By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Katie Wilson wants to accelerate the remaining phases of Seattle’s comprehensive plan update by one year, add more density within a “reasonable walk” of transit stops, and revisit the neighborhood centers—nodes of density inside traditional single-family areas that already have major transit stops or commercial areas—to restore the nine centers her predecessor Bruce Harrell removed from the plan and potentially add more.
On Thursday, Wilson announced that the city’s Office of Community Planning and Development (OPCD) is starting an environmental review process that will wrap up next year, with final land use and zoning legislation around June 2o27.
Wilson previewed the announcement at a Housing Development Consortium fundraising event earlier this week. “As a renter, I think this is very exciting,” she said. “You don’t have to live right along a busy, noisy, dirty street.”
In an interview Thursday morning, Wilson said her plan would compress Phases 3 and 4 of the update (adding neighborhood centers and increasing density near transit and in regional centers, respectively) into a single phase, reducing the timeline by a year while slightly delaying neighborhood centers so that everything can get done at once. On Thursday, Wilson announced that she’ll launch an environmental review process hoping to wrap up environmental review and have final legislation ready to go by June 2027.
“Basically, we inherited this comp plan process, and … we were looking at ways we can really accelerate and go bigger,” Wilson said.
Currently, the city council’s comprehensive plan committee is considering upzones in the neighborhood centers and urban centers—denser areas within neighborhoods that were previously known as “urban villages”—and within a half-block of certain frequent transit routes. Land use and comp plan committee chair Eddie Lin did not immediately respond to an interview request on Thursday.
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Wilson’s plan is to go beyond those limits in a revamped Phase 3, adding back and potentially expanding nine neighborhood centers that the council placed on a “docketing amendment” last year, while also considering new ones the city hasn’t studies yet. The city’s original plan contemplated nearly 50 neighborhood centers, a number that was eventually scaled back to 30 after the council heard complaints from homeowners in areas like Magnolia, Maple Leaf, and Laurelhurst.
“I’m open to new neighborhood centers,” Wilson said. “I certainly want to go back and consider the ones the previous administration cut out, and if there are additional ones that weren’t considered but made sense, I’m happy to consider that too. We’re going to do an efficient but hopefully effective stakeholder process to decide wulhat we want the scope to be, but in general, my bias is to go big.”
Wilson also called the city’s current plan to allow new housing within just a half-block of rail and frequent transit stops “pretty darn stingy.” As a renter in Capitol Hill, she said, she lives within a ten-minute walk of light rail and much closer to several frequent bus routes, so her “instinct” is to change the requirement to allow more housing within “a reasonable walk”—somewhere between a couple of blocks and half a mile. “How long do you walk to get to a bus stop? That’s more than half a block,” she said.
Legislation passed last year, House Bill 1491, imposes new density requirements near transit and restricts parking mandates, which force developers to build parking even in dense areas where fewer people own cars. With a compressed timeline to finish the comp plan, the city should be able to “comply or exceed compliance with state law” before the 2029 deadline, Wilson said.
