The announcement comes on the heels of the roll out of the Comprehensive Plan’s second phase, which includes targeted upzones only directly along streets where frequent buses run — on top of 30 new neighborhood centers clustered around existing business districts — and completely steps away from density increases where they had previously been proposed, but where the City faced community pushback.

“I’d like to provide some clarity so that there is no misunderstanding about where we are. OPCD and the new administration have every intention of putting into our phase 4 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the expansion of upzones to two blocks on either side of frequent transit corridors, and that will be all frequent transit corridors that are as defined by Seattle Department of Transportation,” Quirondongo said. “That scoping is not something that we have on paper at this time. That is not a consultant that we have on board at this time. I’m just speaking to what our intention is as staff and the discussions that we have had with the administration.”

Quirindongo said the plan would need to go through a full environmental study, which would put the zoning change to what the department is calling “Phase 4” of the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan. The plan was due at the end of 2024, but Phase 4 is looking like a 2027 or 2028 effort. The delays and cuts to scope stem from former Mayor Bruce Harrell, whose team pushed back on an early OPCD plan to add upzones more broadly than his ultimate plan did.

Harrell’s scaled back plan was widely criticized by housing advocates, with the Seattle Planning Commission among those pushing the City for a bolder plan adding more housing density and broader corridor upzones.

The planning commission pledged support for the two-block plan. In fact, a few planning commissioners appeared to push the City to go further, noting that policymakers could use generous land use policy to induce a virtuous cycle with more transit and greater ridership.

“We tend to maybe not center the fact that land use and density needs to come first for transit service to follow, even though it seems like it’s the other way around,” Commissioner Dhyana Quintanar Solares said. “It is this chicken and egg situation where the land use does drive where service and demand and future ridership potential and increasing fair revenue and justifying infrastructure expenditures and investments go. So I think putting forth a vision of where these corridors and the expanded TOD perspective and upzones happen should have the opportunity to plant where we want to see frequent transit.”

OPCD again pointed to legal requirements for environmental study as limiting the City’s ability to implement corridor upzones on a faster timeline. Phase 3 is already scoped to include the eight additional neighborhood growth centers that city councilmembers discussed last year. Department leaders have said shoehorning more upzones into that study would delay phase 3, as reported earlier in The Urbanist.

“The final EIS for the Comp Plan and zoning legislation that was released in early 2025 studied a preferred alternative that included upzones along transit corridors at a depth of generally half a block, in most cases, including only those parcels that had frontage on the arterial served by the transit,” Sarah Graves, OPCD’s Communications Manager, told The Urbanist following Quirondongo’s appearance at the planning commission. “OPCD had studied a concept of wider upzones in the draft EIS. However, analysis of that alternative was not as detailed as in the FEIS and not sufficient to fully address SEPA requirements legislation to enact significantly broader zoning changes, such as going out to one or two blocks from the arterial.”

The early plan that OPCD internally floated in 2023 and The Urbanist revealed through public records request, included wider transit corridor upzones using an eighth-mile radius that appears even broader than the Wilson administration plan. Harrell also cut OPCD’s 50 proposed neighborhood growth centers down to 30.

Whether two-block-radius transit corridor rezones for midrise apartments are enough to sate housing advocates and urbanists remains to be seen. As the earlier lessons with the Harrell administration shows, an overly limiting environmental study can come back to bite the city and tie policymakers’ hands later in the process.

Before all is said and done, it could be that Harrell’s decision set the city backed by four years on more fully embracing transit-oriented development citywide, rather than in handpicked locations that often allow wealthy and well-connected neighborhoods to weasel out of doing their fair share. The change in leadership does appear to mean that those transit corridor upzones are coming eventually.

The post Seattle Planning Director Says Upzones Within Two Blocks of Transit Inbound… Eventually first appeared on The Urbanist.

After a period of public review and City Council deliberations, OPCD aims to pass the new zoning regime by this summer, a move that will bring the city into compliance with state law. Mayor Katie Wilson has pledged to come back and expand on these upzones, which would likely need to wait for next year to allow for environmental study and outreach work. Virtually all of the work to prepare these zoning changes happened under her predecessor, Bruce Harrell.

“This legislation builds on important zoning reform, updating the rules on what can be built and where, so we can create abundant and affordable housing,” Wilson said in a prepared statement. “Seattle is a great city, and more and more people want to make it their home. We’ll keep advancing zoning changes and developing social housing, as we expand our housing and affordability options. And we are just getting started.”

Wealthy enclaves beat back some upzones

OPCD had already circulated draft zoning maps earlier in the marathon process for the major update to the City’s Comprehensive Plan, which happens once per decade by state law. Planning officials portrayed changes from that earlier draft proposal as relatively minor, though journalists did not get a look at the maps during a press briefing on Wednesday to confirm that assessment.

I'm already seeing a few notable ways that this has been scaled back from the last version of these maps that OPCD had released. Upzones along the Route 2 heading down to Lake Washington in Madrona have been cut out, for example.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 3:42 PM

As is the custom in Seattle, several wealthy neighborhoods were able to wriggle out of proposed apartment zoning. Among those jettisoned (or never proposed) transit corridor upzones in some parts of North Capitol Hill, Madrona, Magnolia, and Montlake. Two entire blocks of zoning changes along Densmore Avenue N in Haller Lake, close to the impending Pinehurst light rail station, were dropped without explanation.

Where they are intact, those transit corridor rezones are only a half-block and generally Low-Rise 3 (LR3) zoning, which would allow five-story buildings. OPCD noted that the plan would update LR3 citywide to the stronger version that is currently only in urban centers, which it portrayed as an enticing zoning type for builders.

Upzones along the 49 in North Capitol Hill (next to our very nice under-construction highway lid) scaled way back.

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— Ryan Packer (@typewriteralley.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 3:45 PM

Urban Center expansions and Pinehurst center upzone

LR3 may be the most prevalent zoning type in the rezoned areas, including wide swaths of neighborhood centers and in a handful of expansions of existing urban centers that were included in the plan. Significantly expanded urban centers include Admiral District, Morgan District, and Greenwood.

Pinehurst, meanwhile, is an entirely new urban center being added around Seattle’s soon-to-open infill light rail station at N 130th Street, which will be a stop for both the 1 Line and 2 Line. The presence of Jackson Park Golf Course next door to the station makes this an oddly shaped center.

Housing advocates had already raised concerns about how the transit corridor zoning was set to be implemented. The Seattle Planning Commission, the Complete Communities Coalition (of which The Urbanist is a member via its advocacy arm), and other advocacy groups were clear in pushing the City to upzone beyond the immediate transit street to neighboring quieter streets, with some suggesting a five-minute walk would be a better rule of thumb. That suggestion clearly died by the wayside.

Rather, the movement from the draft maps to the final maps was largely in the other direction, with OPCD dropping proposed upzones in wealthy neighborhoods where displacement risk is low.

In line with Ryan Packer’s earlier reporting, the Wilson administration is sticking with a plan to pass the zoning changes queued up in December under previous leadership and come back in Phase 3 and Phase 4 to expand on the plan and add even more potential density. Wilson ran a campaign focused on the issue of affordability and said she would have gone farther than the previous administration in encouraging housing density. Her campaign performed much better in apartment zones, as opposed to wealthier single family areas, where Harrell was popular.

