House Bill 1175, sponsored by Representative Mark Klicker (R-16th, Walla Walla), would have opened the door to a wide range of commercial uses within residential zones in most Washington cities, with the goal of allowing more corner coffee shops and bodegas to open within walking distance of homes. According to the bill, a cafe is defined as an establishment with at least 500 square feet of gross floor area that must serve food along with any alcoholic beverages, and “neighborhood stores” would be able to sell a broad range of items “not limited to” food, beverages, and household items.

In a conversation with The Urbanist, Klicker placed blame for the bill’s failure squarely on Jesse Salomon (D-32nd, Shoreline), the Local Government Committee’s chair. Despite being approved by the Washington House on a 94-2 vote just four days into the start of the legislative session on January 15, it was never given a public hearing on the Senate side after being referred to Salomon’s committee.

According to Klicker, Salomon communicated concerns around the sheer number of other bills that the legislature has approved in recent years that have given local governments a mandate to overhaul their land use codes, including legalizing middle housing in most single family zones, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) reform, and parking mandate reform. This session, the legislature is likely to add another mandate onto the state’s medium and large cities that will require them to reduce barriers to building housing units in commercial and mixed-use zones. Officials in cities large and small have complained about the timelines to implement these bills and the increased workload they’ve placed on planning staff.

“Senator Jesse Salomon chose he didn’t want to run it. The excuse that he said [was], ‘Well, there are just too many mandates with all the bills,'” Klicker told The Urbanist. “That was his choice, and his choice alone, to decide to do it that way.”

A state senator since 2019, Salomon faces a strong opponent in his bid for re-election this year in Representative Cindy Ryu. Ryu’s challenge against an incumbent was an early signal of the number of left-leaning primary challenges legislators are likely to face this year, with Redmond City Councilmember Jessica Forsythe’s challenge of moderate Democrat Representative Amy Walen (D-48th, Kirkland) coming soon in its wake with others likely on the way.

Two years ago, the Local Government Committee gutted Klicker’s previous version of the bill, under the leadership of then-chair Liz Lovelett (D-40th, Anacortes). Lovelett’s changes, intended to allow the bill to survive until it got to the Senate floor, switched the framework from a mandate on local cities to an opt-in, at the same time potentially outlawing a number of existing corner stores around the state that sell alcohol.

Those changes essentially doomed the bill, prompting Klicker to retool the idea in 2025 and introduce HB 1175, a proposal that was more explicit about the types of businesses that would be legalized in neighborhoods but with some big concessions to local governments. They can set the maximum size of a cafe or corner store — with a minimum set at 500 square feet — and regulate parking “provided that the regulations are not infeasible,” whatever that means. Hours of operation could be limited to half of the day, putting the kibosh on the ability for businesses to be open later in the evening.

HB 1175 was approved in a House committee last year but the session ended before it could get a floor vote.

Salomon’s office provided a very short statement to The Urbanist. “There were, unfortunately, not enough votes to move the bill out of committee this session,” it read.

Despite the fact that it’s repeatedly stalled out, Klicker’s attempt to push this issue may actually have elevated it and prompted local governments around the state to take up the charge. An updated Comprehensive Plan in Shoreline legalized neighborhood commercial uses across most of the city’s blocks, with updated regulations in Burien and Everett soon following.

The latest city to jump on the corner store bandwagon looks to be Renton, which is advancing a proposal that would allow neighborhood commercial throughout approximately half of the city by targeting areas within a half mile of a bus rapid transit stop. But stores would only be allowed on literal corner lots, limiting their potential significantly and stopping well short of what HB 1175 would have required.

A survey Renton conducted last year showed a staggering 86% of respondents agreeing with the idea that there should be neighborhood retail stores and services closer to where they currently live, with 39% of those same respondents saying that cafes and corner stores should be allowed on all residential lots, more than double the number that said they should only be allowed on corner lots (17%).

Seattle now allows cafes and corner stores citywide, after successful advocacy to broaden regulations proposed by former Mayor Bruce Harrell that would have only allowed them on corner lots as is proposed in Renton.

“Every neighborhood deserves places for community members to gather, buy essential goods, create art together, and build a community. But right now, that kind of commercial and community space can be hard to find or afford. Legalizing corner stores would help bring these services and community spaces to every neighborhood,” read a 2025 petition created by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, Futurewise, and the Greater Seattle Business Association. Those groups’ advocacy was ultimately successful, with new regulations adopted in December.

In lamenting his bill’s failure again this year, Klicker also referenced the issue of community, noting that residents of Washington’s large cities are more likely to be missing out on the benefits that his bill would have brought, compared to residents of the smaller towns in a district like his where walking distances tend to be much shorter.

“People are losing out on community. Really, that’s what it is, that sense of community people are yearning for,” Klicker said. “I probably wouldn’t have pushed and pursued this bill so much, but when you get, you know, emails and calls to my office, everything over the last couple years, I mean, people begging for this. Sure, there are people that don’t want it because they don’t understand what this would be. They worry that it might be a big thing that is going to bring all these crowds in, and it’s not that whatsoever. It’s just very simple neighborhood, little things that people are looking for.”

The post Neighborhood Cafe and Corner Store Bill Fails for Third Straight Year first appeared on The Urbanist.

SB 6026, introduced by Senator Emily Alvarado (D-34th, West Seattle) and requested by Governor Bob Ferguson, is geared toward jumpstarting redevelopment of underutilized commercial properties in cities across the state. In its original form, on top of requiring cities to allow residential uses in all commercial zones, it would have also banned those local governments from requiring housing projects in those areas to come with ground-floor storefronts or commercial spaces.

It’s the ban on requiring storefronts that likely would pack the biggest punch in the bill, with analysis conducted by the Puget Sound Regional Council earlier this year concluding that only 5% of the eligible parcels around the state currently prohibit residential uses outright. But concerns have been raised at the local level around potentially losing the opportunity to create more truly mixed-use districts in some of Washington’s fastest growing cities.

The officials making their voices heard Olympia seeking changes to SB 6026 have been from some of the most pro-housing jurisdictions in Puget Sound, including Bothell, Redmond, and Kirkland, and are asking legislators to not get in the way of their momentum when it comes to densifying.

A major fear is having blank facades where there could be active storefronts, giving pedestrians little reason to walk down a corridor. The upside? Allowing builders to make use of less expensive housing construction types, with ground floor retail requirements often forcing the same type of buildings that feature wood-frame upper stories over one or two stories of concrete.

As SB 6026 advanced through the Senate, exemptions were added that would have retained the ability for cities to require ground-floor commercial in certain places. That list included all areas close to light rail and bus rapid transit stops as laid out in the 2025 transit-oriented development bill, within business improvement areas (BIAs), and along designated “Main Streets” as administered by the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. Essentially, that provided a top-down designation of which areas of the state were more important to maintain walkability and areas where that is seen as less of a priority.

