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Lake Stevens planning commission reviews draft updates to Lake Stevens Center sub area plan
Summary
City staff reviewed updates to the Lake Stevens Center sub area plan and its planned-action thresholds, noting the area remains under most development thresholds but PM peak trips are at 55%; commissioners asked staff to reconcile thresholds with the city’s transportation plan and to continue outreach with Community Transit.
City planner Troy Davis reviewed proposed updates to the Lake Stevens Center sub area plan and the related planned action ordinance, telling the planning commission the sub area plan — adopted in 2012 with a 2022 addendum — is intended to guide revitalization and streamline environmental review for qualifying projects.
Davis said the original environmental analysis modeled three alternatives and the city adopted the alternative focused on employment and retail. He summarized the planned-action thresholds and assumptions: the plan anticipated roughly 140,000–150,000 square feet of gross retail area, a similar amount of office space, about 180–200 homes and an estimated PM peak‑hour trips threshold of 915. “What the planned action ordinance does is it…speed[s] up the environmental review for projects that get developed in the area,” Davis said, describing how projects that remain under the thresholds avoid separate SEPA review.
Using the city’s capacity tracker, Davis reported the sub area has achieved about 43% of the gross retail/service threshold, 8% of the anticipated office/employment threshold, 14% of anticipated residential dwelling units and 55% of the PM peak‑hour trips threshold. Commissioners noted that while most categories remain well under the modeled limits, the PM trips percentage is relatively high and could constrain future development if traffic grows faster than other components.
Commissioners focused questions on transportation and transit. One commissioner asked whether the high PM trip figure should prompt different targets or trigger a reopener; staff responded that several intersection and access improvements (including Village Way and highway intersection projects) have been made to improve ingress and egress, but recommended a transportation deep dive to reconcile the sub area thresholds with the city’s recently updated transportation plan. Commissioners also urged renewed outreach with Community Transit to explore safer, consolidated bus stop locations off Highway 9.
The commission discussed market and financing barriers to vertical mixed‑use development (ground‑floor retail with housing above), noting lenders, higher insurance and market demand have limited such projects in Lake Stevens compared with more transit‑rich, urban markets. Davis and other staff cautioned that planned‑action thresholds are tied to modeled mitigation for vehicle trips and environmental impacts; swapping development types or exempting certain uses without careful analysis could undermine the mitigation basis and would require technical review.
No formal changes or votes on the sub area plan or thresholds were taken at the meeting. Commissioners and staff agreed to “pin” the threshold question for now, continue technical analysis — including correlating sub area assumptions with the updated transportation plan — and return with more specific draft language and data at a future meeting.
Next steps: staff will continue analysis of the sub area thresholds, pursue outreach with Community Transit about route and stop configurations, and present revised draft language and supporting data to the commission for further review.
