is a little under an acre, about 0.92 acres. And it is in our CV, which is Center Village Zone, as well as the Urban Design District D, which means there's a set of urban design standards that are applicable to development on this site. It's in the commercial mixed use comprehensive plan land use designation. It's also also be talking about a little bit more, but it's within the sunset planned action area. And also it is within the boundaries of the Sunset Terrace and Redevelopment Master Site Plan area, which is a subset of the sunset planned action area. (05:02): So this whole area went through the EIS process a while back. Critical areas on the site, moderate and high landslide hazard areas and steep slopes. (05:17): So the project proposal, so the applicant, Homestead Community Land Trust, they're requesting preliminary and final planned urban development, so doing a combined PUD, a binding site plan amendment, and then a master site plan minor modification, which I'll get into a little more. Proposing 19 owner-occupied affordable town home units within five buildings as part of phase two. Phase one, which will be a site plan coming up next, but phase one is to the east of the site, and that was known as Willowcrest Phase one, and that was entitled in 2019 constructed within the years after that. And that includes 12 affordable town home units that are in a very similar style as the ones being proposed. For this project, for phase two, the lots range in size between 849 to 1,595 square feet. Other improvements proposed 25-foot wide winer, which is basically a shared access private street that's going to be connected. (06:22): I'll show you in the site plan, going to connect up to phase two used for vehicular and then pedestrian access designed to be almost like an alley, but a low speed, multifunctional private street that goes through development. That's the same type of street that's in phase one. So there'll be that connection LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 4 of 20 there, which I'll talk about a little more here. There was a neighborhood meeting held at the Renton Community Center, which I attended as well as some representatives from Homestead. And then I think the architect was there as well. Most of the folks there from the public were from phase one actually, and just had some comments and questions about what the development next to their homes is going to look like. So there were some questions and concerns related to security, parking, trash collection, landscaping, cut through traffic with this new street connection that's private street connection that's being proposed. (07:20): And that was included as an exhibit to the staff report. And then we did receive one public comment from a resident property owner nearby regarding parking in the area and the limited parking, or there's been a lot of new development in this area, and so just expressing some frustration with just the lack of parking available. (07:45): So just about the zoning here, again, we're in the center village here. I've got the site highlighted in the dark pink. So surrounding it to the northeast and south, you've got other center village zone properties. You've got R10 across the street to the west, across Edmonds, and that's mostly single family with some duplexes as well. To the south, there's a medical office. And then to the north and east, there's multifamily. So to the east, you've got the town homes, and north you've got some other multifamily there, the phase one townhomes. Here is just looking at some of the critical areas on the site. So there's a lot of colors, but basically the red and the orange that are together, that is the landslide hazard that's mapped. And then under that is some sensitive slopes, which is 15 to 40% grade, and then detected slopes which are 40 and greater. (08:43): Their geotechnical engineer found basically that there are no ... So this is just what we have mapped and core maps in our city rent and mapping system is based on LIDAR mostly, and so it's not exactly accurate. And so we do rely on the geotech to actually go out there and see what's on the ground. So they did find that there's actually no geohazards on the site that this was ... Some of it for a couple of reasons. One is that the slope doesn't reach the threshold for being a protected slope. It's manmade and also found that the landslide hazard, which again is just an approximate area. You can see obviously it goes across the street. The flat street of Edmonds is probably not a landslide hazard. So basically found that there were no geohazards on the site. Again, our mapping is showing that, but that's again, based on the more inaccurate LIDAR. (09:34): So to conclude, really, no critical areas on the site. So this is the site plan. I want to give a broader context of how this project fits in with the phase one. So phase two we're talking about for this is in the orange highlight there. And then you can see the 12 units that are part of phase one to the east. So for this site, we're talking about 19 units, five buildings, two tracks. You've got track D up in the northeast corner there, which is going to be some extra parking. And then you've got tract C, which is the open space tract, which is mainly on the southwest side of the site. You've got vehicular access to Edmonds LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 5 of 20 via, again, calling it a Woonerf, but basically a private driveway or sorry, private road that is going to ... It's 25 feet wide. It's going to connect up to the same style private road for phase one. (10:32): Important to note that it is pedestrian and emergency access only, and that's a recommended condition of approval. Because this is a substandard private road, we really don't want cut-through traffic going from ... And I'll back up here really quick, going from Edmonds all the way over to