Why Wilson isn’t overhauling Phase 2

OPCD Director Rico Quirindongo explained that state deadlines were looming and hinted at risks to grant funding provided via the Puget Sound Regional Council.

“The less time there is between the adoption of the Phase 1 legislation and the adoption of the zoning implementation, the better, both for Puget Sound Regional Council and the state,” Quirindongo said. “Opening up the box to try to make changes with the phase two package has delay implications that are concerning, and so that’s where we really want to lean into both Phase 3 and Phase 4 and do a real exploration of what are the other things we know we want to add back into the toolkit, and actually give us a little time to do that.”

Other cities around the state are coming under state scrutiny for not passing their Comprehensive Plans on time, or for leaving out key elements of recent housing reforms approved by the legislature. While Seattle is likely not in any jeopardy of seeing serious consequences for dawdling on its plan, being out of compliance could ultimately mean risking eligibility for state funding.

Quirindongo is among the city department heads that Wilson is intentionally keeping in his role, a vote of confidence that suggests that he’s on board with the administration’s plans to go bolder next time. But the fact remains that it has been OPCD’s planners who have been shrinking neighborhood centers and transit corridors in response to pressure from neighborhood groups wary of too much change.

While the plan did not increase housing opportunities to the extent advocates were urging, it does represent a major step forward compared to the status quo. Planning officials say the zoning changes on deck as a whole will double housing capacity, and stressed that the plan was designed to increase affordability and homebuilding momentum — notwithstanding some of the quiet cuts in response to neighborhood pushback.

Queuing up future phases

Quirindongo sketched a rough timeline for future phases of Comprehensive Plan tweaks, which could include zoning changes in Seattle “Regional Growth Centers” — Downtown, Northgate, Uptown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill/First Hill, University District, and Ballard.

“The plan right now is that four get adopted as part of annual amendments in 2026, four more in 2027, Ballard in 2028,” Quirindongo said. “And there may be some upzones that are part of that consideration, related to those, to some of those subarea plans that are also part of Phase Four.”

It’s already been a long saga for this planning update.

The City broke the Comp Plan into phases after the Harrell administration fell behind schedule and ran into challenges meeting the state deadline to phase out single family zoning, as required in House Bill 1110. Ultimately, the City relied on an interim ordinance to meet the state mandate and passed permanent “Phase 1” legislation in December, which became effective on January 21, 2026.

• Phase 1 – Changes in urban neighborhoods (formerly single family zones) meeting state middle housing requirements, completed in December.
• Phase 2 – Rezones implementing new growth areas in Comprehensive Plan via 30 neighborhood centers, expansions of urban centers, and transit corridors.
• Phase 3 – Adding nine neighborhood centers and expanding six neighborhood centers (as requested in Comp Plan companion resolution) and upzones in selected areas within existing Regional and Urban Centers (centers that don’t have ongoing planning processes that will take longer).
• Phase 4 – Additional upzones around transit to incorporate 1) remaining changes required to fully comply with state transit-oriented development requirements passed in HB 1491 and 2) changes to implement remaining Regional Centers subarea plans and station area planning efforts which are ongoing. This phase could also include additional changes (e.g., transit corridors).

The Urbanist was able to a bit more clarity on why a supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) was necessary in order to add the nine additional neighborhood centers that councilmembers proposed last year, largely at the prodding of Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, but ultimately only “docketed” for future passage.

Beyond the existing vague legal appeal risk excuse, Quirindongo and Michael Hubner, OPCD’s Long Range Planning Manager explained that the culling of centers that happened between the Comp Plan’s draft EIS and the final EIS meant that the 30 final neighborhood centers received more environmental study that the original list of about 50 neighborhood centers that Harrell’s office pared back. Under advice from the City’s legal team, planning officials wanted to make sure they had shown their work on State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) requirements.

“The scope of the Final EIS did not include any of the centers that Council has now asked us to do additional environmental reviews,” Hubner said. “There’s some other complexities in the weeds of SEPA there that we need: integration with our transportation modeling and all of those things.”

The supplemental EIS work is already underway, with OPCD indicating it had hired a contractor. That work is scoped to include the nine additional neighborhood centers and six neighborhood center expansions. However, the City could potentially add more to the environmental review, with the caveat it could mean the study takes longer to complete.

“We all know there’s more work to do,” Mayoral spokesperson Sage Wilson said.

Correction: An earlier version incorrectly indicated that broader transit corridor upzones are in scope for the Phase 3 supplemental EIS. Barring a contract revision, those citywide corridor rezones would need to wait for Phase 4.

The post OPCD Further Trims Corridor Upzones in Newly Unveiled Seattle Zoning Maps first appeared on The Urbanist.

Urban density is often misunderstood. To some, it conjures images of overcrowded cities with nothing but concrete and asphalt. But it can and has been done well with massive environmental and social benefits. It allows people to live closer to friends and family, as well as to where they work, shop, and play. And with these benefits, we all significantly reduce climate pollution and other pollutants that damage human health. 

As Seattle grows and corrects its deeply flawed urban planning policies and decisions of the past, we have the opportunity to choose our future: to be a vibrant, efficient, and sustainable community, or a place that is simultaneously dying socially and economically unaffordable.

Housing as a climate solution

Just road transport — largely driven by our car-dependent urban form — accounts for 58% of Seattle’s core GHG emissions from the sources that improved city policies can meaningfully affect. But even this large faction obscures the huge magnitude of emissions that have been induced by Seattle’s historical choice that made it illegal to construct more housing across most of the city. This choice has led to a Seattle that is now suffering from a significant housing shortage. Specifically, decades of restrictive zoning policies have limited people’s housing and neighborhood choices while driving up the cost of the existing housing stock and forcing lower-income workers to commute from increasingly distant suburbs.

Close-in and connected city neighborhoods with more housing flips this equation on its head. By permitting the development of affordable and vibrant mixed residential and commercial neighborhoods, we reduce the distances people need to travel and make low-carbon transportation options like walking, biking, and public transit the desired option. Research and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (Chapter 8) find that transitioning to more walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods is one of the most effective ways to cut energy use and emissions, while at the same time improving both our quality of life and addressing inequality.

Enabling Low-Carbon Transportation

Building transit, such as the Seattle region’s growing Link light-rail system, is not enough. To be effective at addressing problems, it must be paired with a sufficiently dense and varied supply of housing near transit hubs that gives more people an affordable choice to use it. This obvious approach is already in Seattle’s Climate Action Plan. We just have to make Seattle’s policies match our plans and emissions reduction targets.

Further, by reducing the necessity for all trips to be by car, more walkable neighborhoods also free up valuable space currently consumed by parking lots and wide roads, which can instead be repurposed for green space and green infrastructure to capture stormwater runoff. The IPCC confirms that creating more space for small urban wetlands and forests is also a climate adaptation solution, as they are buffers against heat. During climate emergencies — like heatwaves or storms — compact communities with walkable access to resources and services are inherently more resilient.

Buildings are also a major source of emissions for Seattle, and the concentration of buildings enables the future deployment of more energy-efficient infrastructure, such as district heating and cooling systems, which are not viable in sprawling neighborhoods.

