Please try to contain your excitement, 'cause Lord knows, this is some hot, saucy stuff. Yes, this evening is your chance to talk dirty at a public hearing on proposed updates to the code that regulates low-rise multifamily development in Seattle. That would be buildings that look like this:



Whoops, I'm sorry, did that ruin the mood?

A few years ago, many Seattle residents began to notice that the city was being invaded by new "townhouse" developments like the one in the photo above. Due to a combination of economics and building rules, most of these developments followed a formulaic design model that people loved to hate (except, of course, those who bought them). The litany of evils includes blank walls, tall fences assaulting the sidewalk, entryways that aren't visible from the street, dark, useless auto-courts with claustrophobic overhangs, tiny open spaces affectionately known as cattle pens, and generally awful architecture.

The scourge of the townhouses became such a hot-button issue that it drew then-Mayor Nickels into the fray, and addressing the issue became a focus of the lowrise component of the multifamily code update process. The draft legislation was released this April, and tonight is the first public hearing: Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 5:30 p.m, at Seattle City Hall, Council Chambers, 600 Fourth Ave. (enter on Fifth Ave. side).

AIA Seattle and the Congress of Residential Architects (CORA) have been working on this issue for the past two years, and are urging people to come out and testify in support of the legislation---check out AIA Seattle's summary here. The proposed code update is not a cure-all, but it includes many meaningful improvements, most notably the use of floor-area ratio to allow more flexibility of form, the shift to market-based parking (rather than strict minimum parking requirements), and some modest height increases.

One key outstanding issue is admiinstrative design review. Most in the design community like the idea of individual project review in place the prescriptive, inflexible design standards that have been the norm. But many developers are wary of additional permitting time and cost. It's a thorny issue, but my take is that administrative design review for townhouse developments with more than three units would be a constructive solution.

Predictably, the usual suspects have their usual gripes with the proposed code update, and the Seattle Community Council Federation, the Seattle Displacement Coalition, and 13 individuals have filed an appeal of the Determination of Non-significance---basically an obstructionist move. Though I hesitate to use the blanket label density NIMBY, in this case I believe it pretty much captures the primary motivations of many in this crowd, on which I have written at length previously.

Tonight's hearing will no doubt be crawling with folks sympathetic to the mindset that led to the appeal, so it will be important for those who support the code update to show up and advocate for it. Seattle's lowrise zones cover nine percent of Seattle's land (excluding city-owned open space and rights-of-way). In other words, this code update will have a huge impact on Seattle's built form for decades to come. In other words, this code update is important, and worth your time.

Seattle is still in the midst of serious growing pains, as exemplified by the knee-jerk resistance to change that is still so common here. But slowly, inevitably, the tide is turning. Seattle will grow up into a real city eventually, and though the lowrise multifamily code update may seem relatively modest, it is nevertheless one of the many small steps that will help us get there.