Working Group Recommendations

The presence of over 1,100 unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in the City of Seattle, not to mention many more across the state, poses a grave and persistent threat to public safety, affordability and the preservation of the City’s historic legacy. Animated by the belief that this situation can only be effectively addressed through the passage of mandatory retrofit legislation, in late 2017 Nitze-Stagen and Anew Apartments, two developers focused on the restoration and adaptive reuse of older (often URM) buildings in Seattle, began meeting with City officials, developers (both market-rate and affordable), URM property owners, historic preservationists, engineers, policy experts and neighborhood associations. The purpose of these meetings was to explore ways to overcome the obstacles to passage of such legislation -  principal among them the challenge of financing the significant cost of seismic upgrades.

Starting in late March through late June of this year, three roundtables consisting of a broad cross-section of representatives of the groups listed above met to discuss creative financing approaches, and to identify the other key challenges associated with a City-wide retrofit program.

These discussions led to the formation of four separate working groups focused on addressing the leading concerns raised by the roundtable participants: 1) physical and economic displacement of tenants of URMs; 2) delays in regulatory review and approval of retrofit applications; 3) engineering challenges and estimated cost of meeting the proposed technical specifications; and 4) the lack of an incentive structure not just for seismic, but also for environmental upgrades.

Each working group, consisting of a similar cross-section of concerned stakeholders, met two or three times between mid-September and mid-October and discussed each of these issues at length. A number of government representatives participated in these sessions as subject matter experts. The outcome is an overarching policy proposal that describes a novel financing mechanism together with a set of specific recommended actions associated with each of the key concerns.

The working group recommendations appear below. The participants in the groups, whose names and affiliations are provided as well, believe that this policy and these recommendations, if implemented, offer a pragmatic approach to addressing this critical challenge that is: a) technically and financially feasible; b) meets the needs of all stakeholders; and c) successfully protects Seattle’s URM buildings from the impact of the next big earthquake.

Working Group 1: Solving for Physical and Economic Displacement

Brad Padden, Coordinator

The Physical and Economic Displacement Working Group focused on identifying ways to ease the impact of construction work on individuals and businesses housed in vulnerable masonry buildings. Displacement will be an ongoing issue throughout the upgrade period as large sections of these buildings will be made uninhabitable for extended periods of time, so mitigating the effects of displacement and finding economically viable temporary and longer term solutions is vitally important to the success of any retrofit program.

Participants:

Recommendations:

• Ensure residents of buildings undergoing a Bolts + upgrade or greater are eligible for the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance (TRAO) even if the project does meet the threshold of a substantial alteration

• Permit residents displaced by mandatory URM upgrades to qualify for TRAO while earning up to 80% of area median income (AMI) versus the current 50% AMI

• Go beyond TRAO to include additional wrap-around relocation and support services for the most vulnerable residents (i.e. 0-30% AMI)

• Assign a project manager to manage the entire process for those individuals

• Utilize the resident’s regular onsite manager or community manager who knows the residents the best and can help provide an emotional grounding to the process, helping them to adjust on a personal level at both the sending and receiving sites

• Make a caseworker available to help with medical, transport and language issues

• Provide a relocation contractor to help with the move itself

• Accommodate and/or subsidize qualified URM displaced individuals including  0-30% AMI and 30-50% AMI in Office-of-Housing-funded, MFTE, incentive zoned or market rate projects

• Housing Finance Commission may need to create a special housing class for “qualified URM-displaced” individuals to be able to prioritize them in Affordable housing (could require a declaration of emergency due to the life safety threat posed by vulnerable masonry buildings)

• Prioritize “qualified URM-displaced” individuals and families for replacement housing

• Use new Affordable housing projects to move the populations of entire buildings at once so neighbors can maintain support networks (preferably within their existing neighborhoods)

• Do not allow building owners to retenant units that were vacated to perform URM upgrades before attempting to put original tenants back into their former units

Working Group 2: Streamlining the Regulatory Review and Approval Process

Peter Nitze, Coordinator

The Regulatory Working Group focused on identifying ways to streamline the permit review and approval process for seismic retrofits. With the added influx of hundreds of new applications following passage of URM retrofit legislation, meeting the URM Policy Committee’s recommended timeline of one year for permit approval will be very challenging, and almost certainly require changes to the existing process. Toward that end, the Regulatory Group explored how municipal resources could be allocated most effectively to ensure swift review and approval, as well as how to best balance sound seismic design with the preservation of important historic features, where applicable.

Participants:

• Jamie Anderson, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections

• Chris Moore, Washington Trust for Historic Preservation

• Brett Phillips, Unico

• Michael Sullivan, Architectural Historian

• Karen True, Alliance for Pioneer Square

Recommendations:

Passage of legislation mandating seismic retrofits of URM buildings in Seattle will precipitate a significant increase in permit applications. Even with the current volume of applications, depending on the complexity of the project, review and approval can take over a year, as can be seen by the case studies summarized at the end of this document.

The following are recommendations for changes to the existing review and approval process intended to simplify and accelerate processing these retrofit applications, both to ensure timely completion of the retrofits and to minimize the incremental burden on SDCI staff.

