BelRed's draft code has no incentive for family-sized homes. It was asked for three times and left out each time.

By Brian H. Liou · Drafted with Claude; edited with Codex · Published 27 August 2026 · Updated 29 October 2026

22 of 2,472

BelRed apartments since 2010 with three or more bedrooms

0.9% / 3.4%

family-sized share, BelRed against Bellevue buildings of 20+ units

3

times it was asked for: staff 2023, commissioners 2024, owners 2026

BelRed is the old warehouse and car-dealer district between downtown Bellevue and Microsoft, and it is being rebuilt around the 2 Line's light rail. Bellevue is rewriting BelRed's zoning code now. The Planning Commission held its hearing on it on 28 October 2026 without a recommendation, and its schedule now shows one on 13 January 2027.

BelRed is being rebuilt now, under this code

BelRed's zoning districts hold 465 parcels across 1.06 square miles. Their land is appraised at $3,171M and the buildings on it at $1,084M, and on 434 of the 465 parcels (93 percent) the land assessment exceeds the building assessment. Those assessments do not establish whether redevelopment would pay or when an owner might build. The draft code would govern future redevelopment. The plan calls for 7,900 new homes by 2044.

Almost none of the new apartments have three bedrooms

Of BelRed's 2,472 apartments since 2010, 22 have three or more bedrooms: 0.9 percent, against 3.4 percent across Bellevue's apartment buildings of 20 or more units. All 22 are in one 402-unit building completed in 2024. Most of what's been built is one-bedroom.

At BelRed's own rate, the 7,900 planned homes include about 70 family-sized ones; at the city's rate, about 270. A family that needs three bedrooms finds almost nothing to rent in BelRed's new buildings.

The incentive was proposed three times

February 2023: staff proposed it. Introducing the BelRed rewrite to the Planning Commission, city staff listed among the key policy issues: "Incentivize family size as well as affordable units." Their slides noted that fewer than five percent of "naturally occurring" affordable homes (affordable without a subsidy) had three or more bedrooms. The commission's chair, Ferris, replied that "the incentives and policies in place clearly are not enough."

April and May 2024: commissioners asked for it in the plan. Reviewing the BelRed plan, Commissioner Lu asked that its housing policy cover "different family needs" as well as income, and Ferris agreed: "Family housing requires multiple bedrooms, and those houses are more expensive to build, and there needs to be policy support for developing family housing." In May, commissioners proposed language "to support a diversity of housing unit sizes to meet a variety of family needs." Staff proposed "household needs" instead. The draft the commission recommended unanimously in June carried staff's wording, and the council adopted it unchanged in October 2024. "Unit sizes" and "family" did not survive. Wilburton's plan, adopted the same year, tells the code to reward "affordable and family-sized housing units."

July 2026: a property owners' lawyer asked for it. A land use attorney representing BelRed owners asked the commission to broaden the bonus list to eight more items, family-sized housing among them, "align[ed] with the Wilburton approach." The city's comment tracker marks it "Under review". The September draft took up three items from the same list (exemptions for child care and grocery stores, and a bonus for building public streets). Family-sized housing was not added, and the staff memo doesn't mention it. The 14 October hearing draft and the 28 October working draftPDF ↗ still leave it out.

Why it was left out: staff say such bonuses go unused and the list is long

City planning staff gave four reasons in writing in October 2026:

• It goes unused. Developers rarely pick a family-size bonus from a list of amenities, and a project seldom provides more than two on site.
• The list is long. Each addition can pull developers from other priorities; family-sized housing is one among many.
• Other routes exist. A new lowrise zone should bring townhomes, though at market prices not every family can afford. Fees paid instead of building affordable homes go to the Office of Housing, which favours family-sized units.
• The commission hasn't directed it. It could tell staff to add the bonus, and has not.

Against the public record:

• No published count shows how often such bonuses are used, here or in the other cities we checked.
• The housing fund favours two or more bedrooms, a lower bar than Wilburton's three, and spends citywide, so a BelRed fee need not build in BelRed.
• We did not count the townhomes built in BelRed.

The plan's wording is the other half. A code follows its plan. BelRed's says "household needs" where commissioners asked for "family needs"; Wilburton's kept the word, and its code has the bonus. In April 2026 staff wrote that BelRed and Wilburton "will retain distinct amenity incentive systems, reflecting different areas of emphasis for these subareas."

Wilburton's fix is one sentence

Wilburton's code (LUC 20.25C.050.B, item 2) reads:

Family-Sized Housing. Dwelling units with three or more bedrooms earn one bonus point for every one square foot of gross floor area reserved for the dwelling units.

BelRed's bonus list in the 28 October working draft (LUC 20.25D.050.D; the 14 October hearing draft reads the same) rewards affordable housing, affordable commercial space, parks, trails, streams, transferred development rights, public art, plazas, green building, natural drainage and, since September, public streets. It is closed: "Only those amenities identified herein shall be eligible to earn bonus points". The word "bedroom" appears nowhere in BelRed's part of the code.

BelRed does require affordable housing, and its affordable housing bonus is the strongest on its list. That targets price, not size: an affordable studio is still a studio, and the 0.9 percent above includes the affordable units.

The family units BelRed does get come from contracts

When the city sells or leases its own land, it has asked for larger units. A 2019 exchange of a city parcel next to Sound Transit's rail yard in BelRed required "at least 10% of the units … to have three bedrooms or more." BRIDGE Housing's affordable project in the BelRed arts district includes "family-sized units". When the council told staff to negotiate its development agreement in August 2026, Deputy Mayor Hamilton said: "There are no more important projects than those that support the creation of family-size units" (video, 1:07:24↗). The council adopted the agreement 6–0 on 8 September. Neither depends on the zoning code.

The Planning Commission recommends in January, then the council decides

The Planning Commission's public hearing on BelRed's code was set for Wednesday 28 October 2026, and the meeting packet planned a recommendation the same night. The commission's schedulePDF ↗, updated 29 October, now lists the BelRed recommendation for 13 January 2027. Minutes and video of the 28 October meeting had not been posted on 29 October. The council adopts the code afterwards; the city's environmental review estimated the first quarter of 2027.

Staff say the commission has not asked for this bonus, and the September draft shows staff add a bonus when commissioners ask for one. Separately, the city's 2026–2032 affordable housing strategy, adopted by the council in April 2026, says to "Prioritize funding and incentives for larger units that meet the needs of families," and sets a target of 800 affordable homes with two or more bedrooms built or preserved by 2032 (strategy, UN.2PDF ↗). That is a citywide route that wouldn't depend on BelRed's list.