North Renton neighborhood residents expressed their problems with a new mixed use development on Logan Avenue as a public hearing was held for a hearing examiner to decide the project’s fate.

The proposed Logan 6 project is planned to span from 3rd Street to 4th Street along Logan Avenue and consist of 6,200 square feet of retail or commercial space on the ground floor as well as 97 apartments above.

The development will have a footprint of 18,868 square feet and a max height above grade of 91.5 feet. Two separate level garages will contain 104 parking stalls for residents and guests. An additional surface parking lot will have 17 spots for the retail space.

The planning division of the city of Renton accepted the master application for review on Aug. 8, 2022. The project was then placed on hold for parts of 2022, 2023 and 2024, as the applicant responded to public comment concerns.

North Renton neighborhood residents Matt Hanbey and Sheryl Friesz have been expressing concerns about the impact of the development for three years.

“My interpretation is this is going to create a big wall, a 100-foot wall along the entire city walk that isn’t there right now,” Hanbey said.

Hanbey said one of the goals of the city’s comprehensive plan is to keep “linkages” to the river. Hanbey said he would like the building to be broken up into smaller buildings instead of one long structure.

“That would allow some of the light through and would also allow the visual view to be maintained of what you look out across the street, and you can see the trees on the river, and you could still feel that linkage,” Hanbey said.

He also said he would like a three- or four-story building instead of the six-floor building that’s planned, or for the floors to be progressively set back instead of being vertical sides.

The property is zoned for Urban Center-2, which is similar to the pedestrian-scale urban mixed-use development intended by Urban Center-1, but to a lesser degree due to differing characteristics of the geography, which limit the scale of commercial enterprise. The land usage for the two parcels in the project are designated as commercial mixed use in the city comprehensive plan.

“The overall mix and intensity of uses is intended to create an urban rather than suburban character, so that includes mixed-use structures like this where you’ve got a mix of residential and retail uses that will hopefully be able to be used by both residents of the development as well as existing people in the neighborhood,” Renton principal planner Alex Morganroth said at the public hearing on Feb. 11 for the site plan review.

The zoning and designations allows for up to 10 stories along principal and secondary arterials and dictates a density of 85 to 150 dwelling units per acre. The proposed Logan 6 project is six stories and currently sits at 81.5 units per acre. Andrew Kovach of Kovach Architects, the architecture group designing the project, said they can subdivide larger units to meet the density threshold.

Another concern for North Renton residents is the traffic caused by the additional vehicles entering and exiting the building. Hanbey said he thinks the two entrances, on 3rd and 4th Street, will cause traffic to divert into the neighborhood due to cars missing the entrance and having to circle around to get to the other entrance. He would rather see a single entrance and exit on Logan Avenue.

Renton Planning Director Matt Herrera said the city’s regulations for this type pf development requires access to be taken at the rear of the building.

“The property’s location, shape, and size results in a Logan Ave S front-facing orientation, therefore access from S 3rd St and S 4th St is warranted,” Herrera said. “Based on public comments received during the review period, city staff put the project on-hold to look at a potential Logan Ave S entrance and had the applicant propose this alternative. However, following review it was determined to not meet city standards and the appropriate vehicle ingress/egress for the site was S 3rd St and S 4th St with offsite improvements to be made by the applicant.”

Herrera said the King County RapidRide stop in front of the propety on Logan Avenue also prevented an entrance and exit for the building onto Logan Avenue.

“A driveway with vehicles entering and exiting, while also yielding to pedestrians along the Logan Ave S public sidewalk would interfere with frequent transit service along this principal arterial,” Herrera said.

Herrera said having a driveway onto Logan Avenue would conflict with the zoning goal to provide pedestrian-orientetd development along the building frontage.

“I feel like they cherry picked the zoning where they’re allowing this intensified use, but they’re not using the road that’s supposed to be linked to the use,” Hanbey said.

