Bellingham Design Review Board

The Bellingham Design Review Board conducted an early design guidance meeting for a proposed 31-unit multifamily apartment building at the corner of North State Street and Rose Street. The four-story development includes structured parking, a live-work space on the ground floor, and loft units on the top floor. The project represents a significant infill development in the Urban Village North district, situated between the industrial area and residential neighborhood. The applicant, represented by Ali Taysi with Service Architects (Whitney Madison and Jed Ballew), presented a complex design responding to the site's unique constraints. The property lacks alley access, forcing creative solutions for garbage collection and parking access. The building will eliminate an existing curb cut on State Street, replacing it with parallel parking, while accessing structured parking via Rose Street. Key design features include a corner entry with extensive glazing, a mixed-material facade combining fiber cement with different ground-floor materials, and a distinctive gabled roof form for the loft units. The live-work space represents a hybrid approach to ground-floor activation, combining commercial space with residential living in a confined area. Board discussion focused heavily on four staff-identified areas: Rose Street elevation treatment, roof form and materials, corner entry design, and exterior building materials. The most intensive debate centered on the live-work unit's privacy concerns, with board members expressing significant reservations about the "fishbowl" effect of having residential space directly visible from the sidewalk. The garbage collection solution proved particularly unique, with SSC agreeing to roll totes from a ground-floor enclosure to the intersection using the ADA ramp. This unconventional approach stems from Rose Street's grade being too steep for standard collection and the absence of alley access.

This was an early design guidance meeting with no formal votes taken. The board provided guidance on: **Primary Areas of Focus (as identified by staff):** - Rose Street elevation design and structured parking treatment - Roof form and material selection (TPO membrane vs. alternatives) - Corner entry glazing and mailbox integration - Exterior building material palette and ground-floor differentiation **Board Guidance Provided:** - Support for fiber cement siding on upper floors with different material on ground floor - General acceptance of gabled roof form with varied opinions on TPO roofing material - Strong recommendation to address live-work unit privacy concerns through design modifications - Endorsement of corner entry design with emphasis on maximizing glazing - Suggestion for security considerations and material integration for Rose Street parking structure

**Ryan Van Straten, on the live-work privacy issue:** "You're either gonna be staring at the back of someone's head where they put a couch there, or you're gonna be staring at the back of their TV. And I think it's just gonna look pretty terrible." **Maggie Bates, complimenting the design:** "When I opened up these plans and I looked at the floor plans... this is like an amazing feat of space planning." **Ali Taysi, on site constraints:** "This site doesn't have an alley, so most of the buildings along this block further north have alley, and you would just take garbage right off the alley. But we don't have that option." **Community member, on tree preservation:** "Once you see it, you'll never not see it. It is part of climate resiliency and I hope that you will see it when you go to look at the preservation of your land." **Ali Taysi, on commercial space challenges:** "There's just a hesitancy to build commercial because it's really hard to fill... but then you don't want to put a residential unit right on the ground floor because it's a privacy issue and livability issue." **Robert Wright, on material quality:** "I don't feel that a TPO or a shingle roof would represent a high quality material that's high visibility from the neighboring taller buildings and up the hill."

# 31-Unit Apartment Building Design Review: A Study in Urban Village Challenges ## Meeting Overview On the afternoon of April 15, 2025, Bellingham's Design Review Board convened to examine a proposed 31-unit apartment building at the corner of North State Street and Rose Street. Chair Ryan Van Straten led the session with board members Coby Jones, Maggie Bates, and Robert Wright in attendance, along with city staff Sarah Ullman and Fiona Starr. The proposal represents the kind of infill development increasingly common in Bellingham's urban villages — a four-story building with structured parking, topped by loft units that create an unusual sloped roofline in a district dominated by flat-roofed structures. What made this project particularly noteworthy was its creative approach to several urban design challenges: garbage collection without alley access, a live-work unit designed to activate the street while preserving residential privacy, and the integration of parking in a city experimenting with reduced parking requirements. The applicant team — Ali Taysi as project agent, with architects Whitney Madison and Jed Ballew from Service Architects — presented a design that reflected considerable problem-solving around the site's constraints while attempting to honor the area's evolving character. ## The Garbage Conundrum: Innovation Born of Necessity Perhaps no aspect of the project better illustrated the complexities of infill development than the garbage collection strategy. The building sits on a corner site with no alley access — a luxury enjoyed by most buildings further north on the block. SSC wouldn't collect from Rose Street due to its steep grade, and the city discouraged a curb cut on State