Glenwood. So these are the Glenwood Town homes. So you have three projects in a row here. You got Glenwood town homes, which are an affordable town home project. You've got phase one and phase two. This, again, substandard street, which is mainly for access to residents that live on this. They're going to live in these 19 units as well as pedestrian access and emergency access. That's kind of the only things we want cutting through there we don't want to see. And that was something the residents on phase one and some of the Glenwood residents had concerns about as well as having cut through traffic, people kind of speeding through this little substandard private street. (11:21): So there is a recommended condition of approval for bollards that would only allow emergency access and then pedestrians to access phase one from the Edmond side of the site. There is, again, various common open space proposed, kind of mainly concentrated down at the southeast corner, but there are a number of pedestrian, and I'll get into the open space plan a little bit more later, but pedestrian walkways proposed throughout the site as well. Even though there's no critical areas, it is a fairly ... And I tried to get a good picture, but it's hard to see from the street. There's some topographical challenges to put it lightly where it slopes up from the street up into the property pretty significantly. And so that's some challenges they had to work around as well. Five surface parking stalls proposed, again, four in track D, and then one right here to the north of ... I think that's building G here on the north side of the site. (12:18): Building design, you can see here, we've got some fiber cement, horizontal lap siding, and then the panels. You've got some of the fake wood Hardy siding there as well. Very similar to what phase one, what it phase one town homes look like. So three stories parking on the first floor, most usually just one spot for each unit. And then you've got the living space above that includes some private deck space, patio space. Again, this is going through, they're requesting a planned urban development, which means they are seeking relief from some of our standards in return for providing a public benefit. In this case, the public benefit is some permanent affordable housing. And so some of the things they're asking for relief from, that's all obviously outlined in the staff report, each standard, but are things for design of the building, wall heights on the site, some landscaping. (13:24): Private open space is one of the ones they're requesting some relief from. And essentially they're not providing the full 250 square feet of ground private open space. So where you can walk out your door and it's 250 square feet of private open space. Some of these, they are asking to basically sub in some patio, some above grade, above ground space for that private open space. But when you add that all LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 6 of 20 together, the patios with the ground private open space, they all do meet this 250 square foot standard there. So you can see a few of those patios here on buildings D and E. Speaker 1 (14:04): Alex, can I ask you a question? Speaker 3 (14:06): For sure. Speaker 1 (14:07): So I'm looking at the exhibit four, the site plan, and you had it on the prior slide. What's going on between buildings D and E, that gravel space? Is that stormwater? What is that? Speaker 3 (14:23): So right in the corner there. So they are going to be having, yes, a vault essentially below. I'll have a better plan coming up here below this area. They're proposing raised planters. So that's kind of what you're seeing here. That's why it looks funny. So gravel with raised planters, so a P patch essentially, a community garden space. Speaker 1 (14:46): Okay. I couldn't tell if I was looking at a community garden, that was my first guess. My second guess was that it was underground cisterns. Speaker 3 (14:54): This is the community garden that you're seeing here. Yeah. Yep. And then you had a pathway coming over Speaker 1 (14:59): There.That's cool. Okay. Thank you very much. While you're talking about outdoor space, I'm like, that's probably an outdoor space. Speaker 3 (15:06): Yeah, yeah, no problem. I've got the open space plan coming up here too, which will be a little easier to see what's going on. Speaker 1 (15:12): Well, thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt. Speaker 3 (15:14): LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 7 of 20 Oh, no, no. All good. All good. So this is just obviously a rendering just showing, this is from Edmonds showing roughly what it's going to look like. So our code does require, we want the building to be oriented towards Edmonds, towards the public street. So in this case, obviously not all the buildings are going to be able to because some of the buildings are behind the private street and the other side. Again, that's one of the things they're asking for relief from as part of the planned urban development. But the buildings along, I can't remember which numbers, but the ones that are along Edmonds, there's two buildings. They're going to have basically their front door space, a pedestrian pathway that's going to connect then to the stairs. It's going to be one kind of central stair spine. And I'm just going to jump back really quick to the site plan. (16:02): You can kind of see it here. There's one central stairs that go between buildings E and F, and then between buildings G and H that kind of connect up to the parking area and phase one up there. So these buildings, the units, buildings E and F will all, because it's so steep, we didn't want to have stairs just going down to Edmunds for each one. So instead they kind of all go to this, there's a sidewalk or pathway in front of both buildings, and the front doors will have pathways connecting to those