Debunking NIMBY Myths

Opponents of more infill housing development, often referred to as “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) advocates, frequently argue that new housing harms the climate and environment. However, these claims are not only misleading but are simply contrary to all of the best climate science available.

Claim #1: New housing development increases emissions. Critics often claim that building new housing generates significant emissions, from construction materials to energy use. While it’s true that construction has an initial carbon footprint, the long-term emissions savings from dense, energy-efficient housing vastly outweigh these upfront emissions. 

In Seattle, where car dependency is a major driver of emissions, preventing housing development within the city has forced growth outward. This has led to more suburban sprawl, longer commutes, and higher emissions relative to an alternative if Seattle had just allowed more housing to be built. This destructive dynamic continues today.

Claim #2: Housing development destroys trees and green spaces. Another common argument is that new housing destroys green spaces. However, concentrating housing in dense urban areas actually preserves more open land. Compact development uses land more efficiently, leaving more room for forests and wetlands, which also sequesters carbon. By contrast, sprawling development fragments ecosystems and consumes vastly more land per capita.

Claim #3: High-density living reduces quality of life. Some argue that dense housing leads to overcrowding, congestion, and reduced quality of life. Yet, when done thoughtfully, dense development creates vibrant, livable communities with easy access to amenities, public transit, and green spaces. Compact, walkable neighborhoods foster social connections and reduce time spent in traffic — improving mental health and well-being. NIMBY arguments often ignore these broader benefits, focusing instead on preserving the status quo. But the status quo is unsustainable—both for the climate and for future generations.

Claim #4: Housing growth comes at the expense of social cohesion and racial equity. Of course, building more dense housing is not without challenges. To succeed, we must pair it with policies that ensure affordability, equity, and inclusivity. High-density housing should not lead to gentrification or displacement but should instead provide opportunities for all. 

Seattle’s history of exclusionary zoning has contributed to both its housing crisis and its climate challenges. Reversing this legacy has begun through the newly passed State laws on transit-oriented development and zoning as well as some elements of the Seattle comprehensive plan, but further bold action to foster new housing construction, small shops in our neighborhoods, and walkable/bikeable neighborhoods is needed. To fully address the hole that we are in, we will also need to pair it with investments in affordable housing while continuing to invest in public transit.

Seattle, with its new leadership that deeply understands these issues, robust climate goals, and progressive spirit, is well-positioned to lead by example and show the rest of the country how a blue city can fix its problems and be a vibrant, affordable, and low-carbon place to live. This starts with simply allowing people to build more sustainable housing in neighborhoods they want to live in.

The post Op-Ed: Why Housing Abundance is Key to Fighting Climate Change first appeared on The Urbanist.

The appeal in question dates from last winter, one of six that were filed against the environmental impact statement (EIS) conducted on Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s “One Seattle Plan.” The updated Comprehensive Plan spells out which areas will see additional housing density as the Emerald City prepares to accommodate at least 112,000 new homes through 2044, and the policies the city will follow as it stewards that growth.

All six appeals alleged that the city didn’t conduct enough analysis on the future impact of housing and job growth, with environmental advocate Jennifer Godfrey’s appeal focusing on the potential impacts to Puget Sound’s population of Southern Resident orca whales from increased stormwater runoff due to tree removal.

Thanks in part to recent updates to Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), adopted by the legislature with the goal of eliminating predatory appeals that slow down the production of infill housing, all six appeals were dismissed at the city level last April. But Godfrey, along with the group “Friends of Ravenna Cowen” and Mount Baker resident John Cary, appealed that decision to King County Superior Court. After those two appeals were also dismissed, the group elevated their appeal to the state’s court of appeals.

A hearing on the two appeals, consolidated into one, had been scheduled for early March, but last Wednesday City Attorney Erika Evans’ office filed a motion to dismiss the case as moot, given the fact that the plan has now been fully adopted by the city and is in effect. The filing asserts that if the groups want to appeal the plan, the avenue to do so is the state Growth Management Hearings Board, which has “exclusive jurisdiction.” A 60-day clock to file that appeal started in mid-December.

In response, a coalition of conservation groups are now publicly pushing for City leaders to drop their fight against the appeal and allow it to proceed, despite the high likelihood of dismissal at the hearing, with the appellants directed to the state hearings board. A January 21 press release from Orca Nexus, a group Godfrey founded last spring after filing her initial appeal, contained a “call for accuracy in Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan environmental review.”

Among the organizations signing on were Birds Connect Seattle (formerly Seattle Audubon), Thornton Creek Alliance, Orca Conservancy, the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Cetacean Society, and the Oceanic Preservation Society. A form letter has been directing those calls to stop fighting the appeal to Mayor Katie Wilson, despite the fact that the Seattle City Attorney is an independent office that is separately elected.

“Trees filter pollutants, cool waterways, and reduce stormwater flow. Yet the City’s adopted plan fails to accurately assess the increased runoff and raw sewage overflows that would likely result from replacing tree canopy with concrete,” the release stated. “The One Seattle Plan will further reduce canopy coverage following years of the City’s failure to achieve canopy goals. According to the appellant, this dismissal effectively removes the public right to use the long established appeal process on an inadequate EIS, setting a dangerous precedent.”

Just before Christmas, those same groups filed an amicus brief in Godfrey’s appeal, contending that a dismissal would set a “set a dangerous precedent” that could make it harder “to ensure that the City’s compliance with SEPA and the [Growth Management Act] will include dependable, scientifically competent analyses of likely impacts at future stages of regulatory development and project permitting.” The group argued that the citywide analysis conducted on the plan was not robust enough to prevent environmental impacts that will get approved later, when builders head to the city to get their permits.

Ultimately, the brief encapsulates a split between environmental groups when it comes to the issue of urban development. Many old-guard organizations focused on conservation argue for local governments to more intensely micromanage growth and its potential impacts, a position that puts them at odds with environmentalists who argue such micromanagement slows down urban housing production that reduces greenhouse gases and limits pressure on the fringe of the urban growth area, where development has a much higher environmental cost.

“One of Godfrey’s main concerns is the unnecessary increase in impervious surfaces resulting from the removal of large trees to accommodate higher density housing,” the brief stated, bringing up regulations around tree preservation that predate the most recent update to the City’s regulations that occurred in 2023. “[We] are very familiar with this issue and believe the City has failed to update its tree ordinance to actually ‘protect trees.’ For example, an interdepartmental team did a careful evaluation of the City’s tree code in 2016–2017 and determined that the City’s ‘Current code is not supporting tree protection.'”

To date Godfrey has raised around $4,500 from a Gofundme page set up to fund the legal appeal, with longtime Seattle density opponent (and former aide to Councilmember Alex Pedersen) Toby Thaler handling the appeal’s legal filings.

“Seattle’s growth should not come at the expense of the last remaining 74 Southern Resident Killer Whales,” Godfrey said in the release. “This plan will literally pave over orca recovery efforts. It will increase hardscape and facilitate indiscriminate removal of the large trees that provide vital stormwater filtration, without requiring effective mitigation or honest analysis of the ecological consequences. At the same time, the plan will not produce the quantities of low income housing needed to solve the ‘housing affordability crisis.’”

