The city’s Office of Planning and Community Development rolled out legislation this week that will implement “Phase 2” of the city’s 10-year update to its comprehensive plan, the document that guides density and zoning in Seattle. Former mayor Bruce Harrell officially dubbed the proposal the “One Seattle Plan,” in keeping with his campaign and mayoral catch phrase.
The legislation complements the comp plan updates City Council adopted last year by increasing the density of housing allowed in 30 new Neighborhood Centers—areas within about 800 feet of existing commercial “nodes” or major transit stops—and expanding Urban Centers, where significantly more apartments are allowed.
The new plan will simplify the requirements for developers to build apartments in midrise areas. OPCD staff said apartments rarely get built in the existing midrise zone, because the four-story height restriction is too low to justify building and because Midrise has the most complex requirements of any zone in the city.
“Today, every single project that is built in a midrise zone has to come in and get a departure [from the standards because these are so complicated,” OPCD strategic advisor Brennon Staley said during a briefing on the legislation last week.
The legislation was finalized under former mayor Bruce Harrell, so it doesn’t bear Mayor Katie Wilson’s stamp. Wilson ran an explicitly urbanist campaign, with a commitment to allowing more housing in more places—something she’ll have a chance to demonstrate in later phases of the comprehensive plan.
Under Harrell, the city delayed the comprehensive plan update repeatedly, which is one reason it’s now broken up into four separate phases; the first phase, which got Seattle into compliance with a state law passed in 2023 requiring more density in former single-family areas, passed in December.
The zoning update also increases the amount of housing that’s allowed along “corridors”—areas directly adjacent to streets with frequent transit routes. As Doug Trumm at The Urbanist reported last week, OPCD reduced the size of some corridors in response to incumbent residents’ complaints about allowing too many apartments near single-family houses.
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“Today in the city, there are really very, very different viewpoints about housing,” Staley said. “There are people who own their home for a very long time. It’s been a great investment. … There are other people who think they will need to leave Seattle because they can’t afford a place to live.” The final legislation, he said, is an attempt to “recognize that both those types of opinions are valid.”
Efforts to accommodate homeowner complaints about apartments—that is, renters—have long been a centerpiece of Seattle politics. The result has been decades of anti-growth policies. Some, like exclusive single-family zoning, have only been eroded by outside intervention—it’s unlikely that Seattle would have allowed up to six units on every residential lot if the state legislature hadn’t passed House Bill 1110, which forced the city’s hand. Others, like the longstanding practice of segregating apartment buildings from single-family areas by concentrating them on busy, polluted arterials, remain in effect and are baked into the comp plan update.
Within those constraints, the remaining phases of the comp plan leave plenty of room for the new mayor (and progressive urbanists on the council, like Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Dionne Foster, and Eddie Lin) to allow more housing in other parts of the city.
After Phase 2—the “centers and corridors” legislation—the city will rezone the existing regional and urban centers, which include downtown, Northgate, and Capitol Hill. That will happen later this year and early next year, as will consideration of of nine more neighborhood centers, which require additional review because Harrell removed them from his plan.In Phase 4, in 2027, the city will upzone areas around frequent transit stops—another density gift from the state legislature, which forced cities to add more housing near transit through House Bill 1491 last year.
Editor’s note: The original version of this story incorrectly described the city’s midrise zones as allowing six-story apartment buildings. That describes one of the city’s lowrise zones; midrise zones allow taller buildings. The story also misstated when the city will consider adding new neighborhood centers to the plan; that will be later this year, not in the first quarter of this year.
Maybe calling them “stacked flats,” rather than “apartments,” was a stroke of genius.
On Tuesday, the City Council adopted legislation that will allow eight-unit apartment buildings on every residential lot in the city—or up to ten units if the developer preserves trees or adds “green“ landscaping features, like bioswales and green roofs, to new housing construction. These apartments are known as “stacked flats” because they’re on top of each other, unlike multi-level townhouses that are generally offered for sale, not for rent, at prices far out of reach to most Seattle residents.
The legislation, part of the comprehensive plan package the city council adopted this week, doesn’t spell out eight units, but if you do the math, that’s what it works out to on a 5,000-square-foot lot with a standard 60 percent lot coverage.
Developers who go for the green bonuses will also get to build up to four stories, rather than the standard three. (Logically, four stories makes more sense for eight-unit buildings, allowing two per floor, but maybe some enterprising new councilmember will suggest revisiting that limit). That’s more density than the state required cities to allow under 2023’s HB 1110, which allows four units on all residential lots statewide, or six if two of the units are affordable. The council adopted interim rules to comply with HB 1110 earlier this year.
