Old Town's first new building project has more than double the number of homes and less parking than the city's old code would have allowed. The rest of the city might follow suit.

Bellingham's industrial Old Town district is finally beginning its transformation into the walkable neighborhood city planners have long envisioned - thanks, in part, to a decision last year to try giving builders full flexibility over parking counts in that area.

The experiment has paid off. The first building proposed since the regulatory change will have more than twice the number of homes as would have been allowed last year.

"The shift to no parking minimums was a clear win in this case,"

wrote Ali Taysi, a land use consultant for the project.

The six-story building, located on the former recycling facility at 707 Astor, will house a mix of 84 studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments, with 1,600 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor. Permits are expected to be filed in May, with builders hoping to break ground early next year. The project is likely the first of several coming to the neighborhood, after the city signed a development agreement in 2023 for the eight city blocks that used to serve as scrapyard.

Now, the parking reform is being considered citywide.

UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF OLD TOWN

Old Town's transformation from industrial scrapyard to walkable mixed-use neighborhood has been anticipated since 2008 when the area was designated as the city's second "urban village," after downtown. At the time, planners estimated that 1,100 homes could be added there by 2022. Today, only 44 have been built.

The Parberry family, who first started salvaging metals along Whatcom Creek in 1923, owned 46 percent of developable land in the district, or about eight city blocks. Their initial plans to relocate the recycling facility were scuttled by the 2008 recession, but in recent years they discontinued their Old Town operations.

Building in Old Town is no easy feat. Decades of dumping refuse along the tidal mudflats of Whatcom Creek created 13 acres of landfill by the 1950s. The Department of Ecology remediated the area in 2005, removing tons of solid waste and capping the remaining contaminated soil. Excavation work can be prohibitively expensive, and restrictions on ground floor living and daycare centers remain in place. Future residents will also have to contend with the freight trains that run parallel to the district that sound their horns throughout the night.

But at a Planning Commission hearing on April 20, 2023, it seemed like Old Town's future might finally have arrived.

"I wish it would have happened a little bit quicker,"

said Tara Sundin, Manager of Community and Economic Development for the city.

"But I'm just thankful that we have people that have been willing to come forward into one of our riskier parts of town."

Developers Curt O'Conner and Pete Dawson, who both grew up in Bellingham, have paired up for the undertaking by purchasing all but one of the Parberry properties.

A PARKING REFORM PILOT TAKES SHAPE

To make building in Old Town feasible, builders proposed changes to the zoning code with the local Planning Commission. One modification was reducing parking mandates to be consistent with the city's other urban villages. Instead of mandating a parking spot for every studio apartment, for example, the city would only require one parking space for every two.

"The conversation on 'no parking minimums' hadn't really crossed our radar,"

said Taysi, the developers' consultant.

"We thought it might be a bridge too far.

Members of the planning commission, though, thought Old Town might be the perfect place to give builders full flexibility over parking.

"This could be an opportunity to try to go further,"

Commissioner Rose Lathrop proposed.

Another commissioner, Mike McAuley, agreed:

"If we want to pilot something, this would be an amazing place to do that,"

he said.

"If we're forcing the market to pay for a $60,000 park...