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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 05/21/2002 COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES MAY 219 2002 COUNCIL MEMBERS: President Tim Clark, Connie Epperly, Leona Orr, Julie Peterson, Bruce White, Judy Woods, Rico Yingling The workshop began at 5:03 PM. State Transportation Package Briefing Public Works Director Don Wickstrom said that SCATbd had met that day and discussed tables showing projects and their recommendations on the RTID plan. (Please refer to the handouts for detailed information.) Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Dena Laurent said that SCATbd would meet on June 6`h to compile a list that would then be forwarded to the county and the people putting the regional package together. On June 19`h, the county council members from all three counties will convene and select the Regional Transportation Improvement Board members. SCATbd was working on a letter in support of a South King County representative. Page 9 shows a list from Doug Levy of what Kent gets out of the state transportation package. Page 16 has the Chamber of Commerce's endorsement of the state and regional packages. The YES campaign is asking for endorsements. That may be something the Council will want to • consider. The implications are having the Council's name on campaign materials and being publicly supportive of the measure. The council has a history of doing a resolution in support of, or opposition to, various measures. The direction is to bring a resolution to the Public Works Committee for consideration. Tour of Citv Facilities Chief Administrative Officer Mike Martin asked the Councilmembers to think of when they would like to have a tour of the City's facilities. Options are the end of June, or sometime in early fall. Staff will distribute a list of places that might be good for the 22nd of June. Kent Station Presentation Mike Martin said the City was very close to signing a non binding document with Langley Properties. There have been people doing design on roads and civil work. If the deal is consummated,Randy Kite and his team will actually put together the economic engine. Whether it's thought of as the downtown or as an adjunct to the downtown, it will be the significant infrastructure in the downtown area, and will be a $130 million,plus capital development, project that is expected to complete in the next 6-10 years. Randy Kite, Langley Properties, said that the first time he and the City met almost 9 months ago, a vision was laid out for the project and they had worked closely with the city and staff. He said staff had been working very hard to bring the project about. Langley Properties has also assembled what it believes is the best team in the business to put this kind of project together. The primary contact to the design side of the project is through Walt Kneehoff, lead architect and Council Workshop,5/21/02 2 principal in charge at LMN. Dave Schneider of LMN is going to be assembling the plat,PUD, as well as the designs for the project and actually will see the architecture through to completion. Kris Snider, Hewitt Architects, is the landscape architect. Mark Veldee and Tom Jones, from KPFF, are the civil engineers. This is the team that put Redmond Town Center together. Kris Snider,partner in charge of landscape architecture studio at Hewitt Architects, said that they were a 40 person architectural office in Seattle with urban design and landscape architecture as part of the disciplines they offered. He said he had been practicing in Seattle for 20 years, and had been exposed to a lot of East Coast, urban dense development, and has become really enthusiastic about the potentials for how to make the most out of urban space. And knowing that these are now places for people to live, we can't afford to keep building houses everywhere it's green. We have to start looking back internally to where we can create and build housing in places to work and live that are in denser areas. My job is to make that experience livable, exciting, and refreshing and help bring nature back into urban areas and be thoughtful about how those spaces all go together and work. One of the things our office does really well is coordinate with the civil engineers. It's very important that all the things they are putting in in the ground, doesn't affect all the good stuff that we want to do that everybody sees and interacts with, like the trees and all the other pedestrian amenities. We like to bring a bit of uniqueness and serendipity to these projects. A newer item that's been talked about, and one thing we've always practiced as landscape architects, is how to reclaim water and how to think about using a greener attitude towards things and how we can make the best out of what we can afford to do. Certainly creative design thought is part of the first step to that. • Mark Veldee, Civil Engineer, said he was the Principle in Charge of the project. We've done a lot of work similar to this. Redmond Towne Center, Carillon Point, Kirkland Park Place, Bellevue Pedestrian Corridor. Our job is to figure out how to take these sometimes fluffy architectural things and really make them happen. KPFF may be known to you, as we did the civil engineering for the Sound Transit work, Auburn Super Mall, and Redmond Town Center. It's a combination between letting our artistic side go and working very closely with the architect but then making sure everything is tight and precise below grade to make sure it works. Dave Schneider, said there had been further development with the Cinema design team and they had done a few modifications to the site. It is now taller to the north side, which has moved the grocery store component up a little bit to the left. We've also introduced this pedestrian spine that now connects the northeast to the southwest and there's a little bit more of a pedestrian activity and connection throughout the site. We've also had some preliminary meetings with the Green River Community College. We're also working with KPFF who is working with city staff to kind of tighten up the right of way and some of the boundary issues around the perimeter and some of the streets. Our next step is to attack the Master Plan Development Application. My job is to help facilitate all the different energies that are going to go into that. We've got all the landscape work,private/public utilities, input from the staff side on the public streets, as well as KPFF on the private streets, as well as keeping track of all of the areas and uses and parking counts and all the other pieces that Langley and Tarragon are very interested in. Rico Yingling asked if anything had been integrated from the community open houses into the . plan. Randy Kite said that the plan hadn't changed substantially from the earlier plan with the Council Workshop,5/21/02 3 exception of some tweaking to the massing to accommodate the theater and Green River Community