Council reviews 2025 comprehensive-plan docket, staff details privately initiated Fur Lane rezone

City planning staff reviewed the city’s proposed 2025 final docket on Monday, laying out which comprehensive-plan amendments and development-regulation code changes staff expect to study this year and briefing the council on a privately initiated rezone on Fur Lane.

At a workshop item introducing the docket, Amy, a planning staff member in the Community and Economic Development Department, told the council that placing an item on the final docket “does not mean the project is approved” and that docket approval simply adds an item to the department’s work plan so staff can run SEPA review, accept public comment, and bring a formal proposal back to the planning commission and city council within the year.

The docket package includes one privately initiated comprehensive-plan/zoning-map amendment — a Fur Lane rezone — and 11 city-initiated amendments (three affecting the comprehensive plan or zoning map and eight code amendments to development regulations). Amy said the privately initiated rezone originally covered 7.84 acres and that the applicant later requested the addition of a fourth parcel, increasing the total to 8.77 acres. She said the upland portion of the site is roughly 5 acres.

Why it matters: if rezoned, the site’s maximum theoretical density would increase under the proposed residential-moderate ("R-mod") zoning. Amy told the council that the site’s current RLC zoning allows a maximum of 6 dwelling units per acre, while R-mod allows up to 11 dwelling units per acre; for impact analysis staff subtracts roughly 30% of gross acreage to account for infrastructure and open-space needs to estimate developable acreage.

Transportation and public-safety implications were a recurring focus. Amy said a hypothetical project built to the maximum allowed density would trigger a transportation-impact review that would analyze effects on Highway 9 and the Hazel/Highland intersection; she said the most likely mitigation would be a roundabout and that the site’s single access point — “one way in, one way out” via Hazel — could require a future extension of Hazel to the south. Amy cautioned that those impacts are project-level questions for SEPA and subsequent hearings, not the docket decision.

Councilmembers and planning staff also discussed site features and constraints. Amy said the slope/bluff area would remain undeveloped and that the lower-elevation portion of the property has been discussed informally with the owner as a potential future park dedication, but no agreement exists. She reiterated the city has not received a site plan and does not know how many homes, if any, the property owner intends to build.

The docket contains several city-initiated code amendments staff previewed during the workshop, including: - Updates to permit triggers and time-limit language in chapter 20.16 to align with state changes; staff said parking-related code changes will likely be delayed until state legislation is final. - Changes to nonconforming-use rules to allow certain commercial uses in a southern segment of the Smoky Point corridor to remain commercial rather than be forced immediately to mixed-use conversions if owners remodel or change tenant uses. - Revisions to chapter 20.44 (supplemental uses) to separate rules for food-truck courts from other mobile sales and to clarify administrative conditional-use permitting for mobile vendors. - Clarifications to utility and right-of-way sections, including a requirement that developers wrap or otherwise screen utility transformer boxes that are visible from public rights-of-way. - Addition of a procedure for the comprehensive-plan periodic update that occurs roughly every 10 years. - Language references to the city’s fire authority in places where older code text still reads “city fire.”

Councilmember discussion emphasized the difference between docket approval and project approval and encouraged staff to honor due process and provide clear mitigation analyses once formal proposals are submitted. Amy said the department will inform the council which items may be added to the docket later if state legislation requires additional code changes.

What’s next: staff will finalize the map showing the added fourth parcel for the Fur Lane request and return the fully documented items through the public-review sequence (SEPA review, planning-commission public hearing, then council consideration) this year if docketed. Councilmembers asked staff to brief the council about any changes to code or state law that affect timing or substance before bringing final actions.

Votes at a glance: At the start of the meeting the council approved the meeting agenda by voice vote (motion seconded; “Aye; motion carries”) and later adjourned by voice vote. No final vote was taken on the docket at this workshop; staff said final docket adoption and any code amendments will be scheduled for later hearings.