sidewalks, and then those sidewalks both connect to that center spine there. So all of them do have pedestrian access to Edmonds, just I guess not direct in the sense that the pathways from the front door connect right down. They don't each have their own individual stairway down there. And that's primarily, again, because of the retaining walls and the grades that they're faced with on the site. (16:55): So the big wall there, you can see that it is going to be set back. It's another standard they're requesting from relief from. Normally, we'd only require a four-foot wall in the front yard setback. That was basically impossible with the topography of the site. So they do have a wall that ranges from six to 10 feet right along the sidewalk there. And then there's actually another wall kind of terraced back once you get a little out of frame here. They are proposing a roughly three-foot space between the sidewalk and the wall that they're going to landscape to provide some visual interest in front of the wall. There's also a recommended condition of approval that they need to submit a wall treatment plan because we really want to try to two things. One, make the wall look as blended in as much as possible and look as nice as possible, but also we don't want, and I know they don't want either. (17:48): Homestead doesn't graffiti. So we're kind of looking to see maybe there's some options for public art or other kind of treatments that will reduce the chances of that. They're obviously showing some plantings there, which may or may not work, but we left the recommended condition of approval fairly open. I know they've expressed interest with working with us on how can we best treat the wall to, again, reduce the chances of vandalism, but also make it look as good as possible. So here's the open space plan, which shows a little, I know it doesn't show the planner beds here, but that's basically what you were seeing in that previous site plan there. So the PUD common open space requirement is 10% of the site area reserved for common open space. They do meet that. The residential design and open space requirement is 350 square feet per unit, and so that kind of supersedes the PUD requirement. (18:44): LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 8 of 20 It's actually more, I think it's like 6,500 square feet. They're proposing, again, over the amount of PUD, so they're proposing more than 10%, but less than 350 square feet per unit as part of the PUD. So that's one of their modifications in which we do support. There are other areas on this. There's a park nearby and there's other open space that they'll be able to use on the phase one site as well, which get to offset that they're not getting the full 350 per unit. And we worked with them a lot. There was just, you can see they do have a lot of common open space, but again, not quite meeting that 350 square feet per unit. It was just really challenging to fit that amount of units and then the 350 square feet per unit. (19:37): So private open space touched on this a little bit already, but basically they're required to provide 250 square feet per unit with some dimensional requirements. 12 out of 19 comply with the ground with the requirement that's got to be 250 square feet, get the ground level, seven do not, but to offset that, they are proposing, again, patio and deck space on the upper levels to achieve that. So not necessarily meeting the exact code with the 250 per ground on the ground level, but they are meeting the intent of it and that everyone will have at least 250 square feet of private open space. And again, that's really just because of the topography was challenging on some of these buildings that were oriented a little, like you can see buildings H, it's just hard to get the ground space required while also providing enough space for utilities in the road. (20:29): There's other setbacks for the buildings, which they're already really tight as far as separation from utilities there. So we did work with them a lot on this to see, and they actually did, I think, end up getting a few more than they originally had that would meet the code, but they weren't able to get all 19. But SAF, we do support their modification requests because again, they are still meeting the intent of providing the 250 square feet of private space that's outdoor space that people can use. (21:00): So again, access and transportation talked about this a little bit, but again, we got a single driveway off of Edmonds, 25-foot wide private road for vehicles, calling it the wound, which is the fun planning word, but really it's just a private road that allows for slow vehicle speeds, access only for the residents, emergency access. Again, we have a recommended condition of approval for bollards up here so that emergency responders could get through there if need be. And then also obviously pedestrians, bikers are able to walk through there and get over to Glenwood Avenue or to some of the amenities in the phase one part of the site. (21:44): One or two car garage/carport for each unit, which complies with the parking standards for affordable housing units. They are proposing five surface stalls. A little easier to see here now. So you got four of them up top here. These are part of this project. There's another four that are part of the phase one project here. And then there's one, another guest or parking space over here just north of Building H, I think that is right there. And I'll let the applicant, if they want, speak a little bit more to what their intent is for this parking, if it's more for guests or for overflow for residents, I'll let them speak to that a bit more. It's not required. It's something they're proposing. They did submit a traffic memo, found that LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 9 of 20 there was nine new AM peak hour trips, 11 new PM peak hour