The changes were part of the council’s final vote of 2025 on the city’s comprehensive plan, the long-debated, much-delayed document that governs how and where Seattle can grow. The council’s comprehensive plan committee already adopted most of the changes that were finalized this week back in September, but had to put off a final vote while the city’s planning department completed environmental review on some new amendments and gave the public an opportunity to comment on the changes
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s comprehensive plan proposal came in a year behind schedule, a delay that has pushed some comprehensive plan legislation to next year, including legislation to enact new zoning in low-rise areas, establish new boundaries for dense “regional centers” and urban centers, and potentially add more “neighborhood centers” near transit stops where taller apartment buildings will be allowed.
Density opponents on the council will have another opportunity to argue that Seattle isn’t ready for more housing, and that the city hasn’t done sufficient outreach to “neighborhoods,” meaning single-family homeowners, before allowing renters to live in new parts of the city. But, thanks mostly to Harrell’s delays, they’ll be joined by two new council members who are fans of density, Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster, and a mayor who’s an unabashed urbanist.
A public commenter holds up an image of the kind of housing he warns will be everywhere if density proponents get their way.
By Erica C. Barnett
On Friday, hundreds of Seattle residents took time out of their days to comment on proposed updates to the city’s Comprehensive Plan—a document that sets the parameters for growth and development across the city.
Although the plan is supposed to go through a major update every 10 years, Mayor Bruce Harrell released his initial proposal a year behind schedule, and the City Council is currently plodding through the plan in several “phases,” starting with changes to the city’s historically single-family zones, now known as “neighborhood residential” areas.
Some of these changes are designed to implement House Bill 1110, a bill that requires cities to allow up to four housing units on every residential lot, or six if two of the units are affordable. The council, facing a deadline to comply with 111o or accept housing regulations written by the state, passed a short-term bill complying with the law earlier this year, but still has to pass permanent legislation to update zoning rules associated with the new law.
They’re also taking up Harrell’s plan to add 30 new “neighborhood centers”—areas within a 3-minute walk (about 800 feet) of commercial and frequent bus stops where 3-to-6-story apartments would be newly allowed.
Following a pattern that has defined Seattle’s housing debate for decades, last week’s hearing pitted opponents of new housing—who argued that apartments (and the renters who live in them) would destroy the “quaint” character of their neighborhoods and contribute to “clear-cutting” trees on private lawns—against density proponents, who argued that relegating rental housing to polluted, busy arterial roads is inequitable, and that prohibiting apartments in most of the city leads directly to deforestation for suburban sprawl.
Because each person had only one minute to comment, many used some of their time to rattle off a list of amendment numbers—gibberish to anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with the plan. So instead of focusing on the high-level arguments (seriously, though, you NIMBYs need to stop saying housing proponents want to murder “orca babies”), I thought it would be helpful to dive into some of the amendments that came up most frequently.
This isn’t a comprehensive look at the competing changes council members are proposing (I did that here); instead, it’s an attempt to explain the amendments people were praising or complaining about last week, and how they’re hitting with both sides of Seattle’s eternal pro- and anti-housing debate.
Eliminate parking mandates
HB 1110 forced Seattle to get rid of mandatory minimum parking requirements for new housing within a half-mile of major transit stops, making it possible to build apartments with few or no parking spaces; Harrell’s proposal would retain other parking mandates across the city, regardless of demand.
Rinck’s amendment (amendment 7) is the strongest among several that would reduce parking mandates or eliminate them across the city; it would effectively allow developers to add parking based on market conditions and demand, and could result in lower housing construction costs.
Support social housing
Proponents of social housing, which voters overwhelmingly opted to fund using a targeted business tax earlier this year, applauded two amendments incorporating social housing into the comprehensive plan. The first, from Rinck (amendment 17), expresses support for social housing as one of the comprehensive plan’s affordability goals and incorporates it into several sections on affordable housing.
The second (amendment 61), from Kettle, would change existing city law to make it easier to build dense affordable housing in all neighborhood residential (former single-family) areas, and expand the definition of affordable housing to include social housing—a substantive change in law that would take place outside the comprehensive plan itself. A similar amendment, 60, from Sara Nelson would make similar changes to affordable-housing rules but would not apply them to social housing.
Restoring neighborhood centers
Rinck’s proposal would bring back eight neighborhood centers—those locations within a 3-minute walk of commercial nodes and frequent transit stops where 3- to 6-story apartments would be allowed—that were included in an earlier “Alternative 5” version of the plan and studied as part of a final environmental impact statement for the proposal. As we reported at the time, Harrell’s initial “One Seattle” proposal eliminated half of the 48 proposed neighborhood centers included in alternative, (After widespread blowback, Harrell restored six of the centers his initial plan eliminated).
Rinck’s amendment would restore eight more of the nixed neighborhood centers, bringing the comprehensive plan closer to the alternative that nearly new council member elected in 2023 said they supported.
