By Erica C. Barnett
Last August, Seattle’s Department of Planning and Community Development produced a draft update to the city’s Comprehensive Plan that would have allowed for significantly more density in more parts of the city, including single-family neighborhoods, than the final version Mayor Harrell released in March.
The never-released draft plan, which PubliCola obtained through a records requests, would have allowed more density near bus lines, more apartments in areas historically reserved for single-family houses, and more housing of all types in the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
The unreleased plan zeroed in on the city’s history of racist zoning restrictions, and left no question that wealthy, white Seattle residents continue to benefit from exclusionary policies today. Areas that once had explicit covenants banning Black residents “remain disproportionately white, restrictively zoned, and characterized by high-cost detached housing,” according to the original draft, thanks to “facially race-neutral standards like minimum lot size and prohibitions on multifamily housing — both of which remain in Seattle’s zoning today.”
Instead of releasing that plan, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office spent six months taking their red pens to the document—watering down the density requirements, removing provisions that would have allowed more housing in single-family neighborhoods (such as Laurelhurst, Wallingford, and east Queen Anne) and ensuring that the new comprehensive plan would preserve the status quo while just complying with a new state law designed to allow more density everywhere.
Here, for the first time, is a look at some of the changes Mayor Harrell’s office made to the plan that will guide how and where Seattle grows over the next 20 years. The comp plan is an important document: It sets goals for the coming decades and establishes policies to make them happen; these policies become the framework for future decisions about zoning, land use, greenhouse gas reductions, and much more.
The most obvious and high-impact changes to the plan are reductions in the amount of density the city will allow in every neighborhood, especially historically single-family areas. Many of the reductions in density are fairly subtle, but the first one is glaring: The August version of the plan would have created a new land use designation called “corridors,” where buildings of up to five stories would “generally” be allowed, although “higher heights may be appropriate in areas of mixed-use zoning or other focal points.”
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Urbanists (including PubliCola) have raised issues with the idea that apartments should be restricted to big, busy arterials. But that isn’t an argument against tall apartment buildings on streets with bus routes; it’s an argument for denser housing throughout the city.
The proposal the city released in March completely eliminates the corridor designation, taking large swaths of land surrounding streets like Sand Point Way, Ravenna Ave. NE, and East Madison Street off the table for density. According to a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development, Seferiana Day, “the Mayor’s Office considered the corridor option but ultimately decided not to include it as part of its Draft Plan as the other zoning changes contemplated in the Draft Plan can readily accommodate any amount of future growth that does occur.”
According to Day, the city has not calculated how many new apartments and other types of housing including the corridors would have added to the plan.
“[T]his seems to be calling for more housing well beyond what is needed based on projections,” Harrell’s staffer commented. A long-range planner with OPCD responded, “Yes, that is intentional. We have not kept up with past job growth and want to ensure there is a buffer of housing capacity in anticipation of potential future housing demand exceeding the adopted projections (which were low-ball last update).”
For decades, there has been a tension in Seattle between “accommodating” the number of people who are expected to move here—by allowing enough additional housing for a theoretical maximum number of new people—and providing an abundance of options for everyone already living here as well as those who will move here in the future. The comprehensive plan draft the city release in March takes the former approach, creating “capacity” for about 100,000 new homes over a period when at least 200,000 new people are expected to move into a city already facing a critical housing shortage.
Notes between city staff on a draft of the plan show that there was internal debate on this point, and that the mayor’s office prevailed. In one copy of the draft that included staff notes, a staffer for the mayor’s office questioned the plan’s original recommendation to “Plan for expected growth over the next 20 years while also providing additional housing capacity to enable the city to respond to existing unmet needs and potential demand from future employment growth.”
“[T]his seems to be calling for more housing well beyond what is needed based on projections,” Harrell’s staffer commented. A long-range planner with OPCD responded, “Yes, that is intentional. We have not kept up with past job growth and want to ensure there is a buffer of housing capacity in anticipation of potential future housing demand exceeding the adopted projections (which were low-ball last update).” Continue reading “Mayor’s Office Edited Ambitious Growth Plan for Seattle to Preserve the Status Quo”