trips, so that wasn't enough to require a full traffic impact analysis. (22:40): That's a pretty low amount of new trips. Our threshold is 20 new AM or PM peak hour trips. And then they did pass the transportation concurrency test. (22:54): Vegetation on the site, so I know, sorry, a little blurry here. If you look at the exhibits, part of the staff report, you can see there's some more pages. It makes it easier to see. But you can see proposing street trees and along Edmonds there and a nine foot, I think there's a bioswale there. They've got obviously a lot of onsite landscaping in the common open space areas. You got the P patch there or community garden space there. They're going to be submitting a final landscape plan as part of the civil construction plan and the building permits as well. So we'll take a little closer look at what they're proposing and making sure all the plants are in good spaces, not too big. It's something we run into sometimes with these tight town home projects is we want to make sure that there's not going to be a tree in 20 years that's way too big for the space. (23:47): So that is something we do look closely at and that we'll look a little bit more at when we do get those final plans in, but conceptually supportive of their landscape plan. (23:58): Okay, I won't read through each one of these. I know it's a little text heavy slide here, but they are requesting these 14 modifications, which I'll go through and there's analysis for each one in the staff report, again, as part of that PUD process. Public benefit provided, so permanently affordable ownership housing provided through the Homestead Community Land Trust, which I'll let them again talk a little more about. Obviously allows people to build equity, which is a huge benefit, especially with the kind of income levels that they're going to be marketing towards. So targeted to 60 to 80% AMI households, which will expand access to home ownership in the Sunset area, long-term community benefits. So this comes right from Homestead. So each home SMA just served up to seven households over 50 years, creating up to 133 affordable ownership opportunities across the 19 homes. And again, the applicant can speak a little bit more to that, get questions on how they calculate that out. (24:57): But certainly there's no, I mean, regardless of the exact number, providing homeownership opportunities, especially in this area and especially at this income level is super important and is no doubt a public benefit considering we see a lot of our new market rate, homeownership opportunities are for people that make a lot more money and that are in the high up to a million or more for homes. (25:26): LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 10 of 20 And let's see here. So affordable housing obviously is one of the main public benefits that we see. It's not explicitly stated in our code. It is one that we've used for phase one, one of the reasons that we support a PUD like this. Other benefits on this site because of the challenging topography is the high quality nature of the proposal. So we've all seen affordable housing projects that you can maybe tell our affordable housing projects and don't use the same materials or don't use the same design language that you'd see in market rate. In this case, again, one of the other public benefits is that they are providing a pretty high quality product, whether that's with the design of the buildings or the design of the site or providing the wound earth connection, which is going to provide pedestrian access, not only for the residents, but for other folks in the neighborhood that want to use it. (26:36): And so again, the only public benefit is not affordable housing. That's one of the big ones, but there certainly are other benefits being provided here with the overall design of a currently vacant site, which will have, again, a lot of, we'll add new street trees, new stormwater infrastructure, new public sidewalk, the bioswale, and it'll, again, be a pretty well-designed site, especially considering, again, the challenges with the topography and just the size of the site. (27:17): So that was the PUD. So looking at the binding site plan alteration, and there's a lot more, again, analysis on this in the staff report, but binding site plan, the tool that we use for commercial and mixed use zones is an alternative to the standard platting process. So Willowcrest phase one, one of the entitlements through that project was a binding site plan that created essentially the 12 lots that you saw that are part of phase one and all the common open space, the tracks, and then it basically segmented off this Willowcrest phase two, the site they're talking about right now into a separate, just one large parcel. Back a long time ago, the intent was for RHA to develop some multifamily in one building that those plans changed. Now Homestead owns it and they wanted to develop individual town homes that could be sold off to individual owners. (28:16): And so that required basically amending or altering that previously approved binding site plan. So instead of having just the one big lot, you're looking at the plan we see here, which is the 19 separate lots with the two tracks. So that's basically, again, an alteration to an approved binding site plan. So the new binding site plan will obviously establish the new lots, the access going through there, the shared spaces, it'll update things like the utilities, the open space layouts. And so they basically requested that in order to create these 19 new lots, and it is something that we are supportive of with the recommended conditions in the staff report. (29:04): So the second piece of the, or say the third piece, got the PUD, the binding site plan, and then the master site plan minor modification. So the Sunset Terrace Master Site Plan proved in 2015, and that's kind of a master site