After voting to end the Issaquah Highlands development agreement and approving replacement regulations in March, the Issaquah City Council has done the same with the Talus development agreement at its June 5 meeting.

The motion to end the Talus development agreement, enact replacement regulations and change the zoning of a specific parcel to single family was unanimously approved by the council.

In December 2017, the council received a report from staff about ending the Highlands and Talus agreements. The development agreements were old — 20 years for Highlands and 15 for Talus — the regulations were no longer up to date and the primary development for those areas has been mostly complete.

When a development agreement ends, replacement regulations must be put in place. So city staff identified an opportunity to bring the regulations up to date with the council and citizen vision for the city, as well as implement stronger tools to deal with issues such as stormwater regulations.

At its March 19 meeting, council approved the ending of the Highlands agreement and approved the replacement regulations that would take its place. However, the development agreement for Talus was sent back to the Planning Policy Commission for further discussion of the zoning of Talus parcel nine from multi-family to single-family.

The Talus area was also the site of a landslide in 2015 that has destabilized part of the hillside, potentially reducing the land’s developability.

At the June 5 meeting, several council members stated that this issue drew the most public comments they have seen, most of which supported the change from multi-family to single-family zoning for the parcel.

Lucy Sloman, land development manager for the city, gave a presentation to the staff on the history of the process to the end agreement and detailed some of the changes that are being proposed. She said some community members expressed that they did not want the density or number of units on parcel nine to change as a result of zoning. She clarified that with either single- or multi-family zoning, the maximum number of dwelling units will remain at 90.

She explained the work that is going on to address stability of the land and added clarifying information on the potential height and character of future buildings. Last fall, the city conducted some stabilization and repair of roads and underground infrastructure. The property owner, Sloman said, is building buried walls to stabilize the site.

“When all of that work (is complete), there will need to be additional geotechnical assessment to determine what kind of development the site can support,” she said. “That’s a big question and we won’t know until all of that repair work and stabilization work is complete.”

The height of potential multi-family buildings was also clarified as up to 60 feet for the parcel — which is one of the reasons many of the public comments did not support multi-family zoning for parcel nine.

All of the council members supported the replacement regulations and agreed that the parcel should be zoned for single-family use in order to stay within the character of the area and to avoid another large apartment building on the very visible side of the hill.

Council member Stacy Goodman made it clear that the issue had nothing to do with rental versus ownership, that Talus already has a mix of both and that mix is appropriate.

“The form of those buildings is not what we envisioned in the Central Issaquah Plan and it’s one of the main reasons we had a moratorium, to fix the errors in that plan that allowed that type of form,” she said. “Residents in Talus have spoken loudly in the past few weeks. They too do not want to look at 60-foot high apartment buildings at the top of their main drive, that’s not consistent with the mountain village character of Talus.”

Many of the architectural standards and design guidelines will remain in place, council member Paul Winterstein said, adding that the Talus covenants, conditions and restrictions remain in place and the Architectural Review Committee will still stand.

“You can be assured that it’s going to be consistent in the look and form and feel that you’ve grown accustomed to and like so much about Talus today,” he said.