The University District is a neighborhood experiencing fast-paced change as new development takes shape in the heat of Seattle’s historic building boom. A significant portion of the neighborhood recently received major zoning and land use changes that will facilitate thousands of additional residents and employees over the next few decades. Those changes came out of a neighborhood-wide planning process that still is ongoing. One piece of that process includes taking another a look at neighborhood design guidelines. Other initiatives to respond to commercial affordability and delivering public space improvements are also continuing.
Later this year, rezones and urban design regulations are slated to be adopted for University Way NE, aka The Ave, a long north-south avenue that forms an active heart to the neighborhood, as well as modest zoning changes elsewhere in the neighborhood as part of the city-wide rezoning process to unlock Mandatory Housing Affordability requirements in new commercial and residential development.
This past Thursday, the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) held an evening open house to provide a background the neighborhood design guideline update process. Planners noted that the update would be the first major revision of University District design guidelines since 2000–the last update in 2013 largely dealt with formatting instead of substantive design policy. Since that time, the neighborhood has gotten its first phase of zoning changes and adopted a Green Streets Concept Plan and parks plan update.