Single-family activists were overwhelmingly opposed to these changes, saying that they come as a complete surprise, have never been vetted, and would result in—of course—”clearcutting” of trees on existing residential lawns.
“Say no to the city overreach of our community’s character that would destroy the very charm that attracted us to our respective neighborhoods,” one speaker told the council. “Say no to those who have ramrodded this blind-sighted, misguided notion that will result in our neighborhoods being significantly impacted by upzoned, high-density monstrosities.”
On the flip side, both homeowners and renters turned out to speak in favor of the changes, arguing that the city’s renter majority should be allowed to live in more parts of the city. “We spend too much time in the city driving our children around,” one speaker said. “We need more time to walk to neighborhood amenities and also welcome more neighborhood residents into the Seward Park neighborhood with mixed housing types.. … So go as far as you can. We really need it, and if we don’t do that, plenty of trees are going to get chopped down [for] urban sprawl.”
Downsizing neighborhood centers
As I noted in my earlier coverage of the council’s amendments, several proposals would downsize proposed neighborhood centers, while others would increase them. If every single change to neighborhood boundaries passed, they would collectively increase the total size of neighborhood centers across the city, but there’s no guarantee of how each individual vote will go—and the new neighborhood centers would be located, lopsidedly, in the council districts of councilmembers who support expansion.
The downsizing proposals would shrink neighborhood centers in Fauntleroy and Morgan Junction (amendments 35 and 37, Rob Saka), Madrona (amendment 38, Joy Hollingsworth), and Bryant, Ravenna, and Wedgwood (amendments 39, 40, and 41, Rivera).
Dan Strauss’ amendments expanding and redrawing neighborhood centers all over his northwest Seattle district (42 through 49) are the main proposals that would offset these potential losses. If all the amendments were to pass, it would mean that most of the expanded neighborhood centers would be in District 6, which includes parts of Magnolia, Fremont, Wallingford, and Ballard, while most of the reduced neighborhood centers would be in Northeast Seattle, represented by Rivera. (Bob Kettle has also proposed restoring a neighborhood center on Nickerson).
In other words, the neighborhood center-specific amendments are a product of the city’s district council system, in which individual council members have been empowered reshape the density maps in the parts of the city they represent based on their individual opinions about whether more housing is good or bad.
Corner stores, not just for literal corners anymore
A large number of public commenters expressed their support for Rinck’s Amendment 66, which would allow “corner stores” throughout residential areas, rather than just on literal corners, as Harrell’s plan proposes. Rinck’s amendment would also remove a proposed size limit of 2,500 square feet for these businesses, allow bars (not just restaurants), and remove a requirement that new businesses close at 10pm.
“It’s time to let Seattle cook, brew, and create,” one supporter said. Nelson and Strauss have amendments that would remove the “literal corner” requirement but keep all the other restrictions in place.
More transit-oriented development
Rinck’s Amendment 76 would allow denser low-income housing and stacked flats in more parts of the city, by making a technical change to the definition of “major transit” so that it includes areas within a quarter mile of bus stops that have 15-minute service on weekdays. The upshot would be that these types of housing could get a density bonus if they’re near frequent transit; in addition, they wouldn’t be subject to mandatory parking requirements.
One commenter who spoke against this change suggested it would result in “denuding all of Seattle’s neighborhoods” of trees and “subject[ing] nearly the entire city to five- and six-story developments.” Others noted that it went beyond the requirements in HB 1110—which is true; that bill was meant to represent a floor for all cities across the state, not a maximum density level for the state’s largest city.
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Rivera has a couple of amendments that would create steep hurdles for new housing. The first, Amendment 81, would direct the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to write rules dictating the kind of “exterior cladding” allowed on buildings in any local or national historic district, based on “objective design standards,” whatever that means.
Activists have sought and won historic district designations for neighborhoods like Wallingford with the goal of preventing demolition and redevelopment of lots developed in the 1920s and 1930s, but they might balk at HOA-style rules telling them what color they can paint their houses, or what specific type of siding they have to purchase during home renovations.
The second Rivera amendment, 102, is more insidious: It would authorize SDCI’s director, a political appointee, to require developers to come up with alternative site plans, at any point during the development process, “if the Director determines that an alternative site plan could feasibly increase the retention of existing healthy trees.”
In plain language, the amendment would give absolute power to the head of the city’s building department to kill individual housing projects on the grounds that there is some possibility a purely theoretical “alternative site plan” could protect any tree of any size or age—an absurd expansion of the city’s bureaucratic power.
As we’ve reported, neighborhood activists frequently present their own “alternative site plans” that they claim would allow developers to retain trees, usually by reducing the size and value of any future housing on the site.
