Tag: comprehensive plan

City Council, Elections

Six Applicants Make Their Case to Become the City Council’s Newest Member
The six city council candidates hesitate before holding up cards in response to Rob Saka’s question: “Yes or no, would you definitively rule out running this year, 2025, if appointed?”

By Erica C. Barnett

The city council is about to choose a new council member to fill Tammy Morales‘ old District 2 seat, after narrowing down the field of 20 qualified candidates to six men.

After a chaotic public forum that focused primarily on how much the applicants seat support cops, cars, and keeping Sound Transit out of Chinatown, Seattle residents got one last chance to hear from the applicants on Thursday, when each finalist delivered a prepared 3-minute speech and answered questions from all eight current council members.

But if viewers were hoping to learn more about how each of the candidates would handle the primary responsibilities that will face them over the next nine and a half months—updating the city’s comprehensive plan, overseeing the council’s land use committee, addressing ongoing budget shortfalls amid the likelihood of federal funding cuts—the council often undercut that goal. Rob Saka went on forever. Dan Strauss asked everyone where they went to middle school. Joy Hollingsworth asked, “What about the children?” And Cathy Moore requested commitments to revisit the tree code to place more restrictions on tree removal to prevent density in single-family areas.

Each council member had ten minutes to address the finalists, and most of them gave each applicant at least a minute or so for a short answer to each question. The exception was Saka, who spent more than six minutes winding up to a confusingly worded yes or no question (basically: would the candidates run for election or be a “caretaker”)? and took several more minutes to ask a second question about the comprehensive plan. As a result, the six men  had just two minutes, altogether, to explain their priorities and goals for the city’s comprehensive plan, a complex land use document that governs how and where the city will grow over the next 20 years. As Saka’s time wound down, two of his colleagues could be heard, on the Seattle Channel live stream, snickering and saying “oh my god,” respectively, and council president Sara Nelson gave them a few extra minutes so they could all say a few words.

For the record: Chukundi Salisbury and Mark Solomon, who have both previously said they would not run for election, were the only two who raised their green check mark cards.

Two quick notes: As in the public forum last Tuesday, many of the applicants’ answers were about issues or proposals the council has little or no control over, like specific Seattle Department of Transportation projects or how police officers should be deployed. To me, this suggests a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of what the council does, which has sometimes been a problem with the current council (see, for example, Saka’s frustration that he can’t just order SDOT to remove a curb that prevented him from turning left into a parking lot.)

Second, the new council member will chair the land use committee, so they ideally should have some land-use expertise; while experience as a neighborhood advocate is useful for a district council member, they’ll also be making decisions on technical issues that impact the whole city.

Finally, the fact that all six finalists are men is noteworthy, perhaps especially so because some of Morales’ colleagues and detractors dismissed her stated reasons for resigning—feeling bullied, gaslit, and excluded from important conversations—by suggesting she just wasn’t “tough” enough for the job, a common criticism of women who complain about workplace mistreatment. In modern history, there has never been another all-male panel of finalists for an open council seat.

Hong Chhuor

Nominated by: Sara Nelson

Chhour, the Chief Development and Communications Officer at Friends of the Children and co-owner of King Donuts, emphasized his ties to the immigrant and Asian American/Pacific Islander community and his commitment to improving public safety in Little Saigon. Like finalists Mark Solomon, Adonis Ducksworth, and Eddie Lin, Chhuor said his top priority on the would be to “address the travesty that is occurring at 12th and Jackson in Little Saigon.”

Quote: In response to a question from Dan Strauss about how he would “approach the dichotomy of our city need for housing and density with neighbors’ concerns that they don’t want their neighborhoods to change,” Chhour said: “I want to ask, why do we limit ourselves to that dichotomy? Could we take a moment to consider that the narrative around changing the character of our neighborhoods is a form of gatekeeping, and are we really a society in this city that wants to default to, ‘I got here first, and therefore I get to make the rules’?”

