When City Governments Act Like HOAs
Death to "bright, vibrant, vivid hues of color"!
On September 6, 2016, the Issaquah City Council unanimously passed a development moratorium in Central Issaquah, claiming that there was a “public emergency,” and the moratorium was “necessary for the protection of public health, property, safety and welfare.”
The building in question that so threatened public health, property, safety, and welfare? See the bright blue monstrosity below.
It’s hard to overstate how much people lost their minds over this particular shade of blue. “Blue buildings” were cited in a statement against a 2016 bond for traffic improvement projects, of all things, as a reason to mistrust the city government’s ability to implement those traffic improvement projects. The bond failed with 54% of votes in favor.1
As recently as February 2025, a planning commissioner was still making snide comments about “what triggered the [development] moratorium” and obliquely referring to the bright blue color of another commissioner’s jacket. Seriously, I wish I was making this up.
As required by state law, the Issaquah City Council adopted quite a robust work plan to address the urgent issues that had created the need for the moratorium. No less than nine city staff members were involved, and we spent $88,000 on consultants - most of which was spent on consultants for “architectural fit.” We also consulted no less than five of our community boards and commissions, including the development commission, economic vitality commission, planning policy commission, human services commission, and capital improvement plan task force.
The end result of the months of deliberation over architectural fit was a new section of our land use code about “Central Issaquah Design and Architectural Standards.” There are seven specific architectural styles that are allowed. Builders have to explain which of these styles they are selecting, and explain why they’re compliant. “Bright, vibrant, vivid hues of color” are mentioned no less than fifteen times as being noncompliant with the citywide architectural standards.
Oh, and while “bright, vibrant, vivid hues of color” are noncompliant, the “urban grange” style does explicitly allow “traditional barn red, such as ‘Pickering Barn red’,” but if you use Pickering Barn red, you can’t use another accent color. Also, you can’t use more than 3 colors total.
There are a ton of pictures of “compliant” vs “noncompliant” design features. To an uneducated reader such as myself, it looks like they basically took a bunch of examples of “buildings that look nice” as compliant buildings, “buildings that don’t look so nice” as noncompliant buildings, and reverse engineered what the design standards should be.
The descriptions of architectural styles are incredibly detailed, and yet also incredibly subjective. Each style includes a detailed description of massing, scale, walls, windows, doors, roof, and color. As just one example, I’ve included the requirements for “Northwest Lodge Style Massing,” along with some fun photo examples, below.
Intent. The intent is for use of simple rectangular bar forms with steep pitched triangular roofs and dormers within roof form.
Description. The Northwest Lodge style incorporates simple, flat façades without articulated bays or multiple recesses. Overall form is generally a simple bar or bent-bar shape.
Compliant design requires the following:
Asymmetrical, long, massive horizontal bar or bent form;
Roof is steep pitched gable or gambrel with shed dormers giving it an overall triangular roof form;
Prominent roof presence (one-half to one-third of elevation);
Deeply overhanging eaves with exposed rafters and brackets;
Exterior chimneys provide dominant formal element to overall composition of the building;
Building set apart from others; and
Simple, flat façade.
Compliant design may include larger portions or wings of buildings that vary slightly in height to break up mass.
Examples of noncompliant design include the following:
Flat or low pitched roof;
Undulating or curvilinear form;
Articulated bays;
Cross gable end roofs (gable roofs running perpendicular and intersecting);
Gable end dormers; and
Balconies.
Now multiply this by 7 design features and 7 different architecture styles. It pains me to think about the amount of time and effort spent by city staff and consultants (and, by the way, time is money). It’s no wonder that we’ve seen next to zero development in Central Issaquah since the fateful blue building and development moratorium. Despite reforming our inclusionary zoning requirements and offering a multifamily tax exemption (MFTE), our land use code as a whole is still rather hostile towards building literally anything.
We haven’t even discussed other aspects of Issaquah’s land use codes that apply to all development projects - like requirements for “private outdoor amenity space” (usually balconies) for every apartment unit, stepbacks above the 5th floor, and ground floor transparency. These all add costs to developments, with questionable levels of benefit to the “public realm.” Who cares if every apartment has a balcony? People should be able to choose whether they have a balcony or not, and have the choice to pay less for a balcony-less unit.
Regulating Aesthetics…Effectively?
Overly restrictive micromanagement of architecture through land use codes and design review is incredibly costly, and often kills development entirely. However, we’ve seen that “ugly” buildings can cause so much backlash as to result in development moratoria and overly restrictive design requirements that then, in turn, stifle any and all building. So, if we actually care about aesthetics, how can we enable better aesthetics and better architecture, while also enabling building the housing our society desperately needs?
Pre-Approved Designs
This excellent article by Darrell Owens explores why so many new apartments in America are so ugly, and proposes using “pre-approved designs with classical features that are economical to acquire.” The pre-approved design allows people to get behind the look of a specific building, rather than trying to get at it obliquely through arcane design regulations.
This approach is probably most suited to middle housing development, where existing residents in single-family neighborhoods existentially fear 4-plexes. South Bend, Indiana has adopted this approach. Strong Towns’ article on South Bend’s pre-approved designs includes this fantastic quote:
“Cookie-cutter development” gets a bad rap today, because it’s associated with the standardized floor plans used by production home builders, which tend to ignore local context, climate, and are also “value engineered” to minimize construction costs at the expense of charm or detail. But this need not invalidate the idea of having templates itself—if the template is a good one.
Points-based Design Checklist
Neiman Taber Architects in Seattle has proposed the idea of a “points-based system” to be used in lieu of design standards. Essentially, a project would get points for various good design characteristics or other societal values (e.g. high quality exterior siding materials like brick or stone masonry, facade modulation, commissioned artwork, preserving trees). This would allow developers to choose which of these good design characteristics actually make sense for their project, rather than applying the same generic (bad) designs across the board.
Obviously, the specific design characteristics and points values would have to be refined. Overall, though, this seems to me to be a pretty reasonable way of enforcing some level of good design, while also allowing the flexibility for architects to have some actual creativity.
Where do we go from here?
The political winds are changing. Issaquah elected a new mayor last week who professes his love of Abundance by Ezra Klein and wants to see the Central Issaquah Plan actually come to fruition. There’s strong interest from our new city council and new mayor on reforming our land use code and process to enable, not stifle, development.
I’m hopeful that we can explore either pre-approved designs or a points-based design checklist (or both!) Ultimately, I really, really hope we can get this right and show that we don’t have to choose between building more and building better.
In the State of Washington, bonds require a 60% supermajority to pass. In 40 states, the threshold is 50%+1. There are efforts to reform this at the state level - most recently, Sen. Deb Krishnadasan introduced a bill to reduce the threshold required to pass bonds to 55%.
Banning bright, vibrant, and vivid seems like being the worst kind of killjoy. In economic downturns, people wear duller, grayer colors. Gray is the color of SAD, and it's already way too dark around here way too much of the year. I love those brightly colored buildings and if anything I'd hope design standards would encourage them.