plan, and there's an exhibit. You can see the boundaries of that, but this site falls within that sunset master plan, site plan area. There's already been two minor modifications. There was a slight boundary expansion in 2019, and then in 2016, and then 2019, there was a unit allocation. So LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 11 of 20 within the plan, there was the original Sunset Terrace Master Site Plan. There was a total of 722 units allocated on different portions or different sites within the boundaries of that master site plan. (29:50): The Edmund site, which is, I know there's a lot of names at the Edmond site, was what this entire phase one and phase two site was called that had 25 units Allocated under the master site plan. So if you do the math, if they had 25 units, they already built 12. That meant that they only had 13 units left per the allocation in that site plan. Homestead wanted to do 19 units, not 13. So this requires a minor modification to allow those extra six units. So essentially increasing the allocation to 31 units on the admin site and then increasing the total number of units under the master site plan by six units. So from 722 to 728, and that does fall under a minor modification under our 10% threshold. So there is analysis related to that in the staff report. Basically, we found that there's really no new external impacts. (30:46): All the aspect circulation, open space, overall development pattern is still consistent with what was in the originally adopted master site plan. It supports goals in the master site plan, like providing long-term permanent affordable housing, supports goals on our comprehensive plan. And so we are recommending approval of the minor modification of the Sunset Terrace Master Site Plan to increase the allocation on the site to six and then increase the total number of units from 722 to 728. (31:21): And this would be, again, the third modification to this master site plan. The city's environment review committee did review the proposal and issued a planned action concurrence memo and basically found that the project is covered under the Sunset Area Planned Action EIS. There's not a threshold determination. They just basically issue a memo saying, yes, this project falls under that EIS. And that was on December 8th, 2025. So just a few, just wrap up a few integral project features. So you've got 19 permanently affordable for sale town homes. You've got five buildings with contemporary design, street facade activation. Again, that's another one of the public benefits is just getting this high quality affordable housing here. You've got extension of the wound earth, the private street to create a shared pedestrian focused access spine with emergency vehicular access allowed. Of course, you've got a common open space network on the site that provides a number of different opportunities for both passive and active common open space. (32:34): And then we've got some private open space via both the ground, the yards on the ground, and then the second floor decks or patios. And again, you got the continuous access between Edmonds and then actually all the way over to Glenwood, which is a great connection for pedestrians to have. I'm not going to read through all these. I know my grad school professor would not be happy with how much Texas on this slide, but we've got all the conditions here. There's 14 recommended conditions of approval related to the open space plan, to getting updated landscaping plans, to some little architectural issues that we spotted that we just want to make sure are addressed. And so if there's any questions on those, I can go back to this, but I won't go through each one. So to wrap up, we are recommending approval of the Willowcrest Phase two combined PUD, the Binding Site Plan Amendment, and the master site plan modification subject to the 14 conditions in the staff report. LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 12 of 20 (33:39): And I'm happy to answer any questions. Speaker 1 (33:42): Excellent. Thank you very much. At 56 pages, that's the longest staff report I have so far received as a hearing examiner, but I've only been doing it 20 years. So bigger might come. I did a 40-page once as a planner to a hearing examiner, and he barked at me and told me to figure out how to make it shorter. Speaker 3 (34:03): Well, some good reading. Yeah. Speaker 1 (34:04): Well, no, and I've read it. And given the many layers and things in history, this needed to be exactly the way it was, and I appreciate that the hearing decision will sum up a lot. Good. And what he said. I do have several questions before we get onto the applicant's presentation, and I will note that the hearing notice gave a time certain for the WASHDOT hearing next. I expect that will be likely short unless there were lots and lots of comments. So we'll need to discuss in approximately 25 minutes whether we're going to break this hearing up a little bit with a short break for a washed out hearing for a noise variance, or if we'll push the noise variance one out a little bit. Okay. Speaker 4 (34:49): Okay. Our presentation is relatively short. This is the applicant. Speaker 1 (34:55): Okay. Thank you very much. I thought it might be. And I'm going to ask some questions that maybe go to the applicant, but maybe go to Alex. So let me start with one of the conditions of approval that I would hope to see that I may add, and this is when it's the applicant's turn, you can let me know if this is a problem, but one of which are great. Cool. Netherlands style word, but we rely, and Poppy, I'm going to need to stay with Alex until we get to the year apart, but I promise we'll get there. (35:31): Fine. Because there's no curbs and that kind of thing, and it's done largely with paint, I'm going to probably add a condition of approval requiring regular repainting and maintenance