Adonis Ducksworth

Nominated by: Dan Strauss

Ducksworth, a Seattle Department of Transportation employee since 2016 (and transportation policy advisor to Mayor Bruce Harrell since 2023), talked about his experience volunteering with recovery-based groups like the Union Gospel Mission and his efforts to get a skate park in Rainier Beach, which he identified as one of his top priorities.

Quote: In his introductory comments, he said there were “five things I will be prioritizing for the district over the next 10 months, and these are things that I know can be done. Number one, address the state of emergency in the CID and Little Saigon. Number two, make Rainier Avenue safer. Number three, adopt a resolution that outlines a framework for how the city should be engaging with the community. Number four, host SPD recruiting and outreach fairs in every District Two, neighborhood. And number five, we need to give kids a different path. That’s why I want to break ground on the Rainier Beach skate park this year.”

Mark Solomon

Nominated by: Maritza Rivera

Solomon, a crime prevention coordinator for the Seattle Police Department since 1990, said he would prioritize building generational wealth by promoting Black homeownership and keeping Black homeowners in their houses, noting that he can only afford to live in the city because he lives in the house his grandparents built. He also said he’s prioritize traffic safety in Southeast Seattle and building more sidewalks.

Quote: In response to a question from Rinck about what the city should to do respond to federal retaliation, such as the withdrawal of funds, against sanctuary cities like Seattle, Solomon said, “Just looking at the executive orders that have flown out of the past couple days does give me pause, and it made me think—’Okay, if you’re going to deny us money because we’re a sanctuary city, I’m going to go find my own money? I’m going to go find different sorts of funds, so I don’t have to rely on you.’ That’s one of the reasons I’ve been advocating for us to explore a public bank…. where we can set this up to borrow against our own assets to fund our own projects, so we don’t have to rely on the feds for [that] funding.”

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Chukundi Salisbury

Nominated by: Rob Saka

Salisbury, a longtime Seattle Parks Department employee and founder of the group Black Legacy Homeowners, touted his volunteer experience and emphasized his long history in Seattle. (His mother, former Community Police Commission co-chair Harriet Walden, spoke in his favor during public comment). In response to the sanctuary city question, Salisbury said he would look at “leaning in to private industry, not just taxing them, but asking them to really protect us as a sanctuary city.”

Quote: “My number one priority … would be strengthening the anti-displacement framework in the comp plan. We know that if we do not strengthen this anti-displacement framework, 20 years from now, there will not be a Black community, and many of our other BIPOC neighbors and the like who are most at risk for displacement will not exist here. And so this is one of the most important things to me. We got to be here to even work on these things.

Thaddeus Gregory

Nominated by: Joy Hollingsworth

Gregory, a land use attorney the son of Municipal Court Judge Willie Gregory, came across as the candidate with the most direct knowledge about land use. He also ticked several urbanist boxes—supporting safe bike infrastructure, supporting neighborhood corner stores (which are currently illegal), and revisiting minimum parking requirements, which can dramatically increase the cost of new housing.

Quote: In response to Moore’s litmus-test question about trees, Gregory responded: “Our tree code works to a certain extent, but sometimes more flexibility needs to be allowed. When that flexibility is there, we need to make sure that, as we develop, if any trees are taken away, we replant—twofold, threefold, fourfold. We have a goal of having a 30 percent tree canopy. It’s something that I think Seattle should absolutely aspire to and achieve. We can do it using the comprehensive plan, using the tree code. I think that we should revisit the tree code examine how we can both incentivise development and to use new development to spur more trees in our communities.”

Edward Lin

Nominated by: Alexis Mercedes Rinck

Lin, an assistant city attorney who previously worked as a private-sector land use attorney, emphasized the need to accommodate growth while preventing displacement through programs like the Equitable Development Initiative and “gentle density—duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, where somebody can age in place, and we can really build wealth within the community and not just have it go to outsiders.”