Instead, the version approved by the House’s local government committee will cap the number of areas covered by the bill where local cities can require ground-floor retail at 40%. Fully subsidized affordable housing projects would continue to be exempt from any retail requirements at all, on top of any areas covered by the transit-oriented development.

“The bill as it came over to the Senate seemed to me overly complicated, and there were a lot of exemptions in it,” Representative Davina Duerr (D-1st, Bothell), the local government committee’s chair, said in introducing the revamped version of the bill. Duerr, a former Bothell Councilmember, described trying to find a way to placate local officials while still maintaining the bill’s intent.

“I felt like [King] Solomon, in a way, because I really believe that we need more housing, and I completely understand the need to have more flexibility and more area available for housing,” Duerr continued. “But also, with my city background, I understand the need and the wanting to create walkable communities, the ability to raise sales tax — given the 1% property tax cap — and so what I’ve tried to do with this amendment is get rid of the exemptions and provide more flexibility by changing it to a 40% number that cities can mandate the ground floor retail. So it doesn’t make everyone happy, but I feel like it provides more flexibility for cities.”

The same committee did reject an amendment reducing the number of cities where the bill would apply, keeping the floor at 30,000 residents.

SB 6026 is one of this year’s highest profile housing bills, in the wake of major zoning reforms adopted by the legislature in recent years including the Middle Housing Law, parking reform and the transit-oriented development bill. Its inspiration seems to be California’s AB 2011, and its backers include former Governor Chris Gregoire, who is close with Governor Ferguson, and Microsoft President Brad Smith. Both figures are active in the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, a thinktank that regularly weighs in on housing policy and has been promoting the idea of creating “Grand Boulevards” along the state’s busiest roadways.

In Microsoft’s hometown of Redmond, one of the fastest growing cities on the Eastside, local officials have been pushing back vociferously on the bill, arguing that it would make it harder for the city to make room for small businesses that are getting displaced as properties redevelop. Earlier this month, Carol Helland, Redmond’s Planning & Community Development Director pushed for significant changes in the bill to allow their city to continue to build out walkable neighborhoods near its popular light rail stations.

“Cities like Redmond have proactively upzoned and exceeded housing targets. However, redevelopment is already displacing small, locally owned businesses at a rate that available commercial space cannot absorb. Limiting a city’s ability to require ground floor retail outside of station areas will make it even harder to retain these small businesses,” Hellend said. “Ground floor retail requirements are not about restricting housing. They’re about creating complete walkable community and small business can coexist. The legislature has encouraged this type of planning through recent mandates, requiring a climate change element, mandating density around transit development areas and increasing residential capacity in neighborhoods. Redmond has been an early adopter of all of these requirements, and this bill will undercut much of our work.”

The new 40% cap likely gives cities the flexibility to decide which areas within their borders are the most important when it comes to maintaining walkability, especially in a city like Redmond where so many existing mixed-use zones are close to light rail stations where storefront mandates would be unimpacted. But if not, they can simply provide height incentives that allow builders to reach 85 feet, another provision embedded within the House version.

Housing advocates were hopeful some of the reduced requirements for ground-floor retail could be balanced out by the passage of statewide neighborhood cafe and corner store legalization bill, but that policy stalled out for a third year in a row, once again dying in the Senate’s local government committee.

Ultimately, SB 6026 is trying to lower barriers that stand in the way of housing production, though it mostly maintains the status quo of zoning in Washington, encouraging development in areas that are already mostly zoned for apartment buildings and leaving the state’s residential areas off-limits.

“As a city councilmember for Olympia, I have seen what happens to this commercial land that has big open spaces,” Representative Lisa Parshley (D-22) said ahead of the committee vote. “For example, our mall has at peak occupancy, more than three-quarters of the parking lot empty, and we are running out of buildable land. We need to be able to do this, and some cities are working towards it, and unfortunately, some are not, and we have a housing crisis.”

SB 6026 has to clear the House appropriations committee, the House floor, and then have the changes made in the House signed off by the full Senate before the end of the legislative session on March 12.

This article has been updated to clarify that transit station areas would continue to be exempt from the provisions around ground floor retail.

The post Legislation Targeting Ground-Floor Storefronts Gets Overhauled in House first appeared on The Urbanist.

While targeted at fostering cafes and bodegas, House Bill 1175, sponsored by Representative Mark Klicker (R-16th LD, Walla Walla), requires most cities and towns in Washington to allow a fairly broad set of commercial uses in residential areas. A cafe is defined as an establishment with at least 500 square feet of gross floor area that must serve food along with any alcoholic beverages, and the goods a “neighborhood store” sells are “not limited to” food, beverages, and household items.

A floor amendment put forward by Rep. Amy Walen (D-48th, Kirkland) and adopted ahead of the floor vote exempts cities and towns in major urban areas with fewer than 5,000 residents, impacting places like Medina, Clyde Hill, and Yarrow Point — jurisdictions where neighborhood zoning is considered sacrosanct and local elected officials have been increasingly vocal about not wanting to see additional land use mandates handed down to them from Olympia.

Klicker revamped this bill to be less prescriptive after the failure of his previous attempt (HB 2252) in the Senate in 2024. That bill required local governments to allow cafes and corner stores by right, if certain conditions are met, including a cap on the total size of the store and limited hours of operation from 7am to 8pm. HB 2252 ran into opposition from local elected officials, who raised concerns around the aesthetic impact of signage, noise, and traffic. The Association of Washington Cities, a local government advocacy group that lobbies in Olympia, warned that the proposal could lead to “heavily parked residential streets” and that its broad language raises “real concerns beyond preemption.”

After a Senate committee gutted the bill by making it fully optional — and potentially banning existing neighborhood cafes that serve alcohol at the same time — the bill never came up for a Senate floor vote and quietly died before the end of the 2024 session.

Urbanists have embraced neighborhood cafes and corner stores because they increase walkability within neighborhoods, reducing the amount of driving that becomes necessary to make daily trips while at the same time increasing foot traffic and vibrancy. Klicker framed his bill as a boon for community cohesiveness, in cities and towns large and small.

“What’s really neat about this bill is that it is not only a bill that opens opportunity in neighborhoods, but it opens opportunity of cohesiveness. It opens the opportunity for community. It brings people together,” Klicker said of his bill’s approval this week. “People go to those coffee shops and markets, and in some cases, little pubs, like what we see in Europe… and you might run into somebody. You see them every day that you’re going in there, and you see him. Next day you see him, you say hi. The next day, you make a comment about the weather. Next thing you know, within that year, you are sitting down, having conversation, getting to know each other. It’s a place of unity. It’s a place of community.”

While the uses allowed under HB 1175 are broad, so are the tools that local governments would have to regulate them. Cities can still require parking, a frequent subject of concern around how neighborhood cafes operate, as long as the “regulations are not infeasible” — which is sure to be heavily debated. Hours of operation could be limited, as long as businesses are able to be open for at least 12 hours consecutively, and square footage requirements can be freely imposed. All together, this could lead some jurisdictions to essentially allow cafes and corner stores in name only.

