Automatic captions, reformatted for reading: sentence case, paragraph breaks, and
timestamps at their original cue positions. Word order is unchanged. Caption
mishearings are left as recorded.
[00:00:07]
Emily, we good over there? Good to go. Okay. Very good. I don't have an agenda. I suppose I should have an, okay. All right. Welcome everyone to Spokane plan, commission workshop for Wednesday 25, 20 26. Emily, we please tape roll. Uh, president bank here. Vice president patterson. Here. Commissioner lenhart? I am here. Commissioner Madsen? Here. Commissioner osh. Madon williams. Here. S here. Looks like we have a quorum. And then, uh, Council Member Klitzke absent. And community assembly liaison.
[00:01:02]
Linda Carroll? Sure. Perfect. Yep. Very good. Thank you. Um, so before we get into minutes, is there anyone, um, from the public either here, online, that would like to comment on anything? Not on today's agenda. Seeing no one in the room, do we have anyone online? We do not. Okay. With that, we'll close the public comment and move to approve the February 11th, 2026 meeting minutes. Can I have a motion to moved? Second motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed nay. Okay. Motion, uh, minutes are approved. Uh, we will skip over City Council liaison report and, uh, linda, I'll give you a moment to get situated. Um, and then if you'd like to provide a community assembly liaison report, we would love it.
[00:01:56]
Well, I'm not quite sure what I need to report because community assembly hasn't met since the last time. Okay. Perfect. That's, uh, that's, that's an excellent report. That excellent report. Thank you. Um, moving on to president report. Um, we are, as I'm sure we'll hear in a moment, busily working through chapter review. Subcommittees, many of us just came from, uh, land use, which was an extremely robust discussion and will probably be another extremely robust discussion. Uh, so thank you to the commission members that were there, as well as the staff. Um, were both putting together an outstanding presentation as well as putting up with us for, you know, the thick end of, uh, of two hours. So, uh, and here we are again. Um, so with that, uh, moving over to secretary report. Yeah. Three items. The first is I am going to be, uh, you may recall towards the end of last year, we have some discussion about a work plan.
[00:02:53]
Um, the hope was to get on the calendar, a joint meeting with Plan Commission and City Council. Unfortunately, City Council, uh, could not identify a time of work. So in the interest of getting the work plan adopted, I'm gonna go ahead and just take the version that was, uh, that has been discussed here, um, and bring that forward to City Council at the urban experience meeting in March. So I brought copies of it just to kind of remind you of what's on it. Um, and I'll pass that out so that you have it. And then counsel will discuss and ultimately adopt this or some variation of this as they, as it works through their process. Um, second thing is, uh, we will be at Council study session tomorrow to present on the comprehensive plan.
[00:03:49]
This is our first opportunity to really dive in with the City Council. Um, so if you would like to tune in, you're welcome to, uh, that is tomorrow at 11, correct? Yes. Tomorrow at 11. You can see it on, uh, City cable, five City, channel five, whatever that is, live stream. Yeah. So, uh, should be a good discussion. They record it too, so you can always watch it afterwards. Uh, the third thing we have noticed, the, uh, first meeting in April is scheduled for April 8th. That's right in the middle of spring break. So we wanted to just find out from you if there is interest in rescheduling that and maybe holding the meeting on the 15th instead, or how the commission would like to, uh, we can keep that meeting date and time, that's fine from our perspective.
[00:04:47]
But, um, there is the possibility as you'll hear later, that we may wanna hold a hearing to select a preferred alternative on that date and holding a hearing during spring break. We may not get the kind of engagement we're wanting. So, um, just wanted to get some feedback on that. Um, we could also consider April 1st, if that works better. The 15th though, if we had a hearing. Isn't that also transportation permission? Um, good point. And they meet in the, yeah, I mean we having a, um, the room isn't as important. We can hold a hearing in here. That's okay. Um, yeah, so we could just use this room for the hearing, but obviously that would conflict with, and the reason they weren't, they're not using this space though, is 'cause another commission technically has it booked. Yes. Landmarks commission. Yeah. Um, and although they might not be, we would have to check on that too.
[00:05:43]
Um, I kind of haven't thought about the transportation commission part. Yeah. 15. There are different times, but the hearing, would the hearing be conflict? Yeah. And, and back to the conversation that we had in here last time, I think in a lot of cases, hearings in this room would be fine. I'm not sure for that one in particular that this room is the best room to have that hearing. Um, I would imagine there'll be a lot of attendance there. Uh, and quite a lot of testimony in this room is just not super well set up for that. Um, so I guess I would, I would recommend that we find another date for that hearing or however we need to handle that. I'm definitely sensitive to the spring break consideration. Um, and I think that's well taken. So either we find another date for the hearing that will work or reschedule this session.
[00:06:39]
Yeah, I guess I also, but I'm also wondering like, is there that big of an impact? The spring break? A lot of people, like they, the kids night might not be in school, but it doesn't mean they're going anywhere. I think a lot of people are. I was originally planning to be somewhere, but I think it probably won't be now. Um, so I don't, maybe it's a question to the group. Is anyone planning on going anywhere for spring break? Okay. Um, so there's the data point, obviously public participation there is challenged. Amber, remember? Yeah. Amber, please. Yes. I will probably not be around on that date. Um, I could attend remotely, but I've noticed as someone who does often attend remotely, it can be very hard to hear sometime. And I wanna be really present for that. So I, I personally would prefer to not be meeting during spring break, especially if we're having a hearing. Um, and then also, yes, if they're gonna expect a lot of public testimony, I think it would just be nice if it was not during the break.
[00:07:38]
But that's, that's just I'm one, I'm a count. I'm an n of one, so take it lead first. Thank you. Not during break. Correct. Not very temp patient. If that gives you all time, we can talk at the end of my presentation to see if we feel like we're gonna be there. Um, but, but yeah, we can certainly look for another, could move it up two weeks. So maybe this is just sort of an ongoing conversation that we need to keep tabs on as that develops. Yeah, there's a little time. Yeah. We do also have staff that will, we anticipate having staff out that week and then Council doesn't meet traditionally that week, so. Okay. That's all I have. Okay. Um, just going back to your initial thing with Council, I do wanna just sort of pipe up a little bit and say, I think it's really unfortunate that Council is unable to find time to meet with this body.
[00:08:40]
Given the magnitude and gravity of the work that we're working on right now. Um, it, it's a real missed opportunity. I understand that they're all busy. I understand that there's a lot going on, but I think it's really unfortunate that they've been unable to make time to meet with us, not just now, but have repeatedly over the last couple of years. Um, been unable to make time and, and that's really unfortunate. So just wanted to say that for the record. Um, moving on to transportation commission. Speaking of which, uh, so just from the, the previous meeting, um, srtc noted that they're updating their public participation plan so people are interested. That is something that is ongoing. Uh, wash dot also is in the, uh, moving forward with the design phase of the liberty park land bridge project, which I thought was dead. So, uh, in about two weeks from now, there should be a project webpage on washdot if you are interested in learning more.
[00:09:39]
Um, again, this is just the design phase, but it's not nothing. Uh, they did the, uh, presentation on the thorpe road tunnel study. The consultants completed. Um, there are two tunnels, um, that are being looked at. One, um, is has the fish lake trail on top of it. One has an active bnsf line on it that is southbound traffic for 19 trains a day, which, uh, is important because you can't just close it down to work on the tunnel. So they've identified, um, some alternatives, um, to just like making that existing tunnel bigger and, um, building a new tunnel north of it and a new, or a new tunnel south of it. And, um, they have a whole matrix. They, they kinda, with the pros and cons and costs and, um, access.
[00:10:38]
Um, they do think that, um, oh yeah. 'cause if you just enlarge the existing tunnel, it would need to be closed for one to two years. So, and it would be eight to $9 million more expensive. So, uh, they have identified that the kind of best option would be building a new tunnel in the south end, um, and for the fish lake trail crossing, um, building a bridge instead of a tunnel with like a medium cut, not a short, not a long, um, I didn't catch the price of the bridge, but the price of the proposed tunnel is $47 million, which felt very significant. Um, they, uh, bnsf has looked at the plans, so they don't have any issues with it. So they are probably going to be moving on to preliminary design.
[00:11:31]
A big part of the reason of doing this study though, was to get it into the, um, the fee thing. You know what I'm talking about? The development fee impact? Yeah, the impact fee, because we put in the cost of the study in the last time, but the, this would be adding the cost of the actual development into the impact. Uh, there was a presentation on the local commercial parking tax, um, and just some public comment really talking about what, where the ex the exceptions are for long-term parking and uh, some input from downtown and parking lot owners. Um, and so they're still trying to work out that language of how that is apply to people, residents, or a da parking 'cause there's conflicting language and just mostly trying to figure out the feasibility of, uh, implementing and being able to really, um, make it work for both the operators of the parking lots.
[00:12:33]
Uh, then there was an update on shared streets, just really kind of working in language from feedback at the last meeting. And then there'll be going to hearing probably at the next meeting to adopt that. It's a resolution. There was a hearing on the grand boulevard re striping, um, significantly. This does not go to City Council next. It is really just a recommendation for staff because the project is already planned for the re paving of the road, uh, unanimously the commission voted to adopt the option that is a three lane road. Um, there was a good amount of public comment and staff gave an extra detailed presentation that was above even the presentation at the previous meetings with additional details on the number of pedestrian desks we had, uh, in 2024, because I, or was it 20?
[00:13:28]
20, 25? Sorry. I wonder what year it is. Um, which unfortunately was updated from nine to 12 with the most recent, um, information. Uh, and it was also noted that traffic volume on grand is similar to other roads that have received the three lane treatment, including northwest boulevard in monroe and sunset highway. So, uh, that project will probably be built in 27. That was it. Okay. Did they, just outta curiosity, did anybody, did they look at flying over or flying over the tracks rather than going under it? Uh, that was not addressed. Um, at that. I mean, it seems like a bridge is cheaper than $47 million. I know just from the previous bridge issues going over both downtown yeah.
[00:14:20]
And the farther fish lake, there are like significant heights you have to reach. Yeah. So you're going over the train. Yeah, but I'm just saying, could you spring further uphill and stay up high and then come down? Yeah. Um, just, I mean, that's an unbelievable sum of money and tons are crazy expensive. He's so crazy. Yeah. Expensive. Yeah. I, I make virtually no sense. I was flabbergasted. Should talk to downtown Seattle about their, um, okay. Well thank you. You on that? Taken as good a note. Yeah, thank I feel like I was there. Okay. Uh, with that we will move to an approval of the current agenda. Um, can I just entertain a motion? Motion to approve second motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed nay.
[00:15:14]
Very good. We have an agenda and with that, uh, we will move on to conveyance of crsb policy package. Mar and carol. Hello. Hello. It's really mar. Hello. Okay. With really mar the call out. It's, well, of course. It's and kaycee. And kaycee and, um, logan callan as well. And icm so, and the climate board, um, and everyone that participated. So really you all as well. It's a group effort. It's a group effort. Um, everyone put in their, their group efforts, um, time and, um, commitment. So, um, in your packet we have the, um, final resolution and the findings of fact for the, uh, climate resilience and sustainability board. Um, approval of their recommendation to Plan Commission.
[00:16:11]
Uh, so this follows, you know, a number of months of, uh, policy development. We had our last conversation, uh, at the end of January to get some of your all feedback as we were, um, kind of on the, the, the track to finalizing these policies, uh, as far as the climate board's, uh, participation. And, um, we do have a memo that outlines those, uh, edits between last meeting and the February 12th meeting when they had their public hearing. Um, we're working on getting all those materials on the climate planning website. So that, um, will be available hopefully by the end of this week. Uh, the climate board, um, for the, uh, policy package itself though, they just adopted the final clean policies. Uh, so that is what is presented in here. And, um, this is the record for coming forward.
[00:17:08]
Um, understanding that we've kind of reached an ending point for the climate board in this process. Uh, but that it will pick up with integration into the comprehensive plan, uh, going forward. So more discussions to come. Um, a lot of work internally as well to wrap that in. Uh, but we have the, um, policy package as approved by the climate board. Well, I just wanna say thank you to staff obviously, but also to the climate board participants. It was a really detailed process and I feel like they were sort of thrown into the deep end getting involved with this stuff. Really appreciate their participation in the chapter review. Subcommittees, we were just, were smithing a lot of those policy recommendations upstairs. I think the conversation is really robust and so just really appreciate their participation and the nuance that they bring and the thoughtfulness that they bring.
[00:18:03]
Just wanted to, to thank them. Welcome Council member. Um, wanna give you an opportunity to give a Council update if you have anything before we move on. Like forever, since I've been down here, um, legislature is in session and then we have several priority bills. Um, some of them intersect with planning, but not necessarily stuff you're working on at the moment. Um, but that's kind of hardest thing that's keeping us super busy and canceling things and having to testify because stuff gets thrown up before committee. Um, so yeah. Um, I don't, I don't think I have anything in particular, um, system-wide stuff.
[00:18:55]
I mean, we're hearing things about like trying to do better with neighborhood commercial. We'll have a lot of ideas around that, but like, we're ships passing in the night because some of us have a certain perspective from businesses in our district and some of us have another perspective like don't wanna put neighborhood killers in their business or in their neighborhoods. So, but I think that's probably the next thing that's coming up that might affect you guys. Um, but I think that's all I really have. I mean, how do you expect that to come up or I guess, what do you mean? 'cause it, you know, we have these centers of corridors and they like have very narrow like space for where mm-hmm. You can do commercial like 50 feet or lot line and it doesn't go any further than that. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:47]
And just where you can put businesses, things like that. So stuff that should potentially kind of be reflected in the comp plan and I guess that's where I've, this whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Which I, I don't love the, the system that we currently have. So, um, are you referring to the, the bill, State bill or? No, but that, I mean, that's in play too, right? So yeah. Yeah. I guess I was saying, you know, are you as counsel anticipating any hearing and or action on neighborhood commercial in advance of the work that's going on here and at staff level with the, with the periodic? 'cause we are obviously talking extensively about that. I don't know. It's kind of tempting to try to address it because um, at least one thing that's been brought to my attention is snap benefits are changing and can like say good convenience store owners are feeling sensitive to that and wanting to add more refrigeration.
[00:20:51]
And in some cases if they're on a center corridor and they wanna expand backwards, even if they own a lot, they can't expand backwards to accommodate more refrigeration and their convenience store. And we wanna wait for an compliment update to address that when snap benefits are changing now is I think the one that gives me a little bit of anxiety. Um, and then, um, aada a accessibility. Do we wanna wait until that's addressed or do we want to change building code on that? 'cause that's really more building code than zoning. So those are two things that come to mind. But, sorry, I didn't even know if I was gonna make it down here so I don't have it prepared. No, it's okay. I was just sort of trying to figure out how that plane lands over there with how this plane lands over here. Not always clear, right? Yeah, no, it's land is so intersectional, you really affect everything and everything affects you.
[00:21:49]
So it's really sometimes hard for me to figure out what belongs in front of this group anyway. Should go somewhere else. Okay. Well thank you. Um, okay, so then with that we'll move, uh, back over. I think it's you now, tirrell? I think so. Beautiful. Yes. Uh, with plans Spokane 2046 preferred alternative dead zone. So yeah, use the microphone properly. Um, thank you. And emily has powerpoint up and also online, um, is lisa greeter from burke, who, uh, has been our consultant for the environmental impact statement. Um, so she's just here, uh, for questions. So welcome lisa, the presentation. Yes. Welcome lisa. Thank you. And also kaycee is paying here. I know she's already been healthy hours with some of you, but, um, we also have some additional maps that I've printed out.
[00:22:48]
So people here have those. There's just some different versions of where we're heading with the preferred alternative. Um, are there two maps? Just two? There are four. Yeah, I know because trying to, I don't have labels. So they, they do have small labels. They're just tiny in the bottom left. One, one, this is 1, 2, 3. Bottom left. Yeah. Emily kindly printed them for me, but I forgot to say and staple. So you're gonna mess up the order. But yeah, on the lower left. Thank you so much. One dash one, one dash two one dash three, and one dash four. Sorry. Yes, it's yes, this whole map. Okay. Spot the difference. So yeah, I know. I think mm-hmm. It like one of those games on the back. I see highlights magazine. If you put that fast enough, it'll adam, hey, jesse's gonna help me bring you guys in. Go order. We're gonna go back to the presentation here.
[00:23:46]
Okay. Um, so this is sort of the timeline, believe it or not. We were back at step one early last year, um, when we were doing the, the visioning and scoping for the comprehensive plan for the environmental impact statement part of this whole project. Um, that's when we were doing our, our scoping notice. Um, and so we did receive comments at that time. Uh, then we completed the, um, draft environmental impact statement. Um, we released that in December of 2025. Uh, we had originally had a comment period for that ending. Um, February 18th, 2025, we've had a request from agency to add 15 days, which is the maximum, uh, that we are subject to adding for the environmental impact statements.
[00:24:43]
So our new, uh, date for the end of that, um, comment period is March 5th, 2026. Um, but I did pull the comments that we have received to date and shared with you that are, uh, somewhat related to the preferred alternative discussion. So, um, if, if you didn't get a chance to read those, um, they, they did go, uh, to the planning commission, we will post all of the comments that we received after we have the full packet. Just easier than parsing out. Yeah. But we are logging all of our, uh, draft environmental that statement comments. I'm gonna let kaycee just talking again and I also sent the engagement summary. So yeah, so this isn't new information.
[00:25:39]
Just a reminder that we have been working with the community pretty extensively. Um, we've had now we're about over 4,000 total community interactions. Um, we've had way over 50 City boards and commissions since this graphic was made just a month or so ago. Um, and we're still looking for community tabling events and meetings to tell folks about the process. 'cause there's still, um, opportunity to be involved with comment and just following along with the process. Um, so a lot of the work that we're doing, um, whether it's the chapters or refining the alternatives have been steered by a lot of the great community feedback we've received. So just wanna, you know, emphasize that we're very thankful for all of that feedback we have received and look forward to even more. Thanks. So restatement you all know this, but, um, the periodic update is responding to the growth management act changes the growth management act.
