This morning the decision is in from the city Department of Planning and Development – land-use approval for the 30-apartments, no-parking-spaces project at 6917 California SW (map), with DPD determining its “environmentally non-significance,” meaning the city will NOT require a full environmental-impact report. Read the decision here.
After we broke the news of the plan here last October, it drew citywide attention as another flashpoint of concern over increasing density adjacent to single-family neighborhoods – including commentary on its official sign:
Though the project was not planned for Design Review, three meetings were held in December – one with contextual information about the land-use process, one with developer Mark Knoll, a third with city planners, organized after they gathered enough signatures to ask DPD to call the meeting for comments. The decision document includes the results of planners’ review, including these paragraphs about the parking concern:
The proposed 30-unit apartment building proposes zero on-site vehicular parking spaces, and eight bicycle spaces in the basement of the structure. The subject site is within a multi-family zone, the Morgan Junction Residential Urban Village, and is within 1,320-feet of a street with “frequent transit service” (SMC 23.84A.038 “T”); therefore, there is no minimum requirement for on-site parking (SMC 23.54.015).
The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Parking Manual indicates that the residential use could generate peak demand for approximately 41 vehicle parking spaces (1.37 spaces per residential unit peak demand). However, these estimates are generated based on data collected from suburban sites, with typical market-sized residential units. The proposed development consists entirely of studio sized residential units that are approximately 220 square feet in size, located in a dense neighborhood with frequent transit and opportunity for walking and biking to nearby services. It is reasonable to expect that the actual peak parking demand from this project would be less than 41 spaces. As is typical with residential projects, the peak parking demand is expected to occur during late evening and overnight hours.
To better understand the impacts of this development, the applicant submitted a Parking Demand and Parking Utilization Study (William Popp Associates, January 22, 2014). This study estimates the parking demand for this use, and evaluates the existing availability of on-street parking in the area. What the study finds is that this apartment building will likely generate a parking demand of approximately 15 vehicles (0.5 per unit), and that these vehicles can be accommodated on the street as the study area has a late evening parking utilization rate of 55% (282 legal on-street spaces with 156 vehicles parked). The expected 15 project-related vehicles would increase the on-street utilization rate to 61%.
The decision can be appealed to the city Hearing Examiner; deadline is two weeks from today, March 31st. Meantime, demolition and construction permits are pending.
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