The post Sunday Video: Is Mass Timber Revolutionizing Midrise and Highrise Design? first appeared on The Urbanist.

Problems with excessive water hook-up costs stubbornly remain and Breske and other professionals in the building industry have argued the City’s recent water-main cost-sharing proposal does not go far enough and would continue to exact fees that go beyond what is legally allowed in state law. Breske contends Seattle needs a systemwide plan to upgrade water mains that is not dependent on gouging builders.

The post Sunday Video: Seattle’s Water Hook-up Fees Are Stunting Homebuilding first appeared on The Urbanist.

Clark/Barnes architects are working with the owners of the Doyle Building, a four-story landmarked building dating from 1920, and are looking to give the building a big upgrade that addresses the realities of high vacancy levels in downtown offices. Their proposal would take advantage of a suite of newly approved state and city policies approved with the express purpose of making it easier to build housing.

Architects propose retaining the facade of the existing structure and adding 12 additional floors of new construction on top. That new addition would consist of mass timber, allowing a smaller foundation and less weight on the historic building below.

If executed, the project would represent a remarkable confluence of housing reforms across multiple levels of government from recent years. Located downtown, it’s exempt from both design review requirements and review under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). By converting office use to residential, it would be eligible to take advantage of new sales and use tax exemptions recently implemented at the city level, following a change in state law.

Finally, it could be one of the first projects in the state to take advantage of newly approved House Bill 1183, which prohibits cities from requiring upper-level setbacks when mass timber construction is involved, allowing the project to maximize the number of units built — though it’s notable that as smaller tower in downtown, setbacks and facade modulation wouldn’t normally be required for this project.

But the city’s landmarks preservation board still needs to sign off on major changes to the Doyle building. At an initial briefing Wednesday, board members were open to a new chapter for the building, even as they wanted to see more details on how this change would be implemented. Most of the opposition to the project came from members of the public, including a large faction of condo owners from 1521 Second Avenue, right next door.

“[T]he proposal is advanced in bad faith, lacking the transparency and good intentions expected in matters of historic preservation. It is aesthetically inconsistent with the purposes of Seattle’s preservation laws, which aim to maintain the architectural integrity and historical character of our city’s landmarks,” neighbors Timothy and Joanie Kosnoff wrote the board. “Approving this project would set a terrible precedent for other historic preservation building owners and prospective owners, potentially encouraging similar disregard for preservation standards.”

Another recurring theme in the early public comment on this project is that downtown doesn’t need more housing — at least not market-rate housing.

“Building more-of-the-same is not the answer for an economic chain reaction caused by overbuilding. This proposal is for market rate housing,” Ruth Danner, President of Savethemarketentrance.org, which was created to block a proposal to build a new hotel nearby at First Avenue and Pike Street, wrote in a letter to the board. “Seattle does not need more market rate housing. This proposal just knocks over another domino that will force another and another to fall. This proposal disregards the ability of the neighborhood to absorb its mass.”

As proposed, converting the Doyle Building to residential use would generate nearly $2 million in funding for subsidized affordable housing, via the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program. Apart from the benefits that come from more residences downtown — including more eyes on the street to deter crime and foot traffic — more homes downtown reduce pressures on existing housing stock in the neighborhood and the broader city.

Historic Seattle, one of the city’s most influential historic preservation advocacy organizations, opposed the proposal in a letter earlier this week that veered considerably from its core mission of preservation, citing impacts on the nearby vegetable garden.

“While they are proposing to repair, restore, or replace in-kind character-defining features on the two primary facades (east and north), they are ignoring the fact that a 12-story addition would have an adverse impact to the landmark,” Eugenia Woo, Historic Seattle’s Director of Preservation Services, wrote the board. “The addition is out-of-scale and incompatible with the landmark building. It treats the landmark building as a four-story base for the new tower, completely upending the original and historic proportions of the landmark.”

There’s plenty of precedent in Seattle for landmark structures being supplemented with new structures, including nearby in downtown with a seven-story addition to the 1913 Federal Reserve Bank building completed in 2020.

None of the interior spaces in the Doyle building are landmarked, so the big question is whether the new addition conforms with the original intent to landmark the exterior. While certainly open to the proposal, the primary concerns raised by landmarks board members related to the scale of the addition versus the original building.

“For me, what it comes down to is: it does, as some people have noted already, does seem to overwhelm the landmark,” board member Matt Inpanbutr said.

“I think that’s the primary issue, so that it doesn’t dominate the building below,” board member Katie Randall said. “I think it really comes down to: is it going to feel top-heavy in a way that it’s floating above the existing building below.”

“I’m intrigued by how this structurally interacts with the building, the historic property […] I’m still always uncomfortable with large towers really being attached to the top of historic buildings,” board chair Ian Macleod said. “I’d love to hear more about how this develops, but I think what I would like more, perhaps, is alternate proposals for this.”

Design review boards of all stripes do usually see multiple options to decide which is more palatable, but the architects presenting here were clear that the constraints that come from constructing the addition of mass timber mean that this really is the only configuration that makes financial sense for the site.

“To be perfectly frank, if we are forced to set the addition back, that will basically mean that we can’t do the project, simply because it will not be suitable for residential use and also would not be financially viable,” Scott Clark of Clark/Barnes told the board. In other words, if the landmarks board and the architects reach an impasse, there may not be a direct path forward.

The project remains in early stages, but it’s clear that the fight over the Doyle Building could shape up to be one of the most contentious fights over a housing project downtown in many years, joining the ranks of the Escala tower-spacing debate or the fight over 2616 Western Avenue.

The post Downtown Mass-Timber Tower Project Meets Resistance at Seattle Landmark Board first appeared on The Urbanist.

Seattle has long been kicking around design review reforms and hosted a stakeholder process on the idea, but citywide legislation has been slow in coming and exactly how Seattle would put those ideas into action was still up in the air, as The Urbanist reported last summer.

State lawmakers appeared to notice the lack of momentum. In 2023, the Washington State Legislature passed a law (House Bill 1293) capping the number of design review meetings per development project at one and requiring that design standards by “clear and objective.” Seattle faces a July 1, 2025 deadline to comply.

The law set a deadline of six months after the local jurisdiction’s next Comprehensive Plan update to be in compliance with that standard. Seattle missed its end-of-2024 deadline to pass its Comprehensive Plan update, with Harrell Administration infighting that watered down a bolder proposal from the City planning department appearing to be responsible for much of that delay. Major updates to the Comprehensive Plan occur once per decade and lay out City plans for growth in housing, jobs, and infrastructure, acting as a precursor to zoning legislation.

Even with Seattle’s tardy Comprehensive Plan delivery, the design review reform requirements still kick in six months after the missed deadline — hence, the need for interim legislation to meet mandates for design review reform and citywide middle housing. The state middle housing requirement also came out of the 2023 session, via House Bill 1110, which pushes large cities to allow fourplexes citywide and sixplexes near major transit.

Harrell did transmit his “Final Mayor’s Recommended One Seattle Plan” to the City Council recently in May, but it typically takes several months for Council to review, amend, and approve that plan, not to mention host their own public outreach processes.

While Harrell’s urgency around passing his One Seattle Comprehensive Plan hasn’t appeared particularly strong, he has noted an urgency to build housing and eliminate the unnecessary delays that builders encounter.

“Seattle needs more housing — and we’re taking critical steps that build on the success of current initiatives to get that housing across our city more quickly,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement. “These changes will modernize our Design Review process to focus the permitting process on what matters most — safe buildings that meet community needs — while eliminating unnecessary delays.”

The Mayor’s Office said that the “proposed reforms are expected to reduce the number of projects subject to Design Review by up to 40% in an average year, which would decrease permitting time for most new housing projects by one to two years.” Projects newly exempt from design review “would save an average of four to nine months in the permitting process thanks to a simplified process,” the mayor has pledged. “Life-safety and technical code reviews would remain in place for all projects through the existing construction permitting process.”

Support from builders and housing advocates

A coalition of builders and pro-housing advocates called Seattle for Everyone has long pushed for the design review reforms. Seattle for Everyone coordinator Brady Nordstrom issued a statement backing the mayor’s legislation.