Street. The solution the team developed with city Public Works Manager Brent Baldwin was genuinely innovative: SSC would park on the flat portion of Rose Street, roll up a door on the building's ground floor, and drag totes down to the intersection using the ADA ramp at the corner of Rose and State. The garbage room itself would have an 18-foot ceiling, accessed from the parking level above, with a roll-up door as narrow as SSC would allow. "It's definitely not our first choice," Taysi acknowledged. "Our first choice would be to have an alley. And then, when that didn't happen, we looked really hard at Rose, and just when that got shot down, then we really looked at what we could do here." Board member Robert Wright asked about alternatives: "Was a possibility for all toters to be used in a garbage room reviewed instead of the two-yard, because if it were all toters you could kind of put them put them anywhere in the garage and tote them out." But Taysi explained that SSC requires larger containers for commercial accounts: "The SSC won't do toters for cardboard. So they won't allow you to use like a small, like we use in our homes... But for these apartments, commercial accounts, they require a minimum two yard for cardboard." The solution created an unusual ground-floor element — a roll-up door on State Street that some board members found concerning from a streetscape perspective, though they acknowledged the constraints that created it. ## The Live-Work Unit: Balancing Activation and Privacy The ground floor live-work unit represented another creative response to urban village design challenges. With no code requirement for commercial space along State Street, the applicant chose to include one anyway, recognizing the difficulty of placing residential units directly on a busy street at grade level. Whitney Madison explained the unusual layout: "You enter at the ground level into the commercial space and then, as you move from that workspace into the living unit, it both drops down and steps up. So what you see there, where you can see the living layout, that is recessed several feet below grade, and then, as you move up to the upper level, the upper level of the more private loft area is removed enough from the street level that we believe there will be good privacy from the street." But this creative split-level approach created what board member Maggie Bates called a "very fishbowl situation" for the residents. The living area, despite being two feet below grade, would still be visible to pedestrians on the sidewalk. Ryan Van Straten articulated the broader concern about the streetscape impact: "The way that they're showing it right now, you're gonna have countertops, you know, going past that window. You're gonna have somebody's gonna have a TV and a TV stand. You're gonna be walking down the street and you're gonna be looking at the back of a TV and cords coming down." The discussion revealed the fundamental tension in live-work design — the need to activate the street while preserving residential privacy and creating a pleasant pedestrian experience. Several solutions emerged from the board discussion, including freestanding planters that Taysi had used on a previous project, flipping the interior staircase to create a visual buffer, or using translucent glazing for part of the window wall. ## Materials and Character: Honoring Context While Looking Forward The building's material palette sparked extensive discussion, reflecting broader tensions in contemporary urban village development. The architects proposed fiber cement siding for the upper floors, with a different material (possibly brick or concrete) at the ground level to create visual separation. Robert Wright raised concerns about the quality implications: "If we're looking at high quality materials... I don't feel that a TPO or a shingle roof would represent a high quality material that's high visibility from the neighboring taller buildings and up the hill." Madison clarified that they weren't proposing entry-level materials: "We're looking at an integral fiber cement product that is not a painted hardy panel, so something that will weather better than a lot of the fiber cement products that you might be seeing out there." She specified they were considering Equitone, a higher-end product with textural variation and integral color. The roofing material became a particular point of debate. The loft units on the fourth floor created visible sloped roofs — an unusual element in the urban village. While some board members appreciated the residential character this created, others questioned whether a TPO membrane roof was appropriate for such a visible element. Jed Ballew offered perspective on visibility: "Obviously, there's a large apartment building across the street, and there's other taller buildings. So you're gonna have instances where there's visibility of the roof just from where the person is based on where they are up the hill or on a taller building." He referenced Sunnyland Elementary as an example of a successful TPO roof on a pitched surface, noting that "in some cases your mind just kind of doesn't necessarily connect that" when the overall building design is strong. ## The Rose Street Challenge: Parking and Streetscape The building's Rose Street elevation presented perhaps the most challenging design problem. With parking access required from Rose due to SSC's grade limitations, and a transformer that couldn't be fully screened due to fire setbacks, this side of the building inevitably became more utilitarian. Maggie Bates raised security concerns about the open parking structure: "I was just kind of curious about, is there if anybody else any thoughts about that, I mean, it's not that different from just having a parking lot that's open, except it is a little bit more obscured from view." The