Tree Action Seattle, a group that had turned out in force to Comprehensive Plan hearings to push for amendments that would reduce flexibility for homebuilders in the name of tree preservation, also joined the fight this week via an Instagram post. That prompted a response from Sierra Club Seattle Chair Robert Cruickshank, who made the case for increasing density within the city being a net benefit for orcas in an op-ed in The Urbanist last year with Futurewise advocacy director Jazmine Smith, who also serves on The Urbanist board of directors and elections committee.

“Building new housing is one of the most important things we can do to help our orca population survive,” Cruickshank said. “Density actually helps orca populations. That’s because it reduces the amount of pollution in stormwater that harms salmon and the orca that depend on the salmon runs. Now, what is in that stormwater that harms salmon and orca? It’s runoff from cars. It’s oil, it’s bits of tires. It’s the shavings off the brakes when you hit the brakes, when you’re driving. Stuff like that that gets into the stormwater, runoff goes into the sound, kills salmon and hurts orcas, and it’s exacerbated when we build sprawl, when we cut down forests and pave over farmland that destroys salmon habitat that orcas depend on, it also means more people are driving. So what we need to do is build dense cities.”

If the state court of appeals sides with the City of Seattle, the appeals could be dismissed as soon as this week… but that likely won’t be the end of the story.

The post Conservation Groups Join Push Against Seattle Growth Plan first appeared on The Urbanist.

Early indications are the City will largely stay the course on Harrell’s growth plan in 2026, while queueing up additional neighborhood growth centers and broader transit corridor upzones to enact in 2027, once the City has conducted additional environmental review, which is intended to thwart legal appeals.

When Wilson took office at the beginning of the year, Seattle was right in the middle of a major update to its growth framework, which the state requires once per decade. Harrell signed a revamped Comprehensive Plan a few days before leaving office, and approved a major rezone of the city’s lower-density areas, intended to encourage smaller multifamily development.

Additional zoning changes were set to be transmitted over the coming weeks, including those allowing additional density in 30 new “neighborhood centers” that are clustered around existing business districts like Madrona, Tangletown, and Fauntleroy. Harrell’s plan also would upzone in the immediate half-block vicinity of frequent bus routes, which housing advocates (including the Seattle Planning Commission) criticized for being too limited and focusing new apartments along busy, polluted major roads.

The incoming administration faced a choice around whether to keep those plans moving forward, or to revamp them — and so far all signs point to keeping them moving and building on them at the first opportunity.

In an conversation with The Urbanist last week, Wilson described how she’s approaching changes to a growth plan that she had criticized as not going far enough in providing opportunities for housing growth throughout the city. She pointed to additional environmental review that the City’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) plans to conduct later this year a major chance hance to go further than the Harrell administration had decided to go.

“I think we’re going to have some exciting opportunities coming up later this year to potentially go further with opening up space for new housing,” Wilson said. “The supplemental EIS process is going to play out, and we’ll have the opportunity to look at additional neighborhood centers, potentially upzones within a larger distance from transit corridors. And I’m looking forward to having those conversations. And I think, in general, what’s passed already is a big milestone in terms of opening the way for new housing, and we also need to make sure that it actually results in new housing. And so that means paying attention to the details of how it’s playing out. We’re in a moment where there’s a downturn in terms of permit applications and the housing market generally.”

It will fall to Rico Quirindongo to oversee the work ahead. Harrell tapped Quirindongo to lead OPCD, Seattle’s long-range planning department, in 2023. So far, Wilson has given no signals she is planning an immediate leadership change. Reporting by The Urbanist and other outlets have shown how it was Quirindongo’s OPCD that was stifled by Harrell’s office itself, watering down a much more ambitious growth framework in late 2023, which delayed a long overdue draft of the plan.

Earlier this month at a meeting of the Seattle Planning Commission, Quirindongo was forthcoming about how things had progressed during the first few days of the Wilson administration, explicitly referencing opportunities that had been missed during the Harrell Administration.

“We have had a couple of great conversations with the new administration about where the Comp Plan is today, what’s been adopted, what were missed opportunities, and then what are the activities that we need to be leaning into in ‘26,” Quirindongo said, noting that the centers and corridors legislation the council is set to consider soon is required to keep Seattle in compliance with the state’s growth management act.

On the horizon, Seattle will need to make additional zoning changes around major transit stops to be in compliance with House Bill 1491, Washington’s transit-oriented development (TOD) bill, by 2029.

“Our message to the administration has been: we know there’s some new stuff that we want to do now that you guys are here, but we need to, rather than open up the box on the legislation that’s already complete, let’s get it sent down – there’s going to be lots of opinions about what’s in that package,” Quirindongo said. “Let’s get through that process, and then let’s explore through the supplemental EIS and the HB 1491 TOD compliance work that we need to do in ‘27, let’s go back and look at transit corridors again, look at the opportunities that we weren’t able to build into this round of [the] Comp Plan.”

OPCD also has its hands full with a full round of subarea plans, growth and transportation frameworks for individual neighborhoods that provide more detail than the larger Comprehensive Plan. After the Downtown Regional Center plan — which is open for public comment through early February — Northgate, First Hill Capitol Hill and Seattle’s two Manufacturing and Industrial Centers (MICs) in Ballard/Interbay and the Duwamish Valley are all set to come in quick succession, followed by South Lake Union, Uptown, University District and Ballard next year.

All of those plans were in the works well before Katie Wilson took office, but given enough time, they will clearly evolve to reflect the new administration. The Mayor said she’s confident that will be reflected in a growth framework that allows for more housing.

“I think that with the supplemental EIS, we’ll have some good opportunities to go further,” Wilson said. “And obviously that’s dependent on the will of the Council and building public support, but I remain committed to affordable and abundant housing, and I think that we’ve made some progress with what’s been done so far, but I think we can go a lot further.”

Doug Trumm contributed reporting to this story.

The post Katie Wilson Looks to Beef Up Seattle’s Housing Growth Plans first appeared on The Urbanist.

The ideological differences between Foster and Nelson were stark, with Foster joining the Council’s resurgent progressive wing. Meanwhile, Nelson anchored a centrist majority and recruited a slate of more conservative candidates who swept into office in 2023 and controlled the Council for two years, before voters appeared to tire of that approach.

While centrists had focused on austerity and appeasing business interests, Foster has echoed Mayor Katie Wilson in wanting to broaden the focus to everyday Seattleites struggling to get by and carve out a cultural space in the city.

“Listening to Mayor Wilson talk about, not only do people deserve bread, but they deserve roses, and rest, and space to live their lives,” Foster told The Urbanist, referencing the incoming mayor’s inauguration speech last week. “There’s a lot that we agree on, right? I think we agree on the need for new revenue. I think we agree on focusing the agenda on housing. I’m so excited to collaborate with the new mayor on expanding the shelter capacity.”

Wilson has set an ambitious goal of creating 4,000 units of emergency housing in her first term. Both Wilson and Foster have also set the goal of increasing housing capacity and production at all income levels via improvements to Seattle’s growth plan. The zoning component of that plan is still being ironed out, after the state-mandated plan fell woefully behind schedule under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s watch. With these strong housing stances, Foster earned the endorsement of The Urbanist Elections Committee (on which we serve).