“Seattle’s Design Review process plays a role in housing affordability, production, and access. While recent good-faith efforts have been made to improve the process in Seattle, more work is needed to ensure that it supports the creation of urgently needed homes. Seattle cannot control all the factors contributing to rising housing costs, but we can control how we permit and review new housing,” Nordstrom said. “That’s why we are thrilled about Seattle’s active efforts to implement the requirements of HB 1293 alongside key stakeholder and public input. This reform effort represents a major opportunity to make the system work better for everyone — by increasing clarity, reducing unnecessary barriers, and prioritizing homes in more places for more people.”

Seattle for Everyone has previously highlighted complex housing projects often faced a high number of review meetings, slowing down their permitting. Builders often started with the assumption of three design review meetings, but some projects were brought back for additional meetings if design board members were not satisfied — sometimes citing subjective tastes rather than clear design standards.

Design review has contributed to a challenging permitting process that took more than two years on average, from 2010 to 2020.

“In our experience, design review requirements and durations have wildly varied across projects, and meaningful reforms will help get housing built faster in Seattle,” said Raymond Connell, managing director at Holland Partner Group. In October 2024, Holland broke ground on a 45-story downtown highrise that claimed to be the first residential tower groundbreaking of the year on the West Coast, given a regional slowdown in tower-building activity.

At times, builders and housing advocates have criticized the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) for resisting or slowwalking reform efforts. This time around, Nathan Torgelson, the long-time SDCI director who recently announced his departure with prodding from the mayor, voiced his backing for the reform.

“With these Design Review program reforms, we’re improving transparency, honoring community voices, and saving months — sometimes years — in the permitting process,” Torgelson said in a statement. “It’s a leaner but refined program that helps us build the housing our city desperately needs.”

The Master Builder’s Association of King and Snohomish Counties has backed the mayor’s reforms, with the group’s spokesperson Parker Dawson noting that streamlining design review dovetailing nicely with middle housing reforms.

“These reforms are especially important for small homebuilders constructing middle housing — projects that are crucial to addressing our region’s housing shortage,” Dawson said in a statement. “By simplifying the design review process and removing costly delays, Seattle is making it more feasible for local builders to deliver the ‘missing middle’ homes that serve working families.”

Design review overhaul features

The Mayor’s press release touted that the interim and upcoming permanent proposals would provide the following improvements:

• “Extend successful exemption for affordable housing. The interim ordinance would extend by six months a Design Review exemption set to expire in August 2025 for projects that meet Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) requirements through onsite affordable units. During the two-year exemption pilot, proposed onsite housing units more than doubled compared to all prior years of the MHA program. Building on this success, the legislative proposal coming later this summer would make this exemption permanent.”
• Increase the threshold for exempting projects from design review. “The review threshold would increase to buildings with 150+ housing units or 20,000+ square feet of commercial space. Smaller projects would be exempt, as well as projects located outside Urban Centers or Regional Growth Centers, and projects subject to other review boards, such as the Landmark Preservation Board.”
• Clarify and simplify guidelines. The mayor pledges to pare down design guidelines to meet the state’s “clear and objective” standard: “Permanent Design Review guidelines would be easier to understand and focus exclusively on elements of the building’s exterior.”
• Consolidate local design review boards to one citywide board. “The eight geographically focused boards would be replaced by one citywide board of 14 members who have expertise in design, development, and equity. Projects planned within established equity areas would use board members from the local community within the pool of 14. This change aims to simplify the program, make it more consistent, and improve representation for historically underserved communities.”
• A new administrative route to design review departures. Currently, builders must pitch departures from design standards to design review boards, often in exchange for added public benefits. Harrell pledges such flexibility will continue: “Departures from design standards, such as increased height or floor area, may be allowed for projects that add public benefits like meeting equity goals or enhancing street-level design. Projects exempt from Design Review would also benefit from similar flexibility through an administrative process.”

Design review departures may ultimately be the reason that some projects opt into a design review meeting during the moratorium, since departures may allow for more efficient or elegant designs than the City’s often clunky land use code allows.

The Mayor’s Office noted that the reform package would not impact his three-year downtown design review holiday he proposed and Council passed in 2024, as part of his Downtown Activation Plan (DAP). That downtown-only pilot program will continue until November 2, 2027.

Arguably, the City could have accelerated its citywide design review effort by skipping the piece-meal approach that portioned off a downtown exemption while the rest of the city waited. However, Harrell argued that the downtown design review holiday was an important feature of his activation plan, which focused on boosting economic activity downtown following pandemic hits to office occupancy and brick-and-mortar business activity.

Heading to Council

The mayor’s team said it will submit interim legislation to City Council following the State Environmental Policy Act review process, which “began on June 9 and is expected to conclude on June 26.” That leaves a tight and likely impossible to timeline to pass the legislation in June as stipulated in state law, but passage could happen in July.

The reception at City Council may be mixed, with Councilmember Mark Solomon and Council President Sara Nelson signaling support for permit streamlining, but others like soon-to-resign Cathy Moore (District 5) expressing skepticism of builder-friendly policies.

“Safe, well-designed buildings are key to building safe neighborhoods,” Solomon said in a statement. “By streamlining the design review process and focusing on clear, objective guidelines — especially those that improve how buildings interact with public spaces — we’re making sure that safety, accessibility, and visibility remain top priorities as our city grows.”

It seems likely the mayor can whip up the votes, but Moore staging a last stand to weaken his policy in her last days isn’t out of the realm of possibility either. Of course, Moore’s planned July 7 departure could end up removing an obstacle.

The post Harrell Proposes Design Review Moratorium, Interim Legislation Complying with State Mandate first appeared on The Urbanist.

In 1973, Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman tasked the Building Code Advisory Board with examining how the city’s building code could be modified to “encourage in-city living, redevelopment, and new construction.” Focused on reversing the city’s population decline and making city living more desirable, the Building Code Advisory Board’s recommendations were adopted into the 1977 Seattle building code and allowed apartment buildings taller than three stories to be served by a single staircase. 

It didn’t take long for the code amendments to deliver results, as in 1978, the Pike and Virginia Building overlooking Pike Place Market became Seattle’s first taller single-stair multifamily building. Seattle’s single-stair code evolved over the decades, solidifying at a six-story maximum that almost 50 years later has become the reference point for statewide changes (2023’s SB 5491) and housing advocacy in other cities, states, and provinces across North America.

In 2009, a Seattle Planning Commission study on potential zoning changes to the city’s highrise (HR) zone started to highlight some of the building code restrictions that make Seattle highrises large, expensive, and challenging to build outside of Downtown and U District. Noted in the study was the finding that Vancouver B.C.’s and greater British Columbia’s ability to build more desirable highrise multifamily buildings for a reasonable construction cost is heavily influenced by their building code’s allowance for scissor-stair configurations and that without significant changes to Seattle’s codes we will not see similarly affordable to build highrise housing.

Lastly, in 2018, Seattle amended the building code to allow six floors of wood construction over a two-story concrete base. This change happened because architects and developers alerted city officials that they would be unable to fully maximize the new 85-foot multifamily zones that came out of the 2015 Comprehensive Plan and the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) updates.

This brief history lesson leads to the now, where the city once again has an opportunity to improve building codes for better multifamily housing. Building on the growing body of research related to housing supply barriers caused by building codes and referencing housing goals and policies in the One Seattle draft plan, I have identified a series of building code changes that would provide desirable and more accessible multifamily housing at a more reasonable construction cost than most current multifamily development in Seattle.

Although they may be busy, city officials should be familiar with the identified code amendments and the housing options they can provide because the Seattle 2024 building code update cycle is starting in 2025 (yes, this is behind as well, but it is not the city’s or the state’s fault on this issue). Whereas, the most significant zoning changes in the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan — the zoning changes to neighborhood centers, transit corridors, urban centers, and regional centers — are set to occur between 2026 and 2028.

Given that the 2024 building code update likely won’t happen until late 2026 and the following 2027 building code cycle won’t conclude until late 2028/early 2029. Not taking advantage of the current opportunity to improve Seattle’s building codes could hinder the phase 2 and 3 zoning code updates ability to maximize new housing development and achieve housing goals or lead to a similar situation that happened during the last Comprehensive Plan update where zoning updates are misaligned with the building code.