Quote: “Our schools are struggling, and educational inequality in Seattle is some of the worst in the nation. And what I’ve realized is a lot of things that happen outside our communities, whether it’s housing and homelessness or gun violence, those have huge impacts in our schools. And the [Families and Education] levy, things like kindergarten readiness, wraparound services, providing food and summer programs—those are huge ways that we can make a real difference in D2. … I’d love to lean into things like high school internships and, connecting our youth to the enormous wealth and job opportunities in our region, whether that’s the trades or tech companies or maritime industries or police.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misattributed a quote to Lin. We’ve replaced the quote with something Lin actually said, and we regret the error.

City Council, Density, housing, neighborhoods, This Week on PubliCola

This Week on PubliCola: January 11, 2025
Cathy Moore says she won’t “sacrifice” her neighborhood to three-to-five-story apartments around an intersection Maple Leaf (circled on map)

Cathy Moore Says Young People Want Yards, Bob Kettle and Rob Saka Test Blast Balls, and PubliCola Predicts the Future

Monday, January 6

Anti-Housing Activists Hope for Receptive Audience as Council Takes Up Comprehensive Plan Update

As the city considers density increases so modest that its own planning commission called them utterly inadequate, single-family preservationists are creating petitions to oppose any changes in “their” neighborhoods, especially those that allow more renters to live in more parts of Seattle.

Tuesday, January 7

SPD Fires Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula Two Years Ago

Kevin Dave, the police officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula while driving almost three times the speed limit, finally got fired after spending two years on SPD’s payroll after killing Kandula, whose family is suing the city for more than $110 million.

Wednesday, January 8

It’s Time to Appoint Another New Councilmember!

Tammy Morales’ resignation opens a spot for yet another new council appointment. The appointment process, which should wrap up before the end of this month, will result in a council with only one member, Dan Strauss, who has served for more than three years, including seven members who have served one year or less.

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“I’m Not Prepared to Sacrifice My Neighborhood”: Councilmember Cathy Moore Takes Hard Line Against Apartments

One of those recently council members, Cathy Moore, came out hard against a proposal to allow apartments along the periphery of single-family neighborhoods, saying that allowing three-to-six story apartments within 800 feet of 30 transit stops across the city would destroy neighborhood character, denude the landscape, and produce “unstable” housing occupied by renters, who, she said, aren’t “engaged socially and politically” the way property owners are. About six in ten Seattle residents rent their homes.

Thursday, January 9

Seattle Nice: Bob Kettle Talks Public Safety, Density, Why He Opposed the Capital Gains Tax, and More

The Seattle Nice podcast sat down with City Council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle to talk about his priorities for 2025, how much density the city should allow in single-family neighborhoods like Queen Anne, and at what point the new council will stop blaming their predecessors for the real and perceived public safety challenges in Seattle.

Afternoon Fizz, SPD Edition: Councilmembers Test-Drive Blast Balls, SPD Sued Over Records Violations, and More

Four stories in this week’s afternoon Fizz: Bob Kettle and Rob Saka take a field trip to SPD’s firing range to test blast balls for themselves; the Community Police Commission proposes changes to SPD’s proposed policy allowing the use of “less lethal” weapons, which is moving forward at breakneck speed; the Seattle Times sues SPD for violating an agreement over public records requests; and former police chief Adrian Diaz loses his longtime attorney.

Friday, January 10

PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025

PubliCola’s founders give you our predictions for 2025. Sandeep thinks Seattle will fail to break out of its political inertia; Josh says you’ll start to hear more open MAGA rhetoric in public places in Seattle (which, he also predicts, will still be riddled with dogs), and I predict that new, even more stringent tree protections will be used to prevent housing for renters in the name of the environment (despite the fact that car-oriented sprawl, which results from insufficient housing in cities, is an existential environmental risk.)

Also, despite a $2 million budget setaside, I predict that SDOT will find reasons not to remove an 8-inch traffic safety curb that prevents dangerous left turns into the parking lot of the preschool Rob Saka’s kids attended, which Saka claimed his constituents found “triggering” and “extremely traumatizing” because it reminds them of Trump’s border wall.