Foster underscored the need to improve housing outcomes and affordability in a speech following her swearing-in ceremony.

“Our neighbors want to be able to raise their families here and have access to good schools and safe neighborhoods,” Foster said. “Our neighbors want the busses to come on time. Our neighbors want us to build the damn trains. Our neighbors want to feel safe crossing the street. Our neighbors want safe places to sleep at night. They want more housing and more places around the city, and they want thriving third places to spend their day, whether that be a park, a library, or a neighborhood business, and they all want to be able to afford to stay in the city that we all love so much.”

While laying out a firm foundation in progressive values, Foster also pledged collaboration across ideological divisions.

“My commitment to you as your newest city council member,” Foster said, “is to work, to negotiate, to collaborate, and sometimes to fight every day to help build this city alongside anyone who wants to push in the same direction, so that we together can make life better for everyone who makes Seattle the city that we love.”

A focus area for Foster looks to be easing displacement pressure, which is weighing heavily on working class Seattleites, especially communities of color and families struggling with child care costs.

“I am really excited to start to work on policies that are going to help make it easier to build more housing and also to protect our neighbors who are getting displaced,” Foster told The Urbanist. “I think we want to be able to talk more about the displacement that’s happening in the city for folks, and look at what we can do to continue moving the ball forward and keep people in the city.”

Foster will chair the housing committee, overseeing issues like renter protections, Seattle Office of Housing investments, and appointments to the Seattle Social Housing public development authority’s governing council.

Foster expressed excitement to be sitting on the land use committee, which will be chaired by fellow newly elected councilmember Eddie Lin, who handily won a special election in District 2. Since Lin was taking over for an appointee, he took office at the end of November, getting a head start on the rest of the 2025 class.

Like Foster, Lin will bolster the progressive wing, which had been getting a little lonely for Alexis Mercedes Rinck until reinforcements arrived. Rinck also took a new oath of office Tuesday, after coasting to reelection with 81% of the vote.

While mostly snubbed from the public safety committee, progressives are heavily represented in the land use committee, with features Lin, Rinck, and Foster, along with Dan Strauss and Joy Hollingsworth. The housing committee will feature the same members, but with Debora Juarez swapped in for Strauss.

Foster’s victory forced Council to elect a new president of the body, and councilmembers unanimously elevated District 3’s Joy Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth is to the left of Nelson and likely to act as a swing vote between the solidly progressive camp and the ardent centrist camp. Neither side has a rock-solid majority, which brings the risk of legislative gridlock as well as the opportunity for creative politics to forge new coalitions and a way forward.

The post Dionne Foster Takes Office, Aiming to Tackle Housing Issues first appeared on The Urbanist.

Harrell’s framework has faced significant criticism for not going far enough to accommodate future housing growth in Washington’s most populous city, including from the City’s own planning commission.

On top of the 8-0 vote to adopt the plan itself, another unanimous vote will put new zoning standards in place across the city’s lowest-density zones, with beefed-up allowances added by the council that will allow builders to make small-scale multiplex development more easily pencil out as feasible. One local architect described those new standards as leading to Neighborhood Residential (NR) zones that are “fundamentally changed.” Formerly known as single family zones, NR areas account for nearly three-quarters of the land in Seattle zoned for housing.

Nonetheless, Seattle’s biggest housing debates still lie ahead. While the new Comprehensive Plan lays out the locations for 30 new neighborhood centers — areas of higher-density zoning, mostly focused around existing commercial districts — the exact zoning standards for those areas won’t be adopted until next year as part of the plan’s second phase. That phase also includes lifting apartment bans in the blocks directly along some of the city’s most frequent transit corridors, something that is much less prescribed by the plan and therefore more up for grabs.

Beyond that, the City has pledged a phase three, which will look at zoning changes to “urban center” neighborhoods that are already Seattle’s densest areas, like Northgate, Capitol Hill and Alaska Junction.

“When I talk to our neighbors about the Comp Plan, I often say that it’s the wonkiest thousand-page document that has such a deep impact on our day-to-day lives, because at the heart of this, the Comprehensive Plan is about how we will live our lives: where people can live across our city, how we will ultimately move through our city, and it represents our shared future,” Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said ahead of Tuesday’s vote. “This update to our Comprehensive Plan represents such an important start to make Seattle a more affordable place to live, while also reconciling with our racist history of land use within the city.”

At first glance, the timing of passing a Comprehensive Plan now might look like a missed opportunity for the new mayoral administration, led by Mayor-elect Katie Wilson. On the campaign trail, Wilson had been critical of Harrell’s proposed plan for not going far enough, and it now represents the new floor which her administration can build upon. Rather than the plan itself, the biggest limiting factor in 2026 will be how quickly Wilson’s administration can conduct environmental review to make additional changes. In some ways, not having to worry about adopting a major Comprehensive Plan update at the same time will likely prove to be a gift.

“If we only plan for housing to match expected population growth, that’s a recipe for continued tight housing markets and unaffordable rents, with homeownership remaining out of reach for most,” Wilson told The Urbanist’s elections committee earlier this year in explaining why she supported going further than Harrell did. “We should be adding more neighborhood growth centers, expanding the definition of ‘near transit,’ granting social housing the same density bonus that other types of affordable housing get, eliminating parking minimums, fix the stacked flats bonus so it actually results in building stacked flats, exempt smaller projects from [Mandatory Housing Affordability] fees so they will pencil out, etc.”

The city council also came up against the barrier of the environmental review process when trying to pass their own amendments. Rinck’s proposal to restore eight neighborhood centers that had been explored earlier in the plan’s development wasn’t able to make it in for that reason, and instead it ended up in a resolution which also passed Tuesday, laying out a laundry list of changes for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) to work on in 2026.

OPCD will have to juggle those priorities on top of any new goals added by Wilson, which could ultimately prove a challenge given the department’s limited staffing levels.

The council did make one substantive change to the plan before its final vote, removing a small area west of 18th Avenue that had been set to be added to the First Hill/Capitol Hill Regional Center. Filling in a “donut hole” of lower density within one of the city’s most transit-rich neighborhoods had been proposed by the Harrell Administration, but Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth raised concerns about lumping that area in with Capitol Hill’s regional center instead of the Central District urban center, which will extend east of 18th. Keeping a boundary at 18th was seen as essentially splitting this historically Black neighborhood in two.

Hollingsworth had intended to put forward an amendment moving all of the area into the Central District urban center, but that amendment would not have come with enough public notice to be legal.

“The intention behind this, the second phase to this, is during Phase Two of the Comprehensive Plan, is to then post a 30-day notice for us to upzone that area, particularly for that to be the Central District Urban Center,” Hollingsworth said.

Despite the fact that OPCD spent years holding open houses, attending community council meetings, and taking feedback on the proposed plan, Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth pledged even more outreach around the plan’s second and third phases. An alleged lack of outreach on the plan had been a concern raised by Councilmember Maritza Rivera and by Cathy Moore, who resigned from the council earlier this year. But to many housing advocates, those concerns seemed to come from a place of assuming that the City should be responding more vigorously to incumbent property owners who wanted to see the plan scaled back, even more than it already had.

“We will have better outreach to everyday people, from our [OPCD] department to our office as well, to make sure people’s voices are heard and that we get everyone’s voices across the city, that is really important” Hollingsworth said.