[00:26:38]
We especially have changes, uh, with the addition of the climate element and the increased, um, housing, uh, focus. So we now are planning not just for population, but we're planning for housing units, including kind of a makeup of housing units. Um, so we're planning for our, uh, projected population we're trying to make up for the under production as well that's occurred. So, um, that's reflected later on in the zoning decisions and in the preferred alternatives. All the chapters except shoreline are being updated. And again, a reminder for anybody who's less familiar with the process we're doing. We did mention climate planning. We are not adding a climate element or a climate chapter. We're integrating climate, um, as the sort of best practice. Um, the land use plan map is also being amended.
[00:27:34]
The land use plan map is considered part of the land use chapter or the land use element. Um, and that is what our zoning map ultimately is, uh, built off of. And our zoning, uh, will be part of the build Spokane. The next sort of big push that we're gonna do as we work on our development code changes. So the land use, um, map amendments, just again to remind you that we are, um, having to emphasize multifamily, uh, more than we have in the past. I'll remind you of how we looked at that in the preferred alternatives. Uh, again, we will also be, uh, amending the critical areas ordinance. Um, so we, I think talked about that and sort of concept in our November, uh, meeting.
[00:28:31]
Uh, we have had some staff change, so, we'll, we're not sure exactly we'll be coming back with that. But we are anticipating also, uh, doing our critical areas ordinance adoption in 2026. And that will be outside of the sort of build Spokane, because that's very, uh, specific to Washington State law. So we'll be following the State law, uh, for critical areas. Ordinance. We have also been discussing in the, uh, environmental impact statement and we have discussed here about the cipa infill exemptions. So we are still getting a, a lot of comments on that, uh, concept as well. And the reason for that, of course is to help accommodate the housing needs. So we had three alternatives. Uh, we had stay the course. Um, in cpa world you must analyze your existing conditions.
[00:29:29]
So, uh, we had stay the course, which shows our current land use plan map. Uh, we have of course accommodated middle housing. Uh, so that is, uh, considered in alt one. Alt two is a little bit more transit oriented development. And alt three, uh, is more central City. So thinking more about downtown, thinking about employment on the west plains and employment, uh, especially in the n-e-p-d-a or northeast, uh, public development authority in hilliard, uh, part of the City, the alt one does not meet our housing affordability target. So that's kind of the most important takeaway. Um, we did get some comments, you know, stay with help, stay with alt one. Um, that's really not an option for us to meet, uh, the State requirements now that we, uh, our planning for that housing by income ban.
[00:30:23]
So it's that lower, uh, zero to 80%, uh, of the forecasted need that we need to make some zoning changes to accommodate. Can you just clarify why the job numbers is so much lower for alternative? Sure. Versus three. Can you just look at different study we used, um, different, uh, job forecasts. So for, uh, alt one, I don't think I have my notes on this, but I believe we used alt two is, uh, srtc. Maybe I'll, I'll ask lisa to remind me of what they are. Uh, sure. Um, alternative one used the Spokane regional transportation Council, uh, assumption.
[00:31:20]
So the 34 8 50 came from there. And the middle alternative, um, is using a, an employment security department trend-based approach. It's still, um, higher than, than trend, but um, not as high as the srtc and all alternative three was in the range of some other projections, a moderate high, uh, approach to kind of look at different, um, potential for infrastructure needs. It makes it difficult to compare them yeah. When they, it feels problemsome. So I think part of it is, it's not that one alternative the other creates new jobs. It's hard for us to even project that. 'cause there are different projections. Um, it's more for us to analyze how do we, um, have capacity for different infrastructure that may be needed if we have 24,000 jobs where we have 38,000 jobs.
[00:32:15]
So that was really the intent of the employment numbers. Not necessarily comparison between the alternatives, but just to understand the infrastructure needs as we're doing the environmental impact review. We have had no comments on this. Um, and we anticipate for the preferred alternative for the jobs, we will use s rtcs projection, which be we would stick with the jobs number and all one. It's kind of interesting. The State law says we should plan for population and employment or jobs. And um, a lot of the State has, um, regional planning, uh, in place that assigns a job number to each City. And we do not have that in place. So we explored some alternatives here. Um, if I had a do-over, kyle probably would stick with just the srt scenario.
[00:33:11]
But, um, it, it was interesting to place jobs in different places, uh, from the transportation and utility analysis and to consider that. So for the real model wons, I think it was useful, but it is difficult to, uh, think about. I do have a, I guess a follow up question. Um, so is our assumption that all three of these alternatives would have capacity for or allow for a similar number of jobs job growth over time? Or do we just not have data to understand the difference? They, in the, in the EIS, the, um, there were not mitigations needed for the different job scenarios. I mean, I know that it's primarily focused on housing, but, um, like useful data, well it is a big transportation driver. So, yeah. And I guess what this chart in particular, that chart on the previous page in particular has been really challenging for me to understand and to talk about.
[00:34:15]
It's appears as though it's comparing differences, but really there's no difference on this chart between two and three except for the choice to use different job projections. Is that correct? Yes. From that. So what is this chart really saying except for the one doesn't meet, that one doesn't, right. Yeah. So it's really a comparison between two and three and one, I think the, they put in red the um, does not meet the zero to 80% because that's the only fail. Yeah. And that from that environmental review, which is a little, gets a little abstract, I guess just from a public communication perspective, given how dense and complicated all this material is, this is a really hard thing. If, this is a hard thing for us to understand exactly what's going on here. This at the very least, the job projection spearman.
[00:35:08]
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's really hard to understand. Linda. Um, I have a question concerning actually the housing targets and that for two and three. Well, I do have some better slides up here. Let's go. Maybe we'll just jump to here. Well actually I would prefer be back at the other screen because that shows the three lined up. That's what I wanted to point out. Okay. Um, we currently have a pretty serious dearth of housing in the zero to 80% affordability area. It is stated that alternatives two and three will, um, sort of even that out or provide for those, uh, for housing in that category, in that lower category.
[00:36:06]
The problem is we currently have a pretty serious oversupply in the middle and upper, uh, categories of housing, which is a way of showing that's what builders in Spokane wanna build. 'cause that's what they've been building. So my question is if, what do you mean by over support? Well, I don't have the exact page numbers. I'm sorry. I should have not prepared that part of it. Um, in the, in the EIS in the 614 page EIS there is a point at which it shows that there is an oversupply currently in the upper two ca income categories for housing, which shows us that's what local builders want to build. So my question is, given that as far as I can tell, the only tool available is zoning. How can it be projected that builders are going to build in that lowest income band of housing if there are no incentives or penalties for them to, that would direct move them in that direction?
[00:37:10]
Is zoning alone sufficient to make up for that? So zoning is not considered sufficient, but it is considered a tool that governments can use to remove one of the impediments towards housing production. So I wonder if you're, when you're referring to when oversupply, just to be clear, we're looking at capacity not supply. I wonder if those are the numbers you're reading. So well, let, let, let me set that aside as perhaps, you know, something that I can give you better formulation on when I go back and review the numbers. My real concern is that we're currently pretty badly under supplied in the lowest income, uh, level of housing. So, and it's sort of kind of assumed that alternatives two and three is simply by changing zoning. We'll be able to make up for that.
[00:38:03]
And my question is, is, is that really, uh, is that realistic? Well that's kind of what this next slide was to lead into, is that the commerce guidance and the recommendation is that, uh, people in the zero households in that zero to 80% income band are very likely to need the moderate and high density type of housing. But, but that's, that doesn't answer the question. My question is, will the builders want to build that kind of housing? Yeah, and I guess the, the, that's the difference from our perspective about supply versus capacity with the planning work that we're doing, our requirement is to focus on capacity because that's what cities can control. I understand that and we totally understand that there, that having capacity does not inherently lead to the production of housing that's meeting those needs.
[00:39:00]
But it's the tool that's most readily available for us as a City. And so our focus is on capacity. Does our zoning allow for, uh, the amount of housing needed at those different levels, how that housing actually gets produced? We, um, I mean there are some things that we are trying to consider in the planning process, but it's ultimately a different question than what we're trying to answer through the comprehensive plan and the EIS and layered on top of like, this has to come first. Right? Right. So it's an important question. I'm not saying it's not important, that's probably the important question. But for the purposes of the comprehensive plan and um, especially the, the mandated housing study that we have to do from the State, the focus is really on capacity through the zoning code, not necessarily what units are, is this actually gonna produce?
[00:39:53]
Because ultimately that's decisions that are made by private property owners in the marketplace. If I, and we do have a new requirement to, to separately list all of the incentives that the City is providing. 'cause there is an interest in making sure we're have some incentives. But as, as you know, you know, the housing market is very complicated. You can read articles about the cost of insurance, the cost of construction, the cost of labor, the cost of land, you know, it's goes on and on. And it's not really a closed system, although we kind of assume it in here. It's a, it's a regional market as well. So if I can simplify it for you in one scenario, linda, um, you talk about in, in my job and tim's former job actually, we talk about building housing and uh, I go to my supervisor, I say, I wanna build housing in Spokane.
[00:40:51]
I found an area, here's what we can do. He goes, what's the zoning? That's his first question. And so zoning really does play a role, but the City can control. But it is a small piece. Yeah. And it alone does not make people build to your point. Okay, I'm gonna jump by this one. 'cause I think we, we did that. So what we are hoping to get to today, and I think we've, we've had some discussions, but um, uh, we have really come to the preferred alternative yet. So we did come up with a, a draft of a map. So also check my notes here. So the preferred alternative is helpful to respond to comments and to form kind of a plan that, uh, reflects our, our public comment and agency comment.
[00:41:54]
Um, what we're trying to do with this preferred the term is preferred alternative is, again, a cipa term. Um, but that would be, um, you could also call it alternative four or alternative two a or two b or whatever you want to. But it takes, uh, it should be made up of, uh, the alt two and alt three. And in verse alt one, we still have what we have on the ground as well. Um, so which is one of the challenges of actually mapping the preferred alternative because, um, we're trying to show the change away from zoning that we already have. So, um, we have some, the context of what we already have the context of already have. So, you know, we have, we have the bones of the land use plan map. Um, so we're, we're really trying to build off of those. Um, probably hit these enough.
[00:42:57]
But you, you've all seen these, you uh, linda, a little less than the, the rest of the group, um, since you're more recent joining. But again, alt one, um, does meet our population target. So maybe that's kind of what you're talking about. It has the capacity for the number of units, but it does not have the zone capacity in the lower income bands. So that's where this one, uh, why we need to still make changes. And I stress, although we've made the middle housing changes, we still need to do more. This was, uh, alt two. We called it distributed and balanced. As I mentioned before. It has a little bit of more of a tod focus. Um, you can tell from some of the preliminary comments that I shared with you. Uh, some people feel this kind of invade, this maybe more neighborhood impactful.
[00:43:56]
So, uh, because it's distributed and balanced, um, we've also had some comments about the, um, shares that these are showing in the change away from single family, um, that is been occurring and would just, can probably continue to occur. Um, you can see that in our, uh, production numbers or our, uh, numbers that we report on the, uh, certificate of occupancies issued, uh, tends to be, uh, a moderate number of single family residences and a higher number of units in the multi-family. So that's what we, uh, continue to expect. And this does that. The jobs prescribed a little better, but all three, uh, we looked at center City and regional hubs. This one really also, we, we looked harder at the job distribution in this.
[00:44:53]
This showed a little bit more, uh, housing density, especially, uh, in the northeast, but also tried to show around, uh, the City. We use central City instead of downtown. So we would catch the university district and the medical district as well, um, by sort of downtown adjacent neighborhoods. So this one focuses a little more there. So the hope for the preferred alternative is that it sort of blends two and three. Um, we still have a lot of focus on tod in the preferred alternative. Um, this does meet our housing income targets. Um, and it has a similar, uh, breakdown of what might be projected for single unit or multifamily. And this uses the srtc jobs.
[00:45:53]
Yeah, just like to note, because the last time you saw these maps, we hadn't quite found the graph preferred alternative. Um, we thought it would be best to kind of start refining it based on feedback we had. So this is largely based on feedback from the initial discussion with you all, but also, um, the community feedback we had during the workshops. It also internal City Staff, um, engagements on where there's infrastructure capacity or concerns about growth in certain areas. So that's what started this draft. Um, just so you have a framework of how this came to be. So this is not alternative one, two, or three. This is a new blend of two and three. So this is alternative four, if you will, or a new yeah, yeah. Okay. And just, you know, the maps are so tiny and my eyes are not so good anymore. Well that's why we have, we were thinking we could get to the end of the powerpoint and then we have these maps.
[00:46:49]
Um, kaycee's going to drive. Sounds good. We can zoom. Yeah, you need a little detail to understand you do like which neighborhoods. And I've also been, as I mentioned going back, yes. Going back to the, um, and, and for anybody listening the City has, uh, City map online. Um, and I can send anybody the link that lets you look at the existing zoning patterns too. 'cause that's really helpful. Um, so we were kind of going back and forth about showing what we're doing and we're also trying to show in here, um, we tried to show the sort of change areas. So this would, we know that we have to get more parcel level when we do the land use plan map, but this is really like what staff needs to be directed to go in and do more detailed analysis. And then we could come up with sort of how many acres as well.
[00:47:43]
Um, I would also, the other thing that I think we have to be mindful of is we do want some mixed use areas, but as far as the State's concerned, we couldn't count a hundred percent of like the high density residential increases towards that housing number. Uh, now for our land capacity analysis in commercial areas, we calculate 30% of those. Um, looking at trend, 30% of those do become housing and not developed, um, as commercial. Uh, so, um, we, we wanna kind of have a blend of, of both of those. And so that's kind of a traditional, uh, step down or transition to in zoning where you go from commercial and you might have high density residential, uh, falls down to a lower density residential.
[00:48:35]
So I just ask where that calculation came from. 30%. Yeah. In, in this day and age, with the office market the way it is and all of that, I have a really hard time believing that number. Kevin is jumping up and down. Great. Well I wouldn't say jumping up and down, but he's meaningful. He is jumped up. I need a lot of water. So for break. So the land capacity analysis of course is based on what we have today. It's not based on the changes that are being proposed. But, um, for that analysis, um, we looked to add a trend of all building permits within any of those, uh, what would now be called mixed use zones. So like commercial allows residential, general commercial, community business and those things. Looking at all of those, for the last 10 years, it was about 30 to 33% of projects were residential. Uh, and it wasn't significantly changing over time.
[00:49:31]
And so for the assumptions in the lca, we used 30 33%. And that's referring to like the percentage of building permits in the zone. The well for every building permit in those types of zones, uh, 33% of the land area developed is residential land area. Okay, thank you. So it was, it was using, um, the number of units by the land area. Do you know what the 70% was? Everything else? Mostly commercial. And that's work we did in 2024 in anticipation of the periodic update. Is that something we're gonna do at the five year check-in, is like well we'll wanna look at those assumptions at that. Yeah. Yeah, we have. Look at that. The same is true of the effective middle housing. We don't have enough data to yeah, really shift the numbers because of middle housing, but we hope in five years that we will. And I guess perhaps the office crash in the last five years also is probably a similar impact.
[00:50:25]
'cause I cannot imagine that those, those numbers are that way now. But yes, but keep in mind too that the first four years of our trend data that we used was post COVID. Yeah. And so, uh, and like I said it, we did not see a significant change in rate we might in the future. That'd be interesting to see. Yeah. Um, I'm checking on my notes too. I did wanna mention that, um, the, the buffer for these, uh, is a quarter mile buffer. Um, that's just what we've used for now. As I mentioned, we can be more detailed but bigger or smaller. Um, we also have, um, put a, uh, the interim height allowances, which are now in place for downtown. So downtown, but through interim ordinance currently has unlimited height. So, um, we added that to the map also just to keep the downtown conversation, the downtown zoning, this is the complexity of it, it was already able to accommodate housing.
[00:51:30]
So the zoning's already in place. What other incentives do we need to get more housing downtown? It's more the conversation. So it's less of a zoning conversation in that situation. But, um, trying to keep all the threads together here. So, um, anything else you wanted to add, spencer? No. So just some questions to keep in mind. Kinda obviousness we're looking for, you know, what, what areas do you think yes, um, that these make sense? Um, which ones did we miss? Um, what are concerns? So, um, if there's additional areas, we would hope they were analyzed in one and two, we went to those. So with that, can we pause the, well, I guess first question that I have in potential land use changes areas, most of these areas of change, quote unquote, even though I know that's not terminology we're focusing on here, um, the potential intensity change area is that saying underlying land uses are intended to stay the same and we're just gonna change intensity or we're gonna change, we're looking at changing land use.
[00:52:48]
Okay. And intensity both or, well, I guess that intensity conversation might be something that is more of a zoning code related well extent, I'm just responding to what said here. Extent potentially changing yes. Through the land use, changing intensity through the land use. So right. For example, some areas that are within that change of intensity might currently be residential low. Right? Maybe it makes sense for those areas to be residential high or in some cases maybe they should be mixed use or something else. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. I think I, me personally, I'm just struggling to get my head around all of this. Obviously there's a tremendous amount of information there, but it sounds like the rest of us are also struggling a little bit to get our heads around exactly what this is all saying. Um, and that's where, like monroe as an example, like it's, it's fairly narrow, right?