Therefore, the city should plan ahead and consider adopting the series of building code changes proposed in the research report I published earlier this year. The report covers in more detail the actual suggested code language changes and which changes support goals and policies in the draft One Seattle plan. The proposed code changes can be summarized as:

Taller Single-stair Buildings:

1. At minimum, increase the allowed number of stories for single-stair buildings from six to eight stories.
2. Remove the current limit of two single-stair buildings allowed to be built on a lot. Let lot constraints, zoning code, and design decisions dictate how many fit on a lot.
3. Allow up to 15-story tall single-stair buildings under higher safety parameters such as being constructed with at least three-hour rated fire resistance material. 

Scissor Stairs:

1. Allow scissor stairs for residential buildings.
2. Allow scissor stairs for small commercial and office buildings that are six stories or less.

Right-sizing Elevators:

1. Adopt ISO 8100 as an equal elevator safety code option for elevator and conveyance compliance.
2. Lower the minimum elevator car size for buildings that don’t require an elevator to 43 inches by 55 inches (1092 mm by 1397 mm).
3. Lower the minimum elevator car size for required wheelchair full turn radius accessible elevators to 52 inches by 63 inches (1321 mm by 1600 mm).
4. Lower the minimum elevator car size for ambulance accommodated and wheelchair full turn radius accessible elevators to 52 inches by 84 inches (1321 mm by 2134 mm).
5. Lower the minimum elevator car size for ambulance stretcher accommodated elevators to 43 inches by 84 inches (1092 mm by 2134 mm).

Taller Single-stair Buildings

Single-stair buildings or point access block buildings are buildings that are designed with a single staircase and often with a single elevator core. Single-stair buildings are a common design of multifamily housing in most other high-income countries across the world. Many such countries allow single-stair buildings taller than the six stories allowed in Seattle. The benefits single-stair buildings bring to the people living in them and the overall housing market include:

• A greater diversity in unit sizes, which can support a greater number of family-sized units
• Homes that can cross-ventilate by having open windows on at least two sides of the unit
• Sun and light on multiple sides of the unit
• Increases small lot development and reduces need for costly lot assembly
• Increased building compactness or thinner buildings that are less “imposing” and leave more open space for residents

The recommended changes would allow single-stair buildings to be a viable development option in the city’s midrise zones, which draft documents suggest could be a more prominent zone in the city. For example, eight-story midrise buildings in Seattle typically have two stories of concrete and six stories of wood on top due to the 2018 building code amendments. Seattle also allows mass timber construction level C (Construction Type IV C), a max height of 85 feet, and eight stories for residential development.

Raising the max height of a single-stair building to eight stories aligns with several building construction type methods that allow builders the option to maximize allowed heights in a cost-effective manner. Similarly, raising the single-stair height allowance to 15 stories would align with mass timber level B (Construction Type IV B) or concrete construction. Therefore, allowing phase 3 of the One Seattle Plan to consider zoning changes that would enable 12–15-story apartment buildings in urban and regional centers in areas near light rail stations. Such areas may not be feasible for the large 10,000+ square foot building footprint highrises in Downtown or U District but are very likely to be feasible for the 2,000–4,000 square foot building footprint highrise that would be allowed under the building code changes.

Also, other countries that allow taller single-stair buildings do not limit the number allowed per lot. By limiting the number of single-stair buildings on a lot, one essentially guarantees that development on large sites such as old parking lots or old transit construction parcels near light rail stations will be larger bulky buildings that always have a larger percentage of studios and one-bedrooms and large, expensive commercial spaces.

Scissor Stairs

Scissor-stairs are a two-stairway configuration that includes two interlocking stairways that provide two separate exits located within one enclosed fire-protected stairwell. The stairways in a scissor-stair configuration never cross or intermingle with one another because there is a fire-rated wall separating the stairways. The highrise condo and apartment buildings popular in Vancouver, British Columbia’s (B.C.) downtown, and broader B.C.’s Transit Oriented Development and city centers are often designed with scissor stairs.

Scissor stairs allow for less space dedicated to stairs, hallways, and elevators in a building and more space for living space. This allows for the entire building to be skinnier or more compact than the buildings we typically build in Seattle, which saves on the amount of land needed to construct the building and the overall construction cost because one is constructing a smaller building.

For comparison, building footprints of residential highrises in Vancouver generally range between 6,000 and 7,000 square feet. Whereas in Seattle, residential highrise development typically has building footprints between 10,000 and 11,000 square feet. Even when trying to compare a similar-sized development in Vancouver (i.e., Telus garden) to a Seattle development (i.e., 8th & Columbia), the Vancouver development with scissor-stairs has 2.5% or 225 to 275 square feet more leasable building area per floor than the Seattle development with spatially remote stairwells. That may not seem like much of a difference, but 70 to 100 square feet can mean an additional bedroom or private outdoor deck space for several units per floor.

As part of Phase 3 of the One Seattle Plan, Seattle will likely consider allowing more residential highrises in regional centers and near new light rail stations to achieve housing, transportation, and climate goals. In Vancouver and other cities worldwide, residential highrises are a great housing form for dense housing that supports family-sized units near transit and other desirable locations. Having codes that allow for such structures to be compact and thin makes them more feasible while also increasing the separation between adjacent structures, which provides better views, enhances interior lighting, and provides for more ground-level open space.

Right-sizing Elevators

As the Center for Building in North America points out, the United States has the fewest elevators per capita of any other high-income country, with three elevators per 1,000 people. Other countries like Greece have 41 elevators per 1,000 people, Switzerland has 27 elevators per 1,000 people, and South Korea has 15 elevators per 1,000 people. This shortage of elevators is caused by codes and regulations that force elevator cars to be at least twice the size of elevator cars in Western Europe, which leads to the installation of new elevators costing at least three times as much as they cost in Western Europe and East Asia.

The cost of American elevator installation and the extra leasable space American elevators take up means developers really only add elevators in taller mid-rise and high-rise residential developments that serve more units (the general rule is at least 40 to 50 units). Functionally, the size and cost of American elevators, together with other regulatory and market forces, pushes housing developers to build townhouses instead of flats or small apartment buildings in low-rise multifamily zones and reduces the amount of accessible housing available.

Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Center for Building in North America, said it best during the Senate housing committee public hearing for SB 5156. “There are practically no new walk up apartment buildings in Western Europe, while they are still common in the United States and in Washington State. It’s not good for disabled people. It’s not good for elderly people. It’s not good for parents of young children. It’s not good for first responders. The situation is unbecoming of a country as wealthy as we are.”

The recommendations would right-size elevator sizes specifically for smaller multifamily projects with six to 30 units, increasing accessibility in new multifamily buildings. The smallest elevator size draws inspiration from the typical dimensions of elevators in Europe. The medium elevator size draws inspiration from the typical dimensions of elevators in South Korea, which, while being smaller than US elevators, still typically allows enough room for wheelchairs to turn 180 degrees inside the elevator. The largest elevator size is a hybrid between European and South Korean elevators that can accommodate a fully flat stretcher, which maintains a requirement of American elevator codes.

Questions around safety and whether these changes are safe are bound to come up. The report and citations cover some of the safety concerns in more detail. However, people should also ask themselves whether it is really believable that people in other high-income countries live in deadly, dangerous, death-trap buildings? Was the hotel or short-term rental you, a family member, or a friend stayed in when visiting internationally structurally dangerous, and you were just lucky to return home alive? Would these countries’ people let their governments not do anything to improve building safety if this were a genuine concern?

People in cities across the world live full, satisfying, and safe lives in part because their building codes allow these housing options to be abundant in their housing market. Also, Seattle is a rich city in the richest nation in the world. The idea that countries and cities not as wealthy as us can build at scale safe, desirable, taller buildings with a single stair, scissor stair, or smaller elevators, but we, Seattle, can’t do so, just doesn’t hold up.

Seattle, again, has the opportunity to innovate and encourage new construction, higher-quality city living, and accessible housing. I hope we choose to act sooner rather than later.

Enjoy a sampling of housing we’re missing out on

This article is a cross-post that first appeared on Markus Johnson’s Medium page.