Developers, who get loans to build housing projects based on future value, generally dismiss these alternative plans as unworkable (if you got a loan to build five 1,500-square-foot units with yards, you can’t pay that loan back by selling five 1,000-square-foot units with no outdoor space); under Rivera’s amendment, the city itself could use similar site plans to effectively stop housing projects from moving forward.
Lawns > housing
Other tree amendments (including 91, from Nelson; 92, from Strauss; 93, from Rivera, which would also establish new tree protection areas) would provide density incentives for developers that preserve existing trees on existing private lawns. One Strauss amendment, 100, would require developers to plant a new tree for every 2,500 square feet of lot area, in addition to other tree requirements, and another, 103, would prohibit removing large trees near the corners of any lot.
Unsurprisingly, many commenters claimed that allowing more density in Seattle’s historic single-family neighborhoods would result in “clear-cutting” the city, by eliminating the trees that homeowners and earlier developers planted in the yards of single-family houses. As one speaker argued, “We risk losing old-growth trees and wetland and bald eagle habitat ecosystems that make this area unique.” In fact, there are virtually no old-growth trees remaining on private property in Seattle, because early developers clear-cut the forest that once occupied the land now known as Seattle in order to build single-family houses.
Two proposals that didn’t come up much, if at all, during the public hearing are also worth flagging. The first, Kettle’s amendment 32, would add an entirely new “public safety element” to the comprehensive plan—effectively adding goals like crime reduction and improved 911 response times to the city’s foundational zoning document.
The second, which spans two amendments (21, from Nelson, and 22, from Saka and Mark Solomon), would “discourage the concentration of human services facilities” for “low-income populations” in downtown Seattle. As the brief staff summaries of these amendments notes, the city frequently has no say in where services for low-income people are located; one reason a lot of services are downtown is because downtown is the city’s most central and transit-accessible neighborhood.
The comprehensive plan committee will take up all the amendments (plus, god help us, any new ones) on September 17 and 18, with a final council vote on the Phase 1 changes likely later this month.
Maritza Rivera’s amendments would shrink neighborhood centers—areas where 3-to-6-story apartments would be newly legal—across her northeast Seattle district.
The comprehensive plan sets rules for how Seattle develops in the future, including where the city will allow its renter majority to live.
By Erica C. Barnett
After nearly a year of delays, the city council is finally getting ready to put its stamp on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 10-year Comprehensive Plan—a document Harrell has branded with his campaign slogan as the “One Seattle Plan.” The council has been meeting for months to discuss elements of the plan, including the creation of a few dozen new “neighborhood centers” where apartments will be allowed for the first time in decades, but this week was the council’s first opportunity to propose tweaks to the plan—107 amendments in all.
The comprehensive plan sets policies for growth and development, designating where new housing, transportation, and other infrastructure should go and placing limits on housing density in the city’s neighborhoods. It’s updated every 10 years, with periodic amendments, and inevitably reflects the political priorities of whoever is in office at the time.
We’ve reported previously on the Harrell Administration’s reluctance to allow significantly more housing in Seattle’s traditional single-family neighborhoods as part of the plan.
After killing an early draft of the plan that would have allowed significantly more density, Harrell released a plan last year that fell far short of the changes necessary to create enough housing for new and current residents—including renters—to live in Seattle affordably. After intense criticism of that proposal—the city’s Planning Commission said it upheld exclusionary policies rooted in redlining and failed to provide the housing Seattle needs—the mayor came back with a new plan that allowed slightly more housing, though still less than the proposal most members of the current city council said they supported when they ran for election in 2023.
The council’s proposed amendments are a mixed bag. Several proposals would collectively shrink the size of the proposed “neighborhood centers”—areas within 800 feet of certain frequent transit stops where 3-to-6-story apartments would be allowed—by hundreds of acres, in a blatant retreat to old single-family zoning patterns that benefit people who already own property and don’t want renters living in “their” neighborhoods.
Others would impose new restrictions on any new development that requires removing trees, including one that would give the city free rein to force builders to redo projects if even one tree, of any size, was threatened.
Still others would provide new incentives for developers to build dense housing, serving as a counterpoint to other councilmembers’ proposals to shrink the areas of the city where people who can’t afford to buy a house in Seattle are allowed to live.
Breaking the substantive amendments down into broad categories, we have:
Expanded Neighborhood Centers
On balance, the proposed amendments that make it easier to build housing—including everything from density bonuses for affordability to expanded and brand-new neighborhood centers—outweigh NIMBY proposals to restrict housing, although some of the proposals are probably nonstarters—or negotiation starters—in their current forms.
Harrell’s final comprehensive plan proposal included 3o neighborhood centers—down from 48 in an early draft, but more than the 24 included in an early version of the plan. Since then, though, there’s been intense pressure on the council to further reduce the number of neighborhood centers in the plan, coming primarily from incumbent homeowners in neighborhoods like Wedgwood, Madrona, and Maple Leaf.