Eddie Lin, the council’s newest member who took office just three weeks ago, framed the decisions made around zoning and transportation as part of this process as foundational to how the city achieves its goals — or doesn’t. Lin will chair the land use committee next year, barring a committee shakeup next month.

“The reason we are in the position we are in today, around affordability, around homelessness, around unsafe streets is because of mistakes that we have made in the past. And this doesn’t solve all of those mistakes, but I think this puts us on a better path, moving in the right direction” Lin said. “This past weekend, we lost the life of a bicyclist in Beacon Hill, and that was pretty devastating for our community. And if we want to make real progress on Vision Zero, we have to think about how we’re addressing our built environment, how we’re building dense walkable neighborhoods with good infrastructure for pedestrians, for bicyclists, and that we’re transitioning away from our over-reliance on vehicles as our primary mode of transportation.”

While the biggest housing discussions are still in the future, finally adopting the Comprehensive Plan is a big lift, and the city won’t have to consider another major update to its growth plan under state law until 2029, as part of the Midpoint Comprehensive Plan Update. But given the new administration’s focus on housing affordability and sustainable transportation, the issues laid out in the plan will likely remain front-and-center.

The post Seattle OKs New Growth Plan, but Biggest Zoning Battles Lie Ahead first appeared on The Urbanist.

Now that the dust has settled, we can game out how the One Seattle Plan’s nearly final development standards will open up new opportunities for affordable and accessible neighborhood housing. The flurry of late amendments created incentives for higher-density stacked flats, additional floor area, more accessible units, taller buildings, and parking reductions that could fundamentally evolve the neighborhood’s next generation of housing.

The recent history of Seattle’s housing market has been split into three housing types: single-family houses few can afford, townhouses, or five- to seven-story apartment blocks partitioned into hundreds of studios and one bedrooms. New middle housing can split the difference: Larger units in smaller buildings, with more options that appeal to wider demographic trends, distributed throughout more walkable neighborhoods, built to today’s higher green standards, at a reasonable risk, cost, and return.

More project types, both market and subsidized, are now viable at least on paper in the city’s Neighborhood Residential zone. Seattle’s housing needs are evolving, and using the incentives to build the kinds of projects that would fill growing niches that aren’t being served currently is an exciting prospect.

Each of these concepts starts with Seattle’s typical 50-foot by 100-foot residential lot, with an alley. Since parking is no longer required for units under 1200 square feet, and wouldn’t fit anyway without budget-busting below-grade structured parking garages, we haven’t included any fully parked concepts. Finally, each of these concepts has a similar boxy form — there is a reason that small apartment buildings such as these were the mainstay of ‘naturally occurring affordable housing’ for generations — they can be wonderfully efficient housing solutions.

Case 1: Greener Market Rate Flats for Lease

During the run-up to the vote on the various amendments to the One Seattle Plan, public testimony became a zero sum game between new housing and tree canopy. Amendments that preserve existing Tier 1 and Tier 2 trees, achieve a higher quality of landscaping using the Green Factor, and plant for future canopy in addition to current requirements for street trees, mean that developments with well-placed large trees on the periphery can unlock an additional building story. In this case, designing around a Tier 2 tree isn’t a compromise — it is an unlock that allows enough height and floor area to build eleven two-bedroom flats.

In our development work, we expect two-bedroom apartments to be snapped up by households with children, but we’re seeing older households who want long-term options to flex space between working from home, caring for elders, or reducing the cost of living for the next generation. And if we can build hundreds more buildings like this, we can reduce the scarcity that makes affording a two-bedroom seem out of reach for many of the 56% of Seattle households who rent.

The form factor of flats tends to be more compact, and single-stair buildings further optimize their efficiency. The case study approaches the maximum building size without hitting the maximum lot coverage, and provide 225 square feet of outdoor space per household, with generous balconies for every unit. Unfortunately, there isn’t any additional incentive for greener buildings under the new zoning, but it helps that the baseline under Seattle’s stringent energy code is already one of the best in the nation. Just adding households to established neighborhoods within walking distance of transit and amenities is great for lowering our city’s per capita carbon footprint.

Case 2: Larger Ownership Flats:

Zoning incentives to increase allowable floor area for new stacked flats outpaced the density limits a bit, creating an opening for larger units. While conventional multifamily development is focused on packing more units into less square footage, leading to such innovations as windowless bedrooms, the new rules make designing more spacious flats similar in size to townhouses and accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

With longtime homeowners aging out of the space and responsibility of a single-family detached house, downsizing Boomers and Gen-Xers will be looking to convert some of their equity into a lower-cost, less commitment flat without having to leave their neighborhood. One of the biggest incentives discounts more accessible ‘Type A’ units, great for aging in place, entirely pulling them out of calculations for density, lot coverage, and floor area ratio. With the extra development capacity, maybe we can spring for an elevator and still make it pencil by marginally increasing the sales price of the units.

Flats with more smaller bedrooms, like the three-bedroom units in Case 2, are a good fit given how households are changing. The trend is that more households include either an aging parent or an adult child. That extra bedroom means flexibility and stability for families over time. Concerns about housing affect couples’ decision to whether to have children and family friendly buildings like Cases 1 and 2 can make it less daunting.

Seattle isn’t producing enough ‘starter’ homes to satisfy the demand, locking out those who’d like to step up into ownership and locking in those who’d like to downsize but can’t find anything to move from their single-family house. Building stacked flats works both to create elasticity in the housing market (price reductions responding to supply increases) and flexibility for households changing situations.

We are hearing anecdotally that this scale of building is also appealing to those who would love to work together with friends to co-develop, build, and live together in an intentional community under a co-op or condo ownership structure, but development is a risky venture and few will take the leap.

Case 3: Subsidized Ownership Flats

Seattle’s stock of subsidized affordable housing is concentrated in the areas designated as urban centers, but the need is much more broadly distributed. The new Neighborhood Center place type is going to expand the territory where typical subsidized affordable housing can be built at the scale that works for most service providers, but our local Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King County has been deploying a scaled-down solution that can provide 10 to 20 households with ownership opportunities for those making less than 80% of the area’s median income. One-bedroom homes, such as in Case 3, are priced from the mid $200,000s, equating to a monthly all-in payment of $1800-$2600.

Using incentives for affordable housing, stacked flats, Green Factor landscaping, Type A accessible units, and lot coverage, non-profit affordable housing providers can fit up to 16 one-bedroom units on a parcel and still have space for 174 square feet of outdoor space per resident.

Over the next ten years, the fastest growing segment of new households will be single-person households over age 65. Rather than be isolated in a detached house, a building such as Case 3 (add an elevator) offers community, affordability and stabilty. Because a building this size can be built nearly anywhere within the new Neighborhood Residential zone, over time we can hope to see senior housing pop up in easy walking distance of bustling Neighborhood Centers.

Case 4: Subsidized Rentals + Child Care Center

Seattle desperately needs more child care, and the process to certify a new center is rigorous. In order to justify the investment, the basic template is four classrooms, each with twenty kids, plus administration and facilities, and a space for outdoor play. If a provider can assemble two adjacent NR lots, like in Case 4, the ground floor area is the perfect size. This is essentially what many of our larger affordable housing projects are doing — anchoring the ground level with a child care center, then drawing kids from both the housing above and the surrounding neighborhood.