of the Walnuff by the HOA so that we know where we're supposed to be walking and where we're not supposed to be walking because paint colors go away. If you've been driving around at all lately, you'll notice there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of paint left anywhere because it's been too rainy, I think. The second one is I would like to probably add another condition of approval, a simple sign that says no through access on the Edmunds Avenue side, because people are going to try it anyway, and if they try it anyway, there's not a great deal of places that they can turn around easily and go backwards. So even with a sign, they're going to try it anyway, but I think that probably a simple sign at the front that says no vehicular through access might discourage some traffic. LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 13 of 20 (36:33): So those are the two that I'm thinking about just in terms of conditions of approval. With respect to parking, and this may be a question that comes in the next part, did you do a survey of the parking from phase one? Because it's a reasonable concern that there's not a lot of parking and an ancillary follow-up to, did you do a look at how it's functioning in the companion project that is very similar? And then also, will there be driveway parking? I know primary parking is supposed to happen in the garage, but the CC&Rs will prohibit driveway parking, not prohibit driveway parking. Those are two concerns for me. I want to talk about parking. And then also the staff report is pretty thin on the ground with relation to where transit is for this project. So with limited parking and affordable housing, the next big question is transit. (37:35): So Alex, can you answer any of the parking and transit questions? Speaker 3 (37:39): Yes, I can. So I guess I'll start with the driveway first. So there's really not going to be space in the ... There's not really any driveways because they're so close to the wound. So I don't think there'll be ... And again, I'll let if Poppy wants to jump in or Homes wants to jump in when they go to talk a little bit more about parking. I will say that is one concern we did hear from some residents that came to the neighborhood meeting. I think parking comes up all the time really with affordable housing projects. We do require less parking than we do for market rate in this case, and again, and we did get a public comment regarding just some of the parking challenges in the area. In this case, so I'll just say availability of parking. There is street parking along Edmonds. (38:29): They are going to be doing installing street. There'll be parallel parking in front of the site, and there's street parking on Edmonds, both to the north and the south of the site. As far, I think Ellit Homestead speak a little bit more about what's happened on the adjacent site and parking behavior there. But that is one of the reasons why they are proposing some extra parking, the five extra stalls there. But yeah, so as far as behavior or what happens on the phase one portion of the site, we didn't do any kind of formal study on it. It was basically anecdotal from the residence and from the applicant. So I'll let the applicant speak a little bit more to how they control that and how they designate where people can park and the guest parking and all that. But again, that being said, it is in an area that's becoming more and more urbanized. (39:24): There is multiple bus lines that connect up downtown that are on Sunset Boulevard there. So a short walk away. I can look up and find exactly where the bus stops are, but definitely within walking distance there. And so I think that's in this area, there's a lot less parking than there was 10, 15, 20 years ago. We've seen a lot of new units come online. (39:55): LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 14 of 20 But yeah, so again, I'll let the applicant speak more about parking on the phase one site and what that looks like. But they are providing more than the minimum amount of parking for affordable units by a decent amount. There's street parking on Edmonds, but some of it is controlled by the HOA and how they enforce it and making sure people aren't parking, partially hanging off into the wound and blocking emergency access, things like that. Like I said, there are bus stops, I believe, right at Edmonds and Sunset, so just a short two-minute walk away to the south there. But also understanding that not everyone is going to be able to take the bus to their job, but it is another option. And I think in an area of the city that we hope becomes more high density, King County will continue to add more bus service through there, and that will hopefully offset some of the, not all of it, but some of the parking challenges you see over there. (40:56): And I'm sorry, I might've missed, I think there was one other thing. Speaker 1 (41:00): No, I think that- Speaker 3 (41:01): Or maybe that was it. Okay. Speaker 1 (41:01): That actually covered it, although I thought of another question. I know this is a binding site plan, master plan, PUD, not a subdivision. It could be a unit lot subdivision as part of, but it's not. So RCW 5817 doesn't apply, but I always ask about schools. Are there safe routes to schools, bus stops nearby? Speaker 3 (41:25): Yes. So there is a section we talk about schools in the staff report there. We do notice it to rent in school district to make sure there's adequate space for those students. And then I don't remember where their stops are, but yes, there are bus stops nearby where students will be bused. Speaker 1 (41:47): Right. It's not strictly required because this isn't a subdivision, but Speaker 3 (41:51): We've got- We still put it in there just because it's something that we think that's important. So there is still some analysis under, I think it's under the public services