[00:53:44]
Katie's not here anymore, but, but it's fairly narrow zoning. So, but we already have centers and quarters there. But would that be, add more intensity to that area? Add more? I guess it's the zoning or add more land use. I'm even using the wrong term. This the, the first one because it doesn't have the street names on it kind of help. It's hard 'cause once you put the street name on there, it like completely covers up like the existing, you can, you can better see that narrow little existing stripe down the middle. Yeah. And then just that the proposed change is like, let's, let's just kind big in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Expand around those borders. I would say that's, it's a big City too when you try to put it on a one page map. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, um, some other communities have a little bit less landmass, but, um, we have, I appreciate that in this, the proposed alternative that it, it does seem to have a good chunk of concentrated change in most of parts of the City.
[00:54:49]
Like the areas that don't, it's well creek, I mean it's a big part of that. It's just, it's land, you know, like hillside, um, which probably all that area we're not proposing a lot of change because of the infrastructure issues. Yeah. And as, as linda mentioned, that's probably showing a lot of the capacity for those, uh, sort of traditional single family development. And we have a lot of plats and in either preliminary plat or mostly preliminary plat stage, uh, in that area. So we do anticipate a lot of, uh, that type of housing will continue. So we haven't, haven't offered change there. We have added, we do have some large parcels there. We have added also by interim ordinance, the ability to add commercial into a pud. Uh, we have not had anyone use that at this time, but that's still on the table.
[00:55:45]
But we haven't, uh, proposed except for the, um, inland empire way. Maybe we'll start with this. Assuming I was saying that's that one chunk there, right? And so those of you that we're talking about res residential agriculture, land use is adjacent to that. Um, but it's a long inland empire way, uh, which has some historic fragments of, um, building when that was, uh, more of a highway. Um, so the idea is that I provide some more, um, mixed use area in there and there's uh, property owner interest in that area. Yeah. And uh, another thing to add is that, um, the City's capital plans include eventually the reconnection of inland empire way to chiney Spokane road to that interchange. So the, uh, you know, with the City and washau working together, the intent has been to find alternatives for people needing, who are looking to get into downtown or other central neighborhoods to have an alternative to 1 95. Oh yeah.
[00:56:52]
A flyover 1 95 potentially even. But speaking and not the tracks, specific tracks. Unreal. So, so the, um, the goal there is if we are gonna be directing trips off of 1 95, it would be using inland empire way, which may create some opportunities for commercial development there that can capture those trips locally and not, uh, send them elsewhere in the system. So yeah. One, one neighborhood, I worked on a, a project and this City spent about 50 million to redevelop east sprague. Um, and right east of sonnenberg's market, I did a housing development project. Mm-hmm. So I wasn't sure, I didn't see that as a focus area, but maybe the existing zoning already covers that, but it's just within a mile, the university district and it has rapid transit already, but I didn't quite know where that, I think it's that pink. Yeah, it is. It is mostly the pink. Yeah.
[00:57:47]
But yeah, we haven't extended changes to that area. That area, um, to the south that is hatched is trying to catch the e central planning. So that's something I was, should have definitely mentioned. This incorporates hillard plan, uh, the e central planning as it is to date. And then also, um, focuses on division, uh, in the priority, um, tod areas from that study. Although that's not complete, we have enough information to start leaving that in as well. So we're using that. And uh, to come back to your question, the short answer is yes, that pink on the map indicates that it's already zoned for a more intense housing type rmf or rhd. Okay. So we're not showing that as needing to increase the intensity there because it's already, it's already there. It's already there. That was, thank you.
[00:58:44]
So really amidst all of the colors that we're showing here, the only proposals for change are within the red hatched areas essentially. Yes. Um, I think there are another map there. So this, this second map, it is basically the same information, but it's only showing the hatched areas that would change. That's really helpful. This 1.4 was just the, okay. Absolutely. Yeah, it is. It's helpful. But like I, I appreciate that it's also overlay too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You guys have a favorite one that kaycee could bring up? We're on one. I can't tell the difference to 1, 2, 1 has and with labels. Labels, yeah. One has labels and one doesn't. Is that it? Okay. Because I'm like, yeah, no, it took me like 15 minutes. Besides the label compare, besides, is there anything else okay that no, that is great though. 'cause not having the labels does help see the details, the hazards of small pieces of paper with yeah. Thank you for putting in color though.
[00:59:42]
Um, I, uh, I really like the increased intensity, uh, with grand and the 29th and that whole area, that, that whole uh, route four yeah. Situation. I am surprised and actually disappointed not to see increased density intensity in the west central area. And I recognize that I am yeah. Biased in this way because I live in west central, but I'm also very engaged in west central and, uh, in the prior alternatives, um, especially alt two, there was what looked like increased intensity all along broadway. It's already, it's pink. That's not broadway. It's high density residential. A lot of, a lot of that's kendall yard. Oh, I was thinking that was broadway. No, that's not broadway. See, you can't, can't zoom in enough with, uh, but we have, you know, so much potential. It has so much and I've been sitting here for 20 years going and it has, uh, a well loved bus sprout.
[01:00:40]
It has amazing multimodal transportation with all of the, with the centennial trail around it as well. Yeah. And then it also has a west quadrant tiff that uh, we can leverage to improve, you know, that area. And it has most of all the community will to see that adapt. So why is the intensity being looked where it's, well, we were looking at, um, the maxwell elm area. Yeah. And that's one 'cause that has some legacy industrial yeah. Sort of thing that, and with the cc three overlays, little complicated. You can build a lot of things there, but if you build residential, you have to use the centers of quarters. But anyway, we were thinking we could clarify the zoning in that area. Um, traditionally I think a street is the, it goes low density to the west of a street, but the majority of that is in multifamily in west central.
[01:01:38]
It looks like it's a, you can see the dividing line where it goes from pink to yellow yeah. If you go east to west. Yeah. Um, so I think to answer your question, um, that's helpful feedback. Yeah. If that's important, we can incorporate it in, because this is the alternative we're sort of constructing yeah. Of the three that we've looked at. Yeah. Um, and if would kind of hit the central City. It's a yeah. Yeah. It's, it so it's so close and walkable. I live there when I work downtown. Yeah. Yeah. And I would walk yeah. To work. So, uh, but there was also nothing there. Yeah. At that time there was not even any restaurants. We, we do have linda's sitting here patiently with her hand up also. Um, I, I just wanted to, I, I know my job is to speak for all the neighborhood councils and for the community assembly, but I just wanna point out to you the area of the northwest that is really gonna be the most impacted.
[01:02:37]
And I would also like to point out that is an area that has a lot of affordable single family housing. And I have a very deep concern that given the number of empty lots on places like division that have remained empty for years, and people who own those obviously don't wanna build on them, at least the kinds of buildings available. Now, what very much concerns me is the possibility that we're, which is kind of mentioned in the, uh, about page 53 in the EIS of individual demolitions, there's beautiful old craftsmen cottages that were built by the italian craftsmen themselves for their own families. And if the big land owners on the corridors don't wanna be building low income housing, what are they gonna do?
[01:03:37]
There're gonna be people go in and buy up individual homes from individual homeowners and, and build multifamily housing there. I think, I just wanna raise this as a scenario. I happened to have grown up partly in what we back in the day called st. Al's, which is then became gonzaga and then became logan. Those restrictions were lifted there for the reason of providing more housing in that area because of the influx of students. And it made deep, deep, deep changes in the neighborhood. So I just wanna point out that there are, you know, there are desired consequences and intended consequences. My father was a chemist and he used to say, when the drug companies would say, oh, this is a side effect. He used to say, there's no such thing as a side effect. There are effects. The side effect is what the company wants you to ignore because they want you to consider this other effect which they consider to be beneficial, the one that you make your decision on.
[01:04:40]
But I just wanted to point out that there are multiple effects of all of these plants. So there is a, a little proposed area here on, this is hamilton closer to northwood hills. So above that center, uh, is another small proposed area, potential addition. But um, but that isn't what really concerns me. What concerns me is in the, the wellesley, if he could be more specific ma'am, it's the division, monroe, northwest boulevard, wellesley, that sort of triangular area in the northwest is gonna have a huge squeeze on it. Okay. You can see it's the only area of the City that's basically squeezed on all sides. Um, well, uh, I wanna come back to broadway 'cause I have another important thing that I think we need to talk about, but if you have a response to that, I'm fine waiting.
[01:05:38]
Well, no, you can go first. Uh, so I did wanna just highlight one of the pieces of feedback we've heard specifically about that part of west central is actually the opposite. The concern is that we, uh, the City in the original comp plan up zoned areas around there that have then been snapped up by, you know, landholders that are, um, not doing anything but taking advantage. Yeah. It's speculative, uh, investment. And so I guess I'm just curious how you balance that concern with what I think you're suggesting, which is actually we should be increasing the intensity along broadway. I was gonna ask you guys that, and that actually relates to what I think linda's talking about as well, because, um, that's why you, you need to increase the zoning intensity carefully.
[01:06:37]
Yes, absolutely. One of the, oh, sorry. You were, you had something. Um, sure. I'll throw my hand. Right. Um, but yeah, I guess I wonder also, um, and maybe this is kind of in, in competition with, with, with your statement, but, um, the maple ash couplet, um, I guess I just think about like some of these residential arterials and that they're really horrible locations for single family housing. Mm-hmm. And potentially that there's, that upzoning them provides opportunity to create higher quality housing in some of those areas where single family is poor fit. Um, and I think nevada's the same. Um, but it's not a couplet. So it's a little, there's differences, but, uh, and so I, I guess I just wonder about the potential to actually, um, expand, uh, like the maple ash.
[01:07:32]
Like we've got like a, a bubble down at the south uhhuh by downtown, and then we've got northwest boulevard and there's like pockets of expansion and then pockets of not expansion. I mean, I could see a scenario in which, and this is I guess prefer alternative two, where, um, you know, we're expanding literally, uh, the area all the way up to francis, um, on maple, but even maybe just to wellesley, um, to provide opportunity for higher quality housing on, on both maple and ash offer off both of those. Yeah. All the way. And then would that be really the northwest boulevard? A lot of the comments we got on that was to look for mixed use area, uh, to establish we have community business zoning there, um, that doesn't have those sort of build to the street requirements. Mm-hmm. It is kinda a tough area, so we would need to do more study in there.
[01:08:28]
Mm-hmm. Jessie, I see a lot of hands up, including yes. So think you were first and then spencer. So one of the things that I heard from, and mostly it was from one particular woman at a lot of the community events, but, um, like she would particularly, she was like, um, bring up that she lived in an area that was currently zoned for multi-family housing, although mostly it is existing single family housing. And her feeling was that her neighborhood was being unfairly targeted for change or for increased density. And so my argument is that by providing more opportunities across the City, it makes each neighborhood less yes. Concentrated and that it's less likely to be concentrated along that one strip or that one street because we have provided opportunity in a lot more areas.
[01:09:29]
So although it looks like one part of, you know, is going to be, it's up, it's, it's noted for change, but it doesn't mean that it's going to fill up and be changed to maximum as we've seen how development has occurred in the last 50 years. Needs book in. Uh, well two things. First on the maple ash thing, I, I think, um, the thinking behind the focus on monroe rather than maple ash is really tied to the number four bus line because that's much more frequent service. Yeah. Focusing all that growth on maple ash where you have less frequent transit service maybe isn't, um, as consistent with what we're wanting as far as transit oriented development. And it's harder to, because of the couplet to mm-hmm. Like you have to go like a whole other like extra block or two. Right. And yeah, that creates some challenges too.
[01:10:23]
So just something to think about there. Um, on the question of, you know, concentrating that, I guess, um, this is one of the challenges that we see with, or that we're kind trying to balance is, um, I agree completely that as you open up those opportunities to a wider area, you tend to concentrate the effects less. That also has the downside of not concentrating those changes where you really want to see them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, so just, you know, there, there can be, um, there can be power in focusing and prioritizing where we really want that change to happen. Um, but it, you know, it's sort of a both, both ways have their pluses and minuses just to, so I can kind of absorb what the red hash areas mean. So right now most of these are centers and corridors as I understand it, which means you can do, um, high intensity residential facing that street.
[01:11:20]
They're kind of a mix and match. Okay. Wellesley, most of them are not, especially when you get outside of the immediate vicinity. A bit of the arterial can we, okay. I guess the pink areas are the one within the cash areas are what is currently center. And then the other question is out one that's kind of interesting to me that I had to really zoom in on an indian trail. Hmm. Yeah. So this is capturing pretty large, like 50 acre property that's undeveloped just north of the landfill. That's currently in single family residential. So the consultants also were using the land capacity analysis for underutilized and available property. So, okay. I think this one could give a lot of community conversation. Um, but it is an opportunity and maybe more likely to develop, um, it could be have another mixed use.
[01:12:17]
But we also have, um, down the road, the excel here proposal that, um, if they do execute a development agreement, they will also have more, uh, capacity in at that property. So an indian trail, there is a letter, uh, in your packet from indian trail. They've already expressed concern about any additional zoning, land use capacity added. Uh, so, and they, they also sort of feel the pressure being, uh, one of the neighborhoods that's on the edge of the City. So also the, the County development around them. Ju just to the follow up though was, uh, like on wellesley and northwest boulevard, does that represent a quarter mile on either side of the arterial? Yes. So it'd be like half mile total, but that's just for, so it's about like a, like two blocks basically is kind of how to think of it rather than just one block. It's kind of the division one's hard 'cause the blocks on either side are completely different because of the play.
[01:13:17]
Yeah. Well it's probably more like three or four blocks on the either side, but yeah, it depends on the block side and that's why we're trying to get like, go ahead at the blob level so then we can go back and the latest plan map is gonna take us a long time that the division one is equal at this time. Because right now, I mean, I know and we've discussed like why the intensity is more on the east side than on the west side of the street. Well, there's existing zoning. I'm not sure why. Yeah. They didn't do both sides because it feels, it feels really unbalanced and a lot of missed potential opportunity for the future. 'cause again, it's like, I'm not talking about tomorrow, but like, and so to clarify, within these blobs, there is intended to be a more surgical application and that the resultant land use changes are not going to be in blob format. 'cause I, you know, I look at the blob on mission and sort of cheap gary park and it's like, how did we decide what is inside the circle and what is not inside the circle?
[01:14:21]
So that really is also capturing. Another complexity for us is the State, the transit oriented development bill. Um, we must comply with that in, uh, June, 2027 and deadline, tod addressed everything except for that and our tod addressed. It's the, the City line has addressed, we have addressed through the south logan plan. Yeah. Uh, most of the stops, but there are a few in that area. So we did wanna make sure and analyze that, um, through the environmental impact statement, knowing that's coming there. Um, there's a working group and commerce is working on their guidance on how to interpret that law. So, um, but, but we do have a little bit of neighborhood retail in that area. I, I guess what I'm saying though is you have a circle that's entirely surrounded by yellow, and I understand the reasoning for that, but you have intensity to the east and you have intensity to the west and you have low intensity and then you have a potential area of increased intensity.
[01:15:26]
How'd you decide where, who's inside and who's outside and, and why? Maybe that's probably centering on napa. So yes, there's a more surgical look at right. Sc yeah, I guess that's what I'm getting at. Like, I understand now family promise. It seems awful limiting in that situation and a few others like it. So yeah, there's still some, a few commercial the highs. So there's like a gas station on the right. They wanna circle back a little bit to the question about the centers and corridors, just to clarify for you all, but maybe some anyone watching, but it's the hash mark isn't the centers and corridors. This is a great example. This is, um, 29th. We have a center here that's not in the hash that, that's existing.
[01:16:20]
The hash is potentially expanding our areas around it. So when we're looking at the areas of change, you may not see that existing centers are hashed because they already have a higher intensity, if that makes sense. It's really emphasizing that increase in intensity. Mm-hmm. Just a little dot right in the middle of manito park that seems to be on a single parcel. And I know those people, I'm imagining they may be a little bit confused. I'm just gonna say that's a mapping error. Yeah. That bottom of teko just no, it's, it's the point right across from the ice group shop, that house that's got the big lawn with the point right across from the oh, from the ice group shop. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm asking kaycee to go up into, uh, area closer to like the y um, there's quite a bit of, um, oh yeah, on far side of francis.
[01:17:19]
Yeah. Well I guess it's technically both ours on that part, but it's probably up like off nevada and, um mm-hmm. I, I was looking at this on the existing zoning, I was like, oh yeah, there is some, some lower intensity in this area. Um, I went to a restaurant that was like one and a half blocks south of francis and I randomly found it that was surrounded by houses. But like there are some of those like random little low intensity non residential. This is north of france. So I was just wondering if, oh, if there's any area of any responses or, um, maybe you wanna drive up around in the, is maybe somewhere you first nevada again, is that the middle strip? The o of lincoln. The o of lincoln. Okay. Okay.
[01:18:15]
I do well with stores. The winco, where my mouse is, is roughly here. If you go there. Oh, okay. Ly place you thank you. Yeah. This, you start to realize where you live and where you drive around because there's parts of the City where we all yeah. You know, more frequent know really well and there's other parts. But, so I, I, you know, was, um, less sure about this area. Um, there's a few vacant parcels though in this area or to develop. So, but, you know, maybe adding zone capacity. But again, to linda's point of what's most likely, um, you know, we, we hope we capture likely places. Um, we hope we distribute it equitably. We hope we're, um, being efficient with transit oriented development or opportunities, um, for people to live near transit and live near jobs so we can meet our vmt goals.
[01:19:16]
So trying to pull all these things together, if some way we could, uh, in displaying it to the public link, the transit routes with the increased density, that's a really key, communicate what's going on a little bit better. We did try to show a little bit more. Yes. Map four, so we can look at that one as well. Oh, that's, that's what the blue lines are. Yeah. Okay. Four. I don't know what, we haven't really talked about this yet, but maybe we need sort of a story map approach to, to working with the public with this because, um, well, and it, it's hard to 'cause the, the, again, the street names kind of make it look like there isn't a, like a route. And I'm like, wait, it does continue there. But yeah. Yes. Street names so long and, and many people are only gonna care about a certain part. So it's, it's easier digitally and you are able to use computer.
