EVERETT — How do you accommodate a more than 50% population increase in your city in just 20 years?
Everett has been trying to find an answer for that question since 2022, when it began work on a periodic update to its comprehensive plan. That plan lays out the goals and policies that will prepare the city for increased growth.
On Wednesday, planning staff shared details with the City Council detailing progress the city has made on the update.
In its comprehensive plan, Everett must prepare for 65,000 new residents, 36,500 new housing units and 84,300 new jobs by 2044. To do this, the city must create new zoning maps, amend building regulations and update design standards for public infrastructure. The city will also lay out plans to combat climate change and increase transit availability.
In 1990, the state Legislature passed the Growth Management Act, requiring fast-growing cities like Everett to create 20-year comprehensive plans.
The goals of the act include increasing housing supply, encouraging development while reducing urban sprawl and creating multi-modal transportation systems. Through these guidelines, cities hope to increase housing affordability and quality of life while reducing the negative public health and environmental impacts of low-density sprawl.
Cities update their comprehensive plans every 10 years. State law required the city to complete this periodic update by Dec. 31, 2024.
“We did not meet that deadline but have been in communication with the Department of Commerce and they are aware that we’re making solid progress and working as fast as we can while prioritizing full implementation of state and regional requirements and recommendations (which, for Everett, are substantial),” city spokesperson Simone Tarver wrote Thursday.
Everett hopes to adopt the periodic update, as well as new middle housing regulations, by June 30, Tarver said.
Drafts of the comprehensive plan lay out hundreds of goals the city hopes to meet by 2044. They include increasing walkability, access to public transit and housing supply. The city also hopes to maintain green space, protect important environmental assets and decrease its greenhouse gas emissions. Those documents are still subject to the approval of the City Council, who can make amendments.
Plans are only plans, though. The city needs to make its zoning flexible because private builders will be the ones constructing the new housing the city is preparing for, city planning director Yorik Stevens-Wajda said during Wednesday’s council meeting.
“Unless you’re going to assume that every single parcel redevelops in a certain area, which is unrealistic and probably not desirable, you need to provide more theoretical capacity than you actually need,” he said.
Under Everett’s current zoning, there is only capacity for about 20,000 additional housing units, about half of what the city needs to meet growth targets, Stevens-Wajda said at Wednesday’s meeting.
The draft plan lists growth centers in different areas of the city, including Metro Everett, North Broadway, the Everett Mall and the intersection of Evergreen Way and 41st Street, among others, as locations for mixed-use centers which would allow for more housing units.
Those centers are set to have minimum-height requirements. New buildings constructed in Metro Everett, for example, would need to have at least three floors.
This zoning plan, known as a “dispersed growth alternative,” Stevens-Wajda said, would meet state regulations without concentrating growth too much in a single part of the city.
“We don’t know where the market is going to go,” he said. “If we were to very tightly put capacity in a certain place and … the market wants to go somewhere else, then we’ve missed that capacity.”
The city is also adjusting its plans based on statewide legislation affecting local municipalities. In 2023, for example, the state Legislature approved House Bill 1110, which requires cities to allow duplexes, triplexes, townhomes and courtyard apartments — known as middle housing — in areas zoned for single-family homes.
That law, which Everett will implement in its comprehensive plan, could increase the amount of housing — including homeownership opportunities — available to residents. Doing so would likely drive down housing costs and combat the ongoing affordability crisis affecting Snohomish County.
Another bill the state Senate passed on Wednesday would cap the amount of parking cities could mandate developers to build.
Some proposed zoning changes in the plan would prioritize the placement of community services, like health clinics, day cares, senior centers libraries and educational facilities in mixed-use centers. The changes could also allow some light industrial uses in mixed urban areas, if approved.
One change would also allow for neighborhood scale commercial development, clearing the way for small-scale businesses under 5,000 square feet to open on some corner lots.
“Cafes, corner stores, other neighborhood types of businesses, bakeries, can be within the neighborhood within walking distance so people don’t have to get in their cars and block arterials,” said Alice Wetzel, the city’s long range planning manager. “They can go get a slice of pizza with their family down at the corner.”
Not every area in the city is set to see zoning changes, however. Certain neighborhoods, like extended cul-de-sacs adjacent to a wooded area with only one exit, would be zoned as “neighborhood residential constrained.” That designation would keep the limited areas zoned for single-family homes because of safety concerns, Wetzel said.
Zoning changes also don’t guarantee new construction will happen. The comprehensive plan’s changes are put in place to prepare for possible growth that may arrive.
“The fact that these high limits are that high doesn’t mean it’s going to be economical to do that, in terms of the taller stuff that’s typically going to be part of our downtown core, which doesn’t really make sense elsewhere … Those are limits, but likely, in most of those cases, that isn’t going to happen,” council member Ben Zarlingo said.
City staff is still looking for feedback on the comprehensive plan update. Comments can be submitted online at everettwa.gov/2816/Get-involved. An open house on the comprehensive plan is also scheduled for 6 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Weyerhauser Room in Everett Station.
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
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