On Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell rolled out a package of design review reforms intended to speed up housing development and comply with a state deadline that is fast approaching. With little time left for Council to deliberate on and approve legislation before the deadline at month’s end arrives, Harrell has proposed a six-month pause on design review requirements as an interim compliance step and to provide a transition to the overhauled, leaner system longer term.
Seattle has long been kicking around design review reforms and hosted a stakeholder process on the idea, but citywide legislation has been slow in coming and exactly how Seattle would put those ideas into action was still up in the air, as The Urbanist reported last summer.
State lawmakers appeared to notice the lack of momentum. In 2023, the Washington State Legislature passed a law (House Bill 1293) capping the number of design review meetings per development project at one and requiring that design standards by “clear and objective.” Seattle faces a July 1, 2025 deadline to comply.
The law set a deadline of six months after the local jurisdiction’s next Comprehensive Plan update to be in compliance with that standard. Seattle missed its end-of-2024 deadline to pass its Comprehensive Plan update, with Harrell Administration infighting that watered down a bolder proposal from the City planning department appearing to be responsible for much of that delay. Major updates to the Comprehensive Plan occur once per decade and lay out City plans for growth in housing, jobs, and infrastructure, acting as a precursor to zoning legislation.
Even with Seattle’s tardy Comprehensive Plan delivery, the design review reform requirements still kick in six months after the missed deadline — hence, the need for interim legislation to meet mandates for design review reform and citywide middle housing. The state middle housing requirement also came out of the 2023 session, via House Bill 1110, which pushes large cities to allow fourplexes citywide and sixplexes near major transit.
Harrell did transmit his “Final Mayor’s Recommended One Seattle Plan” to the City Council recently in May, but it typically takes several months for Council to review, amend, and approve that plan, not to mention host their own public outreach processes.
While Harrell’s urgency around passing his One Seattle Comprehensive Plan hasn’t appeared particularly strong, he has noted an urgency to build housing and eliminate the unnecessary delays that builders encounter.
“Seattle needs more housing — and we’re taking critical steps that build on the success of current initiatives to get that housing across our city more quickly,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement. “These changes will modernize our Design Review process to focus the permitting process on what matters most — safe buildings that meet community needs — while eliminating unnecessary delays.”
The Mayor’s Office said that the “proposed reforms are expected to reduce the number of projects subject to Design Review by up to 40% in an average year, which would decrease permitting time for most new housing projects by one to two years.” Projects newly exempt from design review “would save an average of four to nine months in the permitting process thanks to a simplified process,” the mayor has pledged. “Life-safety and technical code reviews would remain in place for all projects through the existing construction permitting process.”
Support from builders and housing advocates
A coalition of builders and pro-housing advocates called Seattle for Everyone has long pushed for the design review reforms. Seattle for Everyone coordinator Brady Nordstrom issued a statement backing the mayor’s legislation.
“Seattle’s Design Review process plays a role in housing affordability, production, and access. While recent good-faith efforts have been made to improve the process in Seattle, more work is needed to ensure that it supports the creation of urgently needed homes. Seattle cannot control all the factors contributing to rising housing costs, but we can control how we permit and review new housing,” Nordstrom said. “That’s why we are thrilled about Seattle’s active efforts to implement the requirements of HB 1293 alongside key stakeholder and public input. This reform effort represents a major opportunity to make the system work better for everyone — by increasing clarity, reducing unnecessary barriers, and prioritizing homes in more places for more people.”
Seattle for Everyone has previously highlighted complex housing projects often faced a high number of review meetings, slowing down their permitting. Builders often started with the assumption of three design review meetings, but some projects were brought back for additional meetings if design board members were not satisfied — sometimes citing subjective tastes rather than clear design standards.
Design review has contributed to a challenging permitting process that took more than two years on average, from 2010 to 2020.
“In our experience, design review requirements and durations have wildly varied across projects, and meaningful reforms will help get housing built faster in Seattle,” said Raymond Connell, managing director at Holland Partner Group. In October 2024, Holland broke ground on a 45-story downtown highrise that claimed to be the first residential tower groundbreaking of the year on the West Coast, given a regional slowdown in tower-building activity.
