Shoreline to end parking mandates and expand middle housing; also won’t ban pickleball

By Oliver Moffat

Shoreline Comprehensive Plan directs the city to go beyond state minimums, lift parking mandates citywide and legalize multiple homes on properties within a half mile of transit stops.

The Shoreline city council: Back row from left: Councilmembers John Ramsdell, Betsy Robertson, Annette Ademasu, Eben Pobee, Keith Scully; Front row from left: Mayor Chris Roberts, Deputy Mayor Laura Mork

At the December 16 meeting, the Shoreline council adopted its 2024 Comprehensive Plan. The policy document directs the city to go beyond state minimums, lift parking mandates citywide and legalize multiple homes on properties within a half mile of transit stops. 

Under the state’s new Middle Housing (HB1110) and ADU (HB1337) laws, the city can no longer require off-street parking for new middle housing and ADUs near a transit stop. 

After Shoreline recently gained two light rail stations and multiple frequent bus routes, many neighborhoods across the city are now within walking distance of high quality transit. 

Also, under the new Parking Reduction law (SB6015), cities must wave parking mandates when tree retention makes a residential development “infeasible.” 

And so, keeping the city’s existing parking mandates could create a cumbersome patchwork of zones where parking is mandatory for some homes but not required for others. 

In a six-to-one vote, the council passed a proposal from Mayor Chris Roberts to remove parking mandates citywide.

Once implemented, Shoreline will join Spokane, Port Townsend, Bellingham and nearly a hundred other cities across the country in eliminating required parking.

An amendment, to an amendment, to an amendment to an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan directs the city to eliminate Shoreline’s parking mandates within six months

Councilmember Keith Scully cautioned against “shooting from the hip” and, while acknowledging that eliminating parking minimums “is probably where we're going,” introduced a compromise giving the city more time to “consider” the change. 

But Deputy Mayor Laura Mork cut the word “consider,” giving city staff and the planning commission a deadline to lift the mandates. “I believe that we must eliminate minimum parking ratios, but we need to do so in a thoughtful way,” she said.

Mayor Roberts agreed the city would need time before lifting parking mandates. “From a procedural standpoint, there is a lot of places in the development code where we talk about parking,” he said. 

“I’ve changed my thinking over the last month” said Councilmember Annette Ademasu who had previously spoken against eliminating parking mandates. 

Referencing public comments urging the city to end parking mandates to reduce hardscape, preserve trees and reduce the cost of building new housing, Ademasu said, “after hearing from residents and organizations and just looking at what our goals are for housing affordability, climate, equity and social justice… I would really strongly like to see this brought back in January or within a few months.”

But not everyone on the council was ready to lift parking mandates. Councilmember Eben Pobee voted against the amendment and said “I'm totally uncomfortable with it and I wish that we would pause … and assess where we are as a city.” 

Neighborhoods could “see spillage all over the place if we make no room for parking,” Pobee said.

Shoreline plans to start ticketing parking scofflaws once the city manages to hire a second enforcement officer.

The journey of a Shoreline transit rider is much different now: in addition to the two Link stations, Metro made big revisions to its bus network, adding new routes and increasing frequency across the city. 

Under the state’s Middle Housing law, cities must allow at least four homes per lot within a quarter-mile of major transit stops. 

The new Land Use map adopted by council with amendments

The city council adopted a Land Use Map that will go beyond that minimum, extending the zone where duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, cottage housing, and courtyard apartments are allowed to a half-mile from transit stops.

In a three-to-four vote, the council rejected a proposal from Councilmember Ademasu to scale the density zone back into the quarter-mile area.

A petition signed by fifteen of the eighteen residents of the Sky Acres subdivision in North City near the 185th street station prompted the council to lower the density of that neighborhood and another single block in the Hillwood neighborhood at Greenwood and 203rd also had its density lowered by the council.

The council adopted a slate of amendments from Councilmember Ademasu expanding tree preservation, wildlife corridors, buffer zones and wildlife protections. And an amendment from Ramsdell calls for the city to preserve exceptionally large trees. 

The council rejected an amendment from Councilmember Ademasu to protect wildlife from “noisy intrusive activities like pickleball” in public parks. “My intent was not to ban pickleball,” Ademasu said in response to more than thirty public comments received from local pickleball enthusiasts. 

The council gave subarea planning another haircut. In a vote of 6 to 1, the council told staff the city should “evaluate” subarea plans instead of creating more neighborhood-level plans. 

Earlier this year, the city council added a new goal to conduct neighborhood subarea planning with a focus on High Activity Areas (HAAs) and neighborhood commercial centers and corridors. 

But when city staff allocated $600,000 in the budget to pay for two subarea plans, the city council cut the funding over concerns the plans cost a lot but deliver very little. 

House Bill 1220 requires cities to implement policies to document and undo racially disparate impacts in housing. 

According to the Washington State Racial Restrictive Covenants Project, Shoreline had 2,951 racist covenants, the second highest number in King County, after Seattle. 

The council struck a sentence hundreds of pages deep within the draft Comp Plan that an Innis Arden attorney said defames and libels the gated community. 

A racist covenant remained in Innis Arden’s by-laws until 2006 because only 122 of 360 homeowners filed paperwork to remove it. 

In 2006, the Innis Arden board removed the covenant after the state made it easier for HOAs to strike their racist rules. Although unenforceable since at least 1969, racist covenants still remain on some properties in Shoreline and home owners can file paperwork to have them removed. 

The city council will meet again on January 13.