Even without state action, cities across the state have been getting out ahead of this policy and legalizing cafes on their own. Everett and Burien both advanced the policy as part of updating their long-range growth plans, and a council committee in Renton just this week considered a policy that would allow neighborhood commercial uses on corner lots in most neighborhoods or within a quarter-mile of frequent transit lines.

In Seattle, a similar proposal to only allow cafes and bodegas on corner lots put forward by former Mayor Bruce Harrell was eagerly expanded to cover all residential lots by the Seattle City Council late last year, setting up a potential boom in neighborhood eateries. The council resisted the idea of explicitly allowing bars in low-density residential areas.

HB 1175 now heads to the Senate, where it will need to receive a majority committee vote by February 25 in order to advance any further this year.

The post Washington House Approves Neighborhood Cafe Bill in Early Floor Vote first appeared on The Urbanist.

The move sets the stage for a major overhaul of land use regulations that have been standing in the way of the city’s own goals for the area. The study could make way for an additional 2,000 homes in the Town Center, assuming Council follows through.

Sammamish is one of the region’s youngest cities, incorporating in 1999 in response to calls to better manage growth on county land between Issaquah and Redmond. Since its early days, creating a Town Center area has always been envisioned as a path toward providing the city with a commercial hub and community gathering space. With a civic campus that’s home to City Hall, a King County library branch, and a YMCA all abutting a large swath of park space, it’s a natural fit for supporting more residents and denser development.

But that density has been slow to develop, a trend that Sammamish city leaders want to turn around with a new plan that’s expected to draw more commercial spaces along with much-needed affordable housing. The hope is that the city can start to grow more sustainably compared to recent decades, when most housing has been built on the city’s periphery.

“Growth is coming. So we can let it happen to us, or we can plan for it,” Sammamish Mayor Karen Howe said ahead of the vote. “We want to expand our very limited choices for housing beyond single-family and have more affordable options. Residents do want amenities, they do want choices — that has been extraordinarily clear, year after year after year.”

Reviving a stale plan

When Sammamish adopted the original Town Center plan in 2008, it spelled out a vision of suburban-style town squares set away from the main corridor of 228th Avenue SE. Brand new roads cut across the landscape connecting lower-scale development, with pedestrian connectivity not prioritized. In the nearly two decades since it was adopted, development hasn’t followed that pattern at all. Instead, projects like The Village at Sammamish Town Center, home to Metropolitan Market, have utilized existing road infrastructure and oriented toward parking instead of the street.

Despite considering the potential of allowing up to 4,000 homes across the entire Town Center, the city council at that time settled on a lower 2,000-unit cap.

“They artificially set it at 2,000 units in the town center. The acreage could support much more than that,” David Pyle, Sammamish’s Community Development Director, told The Urbanist. “They reverse engineered the map to get to 2,000 units, so that there was no more capacity than 2,000 units available in the town center roughly.”

The few mixed-use buildings that have popped up in the area over the past decade-and-a-half have mostly been one-offs, happening not so much because of the plan but in spite of it. Since the Town Center plan was first adopted, Sammamish has added over 3,500 units outside of Town Center — almost all large single-family homes — and just over 300 homes inside the Town Center. At this point, it’s hard to see the plan as anything other than a failure.

“The world has certainly changed quite a bit in 17 years. When you look at the growth that we’ve experienced in the region, when you look at just things that have changed here in Sammamish, the expectation would be that we would have reviewed and adjusted the plan along the way,” Councilmember Pam Stuart told The Urbanist. “There was never really a review done on it.”

Tuesday night’s vote will study bumping up total housing capacity in the Town Center to 4,000, along with implementation of a form-based code that is intended to make development more feasible. Along with shifting the types of housing projects away from townhouses toward larger apartment buildings that can support retail spaces, the update to the Town Center plan is also needed, city leaders say, in order to achieve new state targets for affordable housing. Right now, nearly all of the additional capacity that developers could unlock in Town Center by providing subsidized units has been exhausted.

“We know without a doubt that near zero affordable housing will be built if we don’t make some additional adjustments,” Stuart said.

While the city is clearly aiming to accommodate future residents, councilmembers emphasize the benefits of an improved Town Center that will pay dividends for everyone in the city, including longtime residents.

“If you want to talk about the benefits to the community, well, one is that have large segments, although they tend to be the quiet people of the community who have been dying for us to have more commercial space. We could have restaurants. We could have commercial space for dance studios and music studios and whatever else,” Stuart said. “We have no space for community theater here […] the Sammamish Symphony rarely, if ever, actually performs in Sammamish.”

Planning for transit to come

There’s no doubt that Sammamish, compared to other Eastside cities, is a transit desert. King County Metro’s Route 269 operates on a half-hourly basis between Issaquah and Redmond, stops running at around 7pm, and doesn’t provide weekend service. Routes 216 and 219, both peak-only commuter routes, were suspended by Metro in 2020 and are unlikely to return as the agency shifts to an all-day service model. Despite being within the Sound Transit taxing district, Sammamish only receives five trips a day as a tail off the Route 554, mostly late at night and early in the morning.

Without robust transit access, the issue of increased traffic with future development has been a major sticking point for many Sammamish residents. But city leaders see a denser Town Center as the only way that Sammamish will be able to sustain more robust transit service as the city grows.

“Nobody’s going to give us transit in our current situation,” Stuart said. “We used to have transit. We no longer do. We can, certainly, if we had a town center, figure out a way to partner with Sound Transit or King County Metro or someone, and have a shuttle that runs between the town center and light rail.”

“The idea is with more transit being brought to the Eastside, East Link arriving in Redmond with — out in the future, and hopefully it happens someday — Sound Transit really starting to make headway into Issaquah, that we could start to see some form of more robust connection between transit investments in Redmond and Issaquah,” Pyle said.

Redmond’s light rail connections are not actually very far from Town Center, and with the full buildout of the regional transit network, Sammamish could go from being left out to somewhere that’s well-positioned to be served with frequent transit. The six-mile trip is a 15-minute car ride in light traffic.

“I think that we have to be able to show that we really are going to invest in the region, and then the region will invest in us,” Stuart said.

The misinformation campaign

The weeks leading up to Tuesday’s initial vote have been riling Sammamish politics, with tensions over the future of Town Center running high. The question of what should happen in Town Center is not a new one — in 2022, two councilmembers resigned in the wake of a vote to drop an appeal of litigation related to the area — but the idea of increasing capacity to 4,000 has galvanized opposition.

Save Our Sammamish, a group opposed to the change, created a website that included a laundry list of reasons to oppose the plan, complete with AI-generated images. Along with car-choked roads and skyscrapers, one image showed a burning Sammamish, cars trapped on a roadway in an attempt to evacuate. The website warns of environmental degradation that would come from densifying Town Center, a claim that city leaders clearly rebut.

