Kirkland is somewhat unique among its peers. Its first Regional Growth Center was Totem Lake, an area about two miles from the city center. Most cities in King County that have only one Regional Growth Center chose their traditional city core for that designation, but Kirkland took a different path to focus investment in what has long been a suburban shopping, business park, and garden-style multifamily area. Totem Lake was formally designated as a Regional Growth Center in 2003 and spans about 860 acres. In 2010, it had 5,487 residents and 11,782 jobs, but those numbers have risen as infill development has blossomed in the area in the past few years.

Kirkland’s city center has also been a hotbed of dense mixed-use development in the past decade. New projects like the Voda Apartments, Merrill Gardens, The 101, and Kirkland Urban have been significant investments for housing and job growth. According to Kirkland, the city center now has approximately 6,700 residents and 17,000 jobs, and through 2035, the city anticipates that the city center will continue to rapidly grow with population doubling and jobs increasing by another 9,000.

If approved by the PSRC, the city’s new Regional Growth Center designation would be somewhat smaller geographically than its existing one and be the first such Regional Growth Center since the Regional Centers Framework was updated in 2018; the PSRC currently recognizes 29 other Regional Growth Centers. The downtown Regional Growth Center would comprise some 519 acres and extend from the shores of Lake Washington to just east of the I-405 interchange at NE 85th St, largely on the blocks surrounding NE 85th St, Kirkland Way, Lake Street, and 6th Street.

Kirkland has taken several steps in garnering approval from the PSRC. The first step was conferring with a coalition of city governments in King County as well as King County (known as the “Growth Management Planning Council” or GMPC) in July. The city briefed the GMPC on its intent to seek an Urban Center designation from King County and Regional Growth Center designation from the PSRC. In August, the Kirkland City Council passed a resolution allowing the city to move forward in its effort to gain approval from both King County and the PSRC. Then in late September, the GMCP formally expressed support for the designation. Fast forward to November, the King County Council ratified the Urban Center leaving the PSRC the last entity to review the proposal.

The impetus for Kirkland to move so quickly on the Regional Growth Center designation is that the PSRC had set a temporary moratorium on new Regional Growth Center applications after 2019. The next opportunity would have been in 2025. In supporting its designation application, Kirkland produced a new subarea plan for the city center, dubbed the “Greater Dowtown Urban Center Plan“.

The subarea plan takes stock of existing conditions across the city center, such as the condition of sidewalks, bicycle facilities, open space, and zoning. It also outlines policies on urban design, neighborhood objectives, economic development goals, and transportation priorities.

From a transportation standpoint, there are some interesting details in the subarea plan. Sidewalks are relatively complete across the city center, but block sizes vary greatly and some streets lack sidewalks entirely, especially outside of the central core and off of arterials. In fact, I-405 is essentially a barrier to the two sides of the city center for people walking and rolling.

The condition of sidewalks is also reflected in the quality of walkability. Kirkland hopes to improve walkability in the years ahead and has specific polices that walking should be safe. “Pedestrian routes should have equal priority to vehicular routes in Downtown circulation,” the subarea plan states. “Pedestrian amenities and routes should continue to be improved, and should be given equal priority with that of vehicular routes for circulation within the Downtown. Modifications to the street network and traffic patterns should not be allowed to disrupt Downtown pedestrian activity and circulation.”

Kirkland also has a patchwork of bicycle facilities in the city center. These are largely located on Market Street, Kirkland Avenue, State Street, Lake Street, and 4th Street. The Cross Kirkland Corridor Trail also technically counts and is partially paved. Many other streets are planned for bicycle upgrades with either new bike lanes or greenway improvements. In the most core of the city center, Kirkland plans to do nothing for bicycles, which is perhaps acceptable given the slowness of the streets and regularity of stoplights. What happens on NE 85th St, however, is largely at the mercy of the Washington State Department of Transportation, which is not known for producing many good outcomes for people on bikes.

Another transportation feature of the subarea plan is transit priority corridors. Kirkland has recognized two levels: primary corridors and secondary corridors. Central Way, NE 85th St, Kirkland Avenue, and 6th St S have all been designated primary corridors, which essentially reflects the current hierarchy of significant transit service for the city center.

Zoning in the city center is varied with mixed-use being a primary feature in the core area and east of I-405. Industrial, multifamily, and office and multifamily zoning are stitched together throughout much of the remaining areas, though there is some single-family zoning (e.g., RS 7.2 and RS 8.5). Allowed building heights in the core area range from 28 feet to 67 feet, depending upon zone and use, whereas the Rose Hill area east of I-5 ranges from 30 feet to 75 feet.