College. We did get feedback on Center Court and that's going to take a lot of study. Beyond that there was feedback on multi family housing and whether there should be more or less of that. Haven't gotten into that level of discussion yet and when that can occur. The importance of a lot of those issues is to allow for that future density. Not much on plan yet reflecting what we heard, but we'll certainly be incorporating as we go. The time frame for the PUD and long plat is mid July for application and we're looking at late October/November to actually accomplish those approvals, at which time we would commence on the design of Phase I. We're anticipating coming in for permit in late January. When we met for the very first time we had our partner Tarragon here and I want to reintroduce them to you: Mike Corliss, Joe Blamer. Mike Corliss, Tarragon, said that since he had spoken with Council about a year ago, they had finished another almost $90 million worth of improvements in Auburn, and it was their intent to be able to move up and do a bunch of work on this particular project. I wanted to come back and reaffirm our commitment to being able to work with the city and I think this is a very special opportunity to create a wonderful partnership in that we are committed to this project on a long term basis, like we have been in several other local cities where we continue to own an interest in the real estate investments that we make so we can be good stewards of the projects and the developments that we're involved with. Looking forward to progressing ahead. You have a great staff that progresses very quickly. Randy Kite, said he hoped that they had demonstrated from the team standpoint that they had the • horsepower to put this project together. We've got the experience, we've done this before and we're looking forward to doing it here. Phase I, right now, is in the process of being reformulated as we're working with our leasing agents in trying to figure out exactly what size Phase I should be. It's going to be somewhere in the 6-8 acre range and somewhere between 90,000 and 110,000 square feet. We are continuing to progress with the anchor deals. We've moved the Green River Community College process forward quite a bit. We've met with them on several occasions and we've programmed their uses and we're starting to tour their other facilities and in early July, as soon as we get the PUD and plat off our desks, we're going to commence with detail design of that building, incorporating the Green River Community College. That is a requirement that will go on the second level of a two story building with retail at the base. They also want some of the first floor space for some of their needs such as the Australian International School, and potentially tying in a travel business with that. There's all sorts of interesting inner connections that we quite haven't figured out yet but the idea is of having a living room space for the students on the first floor and creating a zone for students where they could actually study out of doors. The theater has continued to grow. We've continued to dialogue on the performing arts component of the cinema and it looks like that's doable. We just have to figure out exactly what it means to the project in terms of bulking it up, added performance components costs that we would have to add to the building, and understand the economic ramifications of taking the large auditorium out of production for a couple hundred nights a year so it could be used for live performances. It's one of the most exciting parts of the project. Council Workshop, 5/21/02 4 Bladis Realty, who talked to you early on just after we were selected, is actively fine tuning the merchandising of the project, and that is where we sort of lay out the potential uses that we could bring here and try to put names on a plan and figure out where those synergies exist between restaurants, entertainment uses,book stores, those kinds of things. They are presently at a national convention starting dialogue with certain important users that we feel are critical, that sort of sets the tone for the project. We've worked to the point now where after 9 months we've gotten the project as far as we're comfortable getting it without moving it collectively to the next level. To move it to that level we need to have a better sense of our deal, if you will, with the city, and I think you need a better sense for what that deal might look like with us and understand the implications of that. I believe that's where we are after 9 months of working through this and trying to understand each other's hot buttons -what's important, what we need, what I need to make it successful, what the city needs to make it a success, as well, and I believe we're there. Mike Martin asked if Mr. Kite could speak to some of the thought that had gone into connecting to the historic downtown area. Randy Kite said that some of the feedback that from the community forums had to do with open spaces and connectivity to the old town. One of the ideas that we had early on was to create a large open space in the downtown. I know we're a bit presumptuous putting it on a municipal lot. The idea is trying to really shift the center of gravity. Right now your center of gravity has been Meeker. This is obviously going to be a significant anchor in the downtown and trying to provide some synergy at the heart of these two districts. The other element that we see, perhaps even more important than the open space, is to do something more than just your typical 12 foot wide sidewalk along a street through this zone,but actually create a very significant promenade and readdress how that promenade deals with the • library and stretches all the way from Meeker,up Second, into the project. Here we have some opportunities, assuming we can work some things out with Sound Transit because their building is actually back at this line,this could either be a more significant promenade in leading to the projector could be a combination of some shallow retail with a deeper promenade. When I talk about that, I'm talking about something that could be in the 20-25 foot range and would be landscaped rather formally and would be a much more comfortable space in terms of feeling comfortable walking as a pedestrian between these two districts,rather than just trying to keep the traditional urban orientations, such as we have through this zone. What makes urban space special is using every little piece of it for something—a new surprise—to give it purpose. It just isn't lost in the urban fabric. Councilmember Leona Orr said the project was very exciting and the Council was very appreciative of the time that you've all spent coming down and talking to us, keeping us informed. Our staff has been absolutely wonderful. This is one of the most exciting things I think we've ever done and it's coming together. The workshop adjourned at 5:50 PM. 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