“Those environmental impacts are really comparing ‘well, what if we didn’t build anything compared to building a town center?’ Yeah, and that’s not an option,” Stuart said, pointing to work that the city has been doing around the future town center to create stormwater infrastructure to reduce harmful runoff.

An online petition circulating among city residents referenced “15+ story buildings.” It has since been altered to only reference “high density housing.” Currently, the tallest buildings in Town Center would be allowed to rise to 85 feet — around eight stories — only with affordable housing included, but no final decisions have been made on building heights.

In the days leading up to the vote, SkyLine high school student Andrew Wong and his two friends created Super Sammamish, a counterpoint to Save our Sammamish that debunked some of that group’s talking points. “Sammamish is boring. Lets change that,” the website’s tagline reads. The group also created their own petition.

“We don’t totally disagree with everything that Save Our Sammamish did or does, but at that time, we were kind of irked the way that they were transcending their message […] On social media, they had some data points that were blatantly incorrect.” Wong told The Urbanist of the decision to set up the site. “We thought it’d be healthy and just good for the community if we provided another voice as for this, where the city is trying to decide on creating a Town Center or not.”

Wong sees the move toward a denser Town Center as one that will help the city become more vibrant and create more third places. And be less boring.

“They’re saying, ‘Oh, don’t let Sammamish just become another Redmond.’ But if you see the way that Redmond is growing and how it’s very fun to be in Redmond, and how there’s a lot of economic vitality there, the same happening to Sammamish is, subjectively, for me, at least a really good thing,” Wong said. “We’re lacking a place in our city — just the ubiquitous place where everyone can just go and hang out.”

Tuesday night’s vote was just an early step, with a full environmental review still to come in advance of any plan’s adoption — and potentially a lengthy appeal. But city leaders see the move as advancing the best interest of Sammamish residents, both current and future.

The sole vote against moving forward came from Councilmember Kent Treen, who offered three separate motions to reduce the number of potential units studied for Town Center. He failed to convince any of his colleagues to deviate from the new preferred alternative at this stage.

“We’re talking about being able to design a plan and infrastructure for a town center that realistically won’t be redesigned for 50 years,” Stuart said. “And if we under plan it, then we’re shortchanging the next generation or the next two generations, and that’s just bad planning.”

The post Sammamish Council Pursues Denser Town Center Vision Amid Backlash first appeared on The Urbanist.

Bothell’s vote to completely ditch off-street parking requirements is a first for any city in King or Snohomish County — Bothell straddles both — and it becomes only the fifth city statewide to take such a step. With the cost of structured parking in new buildings regularly approaching $60,000 per stall, according to the Sightline Institute, allowing builders to tailor the amount of parking to meet demand without an arbitrary minimum to hit will remove excess costs from homebuilding.

Without costly parking requirements, builders can make more projects pencil out as feasible, especially on smaller lots. Not needing to add parking stalls on-site can make room for additional housing than otherwise possible. Given those advantages, dropping parking mandates tends to stimulate homebuilding while getting rid of a hidden subsidy for cars.

“I am really excited tonight, because we get to take a big step away from the way we’ve always done things, toward our community’s values a little bit closer,” Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson said ahead of the vote. “And the mechanics of parking minimums essentially tax new housing and new businesses that we say we really want, and we use that tax toward building something that creates more traffic and more pollution. And I’ve had thousands of conversations with Bothell residents over the last few years, and I’ve never had a single person say, do you know what? We need more traffic and more pollution. And I’m really excited to get rid of policy that subsidizes both.”

Buoyed by a progressive supermajority its city council, Bothell has been taking bolder and bolder steps toward increased vibrancy and denser housing in recent years. Its bustling downtown, which benefited from rerouting State Route 522 away from the urban core in the early 2010s, turned into an even bigger draw with the pedestrianization of Main Street. The city took steps to allow additional residential density in the wake of new state mandates in late 2023, well over a year before many larger cities scrambled to comply this summer.

The idea of reforming parking reforms in Bothell was prompted, in part, by the passage of Senate Bill 5184 this spring, which requires large and mid-sized cities to reduce required parking stalls to 0.5 per housing unit in multifamily buildings. It also requires cities to exempt uses like affordable housing and smaller apartment units from minimums entirely. During a discussion of potential Comprehensive Plan updates earlier this spring, a majority of the Bothell Council was in favor of just going ahead and removing all parking mandates, 18 months ahead of schedule.

“I will be another voice to supporting the removal of outdated, unscientific, kind of like throwing darts at a dart board parking minimums and how they have developed over time, so that developers can choose what is most marketable for them,” Councilmember Jenne Alderks said at that time.

Cafes and corner stores: legal in all Bothell neighborhoods

Bothell’s new rules for allowing neighborhood corner stores and cafes are some of the most permissive in the state. Along with those uses, property owners can open bars and taverns, bike shops, boutiques, artisan manufacturing facilities with on-site sales, offices, art galleries, salons, and child care centers in all residential zones. Operating hours would be limited to 6am to 10pm Monday through Friday — the opening hour limit goes to 7am on weekends.

“Neighborhood Scale Commercial uses are intended to promote neighborhood vitality and compatibility with surrounding residential areas, allowing only small-scale retail, service, and residential uses that primarily serve local residents with minimal traffic from outside the neighborhood,” the new code states. “These businesses should support live-work opportunities, be easily accessible by walking, biking, and local transit, and contribute to vibrant, pedestrian-friendly community hubs which eliminate reliance on automobiles.”

On small lots, neighborhood commercial spaces are capped at 1,800 square feet, or square footage can scale up by calculating 30% of the net buildable area of a lot, up to a maximum size of 2,500 square feet. In nearby Shoreline, which legalized neighborhood commercial storefronts early this year, a cap of 1,200 square feet was adopted for most residential zones, but that cap can be lifted to 2,000 square feet if a store is built within an existing building.

Other cities are set to follow in these jurisdictions’ footprints, though potentially with more onerous restrictions. In Burien, for example, corner stores and cafes are set to have a required closing time of 8pm, a move that could limit what types of businesses become viable. Meanwhile, Seattle’s pending neighborhood cafe regulations are poised to restrict corner stores to literal corners, keeping them banned mid-block.

“I am really excited about corner stores,” Thompson said as the policy was advancing back in June. “More cool businesses to walk to, more opportunities for entrepreneurs getting started, for small businesses, I think this is so cool and I think when we finally start getting these things built people are going to absolutely love it.”

Bothell’s support for creating small business incubators isn’t confined to its residential neighborhoods. In 2021, the city utilized a vacant lot downtown for its Pop Shops on Main program, in which tiny temporary retail spaces provided space for entrepreneurs to be able to have a brick-and-mortar space while at the same time encouraging people to come downtown.

This week’s votes clearly solidify Bothell’s role as a regional leader when it comes to land use reforms, particularly on the Eastside. During a panel discussion this past weekend hosted by The Urbanist at Bellevue’s Highland Community Center, Thompson was asked what factors led to his city being able to take these major steps ahead of other cities.

