HomeMy WebLinkAboutJ_Modification_Residential_Frontage_210804_v1
Residential Street Frontage Modification
August 04, 2021
Jill Ding, Senior Planner
City of Renton
Department of Planning and Development
Renton City Hall
1055 South Grady Way
Renton, WA 98057
RE: Harrington Redevelopment
PRE- 20000078
The purpose of this letter is to justify an increase in the maximum percent of residential level one street fronted requested
for the Harrington Redevelopment Project. We are requesting to increase the amount of allowable residential frontage
from 25% to 31.9% of the overall façade frontage per zoning code 4-4-150.B.2. With the modification, the current
residential frontage measures about 85.66’ over the total frontage length of 268.7’ (31.9%).
Residential street frontage increase justification
A. Substantially implements the policy direction of the policies and objective of Comprehensive Plan Land
Use Element and the Community Design Element and the proposed modification is the minimum
adjustment necessary to implement these policies and objectives;
To satisfy the goals of increasing the downtown life of Renton, commercial spaces are highly desired to make up
majority of the frontage that runs up along the roadways of the site. Our project understands the objective and
we’ve designed the building for the commercial occupied areas to make up majority of the frontage from running
all the way down Sunset Blvd, to turning the corner at Harrington Ave. Being that our site is elongated along
Harrington, this causes a lot of the interior spaces to become narrow in order to allow for parking behind the
building. To satisfy commercial retail location and depth best we can, we designed the layout to give the
commercial areas the most prominent spaces of level 1 while leaving the thinner areas down the south end of
Harrington for residential and mechanical spaces.
B. Will meet the objective safety, function, appearance, environmental protection and maintainability
intended by the Code requirements, based upon sound engineering judgement;
Although the frontage of the residential spaces seems to make up a great portion of level 1, when broken down,
residential amenity areas only make up about 1439 sf of 6956 sf (20.6%) level 1 area. There is no room to push
the residential deeper and widen the commercial more due to parking, causing the longer dimension of non-
commercial spaces to be elongated along Harrington. The current length we have for the residential spaces gets
us just enough room to provide for a generous lobby area and leasing offices. We have tested the idea of
pushing the Harrington Ave. retail frontage down south more, but our greatest restriction is the exit towers of the
building. Currently the positions of the two main stair towers are separated far enough to follow the requirements
of IBC 1015.2.1 minimum exit separation. If we were to push the egress staircase down south further, the two
exits would become too close for emergency conditions and cause the building not to perform up to IBC
standards.
Renton Ground Level Residential Justification
08/04/2021
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C. Will not be injurious to other properties in the vicinity;
Maximum residential street frontage will not be injurious to the other properties in the vicinity.
D. Conforms to the intent and purpose of the Code;
The intent of the code is to allow the commercial areas to be the dominant interest of the ground level. To our
best we have located the commercial program on the street corner of our property and along Sunset where
majority of vehicle and pedestrian traffic will be located.
E. Can be shown to be justified and required for the use and situation intended; and
Please see comment “b” for information
F. Will not create adverse impacts to other properties in the vicinity;
Please see comment “c” for information
This concludes our modification justification letter. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may
have on the justification.
Sincerely,
Kyle Stevens
Project Architect