City Council, Development, housing, Opinion

“I’m Not Prepared to Sacrifice My Neighborhood”: Councilmember Cathy Moore Takes Hard Line Against Apartments
Cathy Moore says she won’t “sacrifice” her neighborhood to three-to-five-story apartments around an intersection in Maple Leaf (the lavender blocks inside the circle above)

By Erica C. Barnett

Councilmember Cathy Moore came out swinging against the extremely modest, geographically limited density increases Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed in his comprehensive plan update on Monday, taking aim at straw “urbanists” who, she claimed, believe the “lie” that brand-new housing is affordable and that new apartments automatically lead to frequent transit.

“Too many of our young people cannot afford to live in this city, and this is what’s driving a lot of this. And yet they are told, ‘Well, if you just let us have a free rein and build, you’ll be able to have the housing.’ It’s not true,” Moore fulminated. “Allowing free-range zoning is not going to get you into the home that you want. It’s not going to create the homeownership opportunity that you need to grow your wealth [and] create a stable society where people are engaged socially and politically.”

Moore’s specific objection to the plan was Harrell’s refusal to eliminate a small node of density in her neighborhood, Maple Leaf, where the current comp plan proposal would allow apartments within one to two blocks of a small commercial center at 90th and Roosevelt. The intersection, she noted, is still “slated for a neighborhood center, despite my two formal requests to the mayor’s office to remove it.”

“I’m not prepared to sacrifice this particular—my particular—neighborhood, and the reason that I live here and support this neighborhood, so that we can just throw a bunch of townhouses up that start at $700,000,” Moore said.

The planned neighborhood center includes eight and a half blocks around an existing commercial district around 90th and Roosevelt, where apartments between three and six stories would be allowed. The location is smack between two light rail stations and on a frequent bus route that arrives every 15 minutes, which Moore referred to as the “one little bus” that serves the neighborhood.

An example (from the proposed comp plan) of a neighborhood center.

Density is code for rental housing, Moore continued, and “rental housing isn’t working. … When I talk to young people, they want a place of their own. They want a little garden. They want the amenities that us current homeowners have, and we’re creating a false promise what we’re putting out here and what the urbanist people are telling us.”

Moreover, Moore said, “people seem to believe that if you build all this multifamily housing, transit will come. Let me tell you, it will not come. That’s not how it works.”

Phew. OK. It’s hard to fully capture to the condescension in Moore’s comments about renters and “young people,” but let’s start here: Sixty percent of the people who live in Seattle—young, old, and in between—rent their homes, and it’s pretty insulting to dismiss all of them as naifs who don’t understand basic realities about the cost of housing in Seattle. Nor, frankly, is it the place of homeowners in their 60s, 70s, and 80s—including those who showed up in the middle of the morning on Monday to argue that apartments don’t belong next to houses—to talk about what working renters need or want.

Maple Leaf’s planned neighborhood center already has a commercial district that includes bars, coffee shops, restaurants, and businesses.

Much like the idea that most current renters will ever be able to afford a house in Seattle, Moore’s straw urbanist is a fiction. Real-world urbanists have never argued that brand-new rental housing is cheap; rather, they point out that in cities with acute housing shortages like Seattle, artificial scarcity—the kind city governments create by imposing sweeping prohibitions on new housing—pushes non-wealthy people out. “Rental housing isn’t working” because too many renters are paying half their income to live far away from their jobs, not because they don’t understand that what they really want is a mortgage. (Note to the “buy a house like I did” crowd: Given that at least half of all renters pay more than they can afford on rent, how exactly are they supposed to save up for the $462,000 downpayment they’ll need to qualify for a home loan in Seattle?)

Second, she’s actually wrong about how transit decisions work—King County Metro makes bus planning decisions precisely based on housing density—the more people live in an area, the more demand there is for bus service, which is why you don’t see frequent transit in places like west Magnolia or Laurelhurst. “If you build it, they will come” is literally how it works.