[01:20:09]
Sure, yes. You can see it. So you can zoom in and see. And, um, again, we're, we're trying to stay at the concept level so we can go, um, get the information we need. Um, so this, uh, as this reminder to you all and to anybody in the public, we are, um, going to ask Plan Commission by resolution to kind of recommend a preferred alternative that'll give us, uh, the certainty to move forward, um, and investigate further the zoning changes. We'll also ask City Council to do the same. So we hope we're starting to get closer, um, as I, your next meeting we could, I've heard a few changes, but let's continue to explore and then the next meeting we could bring things back. If we could get to a preferred alternative in April, that'd be like super awesome for us.
[01:21:03]
But, you know, we have to spend as much time in this place as needed. Um, so we can all move forward and then we finalize the comp plan. Okay. We have amber with a question online. Oh, hey. Yeah. Hey, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Okay. Um, is it okay to ask a question about the preferred alternatives? Yeah. You ask whatever question you have. Okay. Um, I was just looking at, um, earlier the, um, preferred draft, preferred alternative, I guess the sort of 2.5 map. And I just wanted to note a couple places that look like there's a lot of yellow and orange, I guess the high density housing and the mixed use commercial on growth alternatives two and three that maybe are missing or I don't see as, um, intensely highlighted in the kind of combo new alternative.
[01:22:02]
I'll just go through those really fast. And then I have one more, one more comment that's not related to that, but, um, the on two and three, there's a little kind of spur in the south logan area that looks like it's going up. Hamilton perhaps, I'm not sure, um, that I just noticed is a little bit less, um, called out in the new preferred alternative. Similarly, that area around, we were talking about it earlier, um, with that chief gary park where there's like a one on my, on my map. And then lastly hill, the hilliard area. You know, I'm in the north week northeast, so maybe that's why these are all standing out to me. But just considering the, um, heavy amount of employment and industry up there that perhaps that's a place to look at for more of that high density housing and mixed use commercial.
[01:22:56]
Um, I think that's probably around wellesley and market, but I have no idea looking at my maps. So those are just, uh, for consideration, just things that stood out to me when I was looking at the alternatives. And then I know we talked about jobs earlier. I don't mean to, uh, feed a fed horse, but I think that have saying on these slides that the scenario seems to add a certain number of jobs is very confusing. Maybe adds to the confusion in that table we were looking at earlier. So I would just suggest maybe if, you know, you don't have to necessarily remove it, but make it more clear that it's not necessarily saying that this alternative adds jobs, but that this alternative considers the implications of this modeled number of jobs. Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. So those areas that you mentioned, you think we should have more intensity than we're showing on the preferred alternative?
[01:23:56]
And, sorry. Yeah, you, maybe you don't have the maps that we have here. I don't think I have the printouts, so I'm looking just at the slides. But I think they stand out in the intensity change areas, map the one with all the, um, all the pretty colors and the hash marks. Yeah. But in the, in the actual, um, blended preferred alternative, they're just areas that I don't see as amplified as in alternatives two and three. And if the goal was to combine those into a new alternative, I would just say maybe revisit them. So especially in the hilliard area, there is a large yeah, it's the, the orange and yellow lobbies of all two and all three. And then how do those translate onto these new, oh, I know, but it looked like once you mentioned they are actually well served.
[01:24:49]
Yeah. Because all of wellesley, like through cross market is marked up not really high intensity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or at least a change, but you know, in for sure a change. Yeah. Other, the logan area you were also talking about. Yeah, I think it's probably hamilton that it just on, if you look at the alternatives two and three, there's a little orange and yellow blobby area that just doesn't map out onto the, um, blended alternative. But it is represented pretty well I think in this intensity change map. I think maybe it's just coming also from my own confusion about how the, the orange and yellow blobs on the alternatives map out to the intensity change maps. Um, but yeah.
[01:25:45]
So these intensity change maps are all based on what I'll call alternative four, correct? Yes. They're, that's they're a new basis for yeah. And we, we really looked hard at what we got from our community engagement. Yeah. And we also did a staff and icm exercise, which gave us a little bit more information. Um, but our, my previous conversations with you in the abstract, um, weren't getting a lot of response. We just like, we need to show you map. We do need something map. You're getting response now. Well this is, this is good. Um, so, so, you know, and, and linda said less on hamilton, so we have a more on hamilton coming. So lot's that stuff on hamilton, I'm concerned about the area west of division. Mm-hmm. That's my area of concern. I mean, hamilton is hamilton.
[01:26:39]
I've lived, I lived, my parents lived in that neighborhood. Uhhuh, it's the area west of division that, that north of, well north of say mission maxwell mm-hmm. You know, indiana up to the garland hill, like garland empire, that area below garland. Okay. Below garland. It's that, you know, emerson, garfield and, uh, audubon, uh, downriver, et cetera. That area is going to. And basically I would say north of maxwell mission, or if you will, north of indiana, um, that, that area is gonna be, I, I think very, very much affected by these changes. Maybe in some ways that aren't entirely anticipated now. Um, so I just wanna make comment going back to the bus routes. Matt, first of all, thank you for producing that. That's really helpful, especially seeing it up on the screen there.
[01:27:33]
Yeah, it's okay. I gotcha. Um, she'll go back, be patient with us kind of a overlay that one. Well no, the one that has the bus routes, but also shows the, I mean, I guess I get this one works for, this one works for discussion. So there are numerous areas on this map that show high frequency transit without areas of change, let's call it around those now I, I'm sort of cross-referencing back and forth between the maps to see if there's base zoning that's still supportive there or if it's just low intensity and no projected change. And there are quite a few areas where it is just based zoning and no projected change, whereas those frequent bus routes intersect. And I don't think that's defensible.
[01:28:26]
Yeah. The, I guess that, and we're looking at wellesley is the next, uh, projected sta investment following division. So we are trying to anticipate that a little bit. No, I'm looking at hamilton. Let's say hamilton, oh man. A little bit north of michigan, hamilton, nevada, where it falls down to low density. Yeah. And, and maple or that little situation up there. I don't know what that is. This here. Yeah. That piece there and this piece here. Yeah. I, I don't see how we can, if we're trying to achieve the things we're trying to achieve, I don't see how we can exclude those areas, this and that get there. I've got some notes, but it's also, I mean, it's similar to the comment about broadway, which is we have frequent transit there.
[01:29:19]
Why would we not target that we've got for that, that ultimately, if that's what the goal is, is to existing built mm-hmm. Direct growth into those areas that are served by transit. I see you. Um, I we have to very least look seriously at that. Yeah. Just make a corollary point. I was really taken aback in reading the EIS when you sort of get to the end and the comparison then and now where the number of miles traveled by transit, the percentage, it's like what one, 1.5% now is like 1.7. And similarly for active transit, I'm going, if, if all of this is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the use of personal vehicles and what have we accomplished with all of this, and if we make more of these designations around well areas that are well by public transit, you know, that some moved more in that direction.
[01:30:19]
And one of the points that is made about that is we have to do a lot of work just to stay at the status quo though too. Even like, because of growth and because of change. And like even just at the example of like, look at a high school parking lot 30 years ago versus today, like the number of cars in that parking lot, it's the same number of kids go to that school. Yeah. So we're gonna have to make a lot of effort even just to, even just to keep at the same, you know, number. Yeah. If the conversation is about accommodating growth, which it should be, that has to be one of the major decision points there is, is where is that frequent transit, surface and service and then let's map it to that. And then maybe the study will be wrong and maybe more people will choose the vehicle while travel help gripping their devices instead of the appear wheel. Sure, sure. Indeed. Indeed.
[01:31:20]
Why would you not want to scroll instagram while you commute to work instead of having to watch the road? There's a group in west central who's wanting to create a shirt that says bus 21. Yeah. We love our bus 21. It makes me car sick, but, and so there you go. Bus, bus 21 is sitting there in low intensity. Yeah. Without any change around. So I heard a couple ads. Any subtractions, any areas that you're like, we also, of course we'll eventually also be thinking about, uh, displacement. Yeah. So we haven't quite gotten there in our policies yet. Um, and those are also, we should also have some, um, implementation of that at some point. So tim made some really great comments about that in the chapter review conversation early on that I think we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
[01:32:22]
But I think they were really insightful. Um, I, I guess I, I'll just point out there's awful lot of not change south of the river. Yeah. I mean I appreciate that there. The third landmine I potentially stepped on today. Um, well, yeah, I mean that's, that's there and that's the area we have not, I'm looking at my neighborhood, there's no change. There's nothing really east of grand and that's in part falling the tod. Yeah, that's what I think about it. You really can't get anywhere there. San fe boulevard is your only option, but you can't build there either. No. And, and I was like, optics, well, from downtown it's like three miles to lincoln heights, but it's like eight miles to indian trail. So the, sometimes you think the, the river's the san and is wagging the dog here. If like, if we're looking at intensity and looking at growth patterns and growth patterns fill out a certain way, does sta follow rather than lead?
[01:33:23]
Yeah. And regional growth. There's tremendous growth to the north of the City. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You hear what I'm saying though? Like, it's not a great look, but I do appreciate the, I think that grouping all three south business districts together makes sense because they're already, they're already expanding. I conditional use along our artery. And so it makes sense because that's where the, the, and that we do at least, I mean it just, I'm sure that the transit lines will just, there used to be nothing there and um, yes, there's a lot of traffic, but yeah, I mean there's not a lot of roads either. So there's a gap on grand though in this. Yeah. There is a should there be? I, yeah, I agree that there, it's a strange that maybe there is not a strip along grant.
[01:34:15]
I think there should be. I was gonna ask about that. So is that something you'd like to see then? Yeah, I, I think it falls in line with all of the other circles that I've drawn here. Yeah. Absolutely. A quarter mile on top of grant. Not on either side, but I think like a, well, I, I, I think those, those blobs should be connected right there. Grand is a, I agree. Is a corridor and, and you know, ran it up to the rocket market. I was thinking rocket market. Well, but I think that I live in that neighborhood campus. This, isn't it the center 14th and grand, there's that little steer. Yeah. It goes up to about 38th and grand it looks like. Yeah, it does. You're right. That is pass the golf course. Correct. There was a lot of interest in that, even though that's not on a, a transit line. Mm-hmm. Connecting grand, but between 37th and 29th more with zoning, not right there connected. Yeah. No, but I mean, 'cause even just looking at the way it's already built out, there's already apartments all along grand both in that area that's here 29th, 37th and 29th.
[01:35:20]
But then down grand you don't notice 'em as much. But there are, yeah. There's tons of apartments. There's tons of apartments along grand. Yeah. Yeah. That's, and heaven forbid if we got a restaurant or something that would be the yeah, yeah. That'd be phenomenal. The old albertsons and then the jefferson school, once they're done with it, redeveloped, that would be so nice. Absolutely. So much land there. Absolutely. A hundred percent anyway. Yep. Yep. But that, that does go up to 38th or 39th and 40th and grand. It probably does. 'cause it's that quarter mile. Yeah. But it doesn't get to the golf course, does it? Yeah. Yeah. Again, not trying to be super detailed yet, just trying to get, and I mean, you know, in some ways rocket is a bit of an anomaly down there. It's, you know, it's kind of on an island in residential, I guess. There's that option. You got the golf course and then your million dollar homes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Church. A church. Yeah.
[01:36:16]
Well it's like an office building across from yeah, it was, I think it was a church really. Yeah. Okay. So again, any areas we should remove? I, I don't, I don't think so. No. I, I think if anything it's could be more mm-hmm. Added now. I know that's more work for you guys and I'm sorry. Alright. But just in, in general, I think the focus on existing commercial centers and where they're expanding the focus on transit routes. Mm-hmm. And then the other thing you need to think about, and this is somewhat to linda's point, is it's gonna take, you know, there's existing houses. It's not like this change is, this is like allowing change to occur over time. So it's really a much slower process than, so it's not, not like suddenly yeah, they're buying your house, they're tearing it down and they're putting up a four story unit. Right. Um, so there might sometimes, I don't know about that. I mean, I'm more concerned about that of empty thought on cross division street.
[01:37:21]
I mean, I hope that those are developed first too. I agree. Like why not? Well, again, if you, you know, there's different strategies with zoning, so if you're expanding, there's zoning. So much zoning. Yeah. Are you taking the pressure off? Well this is, yeah, that's the thing we're talking, we're talking about land use too. And then, right. Let, let's go back to taking turns here. Yeah, I, I was gonna add that like, I think that it's really important to keep in mind that this is a land use map and that, um, zoning has a lot of power to talk about what's happening on, you know, at portland park versus what's happening on division. Um, and that there, it's a very different approach hopefully right. In those two, two areas. Um, and that, you know, it doesn't mean that the same thing is getting built on division as it is getting built in portland park. Um, and you know, same with all these other areas. I, I do think that some of the, the comments about the logan neighborhood are, are valid to consider because the logan neighborhood's unique in the City of Spokane, it's probably has the highest diversity of housing types.
[01:38:23]
But also a lot of the, a lot of the infill that happened in the sixties, seventies, eighties, there was very low quality. And so just like, again, like a lot of these are considerations that the zoning code, uh, if it is successful, will have an opportunity to, to control the quality and how that housing infill occurs. But, but in terms of like the, the locations, I think pretty close that's feeling. Okay. Other thoughts? Sorry, I didn't wanna tamp down the conversation there, but we were all talking at the same time. So our, our staff proposal would be to take your comments, um, bring back another map or potentially another small series. Um, and well I'll make sure and have that in the packet if anybody has be remote. Um, so I'm am talking to Council, uh, tomorrow just mentioning, showing this map and saying, Plan Commission is doing the heavy lifting for you Council.
[01:39:23]
This is, um, what we're working on. Um, so if, if the first meeting in March, if we, uh, feel like it's ready to go to hearing, then that would be potentially when we look for April and we'll look for some dates that do not conflict, allow us to have the, um, chambers for the hearing. Um, don't conflict with other meetings. So, and just, I, I don't know how familiar the Council is with land use versus zoning, but I think that it could be very valuable to try and concentrate how this is a, a decoupling of the existing, you know, caring of that. Because a lot, you know, that the land use does not mean zoning anymore because again, you can yeah. You can look at this map and be like, oh, we're gonna make it all multifamily and be like, people just think that means the zoning is all, you know, high intensity multifamily.
[01:40:22]
And I would encourage you to use our confusion with this and that as a tool. 'cause they're going to be more confused than we are. Yeah, well they're gonna be getting a lot more comment than you are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, I also think that additionally, um, as like at a first glance, I think the average per, well the average first doesn't even know what centers and corridors are most likely. Um, but like it's very easy to look at this map and assume, oh, we're really, like, we're just expanding centers and corridors everywhere. Like that's kind of the first assumption of like, this fat line is now a big center, six quarters. And that's where we have to also get into where, where we want more mixed use area. Yeah. So, and, and I wouldn't say brian, that like the land use plan map lives outside of the zoning map. There is still a relationship. No, of course there's a relationship, I don't wanna say here had a change.
[01:41:14]
Like, so like I, that's why I've had to think a lot about that change from the one-to-one to, you know, we, we may have more zoning categories that are permitted, but, um, I do not think either kyle, that we're scoping that we're gonna do specific code in specific areas. Some communities do that well, of course. But I think, but I think that division is gonna be a different zone. Correct. And most of it is in general commercial. Mm-hmm. And so a also we should clarify that our proposal is to focus on the transit nodes. Mm-hmm. Which I don't think are probably called out enough here and leave the general commercial. Um, for, for a lot of it. 'cause we do have a lot of, you know, drive throughs and things that probably the property owners want to continue to be conforming uses of series.
[01:42:12]
We had the non-conforming conversation earlier, like it's, that is a thing. I, I guess as a final comment, as we're sort of wrapping up here, I, I like the expanded investigation to either side of the corridor. I guess I would, I would hope that as that gets a finer grain to it, that is at a super crisp line. Either that there's some sort of gradation back from each one of those corridors and it doesn't just stop at that line, but potentially goes up like we're looking right here. You know, there could be some argument to draw some increased intensity up maple between wellesley and francis there or something. And it's slightly outside the boundary of those quarter mile buffers.
[01:43:05]
But when you're in there looking at it, it might make sense to drag this a little here and that way, a little bit that way. And have it be more our, our intention is to do that on a staff level. Um, so, and it's possible if we got stuck on some areas and we felt like they needed to be set aside, we could ask Council to direct us to do more work in certain areas in the upcoming years. I mean, I've just, our goal is to get across the finish line at the end of 2026. So, um, yeah, there, yeah, I think we will, but the more complexity yeah, it's complex. Like there's no way around. This is complex. You cannot say it's not complex, but this feedback is enormously helpful. Good. So yeah. Thank you. Yeah. But you know, we appreciate the good conversation and as kaycee mentioned, we've been getting a lot of, um, public comment.
[01:44:01]
So we are still taking public comment on the draft EIS of course on the growth alternatives through March 5th. Um, but functionally we will continue to work on the growth alternatives and the land use plan map all the way till adoption. Okay. Anything else on any of this? Okay. Well thank you both. This is, uh, it's a lot, a lot to digest. It's a lot. It is a lot. So yeah. I really thank you as well. Yeah. Really appreciate all of your work on all of this and for capturing the moment. And like, while I know that there's a tremendous amount of pressure to get all this done by the deadline and to get over the finish line and all that, we also have a rare moment in time where we can make this kind of surgery.
[01:44:56]
And so kudos to all of you for grabbing that by the horns and running with it however complicated it maybe. Um, so thank you. Okay. Well, anything else for the good of the order before we adjourn? All right. Hearing nothing, we're adjourned. Oh man. Yeah, that's.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZuL22qm7JA
Automatic captions, reformatted for reading: sentence case, paragraph breaks, and
timestamps at their original cue positions. Word order is unchanged. Caption
mishearings are left as recorded.
