Mayor Bruce Harrell wants to streamline Seattle’s process for new construction by consolidating the city’s various design review boards and limiting scrutiny of new projects to more objective metrics — a departure from the individualized examinations of today.

The proposal, which now heads to the Seattle City Council, is a reaction to state mandates requiring cities to cut down on red tape toward new housing. It’s also an acknowledgment of what many developers working in the city have said for years: The process is too slow.

Harrell’s new proposal specifically targets design review. Although there are varying levels of design review, its fullest version means sharp examination of how a project appears from the outside and its relation to the overall look of its neighborhood, among other things.

It’s a highly subjective process that studies have concluded likely adds months to the already lengthy timeline for permitting new projects.

“These changes will modernize our Design Review process to focus the permitting process on what matters most — safe buildings that meet community needs — while eliminating unnecessary delays,” Harrell said.

Harrell’s proposal is a temporary bill to bring the city into compliance with new state requirements. A permanent bill will be considered later this year.

The bill would do a number of things. For one, it extends preexisting exemptions for affordable housing and for-profit projects that include below-market units on-site.

The bill would also make it so only projects with 150 or more units on-site within the city’s urban centers would be subject to design review, while smaller projects and those outside the city’s urban centers would be exempt.

Buildings that do still go through the review process will be judged against a set of preset, objective standards and would not be required to go through more than one meeting. The city’s eight boards, covering different parts of Seattle, would be collapsed into one board of 14 members.

For developers, the changes are “significant,” said Parker Dawson, government affairs manager for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

“We do think that we will not only get more housing for less money, but these reforms will show something we have been certain of as an industry, which is that people get into this business to build great buildings for people,” he said.

The proposed changes are one piece of a larger housing agenda coming out of the state Legislature and now being implemented by local jurisdictions. Seattle recently passed temporary legislation allowing more housing in residential areas and will soon begin deliberations on its long-term plan for adding more housing.

In 2023, state lawmakers passed House Bill 1293, requiring cities to standardize their design review processes and limit the time reviews take.

The impact of design review on construction timelines varies by project, though some studies have shown it can add months to a process that can sometimes stretch out for years.

Cameron McKinnon, partner at Confluence Development, said he’s “absolutely” abandoned projects because of the added time that comes with design review.

More than that, the current process incentivizes developers and architects to shape their projects based on what they believe can survive the individual tastes of design review board members.

“The focal point was not about the design of the building but instead about designing toward who the reviewer was,” he said. “We would identify what that person liked or disliked, which is not OK.”

Given high interest rates and other costs, design review changes alone are not likely to push projects on ice to fruition, said Seattle developer Kevin Wallace. Wallace hopes to build as many as 900 apartments on a site in Northgate, but the project is on hold.

Even so, the design review changes are welcome, he said. “Anything that reduces the time, the risk or the cost of producing a project is a good, and eventually, if you stack up enough of these goods, it’ll get a project to pencil faster than it otherwise would,” he said.

Opposition to rolling back design review has so far been muted. Just one lawmaker between Washington’s House and Senate voted against the state-level changes and no one appeared to testify against the bill. That said, changes to how Seattle builds housing often attracts a range of opinions.

In addition to exempting affordable housing, Harrell and the City Council recently exempted new hotels, housing and laboratories in the downtown core from design review until the end of 2027.

Meanwhile, permit applications for new housing in Seattle have slowed to a near halt, correlated to higher interest rates and increased costs for materials and labor. There were just 379 in the first quarter of this year, compared with 2,000 in the same period last year and well off the peak of 7,000 in the first quarter of 2021.

Housing proposals will soon receive a different welcome in the City Council. Councilmember Cathy Moore, who chairs the council’s housing committee, is leaving next month. She’s been the most vocally skeptical of some of the proposals from the state and mayor’s office related to housing. In her place will be Councilmember Mark Solomon, who endorsed the mayor’s proposal earlier this week.