Although several council members did end up proposing amendments that would scale down the size of neighborhood centers, in some cases dramatically, the amendments to add new areas of potential density outweigh those proposals, meaning that if every proposed change to the neighborhood centers was adopted, the amount of land in designated neighborhood centers would increase significantly.
Council members who proposed new or expanded neighborhood centers included Dan Strauss (who proposed a new East Ballard neighborhood center and called for expanding the boundaries of five others, including in Magnolia), Bob Kettle (who proposed a new North Queen Anne/Nickerson Neighborhood Center) and Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who’s proposing eight new neighborhood centers, one in each council district.
“Seattle needs more housing,” Rinck said. “Seattle also needs full and thriving communities, and we’ve heard an overwhelming call from constituents to achieve these goals with more housing, especially in high-opportunity neighborhoods which haven’t seen proportional growth.”
Build This, Not That
Other proposed amendments would add density bonuses and incentives for different types of housing, such as stacked flats and affordable apartments.
Kettle, for instance, proposed getting rid of an “amenity area” requirement for new housing in neighborhood residential zones, freeing up more land for housing.
Under the current proposal, 20 percent of the space around new apartment buildings in the city’s traditional single-family areas would be reserved for open space, typically a yard, for residents to “recreate on site”—as if what apartment dwellers in cities really want is a tiny lawn where they can all hang out together.
An amendment from Sara Nelson would retain a requirement that residential buildings, including new apartments in all parts of the city, be exempt from environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA); that exemption is otherwise set to expire next month, making housing harder to build.
Other amendments, from Hollingsworth, Nelson, Kettle, and Rinck, would provide bonus density for developers who agree to build specific types of housing, including social housing, accessory dwelling units, and low-income or affordable housing. Several proposals would create incentives for developers to build stacked flats—apartments spread out across a single story of a building—including density bonuses for retaining trees and amendments that would allow stacked flats to be denser than other types of apartments in neighborhood residential (former single-family) zones.
Rob Saka also has an amendment that would give a density bonus for one- or two-story “cottage” apartments surrounding a large common area, a style that resembles single-family housing more than the three-to-six-story apartments that will be allowed in the new neighborhood residential zones under the current plan.
Strauss proposed an amendment that would increase the maximum height in these areas from six to seven or eight stories immediately next to a major transit stop, and Rinck proposed changing the definition of “major transit stop” to include high-frequency buses.
15-Minute City
Several amendments would reduce or remove mandatory parking requirements. The most ambitious, from Rinck, would “remove parking requirements citywide for all land uses in all zones,” a phrase that brings joy to my car-hating little heart. (Yes, I own a car. No, I don’t think the city should socially engineer car culture, as it currently does.)
Builders wouldn’t be barred from including parking in their developments, but they wouldn’t be forced to do so, as they are in many places under the city’s current code.
Another amendment from Rinck, essentially a backup if her first parking proposal fails would reduce parking mandates to comply with a statewide parking reform bill that requires cities to eliminate some of their parking mandates by 2028. Another proposal, from Strauss, would establish parking maximums in the city’s regional centers—the densest areas, including downtown, Capitol Hill, and Strauss’ home turf of Ballard. In a concession to the tree-preservation lobby, Rinck’s amendments also include one that would eliminate parking mandates for developments that preserve trees.
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A proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods could also see some meaningful changes.
In the past, we’ve dunked on Harrell’s proposal to allow corner stores in neighborhoods, because it would only allow new stores and restaurants on literal corner lots, with restrictions that don’t apply to other businesses in the city, such as a mandatory 10pm closing time. Several amendments attempt to remedy those issues. The amendments range from extremely modest (a Nelson amendment that would remove the literal-corner requirement but retain restrictions on business type, size, and closing hours) to ambitious, by Seattle standards (a Rinck proposal that would remove the corner requirement, allow businesses to be open past 10pm, and add bars to the list of businesses that are legal in neighborhoods.
Three amendments, from Rinck, Strauss, and Nelson, would make it easier to open stores and restaurants in residential neighborhoods where they’re currently banned. As we’ve reported, Harrell’s comp plan proposal would allow corner stores in neighborhoods, but only on literal corners, with additional restrictions such as mandatory 10pm closures and a stipulation that they can include restaurants, but not bars.
The amendments range from modest (amendments from Strauss and Nelson to allow stores throughout residential zones, not just on corners) to ambitious (a Rinck proposal that would allow restaurants and bars throughout these areas, eliminate a requirement that businesses be closed from 10pm to 6am, and ditch a 2,500-square-foot size restriction included in the mayor’s proposal). Allowing bars in neighborhoods, a policy that works fine in big cities across the country, may be a bridge too far for censorious Seattle, but a compromise between these proposals could be a first step toward creating more 15-minute neighborhoods in Seattle.