[00:00:07]
Emily, we good over there? Good to go. Okay. Very good. I don't have an agenda. I suppose I should have an, okay. All right. Welcome everyone to Spokane plan, commission workshop for Wednesday 25, 20 26. Emily, we please tape roll. Uh, president bank here. Vice president patterson. Here. Commissioner lenhart? I am here. Commissioner Madsen? Here. Commissioner osh. Madon williams. Here. S here. Looks like we have a quorum. And then, uh, Council Member Klitzke absent. And community assembly liaison.
[00:01:02]
Linda Carroll? Sure. Perfect. Yep. Very good. Thank you. Um, so before we get into minutes, is there anyone, um, from the public either here, online, that would like to comment on anything? Not on today's agenda. Seeing no one in the room, do we have anyone online? We do not. Okay. With that, we'll close the public comment and move to approve the February 11th, 2026 meeting minutes. Can I have a motion to moved? Second motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed nay. Okay. Motion, uh, minutes are approved. Uh, we will skip over City Council liaison report and, uh, linda, I'll give you a moment to get situated. Um, and then if you'd like to provide a community assembly liaison report, we would love it.
[00:01:56]
Well, I'm not quite sure what I need to report because community assembly hasn't met since the last time. Okay. Perfect. That's, uh, that's, that's an excellent report. That excellent report. Thank you. Um, moving on to president report. Um, we are, as I'm sure we'll hear in a moment, busily working through chapter review. Subcommittees, many of us just came from, uh, land use, which was an extremely robust discussion and will probably be another extremely robust discussion. Uh, so thank you to the commission members that were there, as well as the staff. Um, were both putting together an outstanding presentation as well as putting up with us for, you know, the thick end of, uh, of two hours. So, uh, and here we are again. Um, so with that, uh, moving over to secretary report. Yeah. Three items. The first is I am going to be, uh, you may recall towards the end of last year, we have some discussion about a work plan.
[00:02:53]
Um, the hope was to get on the calendar, a joint meeting with Plan Commission and City Council. Unfortunately, City Council, uh, could not identify a time of work. So in the interest of getting the work plan adopted, I'm gonna go ahead and just take the version that was, uh, that has been discussed here, um, and bring that forward to City Council at the urban experience meeting in March. So I brought copies of it just to kind of remind you of what's on it. Um, and I'll pass that out so that you have it. And then counsel will discuss and ultimately adopt this or some variation of this as they, as it works through their process. Um, second thing is, uh, we will be at Council study session tomorrow to present on the comprehensive plan.
[00:03:49]
This is our first opportunity to really dive in with the City Council. Um, so if you would like to tune in, you're welcome to, uh, that is tomorrow at 11, correct? Yes. Tomorrow at 11. You can see it on, uh, City cable, five City, channel five, whatever that is, live stream. Yeah. So, uh, should be a good discussion. They record it too, so you can always watch it afterwards. Uh, the third thing we have noticed, the, uh, first meeting in April is scheduled for April 8th. That's right in the middle of spring break. So we wanted to just find out from you if there is interest in rescheduling that and maybe holding the meeting on the 15th instead, or how the commission would like to, uh, we can keep that meeting date and time, that's fine from our perspective.
[00:04:47]
But, um, there is the possibility as you'll hear later, that we may wanna hold a hearing to select a preferred alternative on that date and holding a hearing during spring break. We may not get the kind of engagement we're wanting. So, um, just wanted to get some feedback on that. Um, we could also consider April 1st, if that works better. The 15th though, if we had a hearing. Isn't that also transportation permission? Um, good point. And they meet in the, yeah, I mean we having a, um, the room isn't as important. We can hold a hearing in here. That's okay. Um, yeah, so we could just use this room for the hearing, but obviously that would conflict with, and the reason they weren't, they're not using this space though, is 'cause another commission technically has it booked. Yes. Landmarks commission. Yeah. Um, and although they might not be, we would have to check on that too.
[00:05:43]
Um, I kind of haven't thought about the transportation commission part. Yeah. 15. There are different times, but the hearing, would the hearing be conflict? Yeah. And, and back to the conversation that we had in here last time, I think in a lot of cases, hearings in this room would be fine. I'm not sure for that one in particular that this room is the best room to have that hearing. Um, I would imagine there'll be a lot of attendance there. Uh, and quite a lot of testimony in this room is just not super well set up for that. Um, so I guess I would, I would recommend that we find another date for that hearing or however we need to handle that. I'm definitely sensitive to the spring break consideration. Um, and I think that's well taken. So either we find another date for the hearing that will work or reschedule this session.
[00:06:39]
Yeah, I guess I also, but I'm also wondering like, is there that big of an impact? The spring break? A lot of people, like they, the kids night might not be in school, but it doesn't mean they're going anywhere. I think a lot of people are. I was originally planning to be somewhere, but I think it probably won't be now. Um, so I don't, maybe it's a question to the group. Is anyone planning on going anywhere for spring break? Okay. Um, so there's the data point, obviously public participation there is challenged. Amber, remember? Yeah. Amber, please. Yes. I will probably not be around on that date. Um, I could attend remotely, but I've noticed as someone who does often attend remotely, it can be very hard to hear sometime. And I wanna be really present for that. So I, I personally would prefer to not be meeting during spring break, especially if we're having a hearing. Um, and then also, yes, if they're gonna expect a lot of public testimony, I think it would just be nice if it was not during the break.
[00:07:38]
But that's, that's just I'm one, I'm a count. I'm an n of one, so take it lead first. Thank you. Not during break. Correct. Not very temp patient. If that gives you all time, we can talk at the end of my presentation to see if we feel like we're gonna be there. Um, but, but yeah, we can certainly look for another, could move it up two weeks. So maybe this is just sort of an ongoing conversation that we need to keep tabs on as that develops. Yeah, there's a little time. Yeah. We do also have staff that will, we anticipate having staff out that week and then Council doesn't meet traditionally that week, so. Okay. That's all I have. Okay. Um, just going back to your initial thing with Council, I do wanna just sort of pipe up a little bit and say, I think it's really unfortunate that Council is unable to find time to meet with this body.
[00:08:40]
Given the magnitude and gravity of the work that we're working on right now. Um, it, it's a real missed opportunity. I understand that they're all busy. I understand that there's a lot going on, but I think it's really unfortunate that they've been unable to make time to meet with us, not just now, but have repeatedly over the last couple of years. Um, been unable to make time and, and that's really unfortunate. So just wanted to say that for the record. Um, moving on to transportation commission. Speaking of which, uh, so just from the, the previous meeting, um, srtc noted that they're updating their public participation plan so people are interested. That is something that is ongoing. Uh, wash dot also is in the, uh, moving forward with the design phase of the liberty park land bridge project, which I thought was dead. So, uh, in about two weeks from now, there should be a project webpage on washdot if you are interested in learning more.
[00:09:39]
Um, again, this is just the design phase, but it's not nothing. Uh, they did the, uh, presentation on the thorpe road tunnel study. The consultants completed. Um, there are two tunnels, um, that are being looked at. One, um, is has the fish lake trail on top of it. One has an active bnsf line on it that is southbound traffic for 19 trains a day, which, uh, is important because you can't just close it down to work on the tunnel. So they've identified, um, some alternatives, um, to just like making that existing tunnel bigger and, um, building a new tunnel north of it and a new, or a new tunnel south of it. And, um, they have a whole matrix. They, they kinda, with the pros and cons and costs and, um, access.
[00:10:38]
Um, they do think that, um, oh yeah. 'cause if you just enlarge the existing tunnel, it would need to be closed for one to two years. So, and it would be eight to $9 million more expensive. So, uh, they have identified that the kind of best option would be building a new tunnel in the south end, um, and for the fish lake trail crossing, um, building a bridge instead of a tunnel with like a medium cut, not a short, not a long, um, I didn't catch the price of the bridge, but the price of the proposed tunnel is $47 million, which felt very significant. Um, they, uh, bnsf has looked at the plans, so they don't have any issues with it. So they are probably going to be moving on to preliminary design.
[00:11:31]
A big part of the reason of doing this study though, was to get it into the, um, the fee thing. You know what I'm talking about? The development fee impact? Yeah, the impact fee, because we put in the cost of the study in the last time, but the, this would be adding the cost of the actual development into the impact. Uh, there was a presentation on the local commercial parking tax, um, and just some public comment really talking about what, where the ex the exceptions are for long-term parking and uh, some input from downtown and parking lot owners. Um, and so they're still trying to work out that language of how that is apply to people, residents, or a da parking 'cause there's conflicting language and just mostly trying to figure out the feasibility of, uh, implementing and being able to really, um, make it work for both the operators of the parking lots.
[00:12:33]
Uh, then there was an update on shared streets, just really kind of working in language from feedback at the last meeting. And then there'll be going to hearing probably at the next meeting to adopt that. It's a resolution. There was a hearing on the grand boulevard re striping, um, significantly. This does not go to City Council next. It is really just a recommendation for staff because the project is already planned for the re paving of the road, uh, unanimously the commission voted to adopt the option that is a three lane road. Um, there was a good amount of public comment and staff gave an extra detailed presentation that was above even the presentation at the previous meetings with additional details on the number of pedestrian desks we had, uh, in 2024, because I, or was it 20?
[00:13:28]
20, 25? Sorry. I wonder what year it is. Um, which unfortunately was updated from nine to 12 with the most recent, um, information. Uh, and it was also noted that traffic volume on grand is similar to other roads that have received the three lane treatment, including northwest boulevard in monroe and sunset highway. So, uh, that project will probably be built in 27. That was it. Okay. Did they, just outta curiosity, did anybody, did they look at flying over or flying over the tracks rather than going under it? Uh, that was not addressed. Um, at that. I mean, it seems like a bridge is cheaper than $47 million. I know just from the previous bridge issues going over both downtown yeah.
[00:14:20]
And the farther fish lake, there are like significant heights you have to reach. Yeah. So you're going over the train. Yeah, but I'm just saying, could you spring further uphill and stay up high and then come down? Yeah. Um, just, I mean, that's an unbelievable sum of money and tons are crazy expensive. He's so crazy. Yeah. Expensive. Yeah. I, I make virtually no sense. I was flabbergasted. Should talk to downtown Seattle about their, um, okay. Well thank you. You on that? Taken as good a note. Yeah, thank I feel like I was there. Okay. Uh, with that we will move to an approval of the current agenda. Um, can I just entertain a motion? Motion to approve second motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed nay.
[00:15:14]
Very good. We have an agenda and with that, uh, we will move on to conveyance of crsb policy package. Mar and carol. Hello. Hello. It's really mar. Hello. Okay. With really mar the call out. It's, well, of course. It's and kaycee. And kaycee and, um, logan callan as well. And icm so, and the climate board, um, and everyone that participated. So really you all as well. It's a group effort. It's a group effort. Um, everyone put in their, their group efforts, um, time and, um, commitment. So, um, in your packet we have the, um, final resolution and the findings of fact for the, uh, climate resilience and sustainability board. Um, approval of their recommendation to Plan Commission.
[00:16:11]
Uh, so this follows, you know, a number of months of, uh, policy development. We had our last conversation, uh, at the end of January to get some of your all feedback as we were, um, kind of on the, the, the track to finalizing these policies, uh, as far as the climate board's, uh, participation. And, um, we do have a memo that outlines those, uh, edits between last meeting and the February 12th meeting when they had their public hearing. Um, we're working on getting all those materials on the climate planning website. So that, um, will be available hopefully by the end of this week. Uh, the climate board, um, for the, uh, policy package itself though, they just adopted the final clean policies. Uh, so that is what is presented in here. And, um, this is the record for coming forward.
[00:17:08]
Um, understanding that we've kind of reached an ending point for the climate board in this process. Uh, but that it will pick up with integration into the comprehensive plan, uh, going forward. So more discussions to come. Um, a lot of work internally as well to wrap that in. Uh, but we have the, um, policy package as approved by the climate board. Well, I just wanna say thank you to staff obviously, but also to the climate board participants. It was a really detailed process and I feel like they were sort of thrown into the deep end getting involved with this stuff. Really appreciate their participation in the chapter review. Subcommittees, we were just, were smithing a lot of those policy recommendations upstairs. I think the conversation is really robust and so just really appreciate their participation and the nuance that they bring and the thoughtfulness that they bring.
[00:18:03]
Just wanted to, to thank them. Welcome Council member. Um, wanna give you an opportunity to give a Council update if you have anything before we move on. Like forever, since I've been down here, um, legislature is in session and then we have several priority bills. Um, some of them intersect with planning, but not necessarily stuff you're working on at the moment. Um, but that's kind of hardest thing that's keeping us super busy and canceling things and having to testify because stuff gets thrown up before committee. Um, so yeah. Um, I don't, I don't think I have anything in particular, um, system-wide stuff.
[00:18:55]
I mean, we're hearing things about like trying to do better with neighborhood commercial. We'll have a lot of ideas around that, but like, we're ships passing in the night because some of us have a certain perspective from businesses in our district and some of us have another perspective like don't wanna put neighborhood killers in their business or in their neighborhoods. So, but I think that's probably the next thing that's coming up that might affect you guys. Um, but I think that's all I really have. I mean, how do you expect that to come up or I guess, what do you mean? 'cause it, you know, we have these centers of corridors and they like have very narrow like space for where mm-hmm. You can do commercial like 50 feet or lot line and it doesn't go any further than that. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:47]
And just where you can put businesses, things like that. So stuff that should potentially kind of be reflected in the comp plan and I guess that's where I've, this whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Which I, I don't love the, the system that we currently have. So, um, are you referring to the, the bill, State bill or? No, but that, I mean, that's in play too, right? So yeah. Yeah. I guess I was saying, you know, are you as counsel anticipating any hearing and or action on neighborhood commercial in advance of the work that's going on here and at staff level with the, with the periodic? 'cause we are obviously talking extensively about that. I don't know. It's kind of tempting to try to address it because um, at least one thing that's been brought to my attention is snap benefits are changing and can like say good convenience store owners are feeling sensitive to that and wanting to add more refrigeration.
[00:20:51]
And in some cases if they're on a center corridor and they wanna expand backwards, even if they own a lot, they can't expand backwards to accommodate more refrigeration and their convenience store. And we wanna wait for an compliment update to address that when snap benefits are changing now is I think the one that gives me a little bit of anxiety. Um, and then, um, aada a accessibility. Do we wanna wait until that's addressed or do we want to change building code on that? 'cause that's really more building code than zoning. So those are two things that come to mind. But, sorry, I didn't even know if I was gonna make it down here so I don't have it prepared. No, it's okay. I was just sort of trying to figure out how that plane lands over there with how this plane lands over here. Not always clear, right? Yeah, no, it's land is so intersectional, you really affect everything and everything affects you.
[00:21:49]
So it's really sometimes hard for me to figure out what belongs in front of this group anyway. Should go somewhere else. Okay. Well thank you. Um, okay, so then with that we'll move, uh, back over. I think it's you now, tirrell? I think so. Beautiful. Yes. Uh, with plans Spokane 2046 preferred alternative dead zone. So yeah, use the microphone properly. Um, thank you. And emily has powerpoint up and also online, um, is lisa greeter from burke, who, uh, has been our consultant for the environmental impact statement. Um, so she's just here, uh, for questions. So welcome lisa, the presentation. Yes. Welcome lisa. Thank you. And also kaycee is paying here. I know she's already been healthy hours with some of you, but, um, we also have some additional maps that I've printed out.
[00:22:48]
So people here have those. There's just some different versions of where we're heading with the preferred alternative. Um, are there two maps? Just two? There are four. Yeah, I know because trying to, I don't have labels. So they, they do have small labels. They're just tiny in the bottom left. One, one, this is 1, 2, 3. Bottom left. Yeah. Emily kindly printed them for me, but I forgot to say and staple. So you're gonna mess up the order. But yeah, on the lower left. Thank you so much. One dash one, one dash two one dash three, and one dash four. Sorry. Yes, it's yes, this whole map. Okay. Spot the difference. So yeah, I know. I think mm-hmm. It like one of those games on the back. I see highlights magazine. If you put that fast enough, it'll adam, hey, jesse's gonna help me bring you guys in. Go order. We're gonna go back to the presentation here.
[00:23:46]
Okay. Um, so this is sort of the timeline, believe it or not. We were back at step one early last year, um, when we were doing the, the visioning and scoping for the comprehensive plan for the environmental impact statement part of this whole project. Um, that's when we were doing our, our scoping notice. Um, and so we did receive comments at that time. Uh, then we completed the, um, draft environmental impact statement. Um, we released that in December of 2025. Uh, we had originally had a comment period for that ending. Um, February 18th, 2025, we've had a request from agency to add 15 days, which is the maximum, uh, that we are subject to adding for the environmental impact statements.
[00:24:43]
So our new, uh, date for the end of that, um, comment period is March 5th, 2026. Um, but I did pull the comments that we have received to date and shared with you that are, uh, somewhat related to the preferred alternative discussion. So, um, if, if you didn't get a chance to read those, um, they, they did go, uh, to the planning commission, we will post all of the comments that we received after we have the full packet. Just easier than parsing out. Yeah. But we are logging all of our, uh, draft environmental that statement comments. I'm gonna let kaycee just talking again and I also sent the engagement summary. So yeah, so this isn't new information.
[00:25:39]
Just a reminder that we have been working with the community pretty extensively. Um, we've had now we're about over 4,000 total community interactions. Um, we've had way over 50 City boards and commissions since this graphic was made just a month or so ago. Um, and we're still looking for community tabling events and meetings to tell folks about the process. 'cause there's still, um, opportunity to be involved with comment and just following along with the process. Um, so a lot of the work that we're doing, um, whether it's the chapters or refining the alternatives have been steered by a lot of the great community feedback we've received. So just wanna, you know, emphasize that we're very thankful for all of that feedback we have received and look forward to even more. Thanks. So restatement you all know this, but, um, the periodic update is responding to the growth management act changes the growth management act.
