Kirkland 2044 FAQs

The City of Kirkland 2044 Comprehensive Plan update process will help us guide growth over the next 20 years. Comprehensive Plans are guiding policy documents that describe how a city will manage its growth and provide the resources that growth requires. A Comprehensive Plan must be consistent with State, Regional, and County policies. Simultaneously the citywide Transportation Strategic Plan is being updated.

The Washington State Growth Management Act (GMA) determines what is included in each comprehensive plan.The Kirkland 2044 Comprehensive Plan covers many policy areas including:

• Revised Vision Statement and Guiding Principles for the year 2044
• Sustainability, Climate and Environment
• Land Use
• Housing
• Economic Development
• Transportation
• Parks, Recreation and Open Space
• Utilities
• Public Services
• Human Services
• Capital Facilities

Neighborhood Plans

There are 14 neighborhoods within Kirkland. Each neighborhood has it's own Neighborhood Plan chapter within the City's Comprehensive Plan. In 2023-2024 the City is working with the Juanita Neighborhood and Kingsgate Neighborhood to update their Plans. For all other neighborhood plans, text will be updated through an equity lens and historic text from each neighborhood consolidated into a citywide history of Kirkland document that will be included as an Appendix to the Comprehensive Plan.  

For each neighborhood, these plans address topics such as:

• Historical Context
• Natural Environment
• Land Use
• Transportation (pedestrian and bicycle paths)
• Open Space and Parks
• Public Services and Facilities
• Urban Design

Growth targets for housing and employment are adopted by King County and are consistent with the population projections developed by the State Office of Financial Management and Puget Sound Regional Council’s VISION 2050 regional growth strategy. The County’s overall growth target is apportioned to cities and towns within the County by the Growth Management Planning Council (a body of elected officials) based on a variety of factors, including existing development and recent growth, the number of regional growth centers, proximity to jobs, and the quality of future transit service. While State law does not require cities to reach these targets (i.e., the City does not have to build the assigned number of housing units), cities are required to plan for and accommodate these allocated growth targets. 

In addition, there is no evidence to support the claim that Kirkland’s peer cities (Bellevue and Redmond) received a lower proportional housing target than Kirkland. Table 1 below shows the three cities’ housing targets expressed as a percentage of their existing number of housing units. As shown, Kirkland received a much lower proportionate share of the housing target (expressed as a percentage of total housing units) than either Redmond or Bellevue.

Table 1: Housing Units Targets as a Percentage of Total Housing Units

 *2023 Postcensal Estimate of Total Housing Units, Washington State Office of Financial Management. 

Actually, the current Comprehensive Plan process has considered a number of discrete alternatives, including a more moderate alternative without the transit corridors policy. However, per the Growth Management Act, Countywide Planning Policies, and other requirements, all our Comprehensive Plan alternatives are required to plan for a housing target of 13,200 additional housing units by 2044. There is no “no growth” or “high growth” alternative that we’ve presented/considered – both the Existing Plan Alternative and the Growth Alternative in our Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement plan for growth of 13,200 additional housing units.

The Existing Plan Alternative would accommodate 13,200 new housing units, but it would not allow us to meet our affordable housing targets. The key differences between the alternatives are thus where the growth is planned for and how much additional capacity there is to meet the 13,200-unit and associated affordability targets.

The two alternatives presented in the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (Existing Plan Alternative and the Growth Alternative) provide bookends for the consideration of many other alternatives, including ones that focus growth in different places. As mentioned above, the Planning Commission decided to pursue a different alternative in its removal of LU-2.4 (the transit corridors policy), not to mention all the other amendments that the Planning Commission made to the Land Use and Housing elements over the course of several public hearings and many months of discussion. On the whole, these amendments would tend to focus growth more in the City’s centers and less in the outlying neighborhoods.

This approach to the alternatives analysis is not fundamentally different from that undertaken by Bellevue, Redmond, and other cities in their environmental review documents, and the State Environmental Policy Act establishes no requirement for analysis of a specific number of alternatives (a “reasonable range” of alternatives is the requirement, hence the bookends in the Kirkland Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement). Because all alternatives in Kirkland’s analysis should assume 13,200 units of additional housing growth, and because of the State density mandates, the differences in environmental impacts between a more “focused” growth scenario and more “dispersed” growth scenario would be fairly inconsequential. 