discussion revealed that the team was still considering security options, from perforated steel gates to camera systems. The need to cover the parking structure — due to its proximity to the property line — created an additional design challenge that the board felt could benefit from bringing the building's material language around to this elevation. ## Trees and Context: Preservation in Dense Development A poignant moment in the public comment period came when a resident spoke about the mature trees on the neighboring property: "Once you see the historic trees that are there, they're a little gnarly because there's some deciduous trees around that red cedar that's there, but it is not a legacy tree... but once you see it, you'll never not see it." Taysi explained the constraints: "Those trees are off site. And so I don't think we can cut them down without neighbor's permission. So our intent was to kind of work with an arborist to look at how the site would be cut for the parking... do whatever we can to ensure that those are protected." The stepped foundation design that created the building's unusual profile actually helped with tree preservation by limiting the amount of site excavation required compared to a fully flat design that would need to grade down to State Street level. ## The Corner Entry: A Successful Focal Point One element that drew broad board support was the corner entry treatment. The glass-walled lobby at the intersection of State and Rose, wrapped by an awning and featuring large vertically-oriented windows rising through all floors, successfully created the kind of corner emphasis the urban village design guidelines encourage. Coby Jones appreciated the approach: "I like the entry look... as far as just the square corner, I don't mind that being a black storefront, or something, I think that looks pretty sharp." The main concern was ensuring that mailbox requirements wouldn't compromise the full-height glazing that made the corner so effective as a focal point. ## Parking in Transition: A City Experimenting The project's parking approach reflected Bellingham's current experimentation with reduced parking requirements. Staff member Sarah Ullman explained that the city had recently adopted an interim parking ordinance eliminating parking ratios citywide for a one-year trial period. "Any projects that come in during this period do not need to provide on-site parking," she noted. "The goals are really to spur more housing development. To really move the needle on getting a project to pencil or not. Parking is incredibly expensive." This policy context explained why a 31-unit building would include only 17 parking stalls — a ratio that might have been controversial under previous regulations but was now simply a development choice. ## Board Guidance and Path Forward The board's discussion coalesced around several key recommendations. They supported the overall building form and the sloped roof elements created by the loft units, seeing these as appropriate transitions between the industrial areas and residential neighborhoods nearby. On materials, they endorsed the concept of higher-quality fiber cement siding with textural variation for the upper floors, contingent on maintaining a material change at the ground level that they felt was crucial to the building's success. The live-work unit drew the most extensive guidance. While the board appreciated the activation it would provide to State Street, they felt strongly that the current design needed refinement to address both privacy concerns for residents and the streetscape experience for pedestrians. Van Straten summarized this concern: "I just think that whatever ends up happening with that, the floor plans gotta make more sense for what it's gonna look like from the outside than what it does right now." ## The Broader Context of Urban Village Development This project embodied many of the challenges facing Bellingham's urban village development: how to create appropriately scaled buildings on constrained sites, how to activate streetscapes while preserving livability, how to manage service functions without alleys, and how to balance development economics with design quality. The discussion revealed the careful balance required in these developments. As Taysi noted about the live-work concept: "I think we were trying to strike that balance of like, how do we create active streetscape with a commercial tenant space... but also not just have this whole thing be commercial and likely be like two or three tenant spaces that you might not be able to lease." The project also highlighted how interim policy changes — like the parking ordinance — create opportunities for different approaches to development, potentially allowing more creative responses to site challenges. ## Closing and Next Steps The meeting concluded with the board expressing overall support for the project's direction while providing specific guidance on the live-work unit design, material selections, and Rose Street elevation treatment. The applicant team received clear direction that the corner entry was successful and should maintain its glazing, that the material palette was appropriate with the specified refinements, and that the privacy and streetscape concerns around the live-work unit needed to be addressed in the next iteration. Van Straten thanked the team for "really good discussion," noting the complexity of the challenges they were working to solve. The project would return for continued design review as the team refined their responses to the board's guidance. The session demonstrated how design review can work constructively with developers facing genuine site constraints, providing guidance that acknowledges both urban design goals and practical realities while pushing for creative solutions that serve the broader community interest.