[00:26:38]
We especially have changes, uh, with the addition of the climate element and the increased, um, housing, uh, focus. So we now are planning not just for population, but we're planning for housing units, including kind of a makeup of housing units. Um, so we're planning for our, uh, projected population we're trying to make up for the under production as well that's occurred. So, um, that's reflected later on in the zoning decisions and in the preferred alternatives. All the chapters except shoreline are being updated. And again, a reminder for anybody who's less familiar with the process we're doing. We did mention climate planning. We are not adding a climate element or a climate chapter. We're integrating climate, um, as the sort of best practice. Um, the land use plan map is also being amended.
[00:27:34]
The land use plan map is considered part of the land use chapter or the land use element. Um, and that is what our zoning map ultimately is, uh, built off of. And our zoning, uh, will be part of the build Spokane. The next sort of big push that we're gonna do as we work on our development code changes. So the land use, um, map amendments, just again to remind you that we are, um, having to emphasize multifamily, uh, more than we have in the past. I'll remind you of how we looked at that in the preferred alternatives. Uh, again, we will also be, uh, amending the critical areas ordinance. Um, so we, I think talked about that and sort of concept in our November, uh, meeting.
[00:28:31]
Uh, we have had some staff change, so, we'll, we're not sure exactly we'll be coming back with that. But we are anticipating also, uh, doing our critical areas ordinance adoption in 2026. And that will be outside of the sort of build Spokane, because that's very, uh, specific to Washington State law. So we'll be following the State law, uh, for critical areas. Ordinance. We have also been discussing in the, uh, environmental impact statement and we have discussed here about the cipa infill exemptions. So we are still getting a, a lot of comments on that, uh, concept as well. And the reason for that, of course is to help accommodate the housing needs. So we had three alternatives. Uh, we had stay the course. Um, in cpa world you must analyze your existing conditions.
[00:29:29]
So, uh, we had stay the course, which shows our current land use plan map. Uh, we have of course accommodated middle housing. Uh, so that is, uh, considered in alt one. Alt two is a little bit more transit oriented development. And alt three, uh, is more central City. So thinking more about downtown, thinking about employment on the west plains and employment, uh, especially in the n-e-p-d-a or northeast, uh, public development authority in hilliard, uh, part of the City, the alt one does not meet our housing affordability target. So that's kind of the most important takeaway. Um, we did get some comments, you know, stay with help, stay with alt one. Um, that's really not an option for us to meet, uh, the State requirements now that we, uh, our planning for that housing by income ban.
[00:30:23]
So it's that lower, uh, zero to 80%, uh, of the forecasted need that we need to make some zoning changes to accommodate. Can you just clarify why the job numbers is so much lower for alternative? Sure. Versus three. Can you just look at different study we used, um, different, uh, job forecasts. So for, uh, alt one, I don't think I have my notes on this, but I believe we used alt two is, uh, srtc. Maybe I'll, I'll ask lisa to remind me of what they are. Uh, sure. Um, alternative one used the Spokane regional transportation Council, uh, assumption.
[00:31:20]
So the 34 8 50 came from there. And the middle alternative, um, is using a, an employment security department trend-based approach. It's still, um, higher than, than trend, but um, not as high as the srtc and all alternative three was in the range of some other projections, a moderate high, uh, approach to kind of look at different, um, potential for infrastructure needs. It makes it difficult to compare them yeah. When they, it feels problemsome. So I think part of it is, it's not that one alternative the other creates new jobs. It's hard for us to even project that. 'cause there are different projections. Um, it's more for us to analyze how do we, um, have capacity for different infrastructure that may be needed if we have 24,000 jobs where we have 38,000 jobs.
[00:32:15]
So that was really the intent of the employment numbers. Not necessarily comparison between the alternatives, but just to understand the infrastructure needs as we're doing the environmental impact review. We have had no comments on this. Um, and we anticipate for the preferred alternative for the jobs, we will use s rtcs projection, which be we would stick with the jobs number and all one. It's kind of interesting. The State law says we should plan for population and employment or jobs. And um, a lot of the State has, um, regional planning, uh, in place that assigns a job number to each City. And we do not have that in place. So we explored some alternatives here. Um, if I had a do-over, kyle probably would stick with just the srt scenario.
[00:33:11]
But, um, it, it was interesting to place jobs in different places, uh, from the transportation and utility analysis and to consider that. So for the real model wons, I think it was useful, but it is difficult to, uh, think about. I do have a, I guess a follow up question. Um, so is our assumption that all three of these alternatives would have capacity for or allow for a similar number of jobs job growth over time? Or do we just not have data to understand the difference? They, in the, in the EIS, the, um, there were not mitigations needed for the different job scenarios. I mean, I know that it's primarily focused on housing, but, um, like useful data, well it is a big transportation driver. So, yeah. And I guess what this chart in particular, that chart on the previous page in particular has been really challenging for me to understand and to talk about.
[00:34:15]
It's appears as though it's comparing differences, but really there's no difference on this chart between two and three except for the choice to use different job projections. Is that correct? Yes. From that. So what is this chart really saying except for the one doesn't meet, that one doesn't, right. Yeah. So it's really a comparison between two and three and one, I think the, they put in red the um, does not meet the zero to 80% because that's the only fail. Yeah. And that from that environmental review, which is a little, gets a little abstract, I guess just from a public communication perspective, given how dense and complicated all this material is, this is a really hard thing. If, this is a hard thing for us to understand exactly what's going on here. This at the very least, the job projection spearman.
[00:35:08]
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's really hard to understand. Linda. Um, I have a question concerning actually the housing targets and that for two and three. Well, I do have some better slides up here. Let's go. Maybe we'll just jump to here. Well actually I would prefer be back at the other screen because that shows the three lined up. That's what I wanted to point out. Okay. Um, we currently have a pretty serious dearth of housing in the zero to 80% affordability area. It is stated that alternatives two and three will, um, sort of even that out or provide for those, uh, for housing in that category, in that lower category.
[00:36:06]
The problem is we currently have a pretty serious oversupply in the middle and upper, uh, categories of housing, which is a way of showing that's what builders in Spokane wanna build. 'cause that's what they've been building. So my question is if, what do you mean by over support? Well, I don't have the exact page numbers. I'm sorry. I should have not prepared that part of it. Um, in the, in the EIS in the 614 page EIS there is a point at which it shows that there is an oversupply currently in the upper two ca income categories for housing, which shows us that's what local builders want to build. So my question is, given that as far as I can tell, the only tool available is zoning. How can it be projected that builders are going to build in that lowest income band of housing if there are no incentives or penalties for them to, that would direct move them in that direction?
[00:37:10]
Is zoning alone sufficient to make up for that? So zoning is not considered sufficient, but it is considered a tool that governments can use to remove one of the impediments towards housing production. So I wonder if you're, when you're referring to when oversupply, just to be clear, we're looking at capacity not supply. I wonder if those are the numbers you're reading. So well, let, let, let me set that aside as perhaps, you know, something that I can give you better formulation on when I go back and review the numbers. My real concern is that we're currently pretty badly under supplied in the lowest income, uh, level of housing. So, and it's sort of kind of assumed that alternatives two and three is simply by changing zoning. We'll be able to make up for that.
[00:38:03]
And my question is, is, is that really, uh, is that realistic? Well that's kind of what this next slide was to lead into, is that the commerce guidance and the recommendation is that, uh, people in the zero households in that zero to 80% income band are very likely to need the moderate and high density type of housing. But, but that's, that doesn't answer the question. My question is, will the builders want to build that kind of housing? Yeah, and I guess the, the, that's the difference from our perspective about supply versus capacity with the planning work that we're doing, our requirement is to focus on capacity because that's what cities can control. I understand that and we totally understand that there, that having capacity does not inherently lead to the production of housing that's meeting those needs.
[00:39:00]
But it's the tool that's most readily available for us as a City. And so our focus is on capacity. Does our zoning allow for, uh, the amount of housing needed at those different levels, how that housing actually gets produced? We, um, I mean there are some things that we are trying to consider in the planning process, but it's ultimately a different question than what we're trying to answer through the comprehensive plan and the EIS and layered on top of like, this has to come first. Right? Right. So it's an important question. I'm not saying it's not important, that's probably the important question. But for the purposes of the comprehensive plan and um, especially the, the mandated housing study that we have to do from the State, the focus is really on capacity through the zoning code, not necessarily what units are, is this actually gonna produce?
[00:39:53]
Because ultimately that's decisions that are made by private property owners in the marketplace. If I, and we do have a new requirement to, to separately list all of the incentives that the City is providing. 'cause there is an interest in making sure we're have some incentives. But as, as you know, you know, the housing market is very complicated. You can read articles about the cost of insurance, the cost of construction, the cost of labor, the cost of land, you know, it's goes on and on. And it's not really a closed system, although we kind of assume it in here. It's a, it's a regional market as well. So if I can simplify it for you in one scenario, linda, um, you talk about in, in my job and tim's former job actually, we talk about building housing and uh, I go to my supervisor, I say, I wanna build housing in Spokane.
[00:40:51]
I found an area, here's what we can do. He goes, what's the zoning? That's his first question. And so zoning really does play a role, but the City can control. But it is a small piece. Yeah. And it alone does not make people build to your point. Okay, I'm gonna jump by this one. 'cause I think we, we did that. So what we are hoping to get to today, and I think we've, we've had some discussions, but um, uh, we have really come to the preferred alternative yet. So we did come up with a, a draft of a map. So also check my notes here. So the preferred alternative is helpful to respond to comments and to form kind of a plan that, uh, reflects our, our public comment and agency comment.
[00:41:54]
Um, what we're trying to do with this preferred the term is preferred alternative is, again, a cipa term. Um, but that would be, um, you could also call it alternative four or alternative two a or two b or whatever you want to. But it takes, uh, it should be made up of, uh, the alt two and alt three. And in verse alt one, we still have what we have on the ground as well. Um, so which is one of the challenges of actually mapping the preferred alternative because, um, we're trying to show the change away from zoning that we already have. So, um, we have some, the context of what we already have the context of already have. So, you know, we have, we have the bones of the land use plan map. Um, so we're, we're really trying to build off of those. Um, probably hit these enough.
[00:42:57]
But you, you've all seen these, you uh, linda, a little less than the, the rest of the group, um, since you're more recent joining. But again, alt one, um, does meet our population target. So maybe that's kind of what you're talking about. It has the capacity for the number of units, but it does not have the zone capacity in the lower income bands. So that's where this one, uh, why we need to still make changes. And I stress, although we've made the middle housing changes, we still need to do more. This was, uh, alt two. We called it distributed and balanced. As I mentioned before. It has a little bit of more of a tod focus. Um, you can tell from some of the preliminary comments that I shared with you. Uh, some people feel this kind of invade, this maybe more neighborhood impactful.
[00:43:56]
So, uh, because it's distributed and balanced, um, we've also had some comments about the, um, shares that these are showing in the change away from single family, um, that is been occurring and would just, can probably continue to occur. Um, you can see that in our, uh, production numbers or our, uh, numbers that we report on the, uh, certificate of occupancies issued, uh, tends to be, uh, a moderate number of single family residences and a higher number of units in the multi-family. So that's what we, uh, continue to expect. And this does that. The jobs prescribed a little better, but all three, uh, we looked at center City and regional hubs. This one really also, we, we looked harder at the job distribution in this.
[00:44:53]
This showed a little bit more, uh, housing density, especially, uh, in the northeast, but also tried to show around, uh, the City. We use central City instead of downtown. So we would catch the university district and the medical district as well, um, by sort of downtown adjacent neighborhoods. So this one focuses a little more there. So the hope for the preferred alternative is that it sort of blends two and three. Um, we still have a lot of focus on tod in the preferred alternative. Um, this does meet our housing income targets. Um, and it has a similar, uh, breakdown of what might be projected for single unit or multifamily. And this uses the srtc jobs.
[00:45:53]
Yeah, just like to note, because the last time you saw these maps, we hadn't quite found the graph preferred alternative. Um, we thought it would be best to kind of start refining it based on feedback we had. So this is largely based on feedback from the initial discussion with you all, but also, um, the community feedback we had during the workshops. It also internal City Staff, um, engagements on where there's infrastructure capacity or concerns about growth in certain areas. So that's what started this draft. Um, just so you have a framework of how this came to be. So this is not alternative one, two, or three. This is a new blend of two and three. So this is alternative four, if you will, or a new yeah, yeah. Okay. And just, you know, the maps are so tiny and my eyes are not so good anymore. Well that's why we have, we were thinking we could get to the end of the powerpoint and then we have these maps.
[00:46:49]
Um, kaycee's going to drive. Sounds good. We can zoom. Yeah, you need a little detail to understand you do like which neighborhoods. And I've also been, as I mentioned going back, yes. Going back to the, um, and, and for anybody listening the City has, uh, City map online. Um, and I can send anybody the link that lets you look at the existing zoning patterns too. 'cause that's really helpful. Um, so we were kind of going back and forth about showing what we're doing and we're also trying to show in here, um, we tried to show the sort of change areas. So this would, we know that we have to get more parcel level when we do the land use plan map, but this is really like what staff needs to be directed to go in and do more detailed analysis. And then we could come up with sort of how many acres as well.
[00:47:43]
Um, I would also, the other thing that I think we have to be mindful of is we do want some mixed use areas, but as far as the State's concerned, we couldn't count a hundred percent of like the high density residential increases towards that housing number. Uh, now for our land capacity analysis in commercial areas, we calculate 30% of those. Um, looking at trend, 30% of those do become housing and not developed, um, as commercial. Uh, so, um, we, we wanna kind of have a blend of, of both of those. And so that's kind of a traditional, uh, step down or transition to in zoning where you go from commercial and you might have high density residential, uh, falls down to a lower density residential.
[00:48:35]
So I just ask where that calculation came from. 30%. Yeah. In, in this day and age, with the office market the way it is and all of that, I have a really hard time believing that number. Kevin is jumping up and down. Great. Well I wouldn't say jumping up and down, but he's meaningful. He is jumped up. I need a lot of water. So for break. So the land capacity analysis of course is based on what we have today. It's not based on the changes that are being proposed. But, um, for that analysis, um, we looked to add a trend of all building permits within any of those, uh, what would now be called mixed use zones. So like commercial allows residential, general commercial, community business and those things. Looking at all of those, for the last 10 years, it was about 30 to 33% of projects were residential. Uh, and it wasn't significantly changing over time.
[00:49:31]
And so for the assumptions in the lca, we used 30 33%. And that's referring to like the percentage of building permits in the zone. The well for every building permit in those types of zones, uh, 33% of the land area developed is residential land area. Okay, thank you. So it was, it was using, um, the number of units by the land area. Do you know what the 70% was? Everything else? Mostly commercial. And that's work we did in 2024 in anticipation of the periodic update. Is that something we're gonna do at the five year check-in, is like well we'll wanna look at those assumptions at that. Yeah. Yeah, we have. Look at that. The same is true of the effective middle housing. We don't have enough data to yeah, really shift the numbers because of middle housing, but we hope in five years that we will. And I guess perhaps the office crash in the last five years also is probably a similar impact.
[00:50:25]
'cause I cannot imagine that those, those numbers are that way now. But yes, but keep in mind too that the first four years of our trend data that we used was post COVID. Yeah. And so, uh, and like I said it, we did not see a significant change in rate we might in the future. That'd be interesting to see. Yeah. Um, I'm checking on my notes too. I did wanna mention that, um, the, the buffer for these, uh, is a quarter mile buffer. Um, that's just what we've used for now. As I mentioned, we can be more detailed but bigger or smaller. Um, we also have, um, put a, uh, the interim height allowances, which are now in place for downtown. So downtown, but through interim ordinance currently has unlimited height. So, um, we added that to the map also just to keep the downtown conversation, the downtown zoning, this is the complexity of it, it was already able to accommodate housing.
[00:51:30]
So the zoning's already in place. What other incentives do we need to get more housing downtown? It's more the conversation. So it's less of a zoning conversation in that situation. But, um, trying to keep all the threads together here. So, um, anything else you wanted to add, spencer? No. So just some questions to keep in mind. Kinda obviousness we're looking for, you know, what, what areas do you think yes, um, that these make sense? Um, which ones did we miss? Um, what are concerns? So, um, if there's additional areas, we would hope they were analyzed in one and two, we went to those. So with that, can we pause the, well, I guess first question that I have in potential land use changes areas, most of these areas of change, quote unquote, even though I know that's not terminology we're focusing on here, um, the potential intensity change area is that saying underlying land uses are intended to stay the same and we're just gonna change intensity or we're gonna change, we're looking at changing land use.
[00:52:48]
Okay. And intensity both or, well, I guess that intensity conversation might be something that is more of a zoning code related well extent, I'm just responding to what said here. Extent potentially changing yes. Through the land use, changing intensity through the land use. So right. For example, some areas that are within that change of intensity might currently be residential low. Right? Maybe it makes sense for those areas to be residential high or in some cases maybe they should be mixed use or something else. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. I think I, me personally, I'm just struggling to get my head around all of this. Obviously there's a tremendous amount of information there, but it sounds like the rest of us are also struggling a little bit to get our heads around exactly what this is all saying. Um, and that's where, like monroe as an example, like it's, it's fairly narrow, right?