To support the city center’s growth, there are several significant transportation projects on the horizon. King County Metro will unleash its bus restructure in March, which will provide better connections and more frequent transit. Then in 2024, the Metro’s RapidRide K Line will launch providing a very frequent and faster service between both of the city’s Urban Centers and Bellevue. That same year, Sound Transit will launch its Stride bus rapid transit line, stopping at NE 85th St and Totem Lake, and run from Lynnwood to Bellevue. Further on the horizon in 2041 will be the South Kirkland-Bellevue-Issaquah light rail line, but perhaps that will be expedited and reach the city center.

The post King County Designates Downtown Kirkland a Regional Growth Center first appeared on The Urbanist.

We were not there, well, because it was in Bellevue, but luckily Seattle Bike Blog‘s Tom Fucoloro made the voyage across the floating bridge to get the ERC 411:

King County Executive Dow Constantine and Governor Jay Inslee shared the podium Tuesday to announce $10 million dollars in funding commitments from local, regional, state and private partners to rehab the most difficult and stunning parts of the planned Eastside Trail: The Wilburton Trestle.

The historic trestle towers above local streets and I-405 with sweeping views of the Eastside, including downtown Bellevue. Its value extends even beyond the major walking and biking improvement it promises. Once saved, rehabbed and connected to a complete Eastside Trail from Renton to Woodinville, the trestle will likely become an iconic place in the City of Bellevue.

Come to think of it, the trestle could become Bellevue’s most iconic place. There’s not a lot of competition in this city of generic office towers, generic strip malls, sprawling parking lots, and nondescript subdivisions. I kid. I kid. Bellevue’s okay. It’s got quite the piece of history with the Wilburton Trestle which was built in 1904 by Northern Pacific Railway and “is one of the few remaining structures that were typical of the original transcontinental rail system,” according to the press release. The trestle is nearly 1,000 feet long and rises more than 100 feet above the ground.

“The innovative and iconic Wilburton Trestle project will connect the Eastside like never before, through a multi-use trail corridor,” Gov. Jay Inslee said. “I am pleased to announce the state’s intent to provide capital funding for the project, and I can’t wait to come back and be one of the first to cross the trestle when it opens.”

The improvement project–anticipated to be completed in 2020–will convert the trestle into a multipurpose elevated trail that Executive Constantine called “a premier public asset that will provide commuters, cyclists, runners and pedestrians with a spectacular view of the Eastside skyline.”

The ERC Master Plan and EIS is available right here. The Kirkland section–the Cross Kirkland Corridor Trail–is already operational on hard-packed gravel. In fact, the trail was made infamous for the Save Our Trail protests that blocked Sound Transit’s plan to use some of the right-of-way for a light rail to Kirkland. Due to those protests, the ST3 package only promises to reach South Kirkland just north of SR-520.

South of I-90, the trail curves toward Lake Washington for a waterfront section that should offer great views across the lake on the way to Renton.

The trail cutting though the Eastside could revolutionize mobility in the area providing a dedicated bicycling and pedestrian north-south corridor for the first time. Many important Eastside destinations, such as Bellevue’s transit center and Google’s Kirkland campus, will be within the trail’s convenient walkshed.

The Seattle Bike Blog hit upon opportunities to speed up completion of the ERC trail and suggested if everything goes smoothly, it could open ahead of the East Link:

For a few years, a section of the trail will be a construction site for Sound Transit’s East Link light rail and Wilburton Station. An interim trail connection through this Sound Transit-owned section could be open as early as 2021, finally connecting the trail into downtown Bellevue. There will need to be a detour around the construction area for a few years.

So if the Wilburton Trestle, I-405 crossing and interim trail improvements are all complete by the time Sound Transit’s trail segment opens, the trail could be almost fully usable in 2021.

For such an ambitious urban trail, that’s not a bad timeline. When completed, the ERC would be a giant leap forward for bicycling in the Eastside complete with a piece of history in the unique WIlburton Trestle centerpiece.

The post Wilburton Trestle Will Be Eastside Trail’s Centerpiece first appeared on The Urbanist.

Over the next few months, we will be exploring the future of King County in a series called “King County 2030.” The series will analyze housing and employment targets for the Core Cities of King County, a top tier of cities that are dense and/or highly productive. Themes we will touch on include the effectiveness of the targets at managing growth, trip generation, commute times, and environmental impacts through greenhouse gas emissions.

Background

Growth in King County is managed through the King County Comprehensive Plan (KCCP), a guiding policy document for the County’s future. The KCCP contains plan elements on land use, transportation, the natural environment, parks and recreation, and other planning and policy areas. While the KCCP largely focuses on the County’s policies for unincorporated areas, it also has strong control over countywide policies that affect cities in King County. Perhaps the most important of these are housing and employment targets. The current planning horizon for the KCCP is to the year 2030.