Homeowners vs. Renters
Of course, it wouldn’t be a zoning update without some NIMBY poison pills. Although no one, including newly appointed District 5 Councilmember Debora Juarez, has proposed reviving former D5 councilmember Cathy Moore’s quixotic effort to remove an entire neighborhood center from Maple Leaf, several councilmembers have proposed reducing the amount of land in their districts where people who rent apartments can live.
Maritza Rivera, who has frequently claimed that the city did insufficient outreach to single-family neighborhoods before allowing apartments near frequent transit stops, has three amendments to shrink neighborhood centers in Bryant, Ravenna, and Wedgwood. Her proposal to scale back the Wedgwood center is the most radical of the three, in that it would reduce the size of the center by about 40 percent, limiting apartments to 35th Ave. NE, already a busy arterial, and prohibiting them in the adjacent blocks. (In contrast, one of Rinck’s amendments would expand the Wedgwood neighborhood center to the south; expect strong objections from Rivera to that one).
“Based on months of feedback from community members who live in and near the proposed neighborhood centers, my amendments modify the boundaries of the neighborhood centers in the D4, including Wedgwood, Bryant and Ravenna, to reflect resident concerns…. around the ability of local neighborhood streets to handle increased growth and the infrastructure,” Rivera said.
A Rivera amendment for Ravenna traces a similar line to carve single-family houses in a designated historic district (itself a way for older neighborhoods to oppose density) out of the proposed neighborhood center around Third Place Books, leaving the commercial area but ensuring that there would be no apartments in the neighborhood surrounding the commercial center.
Separately, Rivera proposed an amendment that would give the city the HOA-like authority to dictate what kind of external siding would be allowed on buildings within designated national or local historic districts, based on factors like the “historic character” of an area; this extraordinary new power would also apply to historic districts that might be designated in the future, including those proposed by house owners who oppose new development in their neighborhoods.
Joy Hollingsworth wants to cut the Madrona Neighborhood Center by about seven blocks, concentrating new housing into a smaller area that already includes parks, schools, and other areas where housing can’t be built.
Joy Hollingsworth has proposed shrinking down another controversial neighborhood center in Madrona, whose homeowning residents showed up en masse to oppose the zoning change in their neighborhood. Hollingsworth’s amendment would shrink the Madrona center by nearly 40 percent, slicing off big chunks of current single-family areas on the east and west sides of the proposed center and concentrating any new housing around an existing commercial stretch that includes an elementary school, library, and playfield where housing can’t be built.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a conversation about housing in 2025 without hand-wringing over trees—not planting or maintaining trees in public spaces, which are actions the city could take at any time, or encouraging property owners to plant new trees themselves, but preserving trees that already exist, generally at the expense of new development.
In addition to the tree preservation incentives I mentioned earlier, there’s an amendment from Strauss to “recognize the importance of the natural environment and native species, including trees, bees, salmon, orca, and herons,” plus several from Rivera to make it harder to develop housing if trees are on site.
The most extreme proposal from Rivera—and the one that made Rinck confirm with council staff that the amendment really would do what it appeared to do—would allow the city to require developers to come up with a completely new alternative plan if it turned out their housing proposal would require the removal of any tree, no matter its size, age, or viability.
It’s easy to see how this could grind development in traditional single-family areas to a halt. If someone planted a sapling on a property slated for development, or if there was already unremarkable small tree on site, the city could stop the project and require the developer to start from scratch.
Housing is already tremendously expensive to build in Seattle, and construction permits are declining as developers pull out of the city. Empowering unelected city staffers to force full project redesigns around every existing tree would exacerbate the housing crisis, adding costs to projects that are already financed while reducing the amount of housing that could be built in every project with a tree on site. And forget about expanding the city’s tree canopy—who would plant a new tree on a property they may want to sell in the future, knowing it would instantly reduce their property value?
Aerial shot of Maple Leaf Community Center, courtesy City of Seattle
By Erica C. Barnett
City Councilmember Cathy Moore complained bitterly last week over the fact that—despite her frequent demands and a Change.org petition with more than 1,500 signatures—the Maple Leaf Neighborhood Center will remain in the mayor’s proposed update to the city’s comprehensive plan.
The designation would allow moderate density—3-to-6-story apartments— in an eight-and-a-half-block area directly adjacent to an existing commercial center. Despite its diminutive size, Moore has characterized the proposed center as a death knell for the area, saying she was not willing to “sacrifice my neighborhood” to allow rental housing in the area. (Moore lives elsewhere).
Moore spoke for ten minutes straight at last week’s meeting, at times seeming near tears as she described what she characterized as an abandonment and betrayal of her district by the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development.”