[00:53:44]
Katie's not here anymore, but, but it's fairly narrow zoning. So, but we already have centers and quarters there. But would that be, add more intensity to that area? Add more? I guess it's the zoning or add more land use. I'm even using the wrong term. This the, the first one because it doesn't have the street names on it kind of help. It's hard 'cause once you put the street name on there, it like completely covers up like the existing, you can, you can better see that narrow little existing stripe down the middle. Yeah. And then just that the proposed change is like, let's, let's just kind big in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Expand around those borders. I would say that's, it's a big City too when you try to put it on a one page map. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, um, some other communities have a little bit less landmass, but, um, we have, I appreciate that in this, the proposed alternative that it, it does seem to have a good chunk of concentrated change in most of parts of the City.
[00:54:49]
Like the areas that don't, it's well creek, I mean it's a big part of that. It's just, it's land, you know, like hillside, um, which probably all that area we're not proposing a lot of change because of the infrastructure issues. Yeah. And as, as linda mentioned, that's probably showing a lot of the capacity for those, uh, sort of traditional single family development. And we have a lot of plats and in either preliminary plat or mostly preliminary plat stage, uh, in that area. So we do anticipate a lot of, uh, that type of housing will continue. So we haven't, haven't offered change there. We have added, we do have some large parcels there. We have added also by interim ordinance, the ability to add commercial into a pud. Uh, we have not had anyone use that at this time, but that's still on the table.
[00:55:45]
But we haven't, uh, proposed except for the, um, inland empire way. Maybe we'll start with this. Assuming I was saying that's that one chunk there, right? And so those of you that we're talking about res residential agriculture, land use is adjacent to that. Um, but it's a long inland empire way, uh, which has some historic fragments of, um, building when that was, uh, more of a highway. Um, so the idea is that I provide some more, um, mixed use area in there and there's uh, property owner interest in that area. Yeah. And uh, another thing to add is that, um, the City's capital plans include eventually the reconnection of inland empire way to chiney Spokane road to that interchange. So the, uh, you know, with the City and washau working together, the intent has been to find alternatives for people needing, who are looking to get into downtown or other central neighborhoods to have an alternative to 1 95. Oh yeah.
[00:56:52]
A flyover 1 95 potentially even. But speaking and not the tracks, specific tracks. Unreal. So, so the, um, the goal there is if we are gonna be directing trips off of 1 95, it would be using inland empire way, which may create some opportunities for commercial development there that can capture those trips locally and not, uh, send them elsewhere in the system. So yeah. One, one neighborhood, I worked on a, a project and this City spent about 50 million to redevelop east sprague. Um, and right east of sonnenberg's market, I did a housing development project. Mm-hmm. So I wasn't sure, I didn't see that as a focus area, but maybe the existing zoning already covers that, but it's just within a mile, the university district and it has rapid transit already, but I didn't quite know where that, I think it's that pink. Yeah, it is. It is mostly the pink. Yeah.
[00:57:47]
But yeah, we haven't extended changes to that area. That area, um, to the south that is hatched is trying to catch the e central planning. So that's something I was, should have definitely mentioned. This incorporates hillard plan, uh, the e central planning as it is to date. And then also, um, focuses on division, uh, in the priority, um, tod areas from that study. Although that's not complete, we have enough information to start leaving that in as well. So we're using that. And uh, to come back to your question, the short answer is yes, that pink on the map indicates that it's already zoned for a more intense housing type rmf or rhd. Okay. So we're not showing that as needing to increase the intensity there because it's already, it's already there. It's already there. That was, thank you.
[00:58:44]
So really amidst all of the colors that we're showing here, the only proposals for change are within the red hatched areas essentially. Yes. Um, I think there are another map there. So this, this second map, it is basically the same information, but it's only showing the hatched areas that would change. That's really helpful. This 1.4 was just the, okay. Absolutely. Yeah, it is. It's helpful. But like I, I appreciate that it's also overlay too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You guys have a favorite one that kaycee could bring up? We're on one. I can't tell the difference to 1, 2, 1 has and with labels. Labels, yeah. One has labels and one doesn't. Is that it? Okay. Because I'm like, yeah, no, it took me like 15 minutes. Besides the label compare, besides, is there anything else okay that no, that is great though. 'cause not having the labels does help see the details, the hazards of small pieces of paper with yeah. Thank you for putting in color though.
[00:59:42]
Um, I, uh, I really like the increased intensity, uh, with grand and the 29th and that whole area, that, that whole uh, route four yeah. Situation. I am surprised and actually disappointed not to see increased density intensity in the west central area. And I recognize that I am yeah. Biased in this way because I live in west central, but I'm also very engaged in west central and, uh, in the prior alternatives, um, especially alt two, there was what looked like increased intensity all along broadway. It's already, it's pink. That's not broadway. It's high density residential. A lot of, a lot of that's kendall yard. Oh, I was thinking that was broadway. No, that's not broadway. See, you can't, can't zoom in enough with, uh, but we have, you know, so much potential. It has so much and I've been sitting here for 20 years going and it has, uh, a well loved bus sprout.
[01:00:40]
It has amazing multimodal transportation with all of the, with the centennial trail around it as well. Yeah. And then it also has a west quadrant tiff that uh, we can leverage to improve, you know, that area. And it has most of all the community will to see that adapt. So why is the intensity being looked where it's, well, we were looking at, um, the maxwell elm area. Yeah. And that's one 'cause that has some legacy industrial yeah. Sort of thing that, and with the cc three overlays, little complicated. You can build a lot of things there, but if you build residential, you have to use the centers of quarters. But anyway, we were thinking we could clarify the zoning in that area. Um, traditionally I think a street is the, it goes low density to the west of a street, but the majority of that is in multifamily in west central.
[01:01:38]
It looks like it's a, you can see the dividing line where it goes from pink to yellow yeah. If you go east to west. Yeah. Um, so I think to answer your question, um, that's helpful feedback. Yeah. If that's important, we can incorporate it in, because this is the alternative we're sort of constructing yeah. Of the three that we've looked at. Yeah. Um, and if would kind of hit the central City. It's a yeah. Yeah. It's, it so it's so close and walkable. I live there when I work downtown. Yeah. Yeah. And I would walk yeah. To work. So, uh, but there was also nothing there. Yeah. At that time there was not even any restaurants. We, we do have linda's sitting here patiently with her hand up also. Um, I, I just wanted to, I, I know my job is to speak for all the neighborhood councils and for the community assembly, but I just wanna point out to you the area of the northwest that is really gonna be the most impacted.
[01:02:37]
And I would also like to point out that is an area that has a lot of affordable single family housing. And I have a very deep concern that given the number of empty lots on places like division that have remained empty for years, and people who own those obviously don't wanna build on them, at least the kinds of buildings available. Now, what very much concerns me is the possibility that we're, which is kind of mentioned in the, uh, about page 53 in the EIS of individual demolitions, there's beautiful old craftsmen cottages that were built by the italian craftsmen themselves for their own families. And if the big land owners on the corridors don't wanna be building low income housing, what are they gonna do?
[01:03:37]
There're gonna be people go in and buy up individual homes from individual homeowners and, and build multifamily housing there. I think, I just wanna raise this as a scenario. I happened to have grown up partly in what we back in the day called st. Al's, which is then became gonzaga and then became logan. Those restrictions were lifted there for the reason of providing more housing in that area because of the influx of students. And it made deep, deep, deep changes in the neighborhood. So I just wanna point out that there are, you know, there are desired consequences and intended consequences. My father was a chemist and he used to say, when the drug companies would say, oh, this is a side effect. He used to say, there's no such thing as a side effect. There are effects. The side effect is what the company wants you to ignore because they want you to consider this other effect which they consider to be beneficial, the one that you make your decision on.
[01:04:40]
But I just wanted to point out that there are multiple effects of all of these plants. So there is a, a little proposed area here on, this is hamilton closer to northwood hills. So above that center, uh, is another small proposed area, potential addition. But um, but that isn't what really concerns me. What concerns me is in the, the wellesley, if he could be more specific ma'am, it's the division, monroe, northwest boulevard, wellesley, that sort of triangular area in the northwest is gonna have a huge squeeze on it. Okay. You can see it's the only area of the City that's basically squeezed on all sides. Um, well, uh, I wanna come back to broadway 'cause I have another important thing that I think we need to talk about, but if you have a response to that, I'm fine waiting.
[01:05:38]
Well, no, you can go first. Uh, so I did wanna just highlight one of the pieces of feedback we've heard specifically about that part of west central is actually the opposite. The concern is that we, uh, the City in the original comp plan up zoned areas around there that have then been snapped up by, you know, landholders that are, um, not doing anything but taking advantage. Yeah. It's speculative, uh, investment. And so I guess I'm just curious how you balance that concern with what I think you're suggesting, which is actually we should be increasing the intensity along broadway. I was gonna ask you guys that, and that actually relates to what I think linda's talking about as well, because, um, that's why you, you need to increase the zoning intensity carefully.
[01:06:37]
Yes, absolutely. One of the, oh, sorry. You were, you had something. Um, sure. I'll throw my hand. Right. Um, but yeah, I guess I wonder also, um, and maybe this is kind of in, in competition with, with, with your statement, but, um, the maple ash couplet, um, I guess I just think about like some of these residential arterials and that they're really horrible locations for single family housing. Mm-hmm. And potentially that there's, that upzoning them provides opportunity to create higher quality housing in some of those areas where single family is poor fit. Um, and I think nevada's the same. Um, but it's not a couplet. So it's a little, there's differences, but, uh, and so I, I guess I just wonder about the potential to actually, um, expand, uh, like the maple ash.
[01:07:32]
Like we've got like a, a bubble down at the south uhhuh by downtown, and then we've got northwest boulevard and there's like pockets of expansion and then pockets of not expansion. I mean, I could see a scenario in which, and this is I guess prefer alternative two, where, um, you know, we're expanding literally, uh, the area all the way up to francis, um, on maple, but even maybe just to wellesley, um, to provide opportunity for higher quality housing on, on both maple and ash offer off both of those. Yeah. All the way. And then would that be really the northwest boulevard? A lot of the comments we got on that was to look for mixed use area, uh, to establish we have community business zoning there, um, that doesn't have those sort of build to the street requirements. Mm-hmm. It is kinda a tough area, so we would need to do more study in there.
[01:08:28]
Mm-hmm. Jessie, I see a lot of hands up, including yes. So think you were first and then spencer. So one of the things that I heard from, and mostly it was from one particular woman at a lot of the community events, but, um, like she would particularly, she was like, um, bring up that she lived in an area that was currently zoned for multi-family housing, although mostly it is existing single family housing. And her feeling was that her neighborhood was being unfairly targeted for change or for increased density. And so my argument is that by providing more opportunities across the City, it makes each neighborhood less yes. Concentrated and that it's less likely to be concentrated along that one strip or that one street because we have provided opportunity in a lot more areas.
[01:09:29]
So although it looks like one part of, you know, is going to be, it's up, it's, it's noted for change, but it doesn't mean that it's going to fill up and be changed to maximum as we've seen how development has occurred in the last 50 years. Needs book in. Uh, well two things. First on the maple ash thing, I, I think, um, the thinking behind the focus on monroe rather than maple ash is really tied to the number four bus line because that's much more frequent service. Yeah. Focusing all that growth on maple ash where you have less frequent transit service maybe isn't, um, as consistent with what we're wanting as far as transit oriented development. And it's harder to, because of the couplet to mm-hmm. Like you have to go like a whole other like extra block or two. Right. And yeah, that creates some challenges too.
[01:10:23]
So just something to think about there. Um, on the question of, you know, concentrating that, I guess, um, this is one of the challenges that we see with, or that we're kind trying to balance is, um, I agree completely that as you open up those opportunities to a wider area, you tend to concentrate the effects less. That also has the downside of not concentrating those changes where you really want to see them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, so just, you know, there, there can be, um, there can be power in focusing and prioritizing where we really want that change to happen. Um, but it, you know, it's sort of a both, both ways have their pluses and minuses just to, so I can kind of absorb what the red hash areas mean. So right now most of these are centers and corridors as I understand it, which means you can do, um, high intensity residential facing that street.
[01:11:20]
They're kind of a mix and match. Okay. Wellesley, most of them are not, especially when you get outside of the immediate vicinity. A bit of the arterial can we, okay. I guess the pink areas are the one within the cash areas are what is currently center. And then the other question is out one that's kind of interesting to me that I had to really zoom in on an indian trail. Hmm. Yeah. So this is capturing pretty large, like 50 acre property that's undeveloped just north of the landfill. That's currently in single family residential. So the consultants also were using the land capacity analysis for underutilized and available property. So, okay. I think this one could give a lot of community conversation. Um, but it is an opportunity and maybe more likely to develop, um, it could be have another mixed use.
[01:12:17]
But we also have, um, down the road, the excel here proposal that, um, if they do execute a development agreement, they will also have more, uh, capacity in at that property. So an indian trail, there is a letter, uh, in your packet from indian trail. They've already expressed concern about any additional zoning, land use capacity added. Uh, so, and they, they also sort of feel the pressure being, uh, one of the neighborhoods that's on the edge of the City. So also the, the County development around them. Ju just to the follow up though was, uh, like on wellesley and northwest boulevard, does that represent a quarter mile on either side of the arterial? Yes. So it'd be like half mile total, but that's just for, so it's about like a, like two blocks basically is kind of how to think of it rather than just one block. It's kind of the division one's hard 'cause the blocks on either side are completely different because of the play.
[01:13:17]
Yeah. Well it's probably more like three or four blocks on the either side, but yeah, it depends on the block side and that's why we're trying to get like, go ahead at the blob level so then we can go back and the latest plan map is gonna take us a long time that the division one is equal at this time. Because right now, I mean, I know and we've discussed like why the intensity is more on the east side than on the west side of the street. Well, there's existing zoning. I'm not sure why. Yeah. They didn't do both sides because it feels, it feels really unbalanced and a lot of missed potential opportunity for the future. 'cause again, it's like, I'm not talking about tomorrow, but like, and so to clarify, within these blobs, there is intended to be a more surgical application and that the resultant land use changes are not going to be in blob format. 'cause I, you know, I look at the blob on mission and sort of cheap gary park and it's like, how did we decide what is inside the circle and what is not inside the circle?
[01:14:21]
So that really is also capturing. Another complexity for us is the State, the transit oriented development bill. Um, we must comply with that in, uh, June, 2027 and deadline, tod addressed everything except for that and our tod addressed. It's the, the City line has addressed, we have addressed through the south logan plan. Yeah. Uh, most of the stops, but there are a few in that area. So we did wanna make sure and analyze that, um, through the environmental impact statement, knowing that's coming there. Um, there's a working group and commerce is working on their guidance on how to interpret that law. So, um, but, but we do have a little bit of neighborhood retail in that area. I, I guess what I'm saying though is you have a circle that's entirely surrounded by yellow, and I understand the reasoning for that, but you have intensity to the east and you have intensity to the west and you have low intensity and then you have a potential area of increased intensity.
[01:15:26]
How'd you decide where, who's inside and who's outside and, and why? Maybe that's probably centering on napa. So yes, there's a more surgical look at right. Sc yeah, I guess that's what I'm getting at. Like, I understand now family promise. It seems awful limiting in that situation and a few others like it. So yeah, there's still some, a few commercial the highs. So there's like a gas station on the right. They wanna circle back a little bit to the question about the centers and corridors, just to clarify for you all, but maybe some anyone watching, but it's the hash mark isn't the centers and corridors. This is a great example. This is, um, 29th. We have a center here that's not in the hash that, that's existing.
[01:16:20]
The hash is potentially expanding our areas around it. So when we're looking at the areas of change, you may not see that existing centers are hashed because they already have a higher intensity, if that makes sense. It's really emphasizing that increase in intensity. Mm-hmm. Just a little dot right in the middle of manito park that seems to be on a single parcel. And I know those people, I'm imagining they may be a little bit confused. I'm just gonna say that's a mapping error. Yeah. That bottom of teko just no, it's, it's the point right across from the ice group shop, that house that's got the big lawn with the point right across from the oh, from the ice group shop. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm asking kaycee to go up into, uh, area closer to like the y um, there's quite a bit of, um, oh yeah, on far side of francis.
[01:17:19]
Yeah. Well I guess it's technically both ours on that part, but it's probably up like off nevada and, um mm-hmm. I, I was looking at this on the existing zoning, I was like, oh yeah, there is some, some lower intensity in this area. Um, I went to a restaurant that was like one and a half blocks south of francis and I randomly found it that was surrounded by houses. But like there are some of those like random little low intensity non residential. This is north of france. So I was just wondering if, oh, if there's any area of any responses or, um, maybe you wanna drive up around in the, is maybe somewhere you first nevada again, is that the middle strip? The o of lincoln. The o of lincoln. Okay. Okay.
[01:18:15]
I do well with stores. The winco, where my mouse is, is roughly here. If you go there. Oh, okay. Ly place you thank you. Yeah. This, you start to realize where you live and where you drive around because there's parts of the City where we all yeah. You know, more frequent know really well and there's other parts. But, so I, I, you know, was, um, less sure about this area. Um, there's a few vacant parcels though in this area or to develop. So, but, you know, maybe adding zone capacity. But again, to linda's point of what's most likely, um, you know, we, we hope we capture likely places. Um, we hope we distribute it equitably. We hope we're, um, being efficient with transit oriented development or opportunities, um, for people to live near transit and live near jobs so we can meet our vmt goals.
[01:19:16]
So trying to pull all these things together, if some way we could, uh, in displaying it to the public link, the transit routes with the increased density, that's a really key, communicate what's going on a little bit better. We did try to show a little bit more. Yes. Map four, so we can look at that one as well. Oh, that's, that's what the blue lines are. Yeah. Okay. Four. I don't know what, we haven't really talked about this yet, but maybe we need sort of a story map approach to, to working with the public with this because, um, well, and it, it's hard to 'cause the, the, again, the street names kind of make it look like there isn't a, like a route. And I'm like, wait, it does continue there. But yeah. Yes. Street names so long and, and many people are only gonna care about a certain part. So it's, it's easier digitally and you are able to use computer.