No. The draft Comprehensive Plan contains no policies calling for 4-6-story apartment buildings in what are considered predominantly residential neighborhoods. One draft policy in the Land Use Element (Policy LU-2.4, no longer recommended by the Planning Commission) called for exploring additional residential capacity along frequent transit corridors, but no maximum densities or building heights were established in the policy. Even if this policy were to be pursued, it’s highly unlikely that 4-6-story zoning would be the starting point for zoning changes in these neighborhoods. For outside reporting about the debate on transit corridors, see: https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/08/27/transit-corridor-upzones-draws-opposition-in-kirkland/

Kirkland must plan for and accommodate 13,200 new residential units by 2044. Of these 13,200 units, 11,462 units must be affordable to households making less than 80% of the median income (about $106,000 for a household of three). Of those 11,462 affordable units, 10,440 must be affordable to households making less than 50% of the median income. The target doesn’t mean that Kirkland must build this number of units by 2044, only that we have supportive policies and adequately-zoned land to allow for this growth to take place. Based on the current draft Comprehensive Plan, the City is anticipated to have capacity for approximately 23,400 additional units of housing (this includes the required capacity for 13,200 units), not all of which will be redeveloped. Having more capacity than is needed to accommodate growth is necessary because not all land will be available for redevelopment during the 20-year planning period. Furthermore, having additional capacity ensures that there will be adequate places in the city to develop the affordable housing that is desperately needed in the community. Because standard stand-alone (i.e., single-family) housing is so expensive in Kirkland, our future affordable housing stock will be developed primarily in parts of the City that allow for the development of mid-rise apartments (4-8 stories). Having extra capacity beyond the target allows us to have sufficient land to accommodate the mid-rise apartment buildings that can be successfully developed by organizations that build affordable housing.  Housing of this height is likely to be focused near major transit hubs, the City’s underutilized shopping centers, and in urban centers like Downtown, Totem Lake, and NE 85^th Street Station Area.  

No. Ignoring the Growth Management Act and other State legislative mandates could have adverse consequences for Kirkland. First, being out of compliance with the Growth Management Act could make the City vulnerable to costly lawsuits filed by developers or community members that claim, for instance, that we are impeding the construction of housing units. The consequences of losing such a lawsuit could be that the City pays financial damages or must amend its code in a way prescribed by the State to be compliant with the Growth Management Act. Second, not having a State-compliant Comprehensive Plan could make us ineligible to receive regional/State/federal grants to build new infrastructure, such as new roads, bridges, bike paths, and trails, or to receive planning grants from the Department of Commerce. Lastly, non-compliance with specific State mandates comes with its own penalties. If the City doesn’t comply with House Bill 1110 (expanding development allowances for middle housing) by mid-2025, the State-created model code could go into effect in Kirkland, taking away our local control to craft middle housing regulations that are appropriate to Kirkland:  https://www.commerce.wa.gov/growth-management/housing-planning/middle-housing/.

Here’s a link to the Washington State Department of Commerce webpage describing what Cities and Counties must do to comply with the GMA: https://www.commerce.wa.gov/growth-management/

The Growth Management Act requires that local governments accommodate planned growth, even if there is inadequate infrastructure to accommodate growth. Although in some rare, unusual cases (e.g., lack of water supply) it may be permissible to temporarily suspend growth, the Growth Management Act requires that local governments plan for and build the infrastructure they need to accommodate expected growth. And that’s precisely what’s being planned for in the draft Comprehensive Plan and related documents.  The Transportation Strategic Plan, for instance, includes specific transportation infrastructure projects that are planned to accommodate the growth that we expect in the Comprehensive Plan. Similarly, the Capital Facilities Element of the Comprehensive Plan aligns the Comprehensive Plan with the regularly-updated Capital Facilities Plan, to ensure that sewer, water, stormwater, roadway, and other infrastructure is keeping up with growth that’s happening in the city. 

To meet new State and County requirements (e.g., House Bill 1220, which requires that local governments identify past history that led to racially-motivated exclusion in the housing and land use realms), and also to create a more inclusive history that tells the story of the people who lived and worked in Kirkland, the City hired Dr. Lorraine McConaghy to conduct research and revise the existing Kirkland history that was discussed in several different elements of the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. Dr. McConaghy is very well-qualified to conduct this work: she is an accomplished historian who has worked at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle and has a Ph.D. in U.S. urban history from the University of Washington. She is the author of three books on regional and State history and received the Washington State Historical Society’s Robert Gray Medal for her contributions to the history of the Pacific Northwest. Dr. McConaghy worked closely with the Kirkland Heritage Society in researching the history, and the draft history document was reviewed by Loita Hawkinson of the Kirkland Heritage Society. Staff has fact-checked key elements of the history and believe it is accurate and that it is supported by meticulous research (including several pages of endnotes), including many oral histories of people who lived and worked in Kirkland throughout history. 