“I think in a lot of ways, we got pretty lucky. We have some exceptionally talented people with really good values that ran for office,” Thompson said. “I think just if there’s any special sauce we’ve had, it’s just some really brilliant people and the ability to communicate with people where they’re at about things they care about, because not everybody cares about the same things I care about, and if I talk about things I care about, I’m losing. I need to talk about things somebody else cares about.”

The post Bothell Drops Parking Mandates, Legalizes Neighborhood Corner Stores Citywide first appeared on The Urbanist.

Still pitched as a pilot program, Roots to Roofs would allow up to 35 projects across the city to take advantage of additional density allowances as long as they set aside at least 25% of planned housing units as affordable for lower-income households for up to 50 years. Furthermore, the proposal includes additional density bonuses on parcels that previously been under racially restrictive covenants, now-illegal clauses in property deeds that prohibited certain racial and ethnic groups from being able to live in those areas.

Rinck’s legislation will face its first committee discussion on Wednesday.

“The spirit of this legislation is to make sure that we have more community-led affordable housing, especially in areas that haven’t seen affordable housing growth,” Rinck told The Urbanist. “We know affordable housing is such a critical need right now, and we know it’s also an increasingly challenging time to be able to build and develop. So steps that we’re taking at the city level to make it easier for projects to pencil is something absolutely within our power. Beyond staff time, this doesn’t cost the city anything.”

Morales’s Connected Communities pilot was relatively straightforward: new housing projects partnering with community organizations and setting aside a certain number of units as badly needed affordable housing would receive additional development capacity. In the works before the 2023 council elections but put forward after a wave of five new moderate councilmembers took office, the idea faced a litany of concerns that seemed secondary to the fact that Morales was the bill sponsor.

Roots to Roofs, by contrast, already another co-sponsor in Land Use Committee Chair Mark Solomon, whose support for the bill could help help convince other centrist councilmembers to get behind the idea.

To qualify as a Roots to Roofs projects, developers would have to have ties to a non-profit organization, a public housing authority, or a public development authority — a group that includes the Seattle Social Housing Developer. Participating projects would be able to rise to four stories in the city’s lowest density Neighborhood Residential (NR) zones, scaling up as allowed density increases in the city’s Low Rise (LR) zones. Projects in LR2 would be allowed to be five stories, and those in LR3 zones inside urban villages and centers six stories. In Midrise (MR) zones, projects could rise to nine stories.

Roots to Roofs projects could also take advantage of additional development capacity provided in terms of floor-area ratio (FAR) allowances. FAR determines the maximum amount of space that buildings are able to take up on a lot. It is calculated by adding up area across all floors in a building and dividing it by size of the lot.

A baseline Roots to Roofs project would be able to increase their FAR by anywhere from 27% — in a denser neighborhood commercial zone — to 260% on a lot within a neighborhood residential (NR) zone.

Projects would be eligible for even more FAR if the parcel’s history includes a racially restrictive covenant, a move that could allow a project in a neighborhood residential zone to increase total FAR by five times what the existing limit is, and double the amount that was proposed in Connected Communities.

The University of Washington’s Racial Restrictive Covenants Project has mapped tens of thousands of properties where covenants were in place, but new ones continue to be uncovered all the time, and it would be up to the property owner to provide proof of a past covenant. In Seattle, the places where covenants were in place largely remain the most exclusive areas of the city today.

In other zones, additional FAR would be provided for projects setting aside space for equitable development uses — arts and cultural uses, child care centers, theaters, educational space, and commercial uses that could include maker’s spaces, commercial kitchens, and cafes. Adding additional development capacity is one way that the city can help scarce Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) funding go even further.

Rinck said the idea to reboot Connected Communities came about, in part, due to delays in advancing the zoning changes included in Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. The council is not set to adopt the most substantive citywide zoning changes — creating new neighborhood growth centers, expanding existing urban centers, and allowing apartment buildings along frequent transit corridors — until early 2026. Meanwhile, the environmental review for Connected Communities had already been completed, and was sitting on a shelf.

“It’s on a prolonged timeline, and we don’t want that to stand in the way of making progress on building more housing. By being able to pass something like this over the next couple months, we can get the ball rolling on some of these projects, be able to the go into the design phase, start working on permits,” Rinck said.

The Roots to Roofs proposal has been in the works for months. Rinck said legal review by City Attorney Ann Davison’s office took longer than expected, and needed to be cleared before the bill could move forward. The bill also builds in some ramp-up time, providing up to 160 days for the city to create rules around how EDI projects qualify to take advantage of the program, and around how the city will integrate a Community Preference policy, which would prioritize systemically disadvantaged populations when it comes to finding tenants or homebuyers for new housing in areas of high risk of displacement.

Even with those delays, Roots to Roofs could still take effect before the biggest zoning changes included in the Comprehensive Plan.

Connected Communities faced the most skepticism from three councilmembers: Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore, and Tanya Woo, who Rinck replaced on the council in November. With Moore’s forthcoming departure from the council, the dynamics look to be very different this time around.

Moore’s Council-appointed replacement to fill the District 5 vacancy is set to be seated on the Land Use Committee by late July — likely before Roots to Roofs will come up for a vote. So, that council vote remains a wild card. Also on Land Use Committee is Dan Strauss, who was the only other final vote in favor of Connected Communities, apart from Morales. The fact that Connected Communities didn’t receive a “do pass” recommendation from committee went a long way toward dooming the proposal. Councilmembers can pass legislation without a committee recommendation, but it often is cited as a reason to oppose legislation.

Through the city council has spent considerable time considering land use proposals submitted by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, no significant proposal to encourage the development of affordable housing has come out of the council itself, at least since the failure of Connected Communities. Whether Roots to Roofs can advance will be a big test of whether this council can advance big ideas that are geared at tackling the city’s housing crisis.

The Land Use Committee will take up Roots to Roofs this Wednesday at 2pm.

The post Rinck Retools Housing Affordability Bonus with More Density first appeared on The Urbanist.

The corner of 12th and Jackson is home – but the people who have called it home have changed over the decades. On the northeast corner, a marker commemorates how this part of Seattle was once a hub for Black Seattle where jazz clubs opened their doors to everyone when much of the city at a time when redlining and sundown laws enshrined segregation by race. Some of us have spoken to elders who know the neighborhood as “Indian Country” and remember what it was like before I-5 tore it apart. 

During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and using an executive order, decimated the Japanese American community that once lived here. 

Displacement, underinvestment, and neglect have been the common story of these blocks of Seattle, in large part because of who has called this place home. It’s always tended to be the most marginalized and precarious communities in the city.

Today, the Vietnamese-American community is the latest diaspora making the area around 12^th and Jackson home, and like the communities before us, it doesn’t take much to see the pattern of underinvestment and neglect repeating itself. Local media can’t help itself to use Little Saigon in an annual puff piece to fire up the fear machine before elections to remind voters it’s time to renew the City’s “law and order” commitment to give us unimaginative, one-dimensional public safety that rarely achieves the “compassionate” goals our city claims to value.