The post Op-Ed: Building Code Changes to Promote Better Multifamily Housing in Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

The term “missing middle” is a label describing the lack of new housing being built between detached houses and five story apartment blocks. Once the mainstay of new housing, these smaller multifamily buildings have been legislated out of existence due to zoning restrictions, building regulations and financing practices.  

Instead of growing housing within, Seattle pushed new homes out to surrounding suburban sprawl while downzoning our city and mandating single-family homes as the only construction option for 85% of our neighborhood land over the next 75 years. For the rest of the city, stacked flats were legal, but didn’t make sense with Seattle’s Urban Centers & Urban Villages planning concept, where housing supply was delivered in larger quantities by large apartment buildings through lot assembly.

Despite “missing” from modern planning, these beloved stacked flats hide in plain sight as fugitives of modern codes. They are part of the fabric of every Seattle neighborhood. They offer housing on a single level and with windows on two or three sides, good for people who want daylight, natural ventilation, prefer more space and don’t want to navigate a stair as often as townhomes require. Luckily, recent state laws have legalized them beyond slivers of “low-rise” zoned land, allowing them broadly citywide once again.

House Bill 1110, passed in 2023, re-legalized these four-, five- and six-unit projects statewide in all areas zoned for single family detached residential homes. Progressive leaders recognized that it was a mistake to prohibit these missing middle housing options and saw them as a solution for adding housing supply, a crucial part of affordability. 

Legalization was the first step, but stacked flats still face numerous hurdles that prevent them from being built. These are hurdles that add enormous amounts of cost and complexity to this solution, resulting in this “legalized” housing model still missing from new supply. 

Five key hurdles remain that must be overcome in order to make stacked flats viable:

State Level Hurdles:

1.     Falling under Commercial Building Code vs Residential Building Code

2.     Falling under Commercial Energy Code vs Residential Energy Code

3.     Condominium definitions and liability risk

City Level Hurdles:

4.     Seattle’s stacked flat bonus falls flat

5.     Piled on infrastructure costs, affordability taxes, and permitting barriers

State codes stand in the way

1.     Commercial Building Code vs Residential Building Code

Residential buildings are currently governed by one of two codes. One is the International Residential Code (IRC)—typically reserved for single family housing, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), duplexes, and townhomes, and the other is the International Building Code (IBC)—reserved for everything else, typically for much larger buildings. The IBC requires expensive building upgrades that the IRC does not require. Unfortunately for stacked flats, they fall into the IBC, saddling a small six-unit building with many of the features and costs of a 400-unit full-block apartment building. 

When built as three-story townhomes, these homes fall under the IRC, saving a lot of money, which is why you will see six townhomes built before you see six stacked with the same building area. To get ahead of this, Washington passed House Bill 2071 into law last year requiring missing middle housing to use the IRC. 

However, the devil is in the details. Currently, the State Building Code Council (SBCC) is considering how to amend the state’s IRC to accommodate stacked flats. Amendments are proposed through the Technical Advisory Group. House Bill 2071 created this subcommittee, at the request of AIA Seattle’s Housing Task Force, with the specific intent of lowering costs for missing middle housing. This Technical Advisory Group has two proposed amendments to consider. 

One proposed amendment is from the Washington Building Officials (WABO) — a professional organization of code reviewers and building inspectors across the state — requesting the IRC to reference sections of the IBC for missing middle housing. The proposal was submitted by a building official in Seattle. WABO’s proposal circumvents state law and would add over-engineered solutions and added costs killing these projects across the state.

If the SBCC accepts WABO’s amendment, new flats will have to comply with the IBC and provide robust fire sprinkler systems, more complex wall assemblies, expensive fire alarm systems, water pressure booster pumps, and other utility upgrades. IBC requires more detailed mechanical and plumbing reviews which translate to longer permitting review times and higher soft costs. None of these items are required in single-family homes or townhomes because the IRC recognizes that small-scale buildings with relatively few occupants are inherently less hazardous. 

By imposing these IBC regulations on stacked flats, the cost per unit exceeds that of a townhouse, making stacked flats more expensive to build despite providing the same number of homes, occupants and built area. Very few developers will accept the additional cost, complexity and risk of stacked flats, when they could build townhomes under IRC instead.

The other proposed amendment is from housing advocate and planner Markus Johnson, which would keep these buildings entirely in the IRC without IBC code references. The amendment would treat a six-unit stacked flat similar to a six-pack of townhomes, recognizing the stacked flat is no different in size, scale and occupancy of six townhomes. This gives stacked flats the same chance at being built economically as townhomes and gives the developer a choice. Markus’s amendment would align with state law in lieu of the WABO proposal which circumvents the law by adding IBC code references into the IRC’s appendix.

You are encouraged to email the SBCC (sbcc@des.wa.gov) and tell them to reject the WABO amendments and support Markus Johnson’s amendments citing the desires of the state law and ability to lower the cost of housing. 

2.     Commercial Energy Code vs Residential Energy Code

Right now, the energy code defines what is residential and what is commercial based on where the residential entrances open. If they open to the exterior, it’s under the residential code, if they open to the interior (like a stair or corridor) it falls under the commercial code. This again is why townhomes fall under the residential code and these stacked flats would fall under the commercial code which is just adding complexity and builders’ unfamiliarity with construction practices. 

Perhaps the black and white code definitions don’t fit this gray area? To avoid unforeseen costs we should revise the rules giving builders the choice of using the Residential or Commercial Energy code for stacked flats.

Last month, an energy consultant proposed this very amendment (Proposal 24-GP1-88R), citing the same logical discussion points brought up here, and the Technical Advisory Group narrowly voted it down. This is an ongoing process and a revision to the definition has also been proposed in the Residential Energy Code advisory group.

If you are interested in joining either the SBCC Commercial Energy Code Technical Advisory Group or Residential Energy Code Technical Advisory Group as a volunteer to promote missing middle housing and make these types of decisions, please email Tammie Sueirro at AIA Washington (tsueirro@aiawa.org) and see more information at the end of this article.

3.     Condo Definitions and Liability Reform

Condo liability reforms have made their way through the state with House Bill 1403 signed by Governor Bob Ferguson on Wednesday, but those reforms are reserved for condos that are two-stories of housing or less. Three-story buildings would only qualify if one level is reserved for parking. A three-story sixplex with housing on all three levels would not fall under the exemption and poses yet another hurdle preventing banks from being comfortable financing this investment. 

Simply put, if the same number of units and area can be achieved as townhomes with far less risk, why would a developer opt to build a condo building when they can just deliver townhomes and avoid this liability? We must reform this definition in order to give stacked flats the same chance of development as townhomes.

The City can do more.

4.     Stacked Flat Bonus falls flat

Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) is tasked with legalizing four and six units per parcel citywide as part of the One Seattle Plan. To encourage stacked flats, OPCD enlisted a bonus offering any lot with a minimum size of 6,000 square feet to increase their buildable area from 7,200 square feet to 8,400 square feet. The problem, however, is that this bonus doesn’t apply to enough lots or go far enough. 

Seattle’s OPCD hired EcoNorthwest, an economic consulting firm, to study their solution and evaluate the financial feasibility of their plan. Long story short, the proposal fell flat. EcoNorthwest predicts virtually zero stacked flats being built in the next 20 years. The reasons outlined in their report include building code restrictions, condo liability, financing concerns, city-mandated infrastructure costs, and a lack of added incentive. 

The report recognized that very few lots south of 85^th Street meet the minimum lot standards for the stacked flat bonus, banning the pursuit before it can even be tried for almost half of the city in our most transit-rich and walkable neighborhoods. With proposed solutions to state hurdles and relaxing financing concerns, now we just need the City of Seattle to step up and offer better solutions.

Washington State’s model code ordinance does not require lot minimum sizes for a six-unit stacked flat and allows more building area than Seattle’s proposal for a six-unit stacked flat with the bonus. As a solution, Seattle should remove the lot minimum and double the building area bonus for any project pursuing a stacked flat to match the model ordinance’s floor area ratio (FAR) of 1.6 (or greater) for a six-unit building. This adds more incentive to pursue the effort and opens up more lots and neighborhoods across the city for adding this housing option.