The real benefit of Case 4 is that this project might take 30 months instead of four or five years for a larger project, require fewer funding sources for the affordable housing, and have tens of thousands of potential residential sites to choose from rather than having to compete with other developer interests in the urban centers. Being in the neighborhood might also induce parents to walk their kids to the center, so we aren’t mixing idling car exhaust, impatient drivers, and vulnerable kids.

Moving Forward

These four case studies illustrate how new zoning incentives can generate more housing, more affordable housing, more accessible housing, for more more types of households. I am looking forward to Seattle City Council’s passing these incentives later this year, and welcoming some new neighbors in the near future.

The post Op-Ed: Making Seattle Neighborhoods More Accessible by Design first appeared on The Urbanist.

Single family zones, officially renamed “Neighborhood Residential” (NR) zones in 2023, make up about three fourths of Seattle’s residential land, and the city council largely avoided making huge changes to the mayor’s map as it rubberstamped the 20-year growth plan. But while the council shied away from adding new growth centers, the updated NR zoning could be consequential — particularly if builders are able to thread the needle and successfully pilot and scale up a stacked multiplex model across single family lots.

As transmitted to city council, Mayor Harrell’s proposal topped out at three-story stacked flats on less than half the lot (or four stories on 60% of the lot, if affordable homes were included) and only on unusually large lots near transit. Housing advocates warned that developers wouldn’t actually build that housing and instead opt for lower density townhomes, due to limited capacity offered and barriers that would remain to stacked flats baked into the system, such as financing structures and state building codes.

Among the fans of the policy revision is Matt Hutchins, who is principal at CAST Architecture and serves on the Seattle Planning Commission. Hutchins has long advocated for stacked flats and pushed back on tight restrictions in Neighborhood Residential zones, popularizing the concept of the “Seattle Sixplex” during the lengthy process for the growth plan.

“We’ve only done half of the Comprehensive Plan, in reality, only really addressing neighborhood residential,” Hutchins told The Urbanist. “So, I think that people were much more keyed into Neighborhood Centers, because those are going to be even larger jumps. But neighborhood residential is going to be fundamentally, fundamentally changed, and for the better.”

Those updates are still pending, with a date for a final vote on the plan still up in the air and potentially coming as late as Christmas. For now, the Council has pivoted to budget deliberations.

Stacked incentives lay path to 12-plexes

Hutchins still projects that the vast majority of redevelopment in Seattle’s formerly single family zones will be townhomes, with four-unit townhomes now legal on virtually every lot in the city in accordance with a state-enacted minimum standard. However, incentives are now calibrated well enough to give the alternative pathway a real chance of success, he argued, if not for the Seattle Six, then perhaps for the “Tangletown 12.”

“We’re talking about like maybe 5% of the townhouse projects become stacked flat projects,” Hutchins said. “There’s still significant headwinds that are going to drive people into the safe harbor of four townhouses. However, there are now avenues, I think, for more ambitious developers who want to take advantage of these [stacked flat] incentives that, really have the right site, and have the right mission.”

I crunched the numbers so you don't have to but it seems like if you're able to preserve trees, things are looking pretty good for housing in Seattle's single family zones! The standard 5k sqft single family lot will allow a 4 story 12k sqft building 🤯 (if you retain trees). That's 6 2k sqft units!

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— Nick (@nicksattele.bsky.social) September 20, 2025 at 10:46 PM

Townhomes are likely to remain the most attractive product for builders since they have a proven market and allow them to cash in immediately when they divide the lot and sell off the individual townhomes to homeowners. Stacked flat apartments, on the other hand, entail renting out the units as a landlord, with the uncertainty and risks that come with that.

Heeding advocate calls to go bigger, the Seattle City Council passed a series of amendments to remove those city-imposed density limits and enact incentive bonuses for stacked flats. A number of amendments increased housing capacity with little or no strings attached.

Councilmember Bob Kettle’s (District 7) amendments 90 and 70 increased the ‘floor area ratio‘ (FAR) limits, unit limit, and lot coverage for stacked housing units. With their amendments, councilmembers increased the size of buildings allowed on all NR lots by 33% by raising the FAR cap from 1.2 in the mayor’s proposal to 1.6. Further incentives could take FAR to 2.0, 67% larger than than mayor’s base zoning or 43% larger than his stacked incentive zoning.

Citywide Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s Amendment 85 implemented Washington’s new parking reform bill two years early, banning parking mandates for new homes less than 1,200 square feet in size, child care centers, affordable housing, and businesses less than 3,000 square feet in size or in mixed-use buildings.

More amendments gave density bonuses for other types of housing, too. Amendment 78, sponsored by Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth (District 3), gives density bonuses for developments near schools with one-quarter of units or more three bedrooms or larger. Hollingworth’s Amendment 79 also exempts Type A accessible units from all density limits except height limits.

And even more amendments give density bonuses to developments that plant or protect trees. Kettle’s Amendment 94 provides a one-story height bonus (up to four floors), waives parking mandates, and waives ‘amenity requirements’ for any development retaining a tree 24 inches or greater in diameter or plants enough trees to cover 10% of the lot at maturity.

Amendment 91, sponsored by Council President Sara Nelson (Citywide Position 9), increases allowed density almost 50% if a development either retains a heritage tree, two trees exceeding 24 inches in diameter, or achieves a sufficient ‘green factor’ by planting enough foliage or building a ‘green roof’ among other things.

Because those stacked flat bonuses (fittingly) stack on top of one another, the result leaves Seattle with Neighborhood Residential zoning that’s actually much denser than the city’s Lowrise 1 (LR1) zones and slightly denser than Lowrise 2 (LR2). Current zoning policy limits LR zoning to designated urban centers — outside of a few grandfathered areas.

Future phases of the One Seattle plan process could conceivably boost LR1 and LR2 zones enough to change that, although that appears beyond the scope of current plans, which do include a modest Midrise zoning boost.

Hutchins predicted that lots with a favorable tree placement for tree bonuses would be particularly enticing for stacked flat builders.

“If you happen to have a corner lot with a large tree on a corner that’s in it in an undevelopable setback, and it’s located kind of like right on your periphery, then you’d be able to leverage those additional lot coverage and height without really having any impact on the footprint or design of the building,” Hutchins said. “”So, things that are like corner lots, sites with alleys, sites that require less or don’t require parking in neighborhoods where the market also doesn’t absolutely require parking in order to be marketable, I think that there’s going to be some shots that get taken there.”

Parking reform provides an assist

Ron Davis, who lobbied for statewide parking reform on behalf of Sightline Institute, stressed the significance of that state-mandated parking reform that Rinck moved up the timeline of with her successful Amendment 85. Davis ran for Seattle City Council in 2019, but lost a razor-close race to Maritza Rivera. Fitting off-street parking on small lots is particularly challenging, especially if protecting and expanding tree canopy is a goal.

“The work we did through the parking bill last year removes parking as a binding constraint on almost every project,” Davis told The Urbanist. “The bill makes it so you can’t require parking for 1200 square feet or less, and that’s basically all multifamily and backyard cottages, right? And some townhomes.”

