The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) faces its first change in leadership in nearly a decade after Director Nathan Torgelson announced his planned resignation in an email to staff today. Torgelson said he was asked to leave by Mayor Bruce Harrell, and did not set an exact date for his departure.
“It is with mixed emotions that I announce that I will be leaving SDCI at some point within the next several months,” Torgelson wrote. “After discussions with the Mayor’s Office, we have come to the joint decision that it is time for new leadership in the department as the Mayor nears the end of his first term.”
Torgelson’s resignation email still shared Harrell’s signature “One Seattle” slogan and pledged his efforts to ensure a smooth transition.
“I am so proud of what we have accomplished over the last 9 years, and I am grateful for our dedicated and talented staff and our partnership with our elected officials and other city departments. One Seattle! Please know that I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition.”
Harrell’s press secretary Callie Craighead said the decision came after “careful discussion” with the mayor.
“This was a mutual decision between Mayor Harrell and Director Torgelson,” Craighead said. “We will launch a national search for a new director soon.”
The Mayor’s Office commended its departing director on his contributions to efforts to to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units (ADU) and to protect trees during redevelopment, via the City’s 2023 tree ordinance overhaul. That tree ordinance kicked up sharp backlash from several tree advocacy groups, who argued it didn’t go far enough for their taste, but the ordinance strengthened tree protections, all the same.
“We are grateful for Director Torgelson’s decades of service at the City and leadership at SDCI over the last 9 years – including important work with our administration like proposing legislation to increase production of ADUs, updating the tree protection ordinance, and creating stronger standards for vacant buildings – and wish him well in the future,” Craighead said.
Before his nine-year stint as SDCI head, Torgelson served as deputy director of the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) for almost two years. A lifelong civil servant, Torgelson was a senior advisor to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels from 2006 to 2009 — the majority of Nickels’ second term. Torgelson is the only director that has ever led a standalone SDCI, with Mayor Ed Murray splitting DPD into two departments in 2016 to better enable long-range planning in the city and let the city’s permitting department focus on day-to-day work.
Torgelson first got his start at the City of Seattle as a land use planner in 1990, climbing to Manager of Neighborhood and Community Development in the Office of Economic Development by 1997, according to his resume.
Criticisms of SDCI
Torgelson had weathered many storms over his long career. A 2023 audit of the department found ethical lapses as some SDCI permit reviewers gave preferential treatment to certain firms, took second jobs in the industry, and did not disclose conflicts of interest in all instances. However, councilmembers ultimately expressed faith in Torgelson and his ability to tighten up practices, with Councilmember Dan Strauss praising his performance.
However, pressure has been ramping up on SDCI as the agency has been increasingly seen as running a bureaucratic maze that is hostile to applicants looking to build in Seattle. Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson hosted a panel in February that allowed architects and development professionals to air their grievances and suggest improvements to a permitting system they portrayed as arcane and far from user-friendly.
“Council’s role as an oversight body requires that we take a look at the performance of our departments, and there was an audit in 2023 that surfaced some of these challenges and produced some recommendations,” Nelson told The Urbanist in February. “This [panel] is not directly related to that, but it is in line with the general theme, because there is tremendous value of bringing industry experts to the table and hearing their experience with the permitting system, the challenges and improvements that have been made, because it helps us as council, support continuous improvement.”
The Mayor’s spokesperson said Nelson’s criticism did not lead to Harrell’s personnel decision: “We can’t speak for [Council President] Nelson, and she does not make personnel decisions for departments under the Executive.”
That panel was focused on small businesses and homeowners looking to expand or remodel, but large-scale builders have also long raised issues with Seattle’s labyrinthine permitting and design review process. Facing pressure from above, SDCI launched a reform-minded stakeholder workgroup in 2020, but changes were initially slow in coming and incremental in nature. Some housing advocates and builders contended that SDCI slow-walked the process and sought to largely keep the status quo.
Finally, the Washington State Legislature intervened in 2023 with statewide reforms that required “clear, objective” design standards and restricted design review meetings at one, where previously three or four had been common for multifamily projects in Seattle. Seattle faces a deadline of June 30, 2025 to implement those design review reforms.
“Mayor Harrell is also looking to improve the permitting process and announced planned efforts in the State of the City address, including forming a new Permitting and Customer Service Team (PACT) and upcoming legislation on design review,” Craighead told The Urbanist.
Seattle faces permitting drought
All of this is happening at a delicate moment for construction activity. Seattle had a robust housing production year in 2024, with the City’s dashboard indicating more than 14,000 homes were completed. However, new permitting activity has plummeted, with the third down year in a row, which could indicate a steep downturn in homebuilding is ahead. While interest rate adjustments are on the horizon, the long-term impact of tariffs is likely to dampen construction activity for the foreseeable future.
Plus, instead of having a completed Seattle Comprehensive Plan to advance pro-housing zoning changes and stimulate homebuilding, the Harrell Administration is way behind schedule and facing the need to break up the plan and use an interim ordinance in order to deal with an appeal from neighborhood-based homeowner groups while still meeting a state deadline to implement middle housing reforms at the end of June.
Some reasons for Seattle’s permitting downturn are likely macroeconomic, such as slowing hiring in the tech industry, rising costs in materials and labor, and fears of a coming recession, and beyond SDCI’s control. However, builders have also alleged that the uncertainty and costly complexity of Seattle’s permitting system is driving them away and scaring off investors. And that is in SDCI’s control to a significant extent.
On the other hand, SDCI did not write Seattle’s massive land use code — that was the Seattle City Council; they only enforce it. And failure to do so, can lead to legal appeals from housing opponents. Moreover, SDCI can’t necessarily prevent Seattle Public Utilities or the Seattle Department of Transportation from seeking exorbitant extractions from builders or gumming up their projects with late demands. In other words, streamlining the permitting system and truly getting projects out the door quicker without saddling them with unexpected costs will take a cross-departmental effort with support from the mayor and city council.
The land use reforms implemented under the Harrell Administration have mostly been focused on helping an ailing downtown, from changing zoning along Third Avenue to proposing a design review moratorium downtown.
It’s not yet clear to what extent parting ways with Torgelson solves any of these problems, but it is perhaps an admission that such problems exist and a new approach is worth trying.
Torgelson’s successor will be tasked with streamlining permitting, improving customer service, and boosting building activity all while dealing with a shrinking staff. Mayor Harrell’s last budget slashed staffing at SDCI, which was attributed to the downturn in permitting activity, which provides the fees to fund SDCI positions. If the City’s growth plan and other reforms succeed in their stated aim of boosting housing starts, then the agency could quickly find itself severely understaffed and ill-prepared to keep up.
Hopefully, the next SDCI director is ready for a challenge.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.