The visible neglect of Little Saigon is hard to look at and harder to change, yet Friends of Little Saigon (FLS) is seeking to do exactly that. FLS recently launched “Phố Đẹp (Beautiful Neighborhood),” an inclusive framework to public safety that started with visioning meetings and outreach to community members, small businesses, residents, and local organizations to foster long-term change through placemaking and place-based solutions.

After a year of collecting data and anecdotes, FLS launched the Little Saigon Safety Plan at a community kick-off in February 2025. The meeting brought together local government partners into the room with small businesses, residents, and community organizations to take shared ownership of this safety plan. Some of the actionable steps include coordinating social service providers to better support people who are struggling with homelessness and addiction, increasing lighting and public art in Hoa Mai Park, advocating for more frequent neighborhood trash pickups, and creating a Little Saigon business coalition. 

A group of community members have committed to accomplishing small steps in the near term, also called the 100 Day Challenge. Over the next two and a half years, the rest of the actions identified by the Little Saigon Safety Plan will be executed by community stakeholders to cultivate safety and vibrancy in Little Saigon. 

We are cleareyed that this is not work that will be simple or have easy solutions, and it will require ongoing and long-term commitments, advocacy, and a bigger imagination for what will help this community thrive and be safe. 

We will prioritize a housing-first ethos for our unhoused neighbors, appropriate services for people experiencing substance-use disorder, physical environment improvements like lighting or improving cleanliness to enhance safety for pedestrians and residents, and growing neighborhood activation to bring more people to the neighborhood. This requires investments in building the capacity of the neighborhood and its people, and partnerships with our local government. 

For a diaspora like the Vietnamese/Vietnamese-American community, the feeling of home and the feeling of safety is something we’ve been seeking for generations. April 30th marks the fall of Saigon, with this year being the 50th anniversary of this historic event that caused 2 million people to flee an authoritarian government. This event was the precursor to many of our families arriving in the Pacific Northwest and carving out the area around 12th and Jackson as a cultural home, a place where we can shop, gather, worship, and celebrate, where we can find ingredients to recreate dishes cherished by elders and the young. 

Despite the struggles and challenges, Little Saigon is a place with vibrancy and meaning for many Vietnamese-Americans and the AANHPI community. This is where culture makers are creating third spaces like the Little Saigon Creative, new ways to celebrate Vietnamese and the broader Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) culture and identities through CID Block Party by Drag & Drop Creative, and neighborhood businesses like The Boat (James Beard Award nominated) cementing Vietnamese cuisine as among the best in the world and making the neighborhood a dining destination for the region. 

These are all things that are making this neighborhood safer and more vibrant, but there’s more work to be done and we need ongoing commitments of resources – not just for the Vietnamese community, but also to adequately fund the services and systems that will assist those currently struggling with homelessness and/or addiction. We need allies to support the Phố Đẹp work, and to think of Little Saigon often by coming to FLS/neighborhood events and supporting the diverse businesses here year round. We call on everyone to come see the magic, innovation, and love we experience in the neighborhood for themselves, because this is a home worth fighting for. 

Join for the world premiere of Saigon to Seattle at Hoa Mai Park on Saturday, May 3rd, more information here: http://flsseattle.org/saigontoseattle.Follow Friends of Little Saigon (Facebook, Instagram) and subscribe to our newsletter to get updates on the neighborhood, our work, or to learn more about the businesses and events in Little Saigon: https://flsseattle.org/get-involved/.

The post Op-Ed: Little Saigon Forges a Plan for a Safe, Beautiful Neighborhood  first appeared on The Urbanist.

What was promised as a tool for empowerment has become yet another mask for modern-day redlining — a new iteration of an old injustice.

Opportunity Zones (OZs) were intended to drive private investment into economically distressed communities, allowing investors to defer and reduce their capital gains taxes. The theory was that tax incentives would spur the revitalization of underserved neighborhoods. But in practice, OZs have often failed to produce meaningful benefits for long-time residents.

Instead, they have opened the door for speculative development — luxury housing, high-end retail, and corporate projects that price out the very people the policy was meant to help. Developers receive massive tax breaks for building in a designated zone, even if their projects do nothing to address housing insecurity, food deserts, or chronically underfunded public services.

In cities across America — from Baltimore to Oakland, Cleveland to Atlanta — the pattern is painfully clear: investment comes, but equity does not.

This isn’t a new problem. It’s a repackaging of redlining, the racist practice that denied Black and Brown communities access to mortgages and fair housing opportunities for decades. Today, the discrimination is more insidious. Instead of being denied access, residents are now being priced out, displaced, or overlooked altogether as the profits of “revitalization” flow elsewhere.

Though redlining was outlawed in the 1960s, its effects are still visible today — and some say Opportunity Zones have inherited the same framework, simply wearing a different mask. 

High-potential neighborhoods — rich in culture, heritage, and resilience — are marked not for community-led growth, but for external extraction. Land values soar, but local wages do not. Developers gain wealth, while long-time residents lose their homes, their businesses, and their sense of place.

Data supports the concern. According to a 2023 study by the Urban Institute, only a fraction of Opportunity Zone investments have gone toward projects that directly address housing affordability, small business development, or workforce training — the cornerstones of sustainable, inclusive growth.

This is not revitalization. This is erasure.

Opportunity Zones (OZs) have played a significant role in shaping economic development across Washington State, including cities like Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett. In Seattle, the Othello Square project exemplifies the potential benefits of OZs. This development includes affordable housing, a community health clinic, educational facilities, and retail spaces, aiming to serve the local community’s needs. 

Similarly, Tacoma’s Town Center Urban Village project plans to offer over 600 apartments, substantial retail space, and office areas, contributing to urban revitalization efforts. These projects indicate that, when aligned with community goals, OZs can attract investments that foster inclusive growth and provide essential services. 

However, concerns have been raised about the potential negative impacts of OZs, particularly regarding gentrification. Increased investment in historically underinvested neighborhoods can lead to rising property values and living costs, potentially displacing long-term residents. Critics argue that without proper safeguards, OZs might prioritize large-scale developments that do not necessarily benefit existing communities, leading to social and economic disparities. The challenge lies in ensuring that investments through OZs are directed towards projects that genuinely uplift and support the local population. 

Across Washington State, the implementation of OZs has been met with both optimism and caution. Governor Jay Inslee approved 139 census tracts for OZ designation, aiming to stimulate economic growth in low-income areas Washington State Department of Commerce. While this initiative has the potential to bring much-needed development and job opportunities, its success largely depends on strategic planning and community involvement. 

For cities like Everett, the focus should be on leveraging OZs to support small businesses, affordable housing, and infrastructure improvements that directly benefit residents. Ultimately, the effectiveness of OZs in Washington hinges on transparent governance and a commitment to equitable development.​

True reinvestment means more than constructing buildings. It means investing in people: small business owners, community leaders, elders, youth. It means public dollars that match private investment, and community benefit agreements that hold developers accountable.