Every year the Comprehensive Plan can be amended to address technical updates and make revisions that do not require substantive policy changes. Every fourth year, the “Four-Year Cycle” process occurs to conduct a complete review of the Plan. In this review, broader policy issues are addressed and the Plan amended accordingly. The 2012 four-year cycle has been completed, so the next four-year cycle will be in 2016.

The KCCP illuminates different municipalities’ declared growth targets, and a brief analysis shows some very interesting trends. The document is rich with values and further exploration and analysis of the forecasts for this region. For the purposes of this series, we will focus primarily on data from the Metro and Core cities, a subset of King County cities. Now to look at and evaluate some numbers!

Cold, hard, and some reasonably generated population projections

In total, the KCCP has targets of 428,068 more jobs and 233,077 more households created by 2030. Countywide, that’s approximately 1.84 persons per household working a job. It’s a reasonable ratio because it assumes roughly 90% of new households will have two members (heads of households) working in a career.

If we look at the targets for just the Metro and Core cities of the 2030 KCCP, the ratio increases to 2.03 persons per household working in a job. This ratio is also reasonable because it assumes that roughly all new households will have two members (heads of households) working in a career. (In future articles that exclusively analyze the Metro and Core populations, this 2.03 working persons per household will be a key multiplier.)

For the purpose of this article, 1.84 persons is used as a multiplier to find the approximate working population that will be added to each municipality by 2030. An example of the math is as follows: Seattle’s housing target is 86,000¹ households; 86,000 x 1.84 = ~157,947 working persons for an employment target of 147,700 added jobs. Below are two graphs. The first shows the raw values between housing (blue) and employment (red) targets. The second shows the values between adjusted/generated population (blue) and employment (red) targets.

Population to Employment Target ratio

The ratio between the projected population and employment targets is perhaps the most interesting value in the KCCP 2030 Technical Appendix D targets. It is arguable that a 1.0 ratio between working household population and employment targets is the most efficient number for each municipality’s growth. Theoretically, in terms of traveling to and from work, a new person living in the city would/could also work in that city, thereby reducing the distance and time traveled to and from work. (Commuting will be addressed in a future article.) In reality, due to unemployment, it is probably best to plan for slightly more new residents than targeted employment opportunities to account for this.

Let’s look at that in the graph below²:

Note: “Unclaimed Urban Unincorporated” was not included in this graph because the adjusted population to employment ratio was a massive 13.26 to 1. As an outlier, it dominated the graph and significantly detracted from the point of visualizing the 1.00 ratio line.

Now that we’ve seen the data (be sure to look closely at the 1.0 line), let’s discuss three different municipalities’ ratios that are large “players” in the growth of King County:

1. Seattle: The projected ratio of new working persons to job targets in 2030 Seattle is 1.07. A figure above 1.0 means Seattle will have a surplus of new residents relative to the number of jobs offered in the city.
2. Renton: The projected ratio of new working persons to job targets in 2030 Renton is 0.94. Being so close to 1.0, it could be said that Renton will have an adequate amount of new residents relative to the number of jobs offered in the city. Put differently, Renton will have an adequate number of new employment opportunities relative to the number of households built in the city.
3. Bellevue: The projected ratio of new working persons to job targets in 2030 Bellevue is 0.59. A figure below 1.0 suggests Bellevue will have a surplus of new employment opportunities relative to the numberof households being built in the city.

You be the judge.

Conclusion

As noted earlier, we believe a figure slightly above 1.0 to be the realistic ideal. That said, these ratios come from projected targets adopted by planning departments from the various municipalities and from household populations generated for the purposes of analysis. Keep in mind that 2030 is more than15  years away. Only then will we have the luxury of looking back on how well (or poorly) each municipality did in estimatingits growth and the impact that growth had on King County.

Article Notes
¹The Seattle 2035 plan alternatives are advertising 70,000 new households and 115,000 new jobs—16,000 households and 32,700 jobs fewer than the 2030 targets. While the planning periods between Seattle 2035 and KCCP 2030 overlap for only a 15-year planning horizon, the targets do not seem to reasonably align. Speculating, we think that this could mean a number of things: 1) the KCCP growth targets are wildly optimistic, 2) the City of Seattle has revised its plans to reflect its buildable lands reporting data and trends, or 3) the City of Seattle does not believe it can reasonably commit to the growth targets in the KCCP.
²Shoreline isn’t considered a Core City, which seems inappropriate. In 2012, Shoreline had an estimated population larger than Burien, Bothell, and Kirkland and directly borders Seattle.

The post King County 2030: Introduction to Housing and Employment first appeared on The Urbanist.