[01:20:09]
Sure, yes. You can see it. So you can zoom in and see. And, um, again, we're, we're trying to stay at the concept level so we can go, um, get the information we need. Um, so this, uh, as this reminder to you all and to anybody in the public, we are, um, going to ask Plan Commission by resolution to kind of recommend a preferred alternative that'll give us, uh, the certainty to move forward, um, and investigate further the zoning changes. We'll also ask City Council to do the same. So we hope we're starting to get closer, um, as I, your next meeting we could, I've heard a few changes, but let's continue to explore and then the next meeting we could bring things back. If we could get to a preferred alternative in April, that'd be like super awesome for us.
[01:21:03]
But, you know, we have to spend as much time in this place as needed. Um, so we can all move forward and then we finalize the comp plan. Okay. We have amber with a question online. Oh, hey. Yeah. Hey, thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Okay. Um, is it okay to ask a question about the preferred alternatives? Yeah. You ask whatever question you have. Okay. Um, I was just looking at, um, earlier the, um, preferred draft, preferred alternative, I guess the sort of 2.5 map. And I just wanted to note a couple places that look like there's a lot of yellow and orange, I guess the high density housing and the mixed use commercial on growth alternatives two and three that maybe are missing or I don't see as, um, intensely highlighted in the kind of combo new alternative.
[01:22:02]
I'll just go through those really fast. And then I have one more, one more comment that's not related to that, but, um, the on two and three, there's a little kind of spur in the south logan area that looks like it's going up. Hamilton perhaps, I'm not sure, um, that I just noticed is a little bit less, um, called out in the new preferred alternative. Similarly, that area around, we were talking about it earlier, um, with that chief gary park where there's like a one on my, on my map. And then lastly hill, the hilliard area. You know, I'm in the north week northeast, so maybe that's why these are all standing out to me. But just considering the, um, heavy amount of employment and industry up there that perhaps that's a place to look at for more of that high density housing and mixed use commercial.
[01:22:56]
Um, I think that's probably around wellesley and market, but I have no idea looking at my maps. So those are just, uh, for consideration, just things that stood out to me when I was looking at the alternatives. And then I know we talked about jobs earlier. I don't mean to, uh, feed a fed horse, but I think that have saying on these slides that the scenario seems to add a certain number of jobs is very confusing. Maybe adds to the confusion in that table we were looking at earlier. So I would just suggest maybe if, you know, you don't have to necessarily remove it, but make it more clear that it's not necessarily saying that this alternative adds jobs, but that this alternative considers the implications of this modeled number of jobs. Those are my comments. Thank you. Thank you. So those areas that you mentioned, you think we should have more intensity than we're showing on the preferred alternative?
[01:23:56]
And, sorry. Yeah, you, maybe you don't have the maps that we have here. I don't think I have the printouts, so I'm looking just at the slides. But I think they stand out in the intensity change areas, map the one with all the, um, all the pretty colors and the hash marks. Yeah. But in the, in the actual, um, blended preferred alternative, they're just areas that I don't see as amplified as in alternatives two and three. And if the goal was to combine those into a new alternative, I would just say maybe revisit them. So especially in the hilliard area, there is a large yeah, it's the, the orange and yellow lobbies of all two and all three. And then how do those translate onto these new, oh, I know, but it looked like once you mentioned they are actually well served.
[01:24:49]
Yeah. Because all of wellesley, like through cross market is marked up not really high intensity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or at least a change, but you know, in for sure a change. Yeah. Other, the logan area you were also talking about. Yeah, I think it's probably hamilton that it just on, if you look at the alternatives two and three, there's a little orange and yellow blobby area that just doesn't map out onto the, um, blended alternative. But it is represented pretty well I think in this intensity change map. I think maybe it's just coming also from my own confusion about how the, the orange and yellow blobs on the alternatives map out to the intensity change maps. Um, but yeah.
[01:25:45]
So these intensity change maps are all based on what I'll call alternative four, correct? Yes. They're, that's they're a new basis for yeah. And we, we really looked hard at what we got from our community engagement. Yeah. And we also did a staff and icm exercise, which gave us a little bit more information. Um, but our, my previous conversations with you in the abstract, um, weren't getting a lot of response. We just like, we need to show you map. We do need something map. You're getting response now. Well this is, this is good. Um, so, so, you know, and, and linda said less on hamilton, so we have a more on hamilton coming. So lot's that stuff on hamilton, I'm concerned about the area west of division. Mm-hmm. That's my area of concern. I mean, hamilton is hamilton.
[01:26:39]
I've lived, I lived, my parents lived in that neighborhood. Uhhuh, it's the area west of division that, that north of, well north of say mission maxwell mm-hmm. You know, indiana up to the garland hill, like garland empire, that area below garland. Okay. Below garland. It's that, you know, emerson, garfield and, uh, audubon, uh, downriver, et cetera. That area is going to. And basically I would say north of maxwell mission, or if you will, north of indiana, um, that, that area is gonna be, I, I think very, very much affected by these changes. Maybe in some ways that aren't entirely anticipated now. Um, so I just wanna make comment going back to the bus routes. Matt, first of all, thank you for producing that. That's really helpful, especially seeing it up on the screen there.
[01:27:33]
Yeah, it's okay. I gotcha. Um, she'll go back, be patient with us kind of a overlay that one. Well no, the one that has the bus routes, but also shows the, I mean, I guess I get this one works for, this one works for discussion. So there are numerous areas on this map that show high frequency transit without areas of change, let's call it around those now I, I'm sort of cross-referencing back and forth between the maps to see if there's base zoning that's still supportive there or if it's just low intensity and no projected change. And there are quite a few areas where it is just based zoning and no projected change, whereas those frequent bus routes intersect. And I don't think that's defensible.
[01:28:26]
Yeah. The, I guess that, and we're looking at wellesley is the next, uh, projected sta investment following division. So we are trying to anticipate that a little bit. No, I'm looking at hamilton. Let's say hamilton, oh man. A little bit north of michigan, hamilton, nevada, where it falls down to low density. Yeah. And, and maple or that little situation up there. I don't know what that is. This here. Yeah. That piece there and this piece here. Yeah. I, I don't see how we can, if we're trying to achieve the things we're trying to achieve, I don't see how we can exclude those areas, this and that get there. I've got some notes, but it's also, I mean, it's similar to the comment about broadway, which is we have frequent transit there.
[01:29:19]
Why would we not target that we've got for that, that ultimately, if that's what the goal is, is to existing built mm-hmm. Direct growth into those areas that are served by transit. I see you. Um, I we have to very least look seriously at that. Yeah. Just make a corollary point. I was really taken aback in reading the EIS when you sort of get to the end and the comparison then and now where the number of miles traveled by transit, the percentage, it's like what one, 1.5% now is like 1.7. And similarly for active transit, I'm going, if, if all of this is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the use of personal vehicles and what have we accomplished with all of this, and if we make more of these designations around well areas that are well by public transit, you know, that some moved more in that direction.
[01:30:19]
And one of the points that is made about that is we have to do a lot of work just to stay at the status quo though too. Even like, because of growth and because of change. And like even just at the example of like, look at a high school parking lot 30 years ago versus today, like the number of cars in that parking lot, it's the same number of kids go to that school. Yeah. So we're gonna have to make a lot of effort even just to, even just to keep at the same, you know, number. Yeah. If the conversation is about accommodating growth, which it should be, that has to be one of the major decision points there is, is where is that frequent transit, surface and service and then let's map it to that. And then maybe the study will be wrong and maybe more people will choose the vehicle while travel help gripping their devices instead of the appear wheel. Sure, sure. Indeed. Indeed.
[01:31:20]
Why would you not want to scroll instagram while you commute to work instead of having to watch the road? There's a group in west central who's wanting to create a shirt that says bus 21. Yeah. We love our bus 21. It makes me car sick, but, and so there you go. Bus, bus 21 is sitting there in low intensity. Yeah. Without any change around. So I heard a couple ads. Any subtractions, any areas that you're like, we also, of course we'll eventually also be thinking about, uh, displacement. Yeah. So we haven't quite gotten there in our policies yet. Um, and those are also, we should also have some, um, implementation of that at some point. So tim made some really great comments about that in the chapter review conversation early on that I think we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
[01:32:22]
But I think they were really insightful. Um, I, I guess I, I'll just point out there's awful lot of not change south of the river. Yeah. I mean I appreciate that there. The third landmine I potentially stepped on today. Um, well, yeah, I mean that's, that's there and that's the area we have not, I'm looking at my neighborhood, there's no change. There's nothing really east of grand and that's in part falling the tod. Yeah, that's what I think about it. You really can't get anywhere there. San fe boulevard is your only option, but you can't build there either. No. And, and I was like, optics, well, from downtown it's like three miles to lincoln heights, but it's like eight miles to indian trail. So the, sometimes you think the, the river's the san and is wagging the dog here. If like, if we're looking at intensity and looking at growth patterns and growth patterns fill out a certain way, does sta follow rather than lead?
[01:33:23]
Yeah. And regional growth. There's tremendous growth to the north of the City. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You hear what I'm saying though? Like, it's not a great look, but I do appreciate the, I think that grouping all three south business districts together makes sense because they're already, they're already expanding. I conditional use along our artery. And so it makes sense because that's where the, the, and that we do at least, I mean it just, I'm sure that the transit lines will just, there used to be nothing there and um, yes, there's a lot of traffic, but yeah, I mean there's not a lot of roads either. So there's a gap on grand though in this. Yeah. There is a should there be? I, yeah, I agree that there, it's a strange that maybe there is not a strip along grant.
[01:34:15]
I think there should be. I was gonna ask about that. So is that something you'd like to see then? Yeah, I, I think it falls in line with all of the other circles that I've drawn here. Yeah. Absolutely. A quarter mile on top of grant. Not on either side, but I think like a, well, I, I, I think those, those blobs should be connected right there. Grand is a, I agree. Is a corridor and, and you know, ran it up to the rocket market. I was thinking rocket market. Well, but I think that I live in that neighborhood campus. This, isn't it the center 14th and grand, there's that little steer. Yeah. It goes up to about 38th and grand it looks like. Yeah, it does. You're right. That is pass the golf course. Correct. There was a lot of interest in that, even though that's not on a, a transit line. Mm-hmm. Connecting grand, but between 37th and 29th more with zoning, not right there connected. Yeah. No, but I mean, 'cause even just looking at the way it's already built out, there's already apartments all along grand both in that area that's here 29th, 37th and 29th.
[01:35:20]
But then down grand you don't notice 'em as much. But there are, yeah. There's tons of apartments. There's tons of apartments along grand. Yeah. Yeah. That's, and heaven forbid if we got a restaurant or something that would be the yeah, yeah. That'd be phenomenal. The old albertsons and then the jefferson school, once they're done with it, redeveloped, that would be so nice. Absolutely. So much land there. Absolutely. A hundred percent anyway. Yep. Yep. But that, that does go up to 38th or 39th and 40th and grand. It probably does. 'cause it's that quarter mile. Yeah. But it doesn't get to the golf course, does it? Yeah. Yeah. Again, not trying to be super detailed yet, just trying to get, and I mean, you know, in some ways rocket is a bit of an anomaly down there. It's, you know, it's kind of on an island in residential, I guess. There's that option. You got the golf course and then your million dollar homes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Church. A church. Yeah.
[01:36:16]
Well it's like an office building across from yeah, it was, I think it was a church really. Yeah. Okay. So again, any areas we should remove? I, I don't, I don't think so. No. I, I think if anything it's could be more mm-hmm. Added now. I know that's more work for you guys and I'm sorry. Alright. But just in, in general, I think the focus on existing commercial centers and where they're expanding the focus on transit routes. Mm-hmm. And then the other thing you need to think about, and this is somewhat to linda's point, is it's gonna take, you know, there's existing houses. It's not like this change is, this is like allowing change to occur over time. So it's really a much slower process than, so it's not, not like suddenly yeah, they're buying your house, they're tearing it down and they're putting up a four story unit. Right. Um, so there might sometimes, I don't know about that. I mean, I'm more concerned about that of empty thought on cross division street.
[01:37:21]
I mean, I hope that those are developed first too. I agree. Like why not? Well, again, if you, you know, there's different strategies with zoning, so if you're expanding, there's zoning. So much zoning. Yeah. Are you taking the pressure off? Well this is, yeah, that's the thing we're talking, we're talking about land use too. And then, right. Let, let's go back to taking turns here. Yeah, I, I was gonna add that like, I think that it's really important to keep in mind that this is a land use map and that, um, zoning has a lot of power to talk about what's happening on, you know, at portland park versus what's happening on division. Um, and that there, it's a very different approach hopefully right. In those two, two areas. Um, and that, you know, it doesn't mean that the same thing is getting built on division as it is getting built in portland park. Um, and you know, same with all these other areas. I, I do think that some of the, the comments about the logan neighborhood are, are valid to consider because the logan neighborhood's unique in the City of Spokane, it's probably has the highest diversity of housing types.
[01:38:23]
But also a lot of the, a lot of the infill that happened in the sixties, seventies, eighties, there was very low quality. And so just like, again, like a lot of these are considerations that the zoning code, uh, if it is successful, will have an opportunity to, to control the quality and how that housing infill occurs. But, but in terms of like the, the locations, I think pretty close that's feeling. Okay. Other thoughts? Sorry, I didn't wanna tamp down the conversation there, but we were all talking at the same time. So our, our staff proposal would be to take your comments, um, bring back another map or potentially another small series. Um, and well I'll make sure and have that in the packet if anybody has be remote. Um, so I'm am talking to Council, uh, tomorrow just mentioning, showing this map and saying, Plan Commission is doing the heavy lifting for you Council.
[01:39:23]
This is, um, what we're working on. Um, so if, if the first meeting in March, if we, uh, feel like it's ready to go to hearing, then that would be potentially when we look for April and we'll look for some dates that do not conflict, allow us to have the, um, chambers for the hearing. Um, don't conflict with other meetings. So, and just, I, I don't know how familiar the Council is with land use versus zoning, but I think that it could be very valuable to try and concentrate how this is a, a decoupling of the existing, you know, caring of that. Because a lot, you know, that the land use does not mean zoning anymore because again, you can yeah. You can look at this map and be like, oh, we're gonna make it all multifamily and be like, people just think that means the zoning is all, you know, high intensity multifamily.
[01:40:22]
And I would encourage you to use our confusion with this and that as a tool. 'cause they're going to be more confused than we are. Yeah, well they're gonna be getting a lot more comment than you are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, I also think that additionally, um, as like at a first glance, I think the average per, well the average first doesn't even know what centers and corridors are most likely. Um, but like it's very easy to look at this map and assume, oh, we're really, like, we're just expanding centers and corridors everywhere. Like that's kind of the first assumption of like, this fat line is now a big center, six quarters. And that's where we have to also get into where, where we want more mixed use area. Yeah. So, and, and I wouldn't say brian, that like the land use plan map lives outside of the zoning map. There is still a relationship. No, of course there's a relationship, I don't wanna say here had a change.
[01:41:14]
Like, so like I, that's why I've had to think a lot about that change from the one-to-one to, you know, we, we may have more zoning categories that are permitted, but, um, I do not think either kyle, that we're scoping that we're gonna do specific code in specific areas. Some communities do that well, of course. But I think, but I think that division is gonna be a different zone. Correct. And most of it is in general commercial. Mm-hmm. And so a also we should clarify that our proposal is to focus on the transit nodes. Mm-hmm. Which I don't think are probably called out enough here and leave the general commercial. Um, for, for a lot of it. 'cause we do have a lot of, you know, drive throughs and things that probably the property owners want to continue to be conforming uses of series.
[01:42:12]
We had the non-conforming conversation earlier, like it's, that is a thing. I, I guess as a final comment, as we're sort of wrapping up here, I, I like the expanded investigation to either side of the corridor. I guess I would, I would hope that as that gets a finer grain to it, that is at a super crisp line. Either that there's some sort of gradation back from each one of those corridors and it doesn't just stop at that line, but potentially goes up like we're looking right here. You know, there could be some argument to draw some increased intensity up maple between wellesley and francis there or something. And it's slightly outside the boundary of those quarter mile buffers.
[01:43:05]
But when you're in there looking at it, it might make sense to drag this a little here and that way, a little bit that way. And have it be more our, our intention is to do that on a staff level. Um, so, and it's possible if we got stuck on some areas and we felt like they needed to be set aside, we could ask Council to direct us to do more work in certain areas in the upcoming years. I mean, I've just, our goal is to get across the finish line at the end of 2026. So, um, yeah, there, yeah, I think we will, but the more complexity yeah, it's complex. Like there's no way around. This is complex. You cannot say it's not complex, but this feedback is enormously helpful. Good. So yeah. Thank you. Yeah. But you know, we appreciate the good conversation and as kaycee mentioned, we've been getting a lot of, um, public comment.
[01:44:01]
So we are still taking public comment on the draft EIS of course on the growth alternatives through March 5th. Um, but functionally we will continue to work on the growth alternatives and the land use plan map all the way till adoption. Okay. Anything else on any of this? Okay. Well thank you both. This is, uh, it's a lot, a lot to digest. It's a lot. It is a lot. So yeah. I really thank you as well. Yeah. Really appreciate all of your work on all of this and for capturing the moment. And like, while I know that there's a tremendous amount of pressure to get all this done by the deadline and to get over the finish line and all that, we also have a rare moment in time where we can make this kind of surgery.
[01:44:56]
And so kudos to all of you for grabbing that by the horns and running with it however complicated it maybe. Um, so thank you. Okay. Well, anything else for the good of the order before we adjourn? All right. Hearing nothing, we're adjourned. Oh man. Yeah, that's.