City Council approves Gamble rezone despite traffic capacity concerns at nearby intersection

The Lake Stevens City Council approved an ordinance changing zoning for roughly 6.26 acres at 12210 Machias Cutoff from R-6 to RA-12, a move that increases the site’s potential unit count and was supported by the city’s hearing examiner. The vote was 6–1, with Council president Donoghue the lone No vote. The rezone was presented to the council as a closed-record public hearing on Aug. 26, 2025. David Levitan, the city’s principal planner, told the council the property owner, KNA Investment Holdings, submitted concurrent applications including a preliminary plat and a height variance; the hearing examiner conditionally approved the plat contingent on council approval of the rezone. "We are here tonight for a closed record public hearing for what is called the Gamble Rezone, land use application number 2024-0186," Levitan said. The hearing examiner recommended approval under Lake Stevens Municipal Code 14.16(c). The recommendation noted that the proposal leaves the land use designation as medium-density residential but increases the implementing zoning from R-6 to RA-12. The record shows the site sits just inside the city boundary west of 120th/Third and near properties already zoned RA-12 to the north and west. Several council members pressed staff on traffic impacts. The administrative record includes a traffic study and a SEPA mitigated determination of nonsignificance issued for the associated preliminary subdivision. Staff and the hearing examiner explained that rezones are categorically exempt from transportation concurrency under current law and that transportation mitigation is typically addressed at the project (preliminary plat) stage. Levitan said the preliminary subdivision’s traffic analysis and the city’s comprehensive-plan traffic analysis showed conflicting results about when a nearby intersection would fall below acceptable service standards, so the city has asked the applicant’s traffic consultant to reconcile those differences. The transcript record shows the development would increase the site’s potential buildout from about 32 units to 39 units — a delta of seven units — and that, based on the submitted trip distribution, roughly 10% of the incremental peak-hour trips would be expected to use the South Lake Stevens Road/South Davies Road intersection. City staff calculated that the rezone would add, by their accounting, fewer than one additional peak-hour trip through that intersection (about 0.7 trips) compared with the current R-6 zoning. The council’s debate focused on legal and procedural limits: members noted the difference between non-project actions (a rezone) and a project-level review (the preliminary plat and SEPA). A council member summarized that the hearing examiner’s recommendation blended analysis across both levels of review, but legal staff and planning staff said the substantive mitigation for traffic will be secured through conditions on the subdivision and through the SEPA MDNS process before building permits are issued. Applicant representatives urged the council to confine its decision to the rezone criteria and not to re-litigate project-level mitigation, saying the hearing examiner had properly considered the applications together and recommended approval. The council adopted Ordinance 12-01 to rezone the property from R-6 to RA-12. The hearing-examiner approval of the preliminary plat remains effective if the council’s rezone decision stands, because the plat approval was conditioned on the rezone. The council directed staff to continue reconciling the competing traffic analyses and to advance any required mitigation in the preliminary plat process and capital plan updates. The council additionally discussed placing the affected intersection on the city’s capital improvement program to evaluate systemic improvements.