A traffic study was already conducted in the area for this project. At the public hearing, Renton Hearing Examiner Phil Olberechts asked about the required level of service analysis to study the traffic impact after construction.

“I would say it’s a little atypical, but in this case, just because we don’t typically get this much feedback on traffic concerns,” Morganroth said. “We do our best obviously to look at all the data that’s presented in the current conditions but until the project is done, some of it is human behavior.”

Olberechts asked Morganroth what could be done if there was a later violation of LOS standards.

“There’s not much that can be done on-site, obviously, but off-site there are fairly wide right of ways and there probably is some room for adjustments as needed,” Morganroth said. “Again, I think we don’t anticipate that need based on the data we were provided.”

Morganroth said the traffic impact will not be as much as something like the Top Golf facility also in the area.

Friesz said they don’t believe the city is looking at the traffic study correctly. She said they didn’t take into account what the congestion will be like if Boeing has a shift change, Top Golf has an event and Memorial Stadium has an event all at the same time.

“We went like a broken record over the whole traffic study thing and said we wanted traffic study three different days, two different times of the day, and we won’t accept anything less than that,” Friesz said

Along with traffic, Friesz expressed concern about the limited parking for residents at the building and the impact that would have on the neighborhood.

“Part of our problem is, the way our neighborhood has been developed, there are multiple one way streets, and because they have not allotted enough parking for the residents, it’s going to trickle on to the other streets,” Friesz said. “We actually don’t have driveway parking. We are all street parking.”

Boeing also expressed opposition to the project because the aircraft manufacturer has two 15-foot easements that run north and south through the property for high pressure water lines and their maintenance. These easements limit where the developer can build on the property.

“(Boeing) would prefer we not build on this site. It would be easier for them to do any maintenance if the building wasn’t there. But we have come to an agreement as to monitoring everything very carefully during construction,” Kovach said at the public hearing.

Kovach said they have done projects where they have to go down five or six stories with buildings on both sides and they have ways to monitor vibrations to avoid damaging the water lines.

“We’re confident we are going to be able to do it correctly and we just need to make sure they are on the same page with us as well,” Kovach said.

Boeing Civil Engineer Kathleen Vranesic spoke at the hearing on Boeing’s concerns.

“If those mains go down, we lose the ability to do construction at all,” Vranesic said. “Those are significant mains. They are both 12-inch water mains put in back in 1941.”

Vranesic said Boeing would like more focus on the maintenance plan for the water lines.

“They are going to need maintenance at certain points. We are going to need to be doing inspections,” Vranesic said.

Vranesic said Boeing wants the city and the developer to understand the risk facing Boeing and the developer if the development is constructed.

“We want to make sure everybody is out of harm’s way in case those mains were to blow because they are pretty big,” Vranesic said. “It’s not just a construction and in two years it will be done. It’s an ongoing concern and it will be as long as Boeing and the developer are both occupying that site.”

Morganrath said the city will do what it can to prevent any damage during construction.

“We have a very big interest in not having the lines explode either,” Morganroth said. “Obviously we care about both periods, but during construction we are able to actually monitor that in review plans.”

Morganrath said the maintenance of the line will fall on the applicant and Boeing.

“We’ve been highly encouraging the applicant to work with Boeing on this and we are happy to facilitate when we can,” Morganrath said.

Kovach said the architects are doing what they can with what they have to address the concerns of the nearby residents.

“It’s a very difficult site. We don’t have a lot of options as far as maintaining what we need to maintain to meet all code requirements. Density is kind of a big deal. We have to get all the parking that we are providing right now in order to get that density. Any other kind of configuration, given the constraints on the building really don’t allow us other ways of accomplishing the same thing. We’re kind of between a rock and a hard place,” Kovach said. “We’re sensitive to what the needs are. We’ll do everything we can to accommodate.”

The north and south ends of the buildings will be visible from 3rd and 4th Street. Courtesy of City of Renton

A rendering made by Kovach Architecture shows Logan 6 from Logan Avenue. Courtesy of City of Renton