5.     Piled on infrastructure fees, affordable housing fees, and permitting reform

Currently, utility upgrades are levied against the first developer that approaches the block in need of upgrade, putting all the financial obligation and construction timeline on their project simply for going first. Mayor Bruce Harrell has wisely proposed a cost-sharing initiative intended to remove this barrier and encourage housing growth. We need more attitudes like this when it comes to infill housing solutions.

Seattle must maintain that these projects are exempt from Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA). Despite the position of the Seattle Planning Commission to maintain this exemption, Council is considering MHA fees on new missing middle housing. MHA fees are a burden to smaller projects and have shown us after a six-year experiment that it is mostly funded by a few large projects while cratering the townhome market in favor of single-family home and ADU construction to avoid the obligation or fee. 

Despite not requiring Design Review for this zone, Council is considering adding this additional process for missing middle housing. Design Review is a hurdle that brings schedule uncertainty, added carrying cost at higher interest rates, frivolous design changes and requires an additional land use permit known as a Master Use Permit (MUP) which have historically added 400-900 days on average to the overall permit process. Design review has been suspended temporarily for all large-scale downtown and South Lake Union housing projects and single-family homes have never required to go through the program at all. Missing middle housing should be afforded an exemption and avoid this frivolous permit process and save on time, money and risk.

With current city council discussions occurring for MHA fees and Design Review being applied to missing middle housing, we encourage you to email your councilmembers recommending they do not impose the fee, require performance on site nor go through Design Review.

What kind of city and state do we want to be?

All of this to say, these reforms will not make any building more dangerous, it will not make them unlivable or ugly, it will just make them less expensive and easier to build. A single-family home today does not go into the commercial building code, or the commercial energy code, it does not have condo liability laws, it doesn’t have to pay MHA fees, it doesn’t have to pay for street improvements or most utility upgrades, it doesn’t need to get approval at design review, and it doesn’t face the same restrictions and hurdles anything slightly larger does. What does that say about who we are and what we want built when we incentivize behemoth mansions at the most unaffordable price range housing has to offer?

If the solution we want is a less affordable city, one with expensive new single-family homes, narrow and vertical townhomes, large apartment buildings of small units, and nothing in between, then we currently have the state codes and city zoning plan to deliver that vision. There is nothing wrong with owning a single family home, townhome or ADU and there isn’t anything wrong with living in a studio apartment in a large building, but if we want more housing options that include stacked flats, and we want to be a more affordable city for families, retirees, people with limited mobility, and people with children, then we clearly need to do something different or stacked flats will go missing forever.

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck asked city planners what they can do to incentivize stacked flats based on the dire projection in the feasibility report, and the planners couldn’t give an answer. Instead, they threw up their hands and said the deck is just stacked against their proposal. When your job is finding housing solutions for the city, this is not a good enough answer. 

When the deck is stacked against you, innovators don’t give up, they find success by identifying the challenges, proposing solutions, and they take action. Innovation is in the DNA of Seattle and this state as a whole, isn’t it? Are we still a city and state of innovators? 

Because if we are, then it’s time to bet the farm on these solutions and take down the house.

*

This article is the result of input from passionate architects, planners and code committee members involved in the effort to increase the supply, variety, and affordability of housing in our city, region and state. We want to thank the hard work and dedication of the AIA Seattle and AIA Washington for all the foundational work done for missing middle housing reform. 

Please encourage the state officials at the SBCC to support Markus Johnson’s amendment and reject WABO’s amendment, support flexibility in energy codes by changing definitions to include all housing types included in HB 1110. You can contact them at (sbcc@des.wa.gov). 

Contact your state legislator and sponsors of HB 1403 to support condo liability reform for three story missing middle housing.

Please contact your city councilmembers about making stacked flats more viable in the One Seattle Plan by removing lot minimum requirements, doubling the bonus, maintaining MHA and Design Review exemptions, and removing costly street and utility permits.

If you are interested in joining the SBCC on their Single Exit / Multiplex Technical Advisory Group (TAG) team to help make stacked flats possible, there are positions open and available (Page 4) to be filled for Building Owner / Property Manager, Structural Engineer, Fire Systems Engineer, Manufacturer / Supplier, and Insurance / Appraiser. All you need to apply is a letter expressing interest emailed to (SBCC email) and you can make a difference on a state level. If you have questions about serving on the TAG, you can email Tammie Sueirro at AIA Washington (tsueirro@aiawa.org).

Bradley Khouri and David Neiman also contributued to this article.

Khouri is the founder of b9 architects focusing on infill urban housing in Seattle and is an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. He has served as the President of the AIA Seattle Board of Directors and Chair, including many AIA Seattle Task Forces.

Neiman is a partner at Neiman Taber Architects, an award-winning Seattle firm specializing in urban housing with a focus on issues of livability, affordability, community, and access to housing for all. He is a past member of the Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Committee and NW Design Review Board chair.

The post The Deck is Stacked Against Stacked Flats in Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

Senate Bill 5554 has already advanced out of committee and onto the floor calendar, with final passage possible any day. Sponsored by Senator Jesse Salomon (D-32nd, Shoreline), the bill would prevent cities from landmarking buildings without the owner’s consent or if they are less than 40 years old. Senators Jess Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia), Keith Goehner (R-12th, Dryden) and Chris Gildon (R-25th, Puyallup) have also signed on as co-sponsors, evidence of the bipartisan appeal of the bill.

House Bill 1576 is its companion bill in the lower chamber, sponsored by Rep. Amy Walen (D-48th, Kirkland) and Rep. Andrew Barkis (R-2nd, St. Clair). The bill is now in the rules committee, after a vote in the local government committee on February 18 that amended the bill, but ultimately advanced it. It could be pulled onto the House floor anytime between now and March 12, when non-budget bills face their next deadline, the “house of origin” cutoff.

The House bill report notes some concessions offered to historic preservationists, keeping some landmarking tools on the table. The amended House bill:

• Provides that historical landmark designations made by a city before the effective date of the bill are not affected by the prohibitions in the bill;
• Allows a property to be designated as a historic landmark without the owner’s consent if the property is more than 100 years old; and
• Provides that a city or code city is not precluded from allowing a property that is less than 100 years old to be nominated as a historic landmark outside of a designated historic district without the consent of the property owner, as long as such consent is obtained prior to the nomination being approved and the designation applied.

Reformers point out that landmarking is a major weapon in the arsenal of predatory delay. Even if a building owner is able to convince a landmark board that their property isn’t a historic landmark in need of permanent preservation, the time and risk involved in going through the landmarking process can be enough to scare off builders and investors, delaying much-needed housing.

The housing lost to predatory landmarking

The pro-housing environmental thinktank Sightline Institute has long been a critic of Seattle’s landmarking program, and the other forms of red tape that the City has thrown up impeding homebuilding. Sightline researcher Dan Bertolet testified in favor of the senate bill during a hearing earlier this month, citing numerous examples of housing projects being killed when an outside party intervened to landmark the underlying property.

“[L]andmarking prevented 63 apartments from getting built, and then that building became derelict over time, until last month, when it was demolished anyway,” Bertolet said. “And it’s still happening. Last month, Historic Seattle nominated for landmark status, a structurally obsolete apartment building owned by the YWCA. And that will halt YWCA plans to redevelop it into 83 new homes.”

In Seattle, any site over 25 years old can be landmarked, without the owner’s consent, based on six broad criteria, including “its prominence of spatial location, contrasts of siting, age, or scale, it is an easily identifiable visual feature of its neighborhood or the City and contributes to the distinctive quality or identity of such neighborhood or the City.” Tacoma also has a landmarking program that does not require the owner’s consent, increasing the opportunity for abuse to block housing.

In one high-profile incident, the Seattle City Council blocked redevelopment on a one-story Walgreens drive-thru on the edge of South Lake Union — and its adjacent parking lot, bowing to landmarking pressure.

In another example, 500 homes located Downtown at Fifth Avenue and Virginia Street have been delayed for a decade due to the obstacle that landmarking the existing buildings created. The landmarking of the Griffin and Sheridan buildings means those building facades must be preserved for a 44-story apartment tower to rise, the Daily Journal of Commerce noted, complicating the project and adding costs.