Moore and Councilmember Maritza Rivera represent some of the wealthiest, lowest-density areas of the city; although Moore’s district includes Northgate, Lake City, and other urban hubs, it also encompasses vast swaths of single-family urban deserts, represented by the beige areas in the northeast corner of the map above. Seattle has always concentrated density and growth along large arterials,

The council is discussing the comprehensive plan over several meetings in January and February. Because Harrell took so long to finalize the plan (amending it repeatedly to decrease, then slightly increase, the amount of housing it would allow), the council has a hard deadline: If a new plan isn’t in place by June, the state’s model code, which would increase density citywide, will go into effect.

City Council, Density, housing, land use, Mayor Harrell

Anti-Housing Activists Hope for Receptive Audience as Council Takes Up Comprehensive Plan Update
The Future Land Use Map shows the level of housing density the city will allow in various areas; Seattle’s single-family neighborhoods, where up to four units are now allowed under state law, are in beige.

By Erica C. Barnett

As the city council prepared for its first meeting to discuss Seattle’s long-delayed comprehensive plan update Monday morning, anti-housing advocates have started at least eight petitions or letter-writing campaigns to urge councilmembers to scale back the modest upzones the new plan would allow. (Ryan Packer, from The Urbanist, covered some of these last week).

So far, residents have created petitions to reduce the amount of housing that will be allowed in north Ballard (“Whittier Neighbors Against Seattle Upzoning Proposal”), West Seattle (the Fauntleroy Community Association); north Queen Anne (“Oppose Proposed Dramatic Up-zoning of 10th Ave W. from McGraw to Fulton”); east Queen Anne (“Queen Anne Neighbors Against Seattle Upzoning Proposal”); Montlake (“Preserve Montlake Neighborhood While Growing”); Greenwood (“Oppose Greenwood Urban Center Up-Zoning in Seattle Mayor Harrell’s One Seattle Plan”); Madrona (“Preserve Madrona’s neighborhood character as we increase in density”; and North Seattle (“Remove Proposed Designation of Maple Leaf as a Neighborhood Center.”)

As we’ve reported, Harrell’s proposal just complies with state law requiring cities to allow at least four units of housing on every residential lot, but otherwise hews to the the city’s longstanding strategy—going back at least to the 1990s—of concentrating apartment housing in a few dense areas along busy arterial roads, while minimizing density in traditional single-family neighborhoods.

The new plan would allow apartments within a block or two of about 30 frequent transit stops across the city, and would expand the boundaries of the areas where apartment-level density is currently allowed.

Proposals to allow more housing, particularly apartments for Seattle’s renter majority, have produced a predictably disproportionate level of outrage among single-family preservationists, who are lobbying the council hard to reduce the amount of housing the new plan would allow across the city.

A petition opposing a new “neighborhood center” between two light rail stations in the Maple Leaf neighborhood, which currently has more than 700 signatures, claims that allowing apartments within two blocks of an existing small commercial area will destroy critical wildlife habitat, eliminate many “large evergreens,” create shadows that will prevent homeowners from gardening (unlike trees, I guess?), and put too much pressure on “wastewater treatment capacity, water supply, electrical supply [and] stormwater treatment.”  As one of the two Queen Anne petitions puts it, “Current infrastructure does not support drastic population increases.”

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This line of opposition, which we’ve often shorthanded as the “concurrency” argument against housing, presumes that Seattle shouldn’t allow new housing until after the region has invested in far more frequent transit, wider streets and sidewalks, bigger sewage pipes, and all kinds of other infrastructure projects that aren’t necessary or justifiable in the city’s current low-density neighborhoods.”Current Infrastructure does not support drastic population increases.”