At times, builders and housing advocates have criticized the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) for resisting or slowwalking reform efforts. This time around, Nathan Torgelson, the long-time SDCI director who recently announced his departure with prodding from the mayor, voiced his backing for the reform.
“With these Design Review program reforms, we’re improving transparency, honoring community voices, and saving months — sometimes years — in the permitting process,” Torgelson said in a statement. “It’s a leaner but refined program that helps us build the housing our city desperately needs.”
The Master Builder’s Association of King and Snohomish Counties has backed the mayor’s reforms, with the group’s spokesperson Parker Dawson noting that streamlining design review dovetailing nicely with middle housing reforms.
“These reforms are especially important for small homebuilders constructing middle housing — projects that are crucial to addressing our region’s housing shortage,” Dawson said in a statement. “By simplifying the design review process and removing costly delays, Seattle is making it more feasible for local builders to deliver the ‘missing middle’ homes that serve working families.”
Design review overhaul features
The Mayor’s press release touted that the interim and upcoming permanent proposals would provide the following improvements:
- “Extend successful exemption for affordable housing. The interim ordinance would extend by six months a Design Review exemption set to expire in August 2025 for projects that meet Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) requirements through onsite affordable units. During the two-year exemption pilot, proposed onsite housing units more than doubled compared to all prior years of the MHA program. Building on this success, the legislative proposal coming later this summer would make this exemption permanent.”
- Increase the threshold for exempting projects from design review. “The review threshold would increase to buildings with 150+ housing units or 20,000+ square feet of commercial space. Smaller projects would be exempt, as well as projects located outside Urban Centers or Regional Growth Centers, and projects subject to other review boards, such as the Landmark Preservation Board.”
- Clarify and simplify guidelines. The mayor pledges to pare down design guidelines to meet the state’s “clear and objective” standard: “Permanent Design Review guidelines would be easier to understand and focus exclusively on elements of the building’s exterior.”
- Consolidate local design review boards to one citywide board. “The eight geographically focused boards would be replaced by one citywide board of 14 members who have expertise in design, development, and equity. Projects planned within established equity areas would use board members from the local community within the pool of 14. This change aims to simplify the program, make it more consistent, and improve representation for historically underserved communities.”
- A new administrative route to design review departures. Currently, builders must pitch departures from design standards to design review boards, often in exchange for added public benefits. Harrell pledges such flexibility will continue: “Departures from design standards, such as increased height or floor area, may be allowed for projects that add public benefits like meeting equity goals or enhancing street-level design. Projects exempt from Design Review would also benefit from similar flexibility through an administrative process.”
Design review departures may ultimately be the reason that some projects opt into a design review meeting during the moratorium, since departures may allow for more efficient or elegant designs than the City’s often clunky land use code allows.
The Mayor’s Office noted that the reform package would not impact his three-year downtown design review holiday he proposed and Council passed in 2024, as part of his Downtown Activation Plan (DAP). That downtown-only pilot program will continue until November 2, 2027.
Arguably, the City could have accelerated its citywide design review effort by skipping the piece-meal approach that portioned off a downtown exemption while the rest of the city waited. However, Harrell argued that the downtown design review holiday was an important feature of his activation plan, which focused on boosting economic activity downtown following pandemic hits to office occupancy and brick-and-mortar business activity.
Heading to Council
The mayor’s team said it will submit interim legislation to City Council following the State Environmental Policy Act review process, which “began on June 9 and is expected to conclude on June 26.” That leaves a tight and likely impossible to timeline to pass the legislation in June as stipulated in state law, but passage could happen in July.
The reception at City Council may be mixed, with Councilmember Mark Solomon and Council President Sara Nelson signaling support for permit streamlining, but others like soon-to-resign Cathy Moore (District 5) expressing skepticism of builder-friendly policies.
“Safe, well-designed buildings are key to building safe neighborhoods,” Solomon said in a statement. “By streamlining the design review process and focusing on clear, objective guidelines — especially those that improve how buildings interact with public spaces — we’re making sure that safety, accessibility, and visibility remain top priorities as our city grows.”
It seems likely the mayor can whip up the votes, but Moore staging a last stand to weaken his policy in her last days isn’t out of the realm of possibility either. Of course, Moore’s planned July 7 departure could end up removing an obstacle.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.