In his testimony in favor of Salomon’s bill, Ben Maritz, principal of development firm Great Expectations (and a board member at The Urbanist), shared his version of running into the historic landmarking program as his firm tried to redevelop a Central District site that used to be a YWCA — separate from the aforementioned YWCA building in Belltown. Maritz was ready to break ground to construct the new affordable homes, but a late-breaking historic landmarking bid stalled out the project.

“And then I found out that a single neighbor had walked by the site,” Maritz said. “It was fully permitted, completed its master use permit, design review, everything. They had seen the big sign up in front of it, and realized that it was being redeveloped as affordable housing, and they started the process for landmarking without our consent. This project was one that we had started three or four years prior. This is a land-use 911 emergency. I called my legal and consulting team, had to spend a lot of money on trying to fight this, and the risk is still there.”

While Maritz was successful in defeating the first landmarking bid, it set the project back, and that added time and expense can still doom a development project even if builders ultimately get the go ahead.

“It could have totally killed the project,” Maritz added. “If they’ve been successful doing the landmarking, it would have been dead. But just the process of having to fight the landmark, probably alone, if you’re successful, would be a year alone.”

Middle housing is especially vulnerable to landmarking, other obstacles

Landmarking without owner consent could become an even bigger threat to small-scale middle housing development legalized by HB 1110 and going to effect in the Puget Sound region this year. Shepherded by then-Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-22nd, Olympia) — who now serves as a state senator and sits on the Local Government Committee that greenlit the landmarking reform bill — HB 1110 middle housing reform aims to spur multiplex construction in single-family zones, with fourplexes legalized in major cities across the state.

“The small builders who typically construct middle housing do not have the financial resources to take on the risk that a property they plan to develop could become landmarked,” Bertolet wrote in a brief to legislators. “Just the risk that a building could be landmarked is enough to make small builders walk away. And when owner consent is not required, and when anyone can nominate a property, that risk is always present. Even if the nominated building would ultimately not be approved for landmark status, the nomination alone sets in motion a process that could take perhaps a year to resolve — far too long for a small developer to hold a project in limbo.”

The economics of middle housing is tricky and easily short-circuited by obstacles, as a recent Urban Institute report noted, as it examined by reforms don’t consistently lead to a major uptick in building.

Landmarking proponents push local control

On the flip side, speaking against the bill was Chris Moore, the executive director of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation.

“We are a statewide nonprofit advocacy organization committed to preserving Washington’s historic and cultural resources,” Moore said.
We are opposed to SB 5554 as written. But of course, we do understand the critical need for housing affordability throughout the state. […] Only 0.5% of the parcels in Seattle are landmarked, either individually or within historic districts. So we’re not talking about a huge volume of this either. We see housing affordability and preservation both as key social good goals.”

Colleen McAleer with the Laurelhurst Community Club spoke against the bill, spinning a doomsday (though staggeringly unlikely) scenario where the Space Needle would be redeveloped.

“This bill is wasting time and budget on one half of 1% of the land parcels in Seattle, which has a negligible impact on housing development,” McAleer said. “This bill would allow them to demolish iconic landmarks such as the Space Needle, they could be resold without permanent landmark status, and demolished leaving soulless cities and towns across Washington state.”

While landmarking has been used to block affordable housing, a spokesperson did contend that historic preservation is not at odds with housing affordability, and can go hand-in-hand in some cases. Notwithstanding, Eugenia Woo, Director of Preservation Services at Historic Seattle said landmarking can serve as a higher anti-displacement purpose.

“Preservation and housing are not mutually exclusive,” Woo said. “This is a false choice. Preservation is not anti-development. It can be a tool for anti-displacement.”

Conversely, advocates for housing abundance argue that the net effect of creating a challenging gauntlet for housing is anti-development, pro-displacement, and ultimately leads to working families being pushed out of cities.

“The main Seattle historic advocacy group is currently advocating for Seattle to water down its HB 1110 plan to exclude any local landmark district and criticizing the ”cookie-cutter’ new HB 1110 developments,” Bertolet wrote. “And, of course, they’re focused on Madrona, Mt. Baker, Ravenna, and Wallingford. Landmarking and creating historic districts will be the key tool of stymie HB 1110.”

Some highly motivated Wallingford residents have already taken steps to turn their neighborhood into a historic district. One swath of the North Seattle neighborhood has already advanced down the path of historic listing.

“Requiring owner consent through SB 5554 would eliminate this risk and prevent the misuse of historic landmarking to undermine the legislature’s goals for HB 1110,” Bertolet said. “Overall, it’s a commonsense solution aligned with state norms that would help the state address its massive housing shortage.”

Visit the House Bill 1576 or Senate Bill 5554 page for more information or to weigh in with your public comment.

Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly identified Great Expectations as the developer of the YWCA project with 83 homes in Belltown. Great Expectations is developing a separate site in the Central District that used to be a YWCA. This was corrected on February 20.

The post Washington Legislature Wants to Rein In Historic Landmarking to Spur Housing first appeared on The Urbanist.

Using a “flexible co-living” model in office to residential conversion projects could significantly cut costs and open up new opportunities for creating affordable housing in downtown business districts, according to a study recently released by The Pew Charitable Trust and Gensler, a global architecture, planning, and design firm. 

The study looked at office to residential conversion scenarios in Seattle, Denver, and Minneapolis, cities selected for their high office vacancy rates, large numbers of cost burdened renters, and regulatory environments favorable to implementing a co-living housing model. Overall, the study found that while the co-living model significantly decreased conversion costs, some level of financial subsidy would be necessary to make the office to residential conversions financially feasible, albeit less than what is currently being spent to create conventional affordable housing units. 

The City of Seattle expressed enthusiasm in response to the Pew and Gensler study’s findings.

“The City continues to be very supportive of efforts to convert underused commercial space to housing, including co-living housing. Increasing housing supply downtown is an important strategy to advance goals for both downtown activation and housing affordability,” wrote Seferiana Day, communications manager and council liaison, in an email to The Urbanist. “We recognize that a limited subset of buildings will be viable for conversion, but even a small number of conversions can have a strong positive impact.”

In July 2024, the Seattle City Council passed a slew of legislation aimed at supporting the conversion of existing commercial buildings to residential use. Analysis from the City’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) estimates that 1,000 to 2,000 homes could be created in seven years, at a cost typically exceeding $400,000 per apartment.

Critics have cast doubt on whether such office conversions would actually materialize given the high cost and challenges of overhauling office buildings to meet residential needs. A construction cost of $400,000 or more per residence borders on the cost of new-build apartments, which likely would have less awkward layouts compared to converted offices.

Using a co-living model, however, could reduce conversion costs to about $190,000 per sleeping unit, according to the Pew and Gensler report. The flexible co-living model, which features shared kitchen, bathroom, and gathering spaces, reduces conversion costs by maintaining centralized plumbing systems prevalent in office buildings and by creating space for about three times as many dwelling units as a traditional residential apartment building.

The study focused on the conversion of mid-density high rise buildings of about 20 floors that were constructed in the 1970s and 1980s. These buildings were selected because they constitute about 40% of the selected office building inventory and have similar floorplates, developer lingo for the shape of each floor of a building, particularly the leasable square footage.

For the study’s purposes, a typical single occupant sleeping room was defined as 120 square feet, and included a twin XL bed, desk and chair, and nightstand along with a microwave and half-sized refrigerator to store personal food and beverage items. Each floor would have about 29 residents and provide those residents with access to a kitchen, dining area, living room, and laundry area. For bathrooms, there would be six single occupant restrooms with showers and three additional toilet rooms per floor.

In terms of rental cost, the report set rents of $1,000 per month for singles (the majority of sleeping units) and $700 per person per month for doubles. These rental costs would be affordable for single person households earning 30% to 50% of Seattle’s area median income (AMI). 

Construction costs were assessed at about $350 per gross square foot (GSF), which includes about $70 per GSF for mandatory seismic retrofits. The study’s development pro forma estimated building acquisition cost at about $16 million or $75 per GSF. 

