Faced with a state deadline to increase potential residential density citywide, numerous members of the Bellevue City Council appear to be waffling on how exactly the city should move forward, even after being presented with a bullish recommendation from the city’s planning commission. The issue represents a crucial election-year test for one of the largest jobs centers on the Eastside, a city with an ambitious growth framework that anticipates population growth exceeding 50% over the next 20 years.
Like most cities across the region, Bellevue faces a June 30 deadline to update its zoning code to allow property owners to build four units on every residential lot, and six units close to light rail and bus rapid transit. The changes are prompted by House Bill 1110, a law approved in 2023 with the intention of increasing housing diversity across Washington’s cities. Cities can exceed the state’s minimum standard, if they so choose, and Bellevue is flirting with doing so.
Over recent months, Bellevue’s planning commission took an initial proposal to allow up to nine units within a reasonable walking distance of both transit and community amenities, put forward by city staff, and watered it down in many areas.
That recommendation, however, would still go further than the new state baseline, and allow six units within a half-mile of light rail stations, as opposed to the quarter-mile as required under state law, and within a quarter-mile of regional growth centers like Factoria and Downtown. The commission also endorsed allowing the full slate of modest development types — cottage housing, courtyard apartments, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, fiveplexes, sixplexes, townhouses, and stacked flats — citywide, rather than just six of those as required by state law.
At an initial briefing last week in front of the Bellevue Council, three councilmembers declined to support the planning commission’s recommendation, suggesting that there should be more process, extending after an initial ordinance is adopted by early this summer. Bellevue Mayor Lynne Robinson led the push to adopt the state-required baseline now but go no further, a move that would scale the planning commission’s recommendation back considerably.
Robinson raised a laundry list of issues that the council should consider in getting to a final code, including height limits, lot coverage, the city’s tree code, and the ability for a developer to pay a fee to fund affordable housing in exchange for additional units, known as the fee-in-lieu policy. She also suggested the city should scale back from the full list of nine housing types, at least in some neighborhoods.
“Let’s really think about it, and let’s look at what it would look like in all the different neighborhoods. Every neighborhood is different. Some are more suited for some things, and others are more suited for others, and then areas within the neighborhood are better suited for things,” Robinson said. “Let’s go for the state’s bare minimum to start with, just to get that done, and then go back and analyze all this.”
Councilmember Vishal Bhargava, who only joined the council this month after being appointed to fill the seat of retiring Councilmember John Stokes, joined Robinson in urging the council to act conservatively. What made that remarkable is that until joining the council, Bhargava was a member of the planning commission, and voted to advance the recommendation package just last month. But Tuesday’s meeting saw him raising concerns about the ability for infrastructure to keep up with additional redevelopment in Bellevue’s neighborhoods.
“Another thing that’s really important is this is, in some ways, a one-way door. You make this decision and you go aggressive on certain things that you have more risk on the kinds of outcomes we will get, it is very difficult to walk back,” Bhargava said. “I’m going to go back to the mental model of slow stepping. It doesn’t have to be done in one step. There is an opportunity for us to go a quarter-mile, test and learn, and two years later we can go to half a mile.”
Councilmember Conrad Lee, running for a record-breaking ninth term on the council, was less clear about where he stands, initially aligning himself with Mayor Robinson but then clarifying that he wants the policy details to be hashed out by the planning commission.
“My only reservation is, I don’t want to be making all these decisions with the council,” Lee said. “We have a commission that’s there to help us to do all this. They’ve been doing all this from the beginning, and they have listened to what we’re talking about. I hope that they can take this job on, [and] clarify with the staff what we’re thinking about.”
Lurking behind the conversation was this November’s election. Due to recent council vacancies, the Bellevue City Council is in the unique position of having five of its seven seats up for election this year, with only Deputy Mayor Mo Malakoutian and Councilmember Dave Hamilton safe and in the middle of four-year terms. At Tuesday’s meeting, both advocated for adopting something close to the planning commission’s recommendation, with Hamilton even suggesting that the city could consider going further.
“There’s a general consensus that we do not have enough homes that folks can afford to rent or buy, and we all agree that housing is too expensive for too many of us, renters too often find themselves on waitlists and buyers are forced into too many bidding wars,” Hamilton said. “Personally, I think we could go beyond the planning commission recommendation, and many folks have encouraged us to do so. I think that I’m satisfied that the recommendation itself accomplishes what the law requires and will open up the door to some much needed housing. We can always revisit the code if we’re not getting the production that we want.”
Malakoutian, who as liaison to the planning commission worked through the entire process at that level, pushed back on the idea that Bellevue would receive actionable information on residential zoning changes like these within two years. “I think we can evaluate all of our decisions after 10 years, because I don’t think in two years we’ll get any information,” he said.
Questioning city staff, Malakoutian also helped to debunk a talking point raised by Bhargava: the idea that a half-mile distance from light rail isn’t an appropriate distance for more density because the distance isn’t actually walkable. He pointed out that the code language requires project applicants to confirm that a site doesn’t have any impediments that would increase actual walking distances — something that both councilmembers had been briefed on during the lengthy study sessions at the planning commission.
Councilmembers Claire Sumadiwirya, who joined the council in March, and Jared Nieuwenhuis were both absent from Tuesday’s meeting and have yet to weigh in. In 2023, Nieuwenhuis spoke against the idea of allowing six units on a lot in Bellevue, as House Bill 1110 was working its way through the legislature.
The Bellevue Council is set to discuss the issue at another study session before approving an initial code at a subsequent meeting, ahead of the June 30 deadline. But so far, it looks like the work to settle on a final code that all councilmembers can agree on will likely continue beyond that vote.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
