By a 8-1 vote Tuesday, the Seattle City Council approved a tweak to the city’s Living Building Pilot program that will allow a long-stalled 182-unit residential tower in Belltown to finally move forward. The change clarifies that the density bonuses included in the Living Building Pilot Program to incentivize the inclusion of sustainability features can be combined with other density bonuses included in city code, no matter the lot size. Without participating in the pilot program, downtown residential towers can climb above 145 feet only if the lot size exceeds 19,000 square feet.
The tower at 2616 Western Avenue, planned on a 14,400 square foot lot, is set to include two- and three-bedroom units, which are fairly scarce throughout downtown. Developer Saratoga Capital combined the 10-foot height bonus for including three-bedroom units with the 25-foot bonus from the Living Building Challenge, but was met with an appeal from a group of nearby residents calling itself the “Belltown Livability Coalition.”
The appeal came after approval of the project by the Downtown Design Review Board. Appellants argued that because the lot was smaller than 19,000 feet, the building couldn’t be allowed to reach 19 stories under current code.
The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) has argued that the policy was always intended to allow stacking of incentives, but city code was not clear on this point, and Seattle’s Hearing Examiner agreed with the appellants.
“The legislative body set the minimum lot size at 19,000 square feet for buildings over 145 feet. Regardless of policy reasonableness, only the City Council has authority to enact code,” Deputy Hearing Examiner Susan Drummond wrote early this year.
When SDCI proposed the code fix to clarify the program, the same group filed another appeal this fall, arguing that taller buildings in Downtown would, among other impacts, produce “increasing bird strike injuries and death.”
The change approved this week clarifies that the Living Building Pilot program is not beholden to the 19,000 minimum lot size requirements, but the overall future of the program is less clear. The “pilot” program has existed since 2010, though relatively few builders, especially in the residential sector, have participated for much of the program’s history. The 2616 Western Avenue tower will be the 15th project to utilize the pilot since its inception, and it’s set to expire when an upper limit of 20 projects is reached, or in the year 2030, whichever comes first.
The issue might still be mired in appeals, if not for Senate Bill 5818, which the legislature approved in 2022. SB 5818 limits appeals against proposals intended to increase residential building capacity, a move which meant that Seattle’s Hearing Examiner had no ability to consider the Belltown Livability Coalition’s appeal of the code fix at all.
In response to apparent community concerns around the ability to combine incentives to exceed existing height limits, District 7 Councilmember Bob Kettle introduced a last-minute amendment Tuesday that asks the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development to present a report on the “stacking of height incentives and their impact in various zones” by the end of next year. Kettle represents downtown, along with Queen Anne and a portion of Magnolia.
District 5 Councilmember Cathy Moore, the only vote against the code update, also introduced two of her own last-minute amendments. Moore quicky withdrew one amendment, which had been briefly posted to the City’s website but then subsequently removed, would have capped buildings using the Living Building Pilot at 180 feet, allowing no future buildings to go higher than Saratoga’s Belltown tower. As Seattle’s northernmost council district, D5 is the farthest from downtown geographically.
Moore’s second amendment would have had the code tweak approved this week expire at the end of 2025, going back to the status quo after a year. Moore repeatedly referred to 2616 Western Avenue as being “exempted” from the Living Building Pilot when that is not the case. She pushed for a more “holistic” approach to density incentives.
“We heard a lot of feedback from residents in Belltown about this legislation, a lot of concerns expressed about the unintended consequences of this legislation,” Moore said. “This legislation is really addressed to serve one property, which — I’m fully supportive of the Living Building program — but it was really as a way to allow that property to proceed, but it is going to open the doors to this for other properties, some of which are on even smaller, like 7,000 square feet versus 14,000… I have concerns about it being open-ended.”
Former land use committee chair Dan Strauss pushed back most strongly on the idea that any project was being somehow given special treatment.
“When the incentives were passed, stacking was assumed. That was an assumption made by the councilmembers. That was an assumption made and understood by many members of public,” Strauss said. “And the project before us had some adversaries, using the appeal process to find clarity with that. And what I knew in September is the same thing that I know today, that when these incentives were originally passed, stacking was assumed.”
In the end, only Moore and Councilmember Rob Saka supported the sunset provision, and it failed.
This isn’t the first time that Moore has pushed back against reducing red tape for projects downtown. This summer, she cast the only vote against a bill exempting residential, hotel, and life science projects throughout downtown from design review for three years, calling the approach “hodgepodge.” Earlier this year, she expressed skepticism of the idea that density increases housing affordability, pushing back on the King County Affordable Housing Committee’s recommendations around the proposed One Seattle growth plan.
Overall, there was broad support for the Living Building Pilot program Tuesday, as evidenced by the near-unanimous vote. Given its clear limit, with only a few projects left, that fact is not surprising, but councilmembers also expressed interest in figuring out the long-term future of sustainability-based density bonuses in Seattle.
“This has got to be one of the longest pilot programs that I’ve ever heard of. I remember it was called the pilot program when the Brooks [Running] building was being deliberated, and it was a pilot program when the Bullitt building was being built and celebrated on Capitol Hill,” Council President Sara Nelson said. “I am looking forward to seeing the culmination of this pilot and being able to really discuss what happens next to it.”
“The truth is, it just makes sense to build taller buildings in our urban core, even in downtown residential and that’s what this project is is trying to achieve,” Councilmember Tammy Morales said. “I think it’s important for people who choose to live downtown to realize that the city is changing. We’re growing, and our need for housing will continue to grow and continue to increase as well. So I do think that in order to create a vibrant neighborhood downtown, we need more people living there.”
Ryan Packer lives in the Summit Slope neighborhood of Capitol Hill and has been writing for the The Urbanist since 2015. They report on multimodal transportation issues, #VisionZero, preservation, and local politics. They believe in using Seattle's history to help attain the vibrant, diverse city that we all wish to inhabit. Ryan's writing has appeared in Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Bike Portland, and Seattle Bike Blog, where they also did a four-month stint as temporary editor.