The study looked at alternative financial scenarios, such as scenarios in which there would be no building acquisition costs, as well as scenarios in which local grants, below market financing, and/or tax credits would be provided. While the study determined that “the project may require an additional level of subsidy to attract necessary capital,” it expressed optimism about the co-living conversion project’s potential to attract some level of subsidy because of the relative affordability of the cost per sleeping unit.

One potential subsidy may be the sales tax incentives for converting underused commercial buildings to affordable housing passed by the Washington State Legislature earlier this year. The bill allows for developers of commercial to residential conversion projects to apply for sales tax exemptions if they commit to making a portion of the future homes affordable to people with low or moderate incomes. The Seattle City Council is expected to vote to adopt the sales tax incentive in the coming months, building on a regulatory incentive package passed in May — also prodded by a state mandate.

According to Day, the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) has reviewed the report and “believes that the regulatory supports and incentives the City has passed and continues to work on can support the type of co-living housing studied by Pew and Gensler.”

Post-pandemic, Seattle office vacancy rates continue to climb 

Research by commercial real estate firm Kidder Mathews found that office vacancy continued to rise in the third quarter of 2024, reaching a vacancy rate of 27.6% in Seattle’s Central Business District. In the city of Seattle as a whole, office vacancy rates were reported at 19.42%, the highest percentage in the region. This percentage translates into roughly 20.8 million square feet of vacant office space. When analyzing the Puget Sound region as a whole, Kidder Mathews estimates that about 37.2 million square feet remains vacant. 

It is important to note that the Kidder Mathews estimates of vacant office space do not include vacant or underutilized office space currently held under lease, and it is unknown how many companies are leaving office space mostly, or entirely, unoccupied as they wait for their leases to expire, a figure that could be substantial. It is possible, however, to measure how office vacancy rates have continued to climb even as office rental prices have decreased, a trend indicating a distressed commercial real estate market.

While Kidder Mathews projects that cuts to interest rates in September by the Federal Reserve and upcoming changes in workplace policy, such as Amazon’s pledge to require employees spend five days per week in the office beginning in January 2025, could help Seattle’s commercial real estate market to rebound, the shift to increased remote work options for office workers appears to continue to present steep challenges to downtown business districts in cities like Seattle, whose economies have historically relied on a daily influx of office workers to thrive. 

The City of Seattle’s effort to increase the number of downtown resident in order to make its downtown more resilient is in line with research findings by organizations such as the Downtown Recovery Effort, a program run by the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, whose research has linked post-pandemic recovery with the presence of sectors like housing, education, healthcare, entertainment, and manufacturing in downtown districts. Seattle sits near the bottom of its Downtown Recovery Rankings, coming in at 63 out of the 66 North American cities studied using 2023 data. 

Researchers attributed the ranking to Downtown Seattle’s high number of IT and management jobs, many of which have not returned downtown post-pandemic.

Potential high demand in Seattle for affordable co-living housing options

While the co-living model might not be a good fit for all types of households, according to the Pew and Gensler study, 58% (119,000) of Seattle renters live in single occupant households and approximately 16% (19,000) of Seattle’s single occupant renter households earn between $30,000 and $50,000 annually, creating a large potential customer base for this model of housing.

“Adding large amounts of this low-cost, downtown housing would provide a much-needed option for students, service-industry workers, young professionals, veterans, new arrivals in a city, and retirees. It would also reduce homelessness,” the study argues. “And because of these units’ small size, the current low prices for office buildings, and the efficient layout, this housing could be created near jobs and transit at a fraction of the cost of traditional houses or apartments.”

Seattle has had a long, and at times contentious history, with micro-apartments and co-living housing. Once Seattle’s downtown was the site of thousands of units of affordable housing, mostly in the form of single room occupancy (SRO) hotel and residential buildings. In 1970, after a fire at the Ozark Hotel in downtown Seattle led to the deaths of 21 people, the City began to pass legislation that led to the destruction of thousands of units of affordable housing in downtown and nearby neighborhoods.

The Pew and Gensler report noted this history, referencing how across the United States, cities once were “characterized by an abundance of lower cost housing typologies, particularly single room occupancy (SRO) dwellings.” The report estimates that as a result of changes in zoning, building codes, financial incentives that prioritized other forms of housing, SROs were effectively eliminated in American cities, with an approximate 1 million SRO units lost to conversions and demolitions between 1970s and 1990s alone. 

Shared housing began to make a comeback in Seattle between 2009 and 2015 with the popularity of micro-apartments, small individual apartment units ranging from 90-200 square feet that featured private bathrooms and kitchenettes, along with shared fully functioning kitchens and laundry facilities on site. These developments were so popular that in 2013 micro-apartments constituted about a quarter of new housing created in Seattle, which translated to 1,800 new homes, many of them under the “Apodment” brand.

But this particular micro-housing boom was not to last. Concerns over the impact of micro-apartments on neighborhoods, in particular on parking, led to restrictions on minimum unit size, the addition of design review requirements, and a prohibition on the creation of congregate housing like Apodments in areas zoned for low-rise apartment building and neighborhood commercial centers. These changes mostly brought the congregate housing boom to an abrupt halt, but they did not end consumer demand. Developers turned to the creation of small efficiency dwelling units (SEDUs), small studio apartments of at least 220 square feet in size, but these homes often cost significantly more to build and correspondingly higher rents. 

Recently the Washington State Legislature and City of Seattle have passed legislation in favor of congregate housing. In compliance with state law, congregate housing can be permitted in all multi-family zones in the city, including low-rise zones. 

The approved legislation allows for sleeping rooms as small as 70 feet in congregate residences, and exempts them from the design requirements of SEDUs. The definition of congregate residence was amended to describe a residence in which, “sleeping rooms are independently rented and lockable and provide living and sleeping space, and residents share kitchen facilities and other common elements with residents in a building.”

The legislation also deleted parking requirements within a half-mile of a major transit stop and reduced parking requirements to one spot per four sleeping rooms elsewhere. 

Are Seattleites ready for this style of co-living?

Last July, Charles Mudede, senior staff writer at The Stranger, penned an essay critiquing steps the Seattle City Council had taken to facilitate the conversion of office to residential space in downtown Seattle as a “distraction” that would “throw money at developers to make even more unaffordable apartments.” 

As a solution, Mudede suggested a pivot to congregate residences, much like the flexible co-living design plans studied by Pew and Gensler. But Mudede recognized that part of moving to this style of housing will require rethinking some of our middle class norms around housing.

It should be pointed out that not having access to a private bathroom or sink may be a dealbreaker for some future residents. At the same time, with a potential customer base estimated around 19,000 renters, it seems likely that Pew and Gensler’s co-living model would be an attractive option for some renters, especially those who prioritize affordability and access to employment, transit, and services.

Many factors appear to be shifting the balance in favor of creating more small, affordable homes in Seattle, and these same factors, along with the need to address the high levels of vacancy in downtown office buildings, could provide momentum needed to make the designs studied by Pew and Gensler a reality. If such a trend materializes, it would help return Seattle to single-room occupancy roots when the city was more affordable.

The post The Case for Converting Vacant Offices to Congregate Housing first appeared on The Urbanist.

Developers have adjusted to the major contributor of development slack, weak demand for new office space and vacancies. As projects reemerge, offices are being replaced with residences. In our April 2024 update on Downtown Bellevue’s projects, The Urbanist had found a significant decline in the planned office space in the downtown; 1.5 million square feet of office space had been canceled.

Last month, the developer of one of the largest projects in the city (and the region) also announced a pivot away from office space. The Pinnacle Bellevue South project disclosed a new residential focus with eight tower containing 2,114 units, 88,267 square feet of retail space, and 2,223 parking stalls. With more than 2,000 homes and eight towers in just one project, it would be the largest residential development in the history of Bellevue.

The proposal is now without the 125,000 square feet of office space contained in the scope that we had first reported on. In addition to the office space, just under 30,000 square feet of retail, the hotel, and just under 300 parking stalls were also cut and exchanged for almost 600 new homes. That scope change adds more homes than the vast majority of projects in the region include in the first place.

An emerging pattern of downtown housing

The Pinnacle Bellevue South also has a sibling to the north — dubbed Pinnacle Bellevue North — which is also seeing these adjustments. Pinnacle’s northern companion will include 1,451 homes across six towers, with 1,814 total parking stalls, according to permits filed in 2023. The project continues to be characterized as mixed-use, but other uses are not discussed in the permits.