Urban communities—many of which have endured generations of disinvestment—deserve reinvestment that centers dignity, not just profit.

It’s time to stop calling it “revitalization” when the original residents are no longer there to experience it. Real opportunity doesn’t come from tax loopholes. It comes from shared power, community ownership, and policies rooted in justice.

Until we get that right, Opportunity Zones will remain what they are today: missed opportunities for the communities that need them most.

In Brockton, Massachusetts, neighborhoods once identified for their economic potential have seen a surge in speculative real estate activity, yet long-time residents continue to face food insecurity, underfunded schools, and a shortage of deeply affordable housing.

A major criticism of the program is its lack of transparency and accountability. Investors are not required to report how their funds are used or whether they benefit the community. While some developers have formed partnerships with local nonprofits or pursued community benefit agreements, these cases remain the exception rather than the rule.

Advocates argue that a more equitable approach to reinvestment would include direct community ownership, public-private funding models, and policies that prioritize residents over real estate markets. Some cities have launched initiatives to redirect Opportunity Zone funds into land trusts, minority-owned businesses, and affordable housing cooperatives — models that build wealth within the community rather than extracting it.

With federal lawmakers debating the future of the Opportunity Zone program, many believe reforms are needed to ensure investments actually serve the communities they target. Proposals include stronger reporting requirements, affordability standards, and deeper community engagement.

Until then, the promise of equitable revitalization remains elusive for many urban neighborhoods — still waiting for the opportunity they were promised.

The post Op-Ed: Opportunity Zones Fail to Address Urban Disinvestment Crisis first appeared on The Urbanist.

Under normal circumstances, new projects have two years to complete the process for permit approval, and another year-and-a-half before those permits expire. But with pandemic delays, high interest rates, and soaring inflation upending the financial plans for many projects, an unusually high number of permits have been trapped in limbo. In 2023, the Seattle City Council extended the master use permits for many of these projects to keep them alive, but exactly which building code applies to these holdover projects has remained an outstanding issue.

While this rescue line isn’t likely to make every eligible project feasible, as high interest rates are set to converge with increased materials costs due to international tariffs, the number of projects that would be impacted is significant. According to a staff report produced by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, more than 3,000 distinct projects — poised to add around 34,000 units of housing — fall under the scope of the change.

Why are we talking about a 2021 building code in 2025? Seattle adopts new building codes on a three-year cycle, making updates to the state building code and adding city-specific provisions. The 2021 city building code didn’t take full effect in Seattle until last fall. Though it had been initially poised to go much further than the state code, it was ultimately scaled back in a bid to encourage more housing production moving forward. But any major change in building code would require a top-to-bottom reworking of existing building plans. That’s where this change comes in.

A major target of this legislation are around 15 large projects in Downtown Seattle. On the list: a 40-story tower being developed by Chicago-based developer AMLI at 5th Avenue and Lenora Street that would finally fill in a long-vacant lot. AMLI also has another project on the waterfront, a 17-story, 245-unit building along Western Avenue, that could also move forward.

Those 15 projects would have been poised to bring in around $75 million in funding for affordable housing, via the city’s Mandatory Housing Affordability program. Those fees are automatically updated every year to account for inflation, meaning those payments are the same as an equivalent project entering the pipeline today. Ultimately, the move is part of a whole suite of changes proposed by Harrell’s office to keep building projects moving downtown, including narrowly targeted rezones and a three-year design review moratorium.

“Without this legislation, these permit applications could be cancelled, the projects abandoned. We’d be losing critical housing, tax revenue and jobs,” Ardel Jala, a building official with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), told the land use committee earlier this month. “Providing the permit extension to these and other permit holders experiencing financial hardship should stimulate economic development.”

The downside to allowing projects to move forward under outdated building codes is the potential for increased building emissions. But with Seattle City Light providing buildings in the city with 100% renewal energy already, the amount of additional greenhouse gas reduction gained from the new building code is expected to be minimal. On the other hand, pushing building projects in the city core into the red might actually encourage development elsewhere, in places with less sustainable energy sources or where more driving trips would be generated.

“Bringing housing to city centers plays a crucial role in reducing emissions by promoting proximity between where people live, work, and access services,” the Mayor’s Office staff report for this legislation notes.

The list of dormant projects also includes subsidized affordable housing. Scott Surdyke, a senior development manager at Community Roots Housing, told the council this week that the move would allow hundreds of new units to sidestep millions of dollars in increased costs by remaining vested under a prior code. “Two projects in particular represent 350 units at transit stops in the Rainier Valley — if we are forced to comply with the 2021 code, right now they’re vested under the 2015 code, that will add $6.9 million to the cost of these projects. We cannot take it,” Surdyke said.

The idea of giving these projects a lifeline proved uncontroversial at the Land Use Committee, with very little discussion ahead of a 4-0 vote Thursday. However, there was a signal that additional extensions would be harder to come by, even as the city’s building permit downturn doesn’t show any signs of abating any time soon.

“As we get further and further away from the pandemic, I believe, again, that this is prudent today, but this will be the last set of extensions that I will be able to support, moving out of the economic downturn associated with the pandemic,” Committee Vice Chair Dan Strauss said ahead of the vote. “It’s important to keep these projects moving and get them built, there’s a lot of benefit to our city and to our community, and, at the same time, this will be the last of the extensions that I’ll likely support.”

Though the city’s homebuilding landscape seems unlikely to be headed toward anything resembling normalcy any time soon, those questions will remain for another day.

The post Seattle Tosses a Lifeline to Housing Projects Stuck in Limbo first appeared on The Urbanist.

In mid-January, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the city had awarded $22 million in grants to 42 organizations as part of the city’s Equitable Development Initiative (EDI), a program launched 2016 to prevent displacement of marginalized communities and help those communities reduce disparities and build generational wealth. It was one of the first programs in the nation to dedicate significant dollars to programs designed to address systemic racism, funding more than $116 million in grants since its inception.

EDI funds a variety of capital-based initiatives, including affordable housing, community centers, arts and cultural spaces, child care and education centers, and outdoor spaces and environmental remediation. The program relies heavily on partnerships with community-based organizations and is managed by the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD). 

Seattle’s EDI program was briefly in the crosshairs of Councilmember Maritza Rivera (District 4) last fall during the council’s search for programs to cut or reduce spending on in order to address a $240 million deficit. Rivera initially insinuated the program was poorly run and too slow in delivering results. 

Rivera’s attempt to place limits on the program didn’t succeed, and she walked back her criticisms as community groups pushed back. Still, the program could fall victim to cuts in future budget cycles, with centrists like Rivera and Council President Sara Nelson pledging to trim programs rather than raise taxes.

OPCD Director Rico Quirindongo said that even though the 2025-2026 budget cycle was “a difficult time for the city,” he portrayed Harrell as “very committed to and excited about this program. He is passionate about what he sees related to the program affecting positive change and positive support for our diverse communities.” 