## MODULE S1: STUDY GUIDE **Meeting ID:** BEL-DRB-2025-04-15 ### Meeting Overview The Bellingham Design Review Board met on April 15, 2025, to review a proposed 31-unit multifamily building at the corner of North State Street and Rose Street. The project includes a unique live-work unit on the ground floor and structured parking accessed from Rose Street, with the main building entry positioned at the corner. ### Key Terms and Concepts **Design Review Board:** A city board that reviews building design in certain districts to ensure projects meet design standards and are compatible with neighborhood character. **Live-Work Unit:** A space that combines residential and commercial uses in one unit, allowing someone to both live and operate a business in the same space. **TPO Roof:** Thermoplastic Olefin roofing membrane - a white or colored rubber-like material commonly used on flat or low-slope commercial roofs. **Urban Village:** A zoning designation in Bellingham that allows higher density development with specific design requirements to create walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. **Structured Parking:** Parking spaces within a building structure rather than surface parking lots. **Fiber Cement Siding:** A durable building material made from cement, sand, and cellulose fibers, often used as an alternative to wood siding. **SSC (Sanitation Service Company):** The waste collection company serving Bellingham, which has specific requirements for garbage pickup locations and container types. **Early Design Guidance:** The first formal design review meeting where the board provides feedback before detailed plans are finalized. ### Key People at This Meeting | Name | Role / Affiliation | |---|---| | Ryan Van Straten | Design Review Board Chair | | Maggie Bates | Design Review Board Member | | Robert Wright | Design Review Board Member | | Coby Jones | Design Review Board Member | | Sarah Ullman | City Planner | | Ali Taysi | Applicant Agent | | Whitney Madison | Service Architects | | Jed Ballew | Service Architects | ### Background Context This project is located in downtown Bellingham's urban village district, which encourages higher-density housing development. The site sits at the base of a hill in a transitional area between industrial and residential neighborhoods. The property contains two existing buildings that may be historically significant but don't require preservation of their architectural style. The project faces unique challenges because it lacks alley access, forcing creative solutions for garbage collection and parking access. Under Bellingham's interim parking ordinance, the project isn't required to provide parking, but the developers chose to include one level of structured parking. The live-work unit represents an attempt to activate the street level while addressing privacy concerns for residential units directly on the street. ### What Happened — The Short Version The architects presented their design for a four-story building with 31 apartments. The building steps up from the street with the fourth floor having loft spaces, creating a sloped roofline instead of a flat roof. They proposed using fiber cement siding on upper floors with different materials on the ground level. Board members asked detailed questions about the garbage collection system, which will use SSC dragging containers from a ground-floor room to the street corner. They discussed privacy concerns for the live-work unit, which sits partially below street level with large windows. Several members worried this would create a "fishbowl effect" where pedestrians could look directly into someone's living space. The board generally supported the project's overall design but wanted solutions for the privacy issue and refinement of materials. They discussed whether the sloped roof should use TPO membrane or other materials, and whether the structured parking should be secured. ### What to Watch Next - The applicant will return with revised plans addressing the live-work unit privacy concerns - Final material selections for roofing and siding will be determined - Security decisions for the parking structure will be finalized - The project will proceed to final design review before construction permits ---

## MODULE S2: FLASH CARDS **Meeting ID:** BEL-DRB-2025-04-15 **Q:** How many housing units does this project propose? **A:** 31 units in a four-story building with structured parking. **Q:** Where is the main building entry located? **A:** At the corner of North State Street and Rose Street, emphasized with glazing and an awning. **Q:** What is unique about the fourth floor of the building? **A:** It features loft spaces that create a stepped building form with sloped rooflines rather than a flat roof. **Q:** Why can't garbage collection happen from Rose Street? **A:** Rose Street has too steep of a grade for SSC's garbage trucks to safely operate. **Q:** How will garbage collection work for this building? **A:** SSC will roll up a door on State Street, drag containers to the intersection using the ADA ramp, then return them to the building. **Q:** What is a live-work unit? **A:** A space combining residential and commercial uses, allowing someone to live and run a business in the same unit. **Q:** What privacy concern did board members raise about the live-work unit? **A:** The unit sits below street level with large windows, creating a "fishbowl effect" where pedestrians can look into the living space. **Q:** What roofing material is the developer considering due to cost? **A:** TPO (thermoplastic olefin) membrane roofing rather than metal roofing. **Q:** What siding material is proposed for most of the building? **A:** Fiber cement siding, specifically a higher-quality integral product rather than painted Hardy panel. **Q:** Does this project require on-site parking under current city rules? **A:** No, due to Bellingham's interim parking ordinance that eliminates parking requirements citywide. **Q:** How many parking spaces will the building provide? **A:** 17 spaces in one level of structured parking, plus some new street parking. **Q:** Will the structured parking be secured? **A:** This is still under discussion - it may have perforated steel gates for security while maintaining ventilation. **Q:** What material change does the board want to see on the ground floor? **A:** A different material from the fiber cement used on upper floors, possibly brick or concrete. **Q:** Why doesn't this site have alley access? **A:** Unlike most buildings further north on this block, this particular site doesn't connect to the existing alley system. **Q:** What board feedback did the applicant receive about the corner entry? **A:** Keep as much glass as possible in the corner design and avoid letting mailbox requirements reduce the glazing. **Q:** What screening material might be used on balconies? **A:** Perforated metal that allows light and visibility while providing some privacy. **Q:** Are the existing buildings on site historically significant? **A:** They may be eligible for historic listing based on use and economic significance, but this doesn't require emulating their architectural style. **Q:** What is the ceiling height in the live-work loft space? **A:** At least 8 feet but not much more, with the floor made as thin as possible to optimize space. **Q:** What did board members suggest to address live-work privacy concerns? **A:** Options include flipping the staircase location, using planters as visual barriers, or adding transom windows. **Q:** When will this project return to the Design Review Board? **A:** For final design review after addressing the board's guidance and completing construction drawings. ---