infrastructure section in there. Speaker 1 (42:03): Okay. Those are the questions that I had. Do you have anything else to add before I move to the applicant? LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 15 of 20 Speaker 3 (42:08): I do not. Thank you. Speaker 1 (42:09): Thank you, sir. All right. Ms. Handy, are you the one who plans to do for the applicant? Speaker 4 (42:19): I am. Speaker 1 (42:20): Okay. And do you swear or affirm that your testimony today is the truth? That would be- I do. Okay, great. Excellent. So what do I need to know? What does the public need to know? Speaker 4 (42:37): Alex, thank you. You did a great job of giving us a good context for the site. This project is a culmination years and years of work from homestead and then open authority. I think we started the original project, the phase one in 2018 or. So it's been ongoing for quite some time. We've worked with Grant Housing Authority throughout the process, really trying to emphasize neighborhood outreach, neighborhood commitment, and integrating underserved communities into the network so that they could help impact some of the- Speaker 1 (43:41): Design? Speaker 4 (43:43): No, not the design. I'm sorry. So that they could impact the long-term identified in redlining and things like that. So that's really the intent of homestead. And the phase two is an intentional connection and iteration of phase one. We really want one of phase two to fill out town homes, not with phase one, phase two. They will have separate HOAs that they'll do together and they'll have community events and their open space will be open to one another. So the PPACH that's shown on the site plan to both sides of the world development and forming ... Go ahead. Did somebody say something? I'm sorry. I heard something. Speaker 2 (44:58): Ms. Handy, is there a microphone or something that you can get close to? It's a little bit muffled. Speaker 4 (45:03): Is it? LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 16 of 20 Speaker 2 (45:04): Yeah. Speaker 4 (45:04): Okay. I'm sorry. Is that better? Speaker 2 (45:06): Yeah, Speaker 4 (45:07): Much. Okay. My headphones sometimes, I don't know. I think I might point them out more comfortable. Is that okay? Speaker 1 (45:17): It went back to not as great as soon as you fixed it to where it was comfortable. Sorry. Speaker 5 (45:23): Okay. How about that? Oh yes, perfect. How about no headphones? That's great. Yeah, sorry about that. That's okay. The little microphone doesn't work very well, I guess, for me. Speaker 1 (45:34): Thank you, Jenny. Speaker 5 (45:38): So we looked at many different alternatives, both during phase one and phase two of what this entire community would look like. Alex didn't go into it very much, but we also have a through connection with the Glenwood Townhomes. That is the third project that is on the Glenwood side. That was done a long time ago. It's rented a housing authority project. They allowed us access through their site so that we wouldn't have to create a new access way. So these three projects are very interconnected, but all three will share open space. One of our pieces from Lowcrest One was to share open space with the Rent Housing Authority, Glenwood Apartments. And so really thinking holistically about this through block connection. It was our preference to do a voener through the center, as Alex had indicated, or a private drive. And we worked in conjunction with the fire department and Alex quite significantly to get that to meet the standard. (46:51): It is a steep grade change between phase one and Edmunds. And we looked at bringing the road straight down, we looked at all the different ways and just curbing it and making it go alongside the parallel to the grade made a lot more sense just to get the slope of that road less. So that's kind of the theory behind that piece of that related to parking. Did Alex answer your parking questions or do you ... LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 17 of 20 Speaker 1 (47:31): I think so, but stick around because the public may want to ask more specific questions to you. Speaker 5 (47:37): Okay. Okay. And then I think that the ownership would be fine with the know- through access sign and the maintenance painting that you had mentioned earlier. Yeah. Okay. I don't feel like I need to go through the site plan or anything like that because Alex did such a good job. I just wanted to really just say that this has been a long time coming. The Willowcrest one has been very successful. It's net zero energy homes. We've had a lot of support from the City of Renton and the Renton Housing Authority, and really appreciate all of this. Speaker 1 (48:25): Will these also be net zero energy homes? Speaker 5 (48:27): We're trying. Yeah, we're definitely trying. Homestead has an internal, I guess you'd call it a mandate, to be as green as they can on every project. So if we can find the funding, we'll do it. They're set up to be able to be net zero. Speaker 1 (48:50): Cool. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, undergraduate degrees in that. Yeah. Okay, thank you. So members of the public, and Jenny, can you moderate who's getting in? If we have members of the public, I think there's a hand raising opportunity. Speaker 2 (49:07): Yeah, there's a right hand. Okay, we have Linda. I'm going to allow you to speak here, Linda. Go ahead. Speaker 1 (49:14): Linda, can you please tell us your first and last name, spell the last name because our AI transcript generator is at best creative, and then I'll also need to swear you in. Speaker 6 (49:25): Sure. My name is Linda Perine. The last name is spelled P-E-R-R-I-N-E. Speaker 1 (49:34): Thank you. And Ms. Perine, do you swear or affirm that your testimony today will be the truth? Speaker 6 (49:38): LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 18 of 20 I do. Speaker 1 (49:40): What would you like us to know or what questions do you want to have answered? Speaker 6 (49:43): I probably am a resident who mentioned the parking situation, and I wanted to say that I'm somewhat disappointed that nobody took a visual of the area to see what the situation is. On Glenwood Avenue North, which is the street that my duplex is on, I've owned it for the last 30 years. Now, people are forced to park in their lawns, their front lawns, and they can't park on the street anymore because there's so many people parking. I think the lower income probably are those Yelp drivers, the Amazon drivers, and they have their own cars, which has actually increased the amount of cars that the lower income people need. So we've kind of gone opposite. I realize that the standards that were built a couple years ago didn't add all this new technology and all the world, how it's changed, but it has affected the livability on Glenwood significantly. (51:04): And I've mentioned it several times to you guys in other ways, and still nobody cares. Although I did talk to Matt Herrera a couple years ago asking about me now parking, having my renters park in the front lawn like all the other people are now. And he says, "Oh no, those people are grandfathered to park in their lawn now, but because you weren't, you don't get to. " So that was disappointing. Anyway, I just want to roll up and say, I'm disappointed that nobody's taking it seriously. It's a big problem. And the place, Glenwood Avenue kind of looks like a dump now. Somebody take a drive around during the weekend or during when people aren't off on their jobs and you'll see it's not enjoyable to look at. That concludes what I have to say. Thank you. Speaker 1 (52:09): Thank you, ma'am. Applicant or staff, would you like to respond? Speaker 3 (52:17): I can respond. Again, I can't speak for what's going on on the site next door as far as behavior and how people are parking there. But yeah, there's no getting around that parking is everywhere, getting more challenging. I will say that the state requirements, which the new state parking requirements, which will go into effect for us in January 2027 will allow us to require even less parking. So town home units instead of one per unit, it'll be half a spot per unit. So the state is kind of hamstringing cities like Renton where our hands are kind of tied as far as how much parking we can require. In this case, they're providing over double what will in only 12 months be halved, essentially be half a spot per town home unit. So it means you got 12 town home units. We can only require six spaces, which may not be enough. (53:20): LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 19 of 20 But again, that's something that the state has determined, wanted to take ownership of. So there's not much we can do there. I don't live over there or own property like Linda does. So I'm not going to say she's wrong that there's not parking challenges over there. I'm sure there is. I will say as far as people parking on lawns and stuff, we don't have any kind of grandfathering or anything that would allow that. So I can't really speak to that, but I can say yes, it's certainly parking is a challenge everywhere. It's a challenge in renting. It's a big challenge in the sunset area here where we have more units coming online and we're essentially prohibited by the state from requiring more parking than we do. And so that's kind of all ... I will say they are adding, that right now there's no parking in front of this site. (54:06): There's not enough room there because of the grades. They are going to be adding street parking there, so that'll be about nine to 10 new spaces that aren't currently there. So you're adding units, of course, but- Those are Speaker 6 (54:21): Already used for the houses on the other side though. Yeah. Speaker 3 (54:25): Well, technically they can't park there right now, maybe they do, but there's no parking in front of the site right now that's supposed to be at least. So they are going to be adding nine or 10 formal parallel parking spaces. So that's kind of all I have to say on the parking situation over there. They are providing the code required parking. It's a lot more than what we're going to be able to require again in about a year, and they are adding some street parking, but that's about the limits that we can require them to add. Speaker 1 (54:57): I can echo that that parking requirement from the state is coming down on absolutely everybody. And the vast majority of the cities I work with find the spacing both too small and inadequate, but it's come from Olympia, and there's not anything that these individual cities and counties can do other than follow what the legislature's making us there. Are there other members of the public who wish to speak? Speaker 2 (55:31): I do not see anyone. Speaker 1 (55:32): Okay. So the applicant has the last word. Poppy, would you like to speak again? Yeah, Speaker 5 (55:40): Just again, thank you for hearing us today. We appreciate the work that the City of Renton has done to help this move forward. It's affordable home ownership opportunities that might not be there LUA25-00073 Willowcrest Ph II PUD and BSP Page 20 of 20 otherwise, and as a continuation of the good work that Homestead's been doing in the neighborhood. So we really appreciate it. Speaker 1 (56:08): Thank you. That is your last word. Okay. I have 10 business days in which to render a decision and we'll do so. That's usually 14 honest days since the weekends tend to get involved. And I can't rule from the bench, but I think we've covered everything here today as well as we could. I appreciate everyone who came today to testify at this hearing and also Heather who didn't need to, but I appreciate you coming. And with that, I will close this hearing so that we can, in three minutes, begin the next hearing. Thank you very much.