These cart-before-the-horse propositions are conveniently perennial, because no city or region is going to spend a ton of money expanding services to places that don’t currently need them. King County Metro, for example, isn’t going to dedicate limited resources increasing bus service frequency in neighborhoods where everyone owns a house on a 5,000-square-foot lot, because those kinds of neighborhoods don’t produce enough bus riders to justify stiffing denser areas that want bus service.

Cities do have to provide adequate transportation access as they grow (which is one reason we pass levies to pay for things like buses and sidewalks) but people making this argument often take it to absurd extremes, essentially arguing that if you don’t have access to door-to-door transit, parking directly in front of your house, and streets where you can drive without stopping for cyclists, pedestrians, and buses, you shouldn’t have to “accept” new neighbors.

This stuff can get pretty explicit. One of the Queen Anne petitions, for example, includes a lengthy defense of single-occupancy vehicles that begins by dismissing mass transit as pie-in-the-sky social engineering:

We understand the intent of this plan…  is to encourage use of mass transit. Practically speaking, using the #1 bus would be challenging for those making multiple stops in a day for work related activities, individuals who are responsible to get children to child care or extracurricular activities, and residents who support aging parents for doctor’s appointments and other needs. We use our cars to transport us to the many recreational activities that are essential to our well-being. In short, most people will need a car for a long time to come. And, if they need cars, they will need parking for these cars. Parking that would not be included under this new plan, so cars would be forced onto already crowded streets (with current limited parking and the #1 bus).

Most PubliCola readers probably don’t need to be told that this is a dumb argument—people who don’t have cars can and do get around by bus, and Seattle can’t succeed if it bases all its policies on the preferences of car-driving homeowners—but the Seattle City Council is being inundated by messages like these, and some counterprogramming couldn’t hurt. (Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who’s heading up the comp plan process, told the Urbanist in 2023 that she supported the densest comprehensive plan alternative then on the table.)

The council will have a public hearing on the comprehensive plan at 5:00 pm on February 6, but anyone can weigh in before then by sending an email to the council; find the contact information for your citywide and district representatives here.

This Week on PubliCola

This Week On PubliCola: January 4, 2025
The proposed Comprehensive Plan update includes small nodes of density, called “neighborhood centers,” that are already being contested. Otherwise, it sticks to the decades-old policy of crowding renters, who make up more than half the city, onto loud, dirty arterial roads.

By Erica C. Barnett

Sunday, December 29: Seattle Nice: Your Questions Answered!

On the latest edition of Seattle Nice, we answered listeners’ questions about how much new housing the city plans to allow over the next 20 years, the upcoming mayoral and city council elections, our wishes for local politics in 2025, and more.

Monday, December 30: PubliCola Questions: King County Executive Candidate Claudia Balducci

King County Councilmember and former Bellevue mayor Claudia Balducci sat down with PubliCola to talk about her campaign for King County Executive. Pull quote: “Encampment resolutions are not sweeps. They are not, ‘post a date, show up with a team, and move everybody who’s there.’ It’s an application of services. You work with the residents of an encampment over a period of time, some weeks, and eventually people are offered housing.”

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Tuesday, December 31: PubliCola Questions: King County Executive Candidate Girmay Zahilay

Girmay Zahilay, who represents South King County on the county council, also spoke with PubliCola about his campaign for county executive. Pull quote: “What I hear from my constituents is not just, ‘We’re tapped to our economic limit, and we can’t deal with any more levies.’ They also are saying that they don’t feel like they’re seeing problems being solved.”

Thursday, January 2: PubliCola Questions: Seattle City Attorney Candidate Rory O’Sullivan

In our final interview this week, we sat down with Rory O’Sullivan, a longtime legal aid attorney and onetime Democratic candidate for a state House seat who’s running against Seattle’s Republican city attorney, Ann Davison. Pull quote: “Right now, the city attorney’s office is way behind on DUI prosecutions. So we are being put in danger, our public safety is worse off, because the current city attorney is prosecuting protesters and spending resources on other things that don’t improve public safety.”

