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Development Services outlines five-year strategic plan and lists thousands of units in pipeline
Summary
Rebecca Horner, director of Development Services, presented a five-year strategic plan and department structure and described active projects including more than 6,000 proposed dwelling units in downtown and Bell Red and major project pipelines; staff and commissioners discussed Wilburton applications and requested follow-up data.
Rebecca Horner, director of Development Services, told the Planning Commission the department has adopted a five-year strategic plan and reorganized services to align work across four departments and seven divisions.
"We adopted a new vision statement, which is ‘building the best Bellevue together,’ and a new mission that emphasizes partnership and equity," Horner said during her presentation. She outlined tools residents can use to track development, including a public map viewer, permit dashboards and an open data portal.
Horner said downtown and Bel-Red together represent major growth quarters: staff presented slides showing roughly 6,000 dwelling units in active downtown and Bel‑Red projects and about 2,000,000 square feet of office space in the pipeline. She also described a range of smaller-valuation permits (home additions, renovations and tree permits) that together keep department workload high.
Commissioners asked detailed questions about Wilburton, and a staff member (Nick Webb Hall, code and policy director) said two Wilburton projects have advanced past the phase‑1 catalyst provision and are moving into phase 2; he said the two applications together total “over 1,000” residential units filed and noted several pre‑applications are also on file. Staff agreed to provide a follow-up data summary with precise unit counts and valuation breakdowns.
Horner and staff also previewed planned 2026 work: community engagement improvements, neighborhood-area plan updates, comprehensive-plan amendments, sustainable-building plan work and an affordable-housing strategy implementation phase that will consider funding and program details. Staff noted several state-required code updates will be packaged and brought to the commission for review.
No formal land-use decisions were made at the retreat; commissioners and staff focused on information, requests for follow-up and process improvements.