“I just remain incredibly disappointed,” Moore began. “I remain incredibly disappointed that the tremendous amount of public feedback that was given to OPCD was not really taken fully into consideration. And I would take issue with the characterization that you really listen to everybody.”
Moore went on to describe all the dense housing, including affordable housing, that’s going up along busy streets and next to light rail—”a tremendous amount of growth”—saying that this type of housing is “fantastic” and “supported by everybody” currently living in the district. Maple Leaf, she said, was an exception, “the only [neighborhood] in which there has been strong, vocal, consistent opposition.”
Boundaries of the proposed Maple Leaf Neighborhood Center
What about the neighborhood’s drainage capacity, transit access, the traffic all those new apartments would cause? Why hadn’t the city “walk[ed] the district” with residents who opposed allowing more people to live in the area?
“You’re not listening,” Moore said, “and I don’t understand, why is it? Is it because somebody is trying to put the screws to the council member for [District] 5 with some ideological position? … There has been an absolute hardcore resistance to this.”
At the very least, Moore continued, OPCD should “walk the damn neighborhood center with us and explain to the 1,400-plus people [who signed the online petition] why you’re unwilling to reconsider the boundaries, why you’re unwilling to look at other places that might be more appropriate and actually have people walking to the light rail that is so vital to our community.”
Michael Hubner, the mild-mannered OPCD planning manager who typically does the presentations at the council’s comp plan committee meetings, pointed out gently that the department has, in fact, done multiple walks with residents through every neighborhood center, including Maple Leaf, while mayoral staff Krista Valles pointed out that sometimes city departments make decisions individual council members don’t like. “It’s not that we haven’t been listening. We’ve just arrived at a different conclusion,” Valles said.
In other words: A legislator may really, really want something to happen, but sometimes they just don’t get their way.
Moore’s anti-apartment diatribe, which came during her first public appearance after announcing her resignation last week, was another example, among many, of her obvious frustration with how the legislative process works—even when something seems obvious to her, she doesn’t always get her way.
The version of the comprehensive plan the council is considering is much more modest than the proposals most of the current council including said they supported on the campaign trail in 2023, with half as many neighborhood centers and much more modest density increases than the preliminary alternatives OPCD floated that year.
Last year, the city’s Planning Commission declared that an earlier version of the plan would worsen inequities in the city and fail to address Seattle’s affordable housing crisis because it didn’t allow enough rental housing in enough areas. Advocates for housing, including many renters, have been saying the same thing about the comprehensive plan for years now. Moore has never demonstrated much of an interest in listening to them.
This post has been updated to include more information about SDOT’s pothole budget.
Several recently elected members of the City Council raised a novel objection to pro-housing advocates who argued the city should allow more density and plant more public trees yesterday: Trees in the private yards of single-family houses, they argued, are better for people than those in parks and public rights-of-way.
The arguments against public trees took place during a discussion about the impact proposed changes to the city’s comprehensive plan would have on tree canopy. Two years ago, the city updated its tree code to place new restrictions on some tree removals; since then, groups like Tree Action Seattle have argued that the tree code will lead to the “clearcutting” of Seattle.
Whatever individual tree advocates’ motivations, the impact of forcing Seattle property owners to retain trees in their private lawns is to prevent density in Seattle’s traditional single-family neighborhoods, worsening Seattle’s housing shortage as the population grows. (For people motivated by the desire to keep renters out of “their” neighborhoods, trees have largely replaced the blunter objections of the past, such as complaints that renters ruin people’s property values.) Advocates want to revamp the two-year-old tree code to make it difficult or impossible to remove large private trees for development or any other purpose, and Moore is their main champion on the council.
Addressing several staff for the city departments that deal with planning, land use, and trees, Moore kicked things off by saying that planting trees in street rights-of-way, such as planting strips and medians, is “problematic” and potentially “not sustainable” because sometimes the city ends up removing those trees anyway; for example, Moore said, a SDOT was “wanting to cut down all those trees” on a landscaped median on Beacon Avenue.
After staffers responded that most of those trees were actually going to stay in place—the city puts signs on trees to indicate that they could be removed, not that they will—Moore made her case that trees in people’s private yards are actually better than trees in parks and other public spaces.
“While you say everybody is 10 minutes’ walking distance from a park, not everybody is mobile,” Moore said, addressing city staffers who had been describing the city’s tree planting and maintenance program. “And also, I don’t think that you can necessarily get the benefit of a tree by it being in a park. I mean, sometimes the benefit of the tree is that you’re standing outside your apartment building or your house when it’s 90 degrees and you’re getting some relief from the heat. You have the benefit of looking out a window and seeing a tree that you might not see in a park.”