The Washington State Legislature has expressed some interesting in next tackling state building codes so that fourplexes can be built under the residential building code rather than the more exacting and expensive commercial code that virtually all apartment buildings fall under. Such a reform could be a boon for fourplex builders, but Hutchins didn’t see it being of aid to larger multiplexes, like 12-plexes.

“If you’re building a 12-unit building, it doesn’t matter; you’re already into SPC [commercial code], regardless,” Hutchins said. “There’s another sweet spot that has to do with when street improvements are required and when infrastructure improvements are required.”

These upgrades can come from the Seattle Department of Transportation or from Seattle Public Utilities, adding costs that swamp the budget of a modest middle housing project.

Nothing about building housing is easy, especially outside of the normal types of development most commonly seen around the city. However, Seattle’s package of stacked flat incentives could entice some adventurous builders off the well-trod path and into more innovative territory. That has advocates excited, even as they press for more.

“I love the stacked flat bonus. I’d like to see that kind of FAR everywhere, with substantial bonuses above that, around schools and parks for things like family housing,” Davis said. “There’s just a lot we’re not doing yet, but it’s a step, I guess, in the right direction. It’s just a real, real small step, and a lot less than what the community was really clear they wanted.”

Nick Sattele contributed to this article.

The post Seattle Council Sets the Stage for a Potential Multiplex Boom first appeared on The Urbanist.

Rinck’s Amendment 34 would have restored eight separate “Neighborhood Centers” that had been dropped from consideration earlier in the plan’s development. Neighborhood centers are areas of increased housing capacity and expanded commercial zoning that are intended to foster more walkability and community amenities. Drawing the boundaries within Broadview, South Wedgwood, Loyal Heights, Gasworks, Nickerson, Roanoke, Seward Park, and Alki would have set the stage for zoning changes early next year. Those zoning changes are what finally clears the way for builders to start moving larger projects forward.

Amendment 34 was ultimately rejected, amid concerns that adding the centers back to the plan would require additional environmental review that could open the city up to a legal challenge. Instead, the council will consider the eight neighborhood centers next year as part of the annual process to update the Comprehensive Plan.

School Board Directors Joe Mizrahi and Liza Rankin and Board President Gina Topp had signed onto the letter ahead of last week’s board meeting, with Directors Evan Briggs and Sarah Clark adding their names during the meeting to comply with open meetings requirements. With that, a majority of the seven-member Seattle School Board went on record in favor of Amendment 34, albeit not acting officially as the school board as a body. SPS posted the letter to the board’s website.

Seattle’s school district faces significant challenges in the years ahead stemming from a long-term structural deficit, tied to declining enrollment and insufficient state support for public schools. After Superintendent Brent Jones put forward a proposal last fall to close up to two dozen schools around the district, community opposition was swift and fervent. Ultimately, Jones reduced the list to four schools before withdrawing it altogether. Jones has since retired, with the search for a new Superintendent now dragging on longer than expected.

“Councilmember Rinck’s amendments would help address our enrollment and budget challenges by adding more mixed-use, family-friendly housing near existing schools and transit,” the letter states. “These changes are needed and urgent. Many of these proposed neighborhood centers have significant overlap with school buildings that are currently under-enrolled and even schools that were considered for closure last year. Building more affordable homes near schools strengthens neighborhoods, reduces displacement, and will be a big step in ensuring every child in Seattle can attend a well-funded school close to home.”

“Seattle Public Schools has faced a 15% enrollment decline over the past decade. This decline leads to significant impacts to staffing, programming, services and school budgets,” the letter continues. “The District’s 2025 Enrollment Study […] confirmed that this decline is directly linked to housing affordability and family displacement. The study also found that neighborhoods with greater housing density and affordability have seen far less enrollment loss. Conversely low-density neighborhoods with rising housing costs have experienced the steepest enrollment declines.”

Mizrahi, who was appointed to the school board early last year and faces an election to be retained this fall, has emerged as a consistent voice for increasing housing capacity to sustain local schools, and earlier this summer testified in favor of capping King County’s school impact fees for multifamily development.

Perhaps nowhere are the tensions between land use and school policy more on display than in Alki, where Seattle Public Schools has almost completed construction on a brand new elementary school building that will boost the capacity at the site to more than 500 students, compared to 370 at the previous school building. While Seattle voters have consistently approved school construction levies, paving the way for school rebuilds like this one, it’s the Seattle Public Schools operating budget that is feeling the financial crunch.

When SPS put forward two potential lists of schools being considered for closure last year, nearby Lafayette Elementary was included on one of those lists. Located in the Admiral neighborhood, Lafayette is one of the most walkable schools in the neighborhood, and sits directly in the middle of an area where the city is focusing more housing growth in the One Seattle plan. But if that school were to close, many of the families would instead need to commute to Alki or to an even more remote school, Pathfinder near Delridge Way.

More students living closer to Alki could help sustain the entire neighborhood’s school ecosystem, but only if the City of Seattle allows that to happen. As it stands, Alki could end up being not a neighborhood school, but a destination for long commutes from elsewhere in West Seattle.

Nonetheless, the idea of allowing additional housing in Alki has met significant opposition within the neighborhood, including from the Alki Community Council, becoming a particular flashpoint among the eight proposed neighborhood center additions.

District 1 Councilmember Rob Saka, who has focused attention on Alki during his term by prioritizing the area for traffic calming infrastructure ahead of more dangerous corridors elsewhere in the district, came out strongly opposed to the idea of an Alki Neighborhood Center late last week. An amendment Saka put forward to pull the center from consideration in 2026 ultimately failed, meaning it will remain on the Comprehensive Plan docket.

In speaking in favor of his amendment, Saka railed against the proposed Neighborhood Center, citing “very very limited” access to transit — a fact that likely won’t change much without additional housing density. The current Route 50, which connects Alki with Alaska Junction, SoDo, and Southeast Seattle, runs every 20 minutes throughout most of the day, but is a very circuitous route that isn’t competitive with driving. He also brought up “environmental risk” as a reason why Alki is not a good fit for a neighborhood center.

“Alki sits directly on Puget Sound’s shoreline, making it one of the city’s most vulnerable areas to sea level rise, storm surge, and erosion” Saka said. “Encouraging new growth in this high-risk area conflicts directly conflicts with the Comprehensive Plan’s climate resilience principles.”

Apart from the technical case against an Alki Neighborhood Center, Saka painted advocates for additional housing in the area as not being from the neighborhood, suggesting that only neighborhood residents should get to weigh in on whether growth in the area makes sense.

“We’ve heard the term NIMBY, not in my backyard YIMBY, yes in my backyard. I think as part of these specific conversations there’s a new term, maybe: YITBY, yes in their backyard,” Saka said. “It’s easy for some people — some people not from a community — to say something is best for them, and if that thing is implemented, they’re completely unaccountable, and they don’t have to manage the day-to-day as a direct result of that.”

Seattle’s school district, on the other hand, does have to manage the day-to-day reality of a severe school funding crisis. As the city council takes a closer look at the additional neighborhood centers in 2026, including at Alki, they’ll likely want to afford significant weight to the school board directors tasked with finding a way out of that crisis.

The post School Board Directors Are Begging Seattle to Allow More Housing first appeared on The Urbanist.