The first set of recommendations relates to the pre-intake phase of the process and the second to the period after formal permit intake.

PRE INTAKE

• Provide for an exemption from SEPA review for changes of use in URMs undergoing retrofits;

• Provide broader latitude to URM retrofits to permit environmental and other improvements (in addition to seismic) without triggering a substantial alteration;

• Form a dedicated cross-departmental team with the specific technical, historical and code expertise to perform historical and code reviews in parallel:

  • Dedicate/recruit resources with special expertise in URM building construction and retrofitting; rehabilitation of historic structures; and application of relevant code provisions;

  • Appoint steering committee to conduct up-front screening to qualify projects as straightforward, moderately complicated, or very complicated;

  • Develop review and approval paths for each category; straightforward projects would follow an administrative process (described below); more complicated ones would go to a specialized review unit with an optimized review process.

POST INTAKE

• Empower Dept. of Neighborhoods (DON) to coordinate with Landmark Review Board to develop a Director’s Rule for retrofits of historic URM projects to simplify and clarify the guidelines for granting a Certificate of Approval (C of A);

• Create standard detail sheet for simple URM retrofits (e.g. Bolts +) and have review done by DON administratively, rather than obtaining a C of A (see above) (Landmarks can only say “No”. “Yes” needs to come from DON, so DON can bypass Landmarks Board review when appropriate);

• Create a single point of contact (Ombudsman) for URM seismic upgrade applications who would ensure projects follows the correct review and approval path, and track the total elapsed time to complete each significant step in the process;

• Authorize SDCI to make URM buildings a PRIORITY 1 classification (Affordable Housing is a 2). This designation would cut every queue in every cycle, potentially reducing the 6-9-month code review process to 3-6 months.

Case Studies:

PROJECT 1: QUEEN ANNE EXCHANGE
Renovation and addition to a Seattle Landmark building (Garfield Exchange building).

Involved change of use from institutional to multi-family. Substantial Alteration, with full seismic retrofit, all new MEP, new stairs and elevator, new parking, new top floor addition. Full build out of 25 residential apartments.

Review Times: Engaged in the building permit review process for more than 12 months now; waited 8 weeks for initial review, 12 weeks for second review, and 20 weeks for the third review. Successive reviews are supposed to get shorter, but the opposite has occurred.

PROJECT 2: BLOCK 4A
New construction mixed-use residential. Permit submittals have been broken out into three separate permits in order to help expedite review.

Review Times: Engaged in the building permit review process for more than 7 months now.

PROJECT 3: BLOCK 5A
New construction mixed-use residential. Permit submittals have been broken out into three separate permits in order to help expedite review.

Review Times: Engaged in the building permit review process for more than 6 months now.

PROJECT 4: INTERNATIONAL APARTMENTS
This project is an excellent case study for the URM roundtable. This is an existing URM building. The project is a voluntary bolts-plus seismic retrofit and window replacement.

Review Times: Submitted for permit on 9/5/18. Still awaiting permit correction notices.

Working Group 3: Assessing the Engineering Components and Cost of Retrofits

Brad Padden, Coordinator

The Engineering Working Group examined structural plans for Bolts + and full seismic upgrades to unreinforced masonry buildings in the context of a City-wide upgrade mandate. Means, methods and costs associated with achieving these upgrades will be developed and reviewed, using case studies for a variety of building types as references. The working group provided the structural engineering community the opportunity to clarify technical requirements with City subject matter experts, and to explore ideas that may differ from current practice to arrive at more cost effective solutions. The evaluation of the case studies is intended to provide the City with a more thorough understanding of the proposed requirements in the context of real world projects.

Participants:

• Melissa LaFayette, National Development Council

• Aaron Pambianco, AJP Engineering

• Bob Power, SEACON Construction

• Dan Say, Swenson Say Faget

• Andy Taylor, KPFF

• Bryan Zagers, Coughlin Porter Lundeen

Work Product:

Working Group 4: Incentivizing Additional Environmental Upgrades

Peter Nitze, Coordinator

The Energy & Environmental Working Group focused on identifying complementary incentives that will spur URM property owners affected by the mandatory retrofit ordinance to improve not just the seismic performance of their buildings, but their overall energy and environmental performance as well. Since satisfaction of the seismic technical standards will in most instances require significant structural work, this presents an opportunity to simultaneously upgrade and modernize the building’s systems (e.g. HVAC, lighting) and envelope (e.g. windows, insulation) to improve energy efficiency and emissions. A good example of an incentive that could be combined with a URM retrofit program is the Seattle 2030 Challenge Pilot, which offers transferable development rights to building owners who commit to achieving the 2030 energy, emissions, and water conservation targets.

Participants:

• Matthew Combe, Seattle 2030 District

• Chuck Depew, National Development Council

• Jim Graham, Graham Baba Architects

• Kji Kelly, Historic Seattle

• Doug Larson, Heartland

• Erika Lund, Office of Emergency Management

• Sandra Mallory, Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment

• Chris Moore, Washington Trust for Historic Preservation

Recommendations:

The recommendations of this working group are contained in the Retrofit Credit Proposal.