Density, Development, housing, Mayor Harrell, Urbanism

Harrell’s Latest Zoning Plan Modestly Increases Density Compared to Previous, Widely Criticized Draft

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, along with the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development, have rolled out a new zoning map and plan for “phase 1” of Seattle’s updated Comprehensive Plan, updating what was in the draft released earlier this year. The city’s comprehensive plan is the framework that stipulates how the city will grow, and how much housing is allowed in the city’s residential areas, for the next 20 years.

The new version increases the amount of density that will be allowed citywide to the level proposed in the state’s “model code”—allowing slightly more housing in some areas, while adding six new “neighborhood centers” (to the 24 proposed in the previous draft), where apartment and condo buildings as tall as 6 stories would be allowed near intersections and transit stops.

Overall, the new proposal allows tens of thousands more units over the next 20 years than the previous proposal, which housing enthusiasts like state Rep. Julia Reed and the city’s Planning Commission criticized for failing to go big on apartments.

Most of that new capacity, however, comes from implementing a new law that every city in the state is required to follow—House Bill 1110, which mandates new density in former single-family areas. Harrell’s proposal does not go beyond the requirements of HB 1110, but it does include new density bonuses for stacked flats, including larger, family-size units. And it no longer exempts 15 percent of the city—areas at “high risk of displacement,” like parts of Southeast Seattle—from the new density requirements; HB 1110 allows cities to exempt up to 25 percent of their single-family areas from the new rules.

Updating former single-family areas to the state’s recommended density alone (for nerds only: The maximum floor-area ratio for multifamily housing in the new “neighborhood residential” zones would increase from 0.9 to a minimum 1.2, and more for stacked flats) will allow more housing types than the old draft, which effectively limited new density in former single-family areas to townhouses.

The new “neighborhood centers” would be located in North Magnolia, High Point, Beacon Hill, Fremont, and Hillman City; a former “urban village” in South Park would also become a neighborhood center. Notably absent from the new proposal are another 16 potential neighborhood centers the city studied, but rejected—many of them in tony single-family neighborhoods like Laurelhurst and North Capitol Hill.

It’s hard to say exactly how many additional units of housing the new plan would allow compared to the current version, however. During a media briefing on Wednesday, officials with OPCD said a widely publicized estimate of 100,000 new units in the old draft was just a “guesstimate,” since the city hadn’t done a full zoning analysis at the time, and appears to have been low.

The number the city is hyping now—which, according to the city’s fact sheet represents a doubling of the city’s “overall housing capacity”—is 330,000—up to 330,000 new units that will be possible in the next 20 years thanks to this plan. That number is roughly 160,000 units above the city’s existing zoning capacity (the number of units that could currently be built throughout the city if all less-dense housing was razed and replaced). Because the city didn’t do a detailed zoning study of the March draft, that 160,000 may represent a significant increase over the last plan. Or it may not.

Overall, the new plan continues to embrace the city’s longstanding strategy—going back to the 1990s—of concentrating new apartments in a few dense areas (now known as “regional centers”—the densest—and “urban centers”) and along busy, polluted arterial roads, while minimizing density in traditional single-family neighborhoods. Beyond the bare minimum required by HB 1110, the changes (as urbanists, we’ll call them improvements) are fairly modest.

We’ll be digging deeper into the proposed zoning and legislative changes, described in more detail in this summary, as the city approaches its self-imposed December deadline.

Just one quick nitpick, because this drives us nuts (maybe this is how Bruce Harrell feels about graffiti!): The new plan to allow “corner stores” doesn’t merely continue to limit them to actual corner lots—an interpretation of the term so literal it borders on Kafkaesque. It also includes a new stipulation that these corner-based stores can’t be open before 7 or after 10pm, which basically defeats the purpose of allowing bodegas in the first place. A corner store that closes before 10 is almost legally bound to be a bougie “neighborhood market,” not a place to buy laundry detergent in the middle of the night. Seattle should stop calling itself a city if it won’t let us have actual corner stores.