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Moving beyond parks, Moore said that planting trees in public rights-of-way could also be “problematic,” because the city might have to remove the trees later for unanticipated reasons. For example, she’s “received a lot of emails about Beacon Avenue,” where the city has to repair sidewalks damaged by the roots of large street trees, “[and] SDOT wanting to cut down all those trees,” Moore said. “I appreciate the idea of wanting to put trees in the right-of-way, but that, too, comes with with issues.”
The trees Moore was referring to were marked with evaluation notices earlier this year; as a staffer noted in response to Moore, most will be retained thanks to sidewalk redesigns that allow the trees to keep growing while keeping the sidewalk accessible to people with disabilities.
Moore also brought up her favorite straw-man argument, one I’ve never heard anyone actually make: People who want to allow private property owners to remove trees, she said, inaccurately believe that any new housing that gets built in its place has to be affordable. (In other words, she’s saying that you probably believe any townhouse that goes up in your neighborhood is reserved for a low-income person).
“So this narrative that [if we remove trees for development], suddenly we’re going to have affordable housing, is incorrect,” Moore said. “I challenge the department, [the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections], to show me how many of these permits were for affordable housing, I submit to you that none of them were affordable housing.” This is the point when I started yelling “Literally no one has ever said that!” at my laptop screen.
Moore wasn’t the only council member to come up with reasons that forcing property owners to keep trees in their private yards was superior to planting and maintaining public trees.
Rob Saka, who set aside $2 million in last year’s budget to remove a traffic barrier that prevented illegal left turns into his children’s preschool, pointed out that if trees are allowed to grow tall in city rights-of-way, it makes it harder to remove them later for other “transportation purposes.”
“I definitely recognize that the right of way is it is an appropriate place to to plant trees and build our tree canopy,” Saka said, but “there are associated costs, nontrivial costs, associated with maintaining these tree canopies in our public right of ways.” Every year, SDOT’s budget for trees seems to “grow and grow. … I love arborists out there [but we’re] getting to a point, getting to a state where our ongoing annual maintenance costs for maintaining tree canopy alone, in shrubbery alone, eclipses our ability what we spend to repair basic potholes.”
“Planting trees is expensive,” Moore chimed in later, adding that the city should create a new fund to move existing trees, like a sequoia whose owner has become the target of protests, to other locations because the trees the city is planting now aren’t comparable to the ones in people’s existing yards. (City staff who compared new tree plantings to evergreens planted when Seattle was being developed were also being “disingenuous,” Moore said, because the new trees won’t live as long.)
SDOT’s general-fund budget for tree planting and maintenance is $11 million this year, up from $6.9 million in 2024 and $7.5 million in 2021. The general fund budget also includes $19 million for pavement maintenance and repair, which includes potholes—roughly the same amount as last year, and up from $15 million in 2023. Of that total, according to SDOT, about $4.2 million pays for pothole repair. Repairing each pothole costs a few hundred dollars.
The voter-approved 2024 transportation levy has an additional $29 million for urban forestry and citywide tree planting, and $67 million for pavement spot improvements, including potholes.
Planting “trees in a specific location,” Saka continued, has other inherent problems: “It limits our freedom to operate, and removes any flexibility, sense of flexibility or agility, that we need as a city. … So when you plant a lot of trees in rights-of-way and fully leverage that space, again, it limits our flexibility to accommodate new travel, new modes of travel, new traffic patterns, and make the most beneficial use of our roads that works for all.”
I have to admit, “street trees are a problem because you can’t move them” was a new one for me. So it was almost comforting to hear Moore return to a very, very old argument against adding density in single-family areas.
Contrary to what urbanists claim, Moore said, “it is disingenuous, I think, to talk about, you know, ‘if we don’t build density, then we’re going to sprawl.’ We are constrained by the Growth Management Act. If we don’t have density in Seattle, we’re not going to sprawl out, because we’re constrained by state law. So that’s a red herring, frankly. … People recognize when they’ve been sold a bill of goods.”
In reality, the red herring here is that the Growth Management Act prevents sprawl. King County’s growth management boundary—where, according to Moore, sprawl is prohibited— includes every sprawling bedroom community in the region, from Black Diamond and Maple Valley to North Bend and the Issaquah Highlands. (That sprawl exists, by the way, because developers cut down actual forests, as opposed to the “forest” of individual trees in people’s private yards that’s the subject of so much handwringing in Seattle.)
Moore’s wrong about the reason it’s happening, too. Seattle has created a housing shortage by adopting policies that prevent housing. That increases housing prices in Seattle and forces middle- and working-class people to move out into the sprawl that surrounds the city. The “bill of goods” is that Seattle’s anti-housing policies—and, yes, proposals to prevent development by forcing property owners to retain trees are anti-housing—don’t have consequences for the entire region.