Harrell’s final budget passed by the council increased EDI funding to $26 million for 2025.

“Our city is steadfast in its commitment to delivering real results for communities disproportionately impacted by displacement,” Mayor Harrell said in a press release announcing the grants.

However, as reported by PubliCola in April, the Harrell administration removed more ambitious plans for new anti-displacement programs from its early drafts of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan – so EDI remains the city’s primary tool for meeting its racial equity goals. 

The lion’s share of the current EDI funding cycle is intended to help existing partners complete capital projects or build their organizational capacity, EDI director Jenna Franklin said. “We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the need to help people close funding gaps,” Franklin said, noting that OPCD also increased technical funding to assist organizations navigate the world of nonprofit management and fundraising. 

The list of this cycle’s capital grant recipients, which generally range from $300,000 to more than $1 million, is loaded with prominent projects in predominantly communities of color across Seattle, including Africatown Community Land Trust (completing the Africatown Plaza development), Cham Refugees Community (completing a Cham community center), Rainier Beach Action Coalition (completion of the Food Innovation Center), the Somali Health Board (assisting construction of the Somali Community Cultural Innovation Hub), and Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network (to build House of Constance, a place for housing and support for trans and queer people of color).

In addition, in this cycle, OPCD awarded smaller capacity-building EDI grants in the $35,000 to $150,000 range to wide variety of organizations, including ARTE NOIR (to support building a recording studio); Wa Na Wari (capacity building for the Central District arts space); Friends of Little Saigon (in support of the Little Saigon Landmark housing and community space); and Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (to help create a demonstration biofuel systems project).

EDI is funded largely by the JumpStart Tax on high wage earners at large Seattle companies – by law, 9% of JumpStart revenue was designated toward EDI — though subsequent mayors and council have raided the JumpStart fund for other priorities, depleting resources for EDI and affordable housing investments. 

Franklin said that the EDI program is an integral part of the city’s strategy to combat displacement and helps grassroots organizations develop the skills, knowledge and reputation to attract other funding. She notes that Chief Seattle Club, prior to receiving an EDI grant, had difficulty even getting meetings with funders.

“They told us: ‘We got laughed at, we got hung up on. We’d finally get a meeting and no one would really listen. We’d get 15 minutes and then be told to leave,’” Franklin said. “Then they got their EDI award, and suddenly people were willing to take the meeting, and they ended up building affordable housing and a community-serving space that has health clinics and all kinds of other amenities.”

The latest round of EDI funding comes as the Trump administration is rapidly shutting down, erasing, and de-funding anything in the federal government associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs directed at combating systemic racism. Quirindongo made it clear that the federal government provides no funding to Seattle’s EDI program.

Franklin believes EDI is needed more than ever in the current political climate. “The marginalized and socially vulnerable populations that our organizations primarily serve or exist to support are the populations who are most impacted by all forms of oppression and all sorts of regressive policies.”

Franklin also noted the durability of the groups funded through EDI, noting that of 77 projects admitted to the program, 75 are still operating. “Our grantees are completing their projects in roughly the same timeframe as market rate developers,” she said, “while they’re simultaneously capacity building, learning development, and completing a project – which is pretty awesome.”

Quynh Pham is executive director of Friends of Little Saigon, which received a $75,000 EDI grant to help complete the Little Saigon Landmark Project, a cultural and economic center for Seattle’s Vietnamese American community. Pham said that her organization, which first envisioned the center more than 10 years ago, was an early participant in the creation of the EDI program.

“Before we received any funding, we were actually part of the initial demonstration projects and helped to pilot and launch the EDI program,” she said.

Pham noted that rising real estate prices and rents are putting pressure on the International District’s Asian American population. To address this, the Landmark Project will also include 71 units of affordable housing.

“We’ve lost a lot of our social, cultural, and economic assets in the neighborhood,” Pham said. “So this project is bringing back all those elements. The cultural center will offer small business opportunities, cultural programming and social programming.”

Though affordable housing is critical to addressing displacement, Pham said that EDI supplements existing housing levy funds by favoring projects that strengthen Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. “Housing is definitely a big priority,” she said. “But we need resources to support projects like cultural centers and community spaces that aren’t tied to housing, and EDI fills that gap.”

During the city council debate over EDI last fall, Pham co-wrote an editorial defending EDI. 

“What is happening in Seattle is a wake-up call to all cities using a racial equity lens to plan for and fund equitable growth and public goods. Other cities and communities across the country must organize and prepare for similar backlash,” Pham and her co-authors wrote.

In January, OPCD released an impact report on the program, noting that “EDI program is a powerful tool for inclusive growth, cultural preservation, and economic development that shifts power into the hands of marginalized communities.” The report found that 90% of EDI grant recipients found additional funding sources outside the program and that 15% of projects are now self-sufficient and have grown beyond the need for EDI funds.

Rainier Beach Action Coalition (RBAC) received a $300,000 EDI grant in this cycle to help complete its Food Innovation Center. The center, located near Rainier Beach’s light rail station, will increase access to local, healthy, organically sourced food in the community. RBAC managing strategist Gregory Davis said the grant will help the organization expand its facility from 4,000 square feet to more than 48,000. The second phase of the project will offer condominiums affordable for families earning between 80% and 120% of area median income, he added. 

“The idea is to have it in the range $250,000 to $300,000 – something that somebody coming out of college earning $70,000 should be able to do,’ Davis said.

The EDI capital grant will help RBAC leverage additional funds for housing as well as addressing the issue of the longtime “food desert” in Rainier Beach where fast food restaurants have proliferated. RBAC works to build networks connecting local, BIPOC growers with community members, while also fighting displacement. 

“This climate for development is really a challenging one, even for private developers, let alone nonprofit developers, let alone community based organizations, who are in many cases, getting into it for the first time,” Davis said of rising land prices in Rainier Beach. “[EDI] helps to support them to build their capacity as an organization around development, as well as having a substantial anchor facility for the neighborhoods they serve.”

Davis observed that last year’s council fight over EDI funds demonstrated at OPCD and the organizations supported by EDI need to do more to tell their stories.

“One of the challenges we have is, how do we make sure those stories are durable?” Davis said. “When a city council district changes leadership, what’s happening to communicate with that incoming leadership about what has happened before?”

Franklin said that funding equity developments through community-based organizations isn’t the same as simply funding and building an affordable housing project. “If an organization is struggling, we’ll help them figure out what’s going on and make sure they write their operating plan to keep it successful,” she said. 

“When they hit a challenge, they can come to our project managers for resources and support because they know we’re really genuine in our sense of partnership,” Franklin said.

“For a program that’s only been in existence and awarding funds for eight years, we’ve done a lot,” Quirindongo said. “I’m excited for the future.”

The post Seattle Awards $22 Million in Equitable Development Grants Aimed to Combating Displacement first appeared on The Urbanist.