No. The surplus lands policy is intended to allow the exploration of other uses for lands that have no other community use and are not suitable for parks or open space – now and in the future. The City’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space (PROS) Plan makes clear that the City should expand its parks and open space system, including through repurposing public lands that can be used as such. The current version of draft Policy H-2.10 seeks to make this intent more clear:

Policy H-2.10 – Increase residential capacity and housing choice in residential neighborhoods through promoting the redevelopment of city-owned lands not designated or intended to be designated for Parks or Open Space, that accommodate affordable housing.

This is incorrect. There are many academic and other studies that indicate that when housing supply increases (even just the supply of market-rate housing) increases in the cost of housing are moderated (see: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4629628, among others). This primarily is the result of older units being vacated by households who move into higher-priced and newly-built units, freeing up the older units for new households. In addition, under current City policy, 10% of market-rate multi-family projects in much of Kirkland must be reserved for households making no more than 50% of the area median income (about $66,000 for a household of three) for rental units and no more than 80% of the area median income (about $106,000 for a household of three) for owned units. The Comprehensive Plan has policies that would support applying this standard to all newly-built housing in Kirkland. In other words, every 10 units of newly-built housing would yield one affordable unit, meaning that additional density has the potential to increase the City’s supply of affordable housing.  This video (“The Problem with Luxury Housing”) does a good job explaining the beneficial effects of market-rate housing on the overall housing market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbQAr3K57WQ

This isn’t really supported by data. The City offers very limited financial incentives to build affordable housing, including limited-term property tax breaks for affordable housing projects (pursuant to a State program, and only in areas that have been identified as “target areas” for housing in the City’s Municipal Code) and waivers of development impact fees for capital facilities such as transportation, park, and school facilities. Because relatively modest numbers of affordable housing units come online in Kirkland in any given year (usually less than 100 units, not all of which receive tax breaks and impact fee waivers), the impact on individual taxpayers is not consequential. Another important element to this question is the cost of not building sufficient affordable housing. Community members who are unable to secure adequate housing or any housing at all also generate societal costs that must be borne by taxpayers, and those include the costs of addressing the community’s homelessness problem (e.g., paying for temporary shelter, mental/social services, and cleaning up debris associated with encampments).  

The Planning Commission added the following recommended policy to the Comprehensive Plan to explicitly describe existing practices of providing accountability and transparency to taxpayers when it comes to developing new affordable housing programs:  

Draft Policy H-2.28 – Promote fiscal sustainability, transparency, and accountability to existing tax-payers when subsidizing affordable housing programs and incentives.

In addition to the societal costs borne by taxpayers when there is an insufficient supply of affordable housing, it is important to remember the long-term economic and social benefits of adding more affordable housing to Kirkland. More housing can attract new residents, which often means more spending in local businesses and more revenue through sales taxes. A mix of housing options—from single-family homes to apartments available to a diverse range of incomes—means that as community members’ needs change over time, they can often stay in or near their neighborhood, fostering long-term stability. Affordable housing can also contribute to a more inclusive community where a diverse range of people, including essential workers like teachers and healthcare providers, can live close to their jobs. This can foster a sense of community and reduce commute times and traffic congestion, benefiting everyone.

The City has conducted community engagement since the fall of 2022. Engagement information can be found on the Kirkland 2044 Comprehensive Plan Update webpage. The webpage is organized into several topics such as People, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Community & Commerce. Under these topics you can find Comprehensive Plan sections such as Land Use, Housing, and Economic Development. These sections contain community input tabs that outline the community engagement activities conducted and feedback received. The City has used this and continued community comments to help shape the Comprehensive Plan policies.

The City encourages the community to stay involved in the process by visiting the 2044 Comprehensive Plan update webpage “Get Involved” tab at: https://www.kirklandwa.gov/Government/Departments/Planning-and-Building/Planning-Projects/Kirkland-2044-Comprehensive-Plan-Update

or sign up to receive email announcements about upcoming meetings at the K2044 Listserv at: https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/WAKIRK/subscriber/new?topic_id=WAKIRK_153.