We originally reported this project as 60,200 square feet for office space, 1,181 residential units, 129,500 square feet for non-office commercial space, and 1,814 parking spaces over seven towers. The 2023 revision means 270 additional residential units in place of some office and commercial space.

This shift away from office has solidified as a trend in the downtown core. In our last update, we had two big examples. Cloudvue had exchanged 1.3 million square feet of office space for nearly 1,200 homes and the final phase of the Washington Square project had exchanged 129,000 square feet of office space for 400 homes. Meanwhile, some office projects had been shelved entirely, with new residential projects emerging elsewhere.

The residential shift is also impacting smaller projects in Bellevue. 11040 Main Street, 305 108th Ave NE, and 200 112th Ave, have collectively shed proposals for over 500,000 square feet of office space in their latest iterations. In their place, more than 700 residential units have been proposed. Along with that lost office space, around 450 parking stalls are also being dropped.

Balancing jobs and housing

All in all, Downtown Bellevue has seen 1,500 additional homes proposed and nearly 700,000 square feet of office space pulled just since April. Altogether with our April update, Downtown Bellevue’s pipeline has seen nearly 4,000 additional homes added and more than two million square feet of office space abandoned in just the last couple of years.

Removing completions since 2022, office space in Bellevue’s pipeline has declined 15%. It’s unclear how many of the remaining office projects are actually alive, but around 11.5 million square feet of office space is still be in the pipeline, based on permits.

Another roughly 2.5 million square feet of office space has been completed, but has mostly been left in a shell state without office space built out or tenants moving in. Much of this is Amazon office space; the retailing giant continues to add jobs in Bellevue, but perhaps not quite as quickly as once envisioned. In 2021, Amazon announced plans to locate 25,000 jobs in the city by 2025. At last count, Amazon has 17,000 workers in Bellevue, compared to about 50,000 in Seattle.

As office development has slowed, residential units in Bellevue’s pipeline have surged 40%. Around 600 or 900 units, depending on how you count Avenue Bellevue’s hesitation to open, have been completed since our 2022 report. The city could be up to 14,000 homes in the downtown pipeline.

This is a big shift from our first 2022 pipeline aggregation of over 13,100 new residential units and over 16 million square feet of commercial space. Assuming 1.5 residents per unit and 250 square feet per job, the 2022 totals would’ve brought around 20,000 residents and 65,000 jobs to Downtown Bellevue, around 3.25 jobs per resident.

The ratio now is more balanced with the development pipeline housing an estimated 21,000 new residents and 46,000 new jobs, which works out to about 2.2 jobs per resident. These ratios impact how workers will arrive at their downtown jobs, more residences downtown mean more workers could live within walking and biking distance to work — and near great transit access via East Link light rail, which opened this April in abridged form.

Breathing Life into Downtown Bellevue

In 2022, around 16,000 people lived in Downtown Bellevue, according to the Puget Sound Regional Council. Another 21,000 people would greatly transform the growing downtown. Office workers will still bring a surge of people into the downtown during peak hours, but close to 40,000 residents can help keep the downtown active throughout the day, encouraging more restaurants, retail, and nightlife to flourish.

These large shifts in the development patterns in Downtown Bellevue reflect the massive scale of projects occurring there. A shift in a handful of projects managed to add 1,500 homes and cut over half a million square feet of office space. Individual shifts can also cut hundreds of parking stalls out of the pipeline. Many of these projects each command the fate of millions of square feet of the downtown’s future.

The Urbanist will be keeping an eye out on how the rest of the over 11 million square feet of office space in pipeline will pan out.

The post Builders Continue Pivot to Housing in Downtown Bellevue first appeared on The Urbanist.

While voters approved formation of the Seattle Social Housing Developer in 2023, the city has a special election on deck in February with dueling ballot measures to actually fund that public developer. House Our Neighbors put forward the grassroots Initiative 137 that will be on next February’s ballot as Proposition 1A, while the centrist majority on Seattle City Council proposed the reactionary alternative. Voters will be asked whether they want to fund social housing at all, and if yes, they’ll have to choose between one of the two options.

“For House Our Neighbors, [Neiman Taber Architects] designed a detailed proposal for this parcel as a proof-of-concept to expand our idea of what a brighter, more equitable future could actually look like,” House Our Neighbors wrote. “Their design shows what is possible when we put people over profit; A variety of unit types to suit all kinds of households — from students and working class people to elderly folks, people with mobility needs, and families with and without children and with ample communal space and an interior courtyard where the community can come together to socialize and support each other. All of it affordable. Forever.”

House Our Neighbors Co-Executive Director Tiffani McCoy said more design examples are on the way, with a call out for architects to lay out their own visions for surplus City-owned parcels.

“This is all pro bono from these architecture firms, but we know from I-135 that architects are incredibly excited about social housing, not just because they would be able to actually afford to live in the city in which they work, because architects are often between 80 to 120% of AMI [area median income], but also, you know, they’re just so restricted in their craft,” McCoy told The Urbanist. “Their creativity is really lost a lot because we’re more focused on quantity over quality, which has its benefits. But especially working in typical affordable housing buildings, the focus is as many as you can with the amount of funding.”

The first social housing prototype came from the 2023 Seattle Design Festival with a submission by a group led by architect Juliette DuBroca, and including Jesse Davis, Ema Sheehan, Jacqui Aiello, and Anna Brodersen. The group came together via the Committee on Homelessness (COHO) at the American Institute of Architects Seattle (AIA Seattle). What the COHO group proposed was a nine-unit apartment building with one ground-floor commercial space and a mix of unit sizes including two- and three-bedroom units. The roughly 4,000-square-foot lot being eyed was a surplus City-owned site at 1405 NW 65th Street in Ballard.

As laid out in the charter for the Seattle Social Housing Developer, the Ballard building would be built to Passive House standards, which go above and beyond the energy efficiency and sustainability requirements of Seattle’s already rigorous code. COHO worked with Michael Eliason from Larch Lab to develop their concept and Passive House strategies, given his expertise in the area.

In addition to meeting very high environmental standards, social housing proponents are also hoping to design spaces that encourage socializing and social wellbeing. The courtyard space in the Northgate proposal seeks to foster those bonds, as does the rooftop and atrium in the Ballard proposal.

“You have these spaces that are designated to getting to know people, relationship-building community space,” McCoy said. “There’s this beautiful opportunity there to grow friends, maybe lifelong friends, that you wouldn’t have in a traditional apartment setting.”

House Our Neighbors is also planning to create a financial model, or “pro forma” in developer lingo, to go along with Neiman Taber’s architectural designs. That model would demonstrate the feasibility of actually turning the plan into a real-life building. Nonetheless, part of the value of the architectural plans is helping visualize for voters the work the Seattle Social Housing Developer would do — if they elect to fund it.

“We are just the ones creating the vision and showing people that this is what it looks like this is what could be in your neighborhood,” McCoy said. “People don’t know what this looks like. So that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Social housing advocates are confident of success in the upcoming February special election. McCoy did note that council added a wrinkle by putting a competing measure on the ballot, which will make it a two-part vote. House Our Neighbors is also expecting a more robust opposition campaign than in 2023, when there was no funding source involved.

“We’ll just have a little bit more education to do since the council put on their alternative, which isn’t social housing,” McCoy said. “It’s just getting people to recognize that you have to vote twice. You have to vote yes twice, not just one. You have to make sure to do [Prop] 1 and 1A.”

Nonetheless, recent results point toward likely success.

“Seattle has already showed us that they’re very, very strongly supportive of social housing. You’ve seen that with the 14-point win in February 2023. We’ve seen that again with over 38,000 people signing Initiative 137, now Proposition 1A,” McCoy said. “And we’ve seen overwhelmingly Washingtonians want to tax the wealthiest in our state in order to provide services that regular people need. I have no problem thinking that we will win resoundingly at the ballot.”

Correction: An earlier draft failed to list all of the members in the COHO group and also listed the wrong address for the project. We regret the error.

The post Seattle Architects Unveil Designs for Social Housing Ahead of February Vote first appeared on The Urbanist.