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Kirkland planners recommend targeted 85th Street zoning changes, direct staff to protect projects already underway
Summary
The Planning Commission voted to recommend three narrow zoning code amendments for the North 85th Street station area—allowing development agreements to negotiate heights/uses, prohibiting certain low‑intensity residential types (including townhomes), and extending a temporary pioneer affordable‑housing provision to 2029—while directing staff to craft language that preserves projects already in progress and clarifies whether development agreements apply to parcels under 4 acres.
The Kirkland Planning Commission on (date not specified in transcript) recommended that the City Council adopt three targeted zoning-code amendments intended to catalyze development near the North 85th Street station.
In a staff presentation, planner Leandra Baker Lewis said the amendments respond to the 2044 comprehensive plan’s emphasis on focusing growth in urban centers and aim to improve the viability of transit‑oriented projects that support the city’s planned 2027 transportation investments. The three draft changes are: remove language that prevents development agreements from authorizing height or uses otherwise prohibited in a district; prohibit lower‑intensity residential types in the station-area regulating districts (detached and attached dwellings, certain middle‑housing types such as cottages, townhomes and multiplexes); and extend the cutoff date for the station‑area pioneer affordable‑housing provisions from 2025 to Dec. 31, 2029, while retaining a complimentary 624‑unit…
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