Community Corner
Battle Lines Drawn in Bellevue
Developers Win and Residents Lose in Fight to Overhaul Zoning
The Bellevue Downtown Livability Advisory Committee voted on June18th to recommend increasing building heights in nearly the entire downtown Bellevue district. Residents who attended the meeting were dismayed with the outcome.
The themes driving the need to overhaul zoning were aesthetics and amenities. At no time was the need substantiated by the committee that Bellevue’s downtown currently lacks in aesthetics nor that the desired amenities would not be forthcoming under the current incentive system. Development in Bellevue is booming, so why change? The amenities that are being traded for the added building height are undefined in the recommendations. These unknown benefits come at a heavy price. Most people don’t make those kind of deals unless they are receiving the benefit and they aren’t paying the price.
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The recommendations include raising the height of buildings in the core of Bellevue from 450 feet to 600. In the multiuse district surrounding the core of downtown the increase in building height went from a maximum of 200 feet for residential and 100 feet for commercial development to 300 feet across the board. This district comprises nearly half of downtown and the lion’s share of properties ripe for development. In the outer ring of downtown that borders residential neighborhoods, the maximum height was increased from 55 feet to 70 feet. The developers won huge gains in the value of the properties that they can build.
Residents of downtown Bellevue paid a heavy price for the changes they weren’t asking for. Residents were stunned that their wish list was ignored while developers got seemingly everything, all under the banner of “livability”. Residents thought that livability would describe the needs of the people who live in downtown Bellevue, but their concerns about congestion, parking and fairness were unaddressed. Current infrastructure is insufficient to move traffic through the city now, yet the “Livability Committee” made no recommendations to remedy the problem. One might think the solution to that problem might be to scale back development until a time that the infrastructure required to support development is in place. On the contrary, the added height and all the extra cars that will bring to Bellevue will exacerbate the problem risking the viability of Bellevue as a place to live. Further piling on the problem, the new zoning proposals skew development towards commercial development, thus the added traffic will predominantly occur at rush hour. No recommendation was made on parking, although the need for more parking was acknowledged and the proposal to lower the parking requirement for developers was tabled. The most egregious and unaddressed grievance was the fairness of changing the rules after playing the game. People chose where to live based on their understanding of how the zoning laws protected their interests. After making your investment and laying roots in the community, the Livability Committee threatens the quality of life of the residents they are supposed to serve. The residents of downtown Bellevue are asking why?