(The Center Square) – The Seattle City Council passed legislation that is intended to speed up the environmental review process so residential building developers can build housing in the downtown area faster.
The affected developers would be the ones that build residential buildings with up to 200 units and buildings with up to 30,000 square feet of non-residential space, if approved by Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell.
The legislation, sponsored by Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss, was created in conjunction with Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, which intends to make Downtown Seattle more residential.
“Our region depends on downtown Seattle’s success,” Strauss said in a statement following the bill’s passage out of the city council on June 20. “Passing this legislation reduces time and cost to transform our downtown core.”
Besides allowing qualified developers to skip the environmental review process, the bill also permanently relaxes limitations on the number of employees for a residential building and the type of customer visits. It also increases the number of allowed vehicles to no more than three per home occupation, which in turn, could increase the demand for street parking in the downtown area.
Occupied residential units in downtown Seattle continue to trend upwards. There were more than 56,000 occupied units in May, according to the Downtown Seattle Association’s Downtown Recovery Report. That is the highest ever recorded in that area.
Strauss said in the council meeting that a lot of downtown buildings served different purposes before the COVID-19 pandemic, but do not make sense anymore. If the revitalizations of the buildings were to occur without the legislation, Strauss added that they would have to go through the State Environmental Policy Act, “which means it takes more time and it’s more costly.”
The Seattle City Council passed the legislation unanimously with all nine councilmembers in favor.
“Fewer barriers to developing in the center city should spur exciting and creative projects,” Downtown Seattle Association President Jon Scholes said. “This bill addresses a concern we’ve heard from [Downtown Seattle Association] members for years and it comes at a pivotal time during downtown’s continued revitalization.”
