Building housing in downtown Seattle just got easier

Soon, developers will have an easier time building apartments in downtown Seattle.

That’s because the City Council voted 8-1 to exempt residential projects there, along with hotels and research labs, from a time-consuming process called “design review."

Design review meetings are one of the main places the public can weigh in on the impact of new buildings on their neighborhood and demand changes from developers.

But it comes at a cost, since the lengthy process can delay projects for more than a year, adding significant costs to housing and preventing the progress of projects that would help downtown Seattle recover from its economic slump.

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“I very much am in favor of all efforts that revitalize downtown,” said Councilmember Maritza Rivera, who voted to let downtown apartment projects skip design review.

The city needs more housing, especially in downtown Seattle where experts say more residents would help offset the economic impact of remote work. When workers started coming into the office less often, they took their lunchtime and happy hour spending habits with them.

In contrast, residents represent a more consistently present population, who will spend money downtown so long as they can be tempted down from their apartments.

Seattle has been working on increasing the number of downtown residents since the 1980s, when the city sought to escape the central business district's reputation of shutting down at 5 p.m. every day when office workers went home. Belltown, one of the first neighborhoods to add housing, is now considered a major center for downtown nightlife.

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The urgency of downtown's economic situation today appears to have convinced Councilmember Bob Kettle, who has been a supporter of design review in the past.

“I do believe in design review, but I do recognize its flaws and its need for reform,” he said.

Only Councilmember Cathy Moore voted against the change.

“To me, there’s no particular rush,” she said.

Instead, she suggested the council could wait until next year, when a new Washington state law requires cities to streamline their design review process.

Some members of the public back her claim that getting rid of design review is the wrong approach.

"What you’re doing amounts to saying that the public folks that live in these urban centers don’t deserve a voice," said community member Steve Horvath at a public meeting last week.

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H

ere's how design review works.

When developers seek building permits for their projects, it’s routine for them to ask for exemptions, or "departures," from certain rules, such as how far a building's upper stories must be set back from the property line.

In exchange for departures, developers are asked to give the public something in return, like a mural or a public open space.

Negotiations over what to give developers and what to demand in return take place in public meetings as part of the design review process.

But that process, which includes multiple meetings, each with lengthy public notification time periods, can add expensive delays to a project, driving up housing costs for renters.

So, cities face a balancing act between two kinds of cost to the community: The cost of bad or unpopular building designs verses the cost of housing.

Seattle's new bill, which will become law 30 days after the mayor signs it (and which passed by a veto-proof majority), streamlines Seattle's process by granting city permit technicians the authority to negotiate departures directly with developers, on behalf of the public, skipping the public meetings.

Seattle experimented with streamlined process, called "administrative design review," during the pandemic.

Those sorts of experiments, in cities across the U.S, have fueled a national movement to reform design review processes nationwide in order to speed up the supply of housing.

Housing production has lagged behind demand since the Great Recession, leading the U.S. into a national housing shortage that has driven costs through the roof.

In the state of Washington, legislators gave cities until 2025 to streamline their design review processes.