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COMMUNITY CHARACTER AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION
Future Vision for Redmond: Community Character and Historic Preservation
Redmond has maintained its distinctive character. The quality design of new development is a reflection of the value Redmond citizens place on the community’s appearance. Care has also been taken to employ special treatments on identified streets and pathways, and to enhance the comfort, safety, and usability of public places. Public view corridors and entryways have been identified, preserved, and enhanced. The City’s historic roots are still apparent through preservation of special sites, structures, and buildings. Interpretive signage has been used in addition to enhance the City’s sense of its heritage.
Community gathering places are found throughout the City. Spaces for parks and plazas have been acquired and improved by the City or incorporated into new developments. Both public and private investment into place-making has created spaces where informal social gatherings occur. The City has continued to sponsor community events in public places.
Care has been given to preserve elements of the natural environment. Landscaping regulations have ensured preservation of special natural areas and significant trees that define the character of the City. New landscaping has, when appropriate, incorporated native plants. Areas of open space and forested groves near Town Center, along Redmond Way, and in other locations have been preserved. Through creative design, public and private projects have incorporated natural features and enhanced natural systems.
A. Community Character and Design
View Corridors, Entrances, and Landmarks
B. Historic Resources
Regional and Community Involvement
The City of Redmond’s setting includes a series of hills and valleys carved by ancient glaciers. The southern portions of the City adjoin or overlook the shore of Lake Sammamish. The waters of Bear Creek flow south and join the Sammamish River to flow north across a major valley. Redmond’s unwritten history extends back many centuries to when native cultures used the natural waterways for food and transportation and had settlements, both permanent and temporary, along the banks. Those same transportation corridors led others to the Redmond area.
Redmond’s recorded history began in the 1870s when the City started as a small commercial center for logging and remained a small farm community for several decades. It began to grow in the 1970s and has developed into a major business and population center. Redmond expects additional growth in the future that will continue to shape the character of the City. As growth occurs there are characteristics that residents would like to retain, such as Redmond’s green character; a safe, friendly community; and some physical remnants of the past as reminders of its early history.
The Community Character and Historic Preservation Element provides a design framework for new development and construction as well as addresses natural features and historic character preservation. The element is meant to address the goals of retaining Redmond’s distinct character, and creating gathering places and cultural opportunities. It addresses Redmond’s desire to maintain a successful business climate and to foster innovative thinking. It addresses the vision of respect for the natural features and its heritage. It is also intended to help carry out the vision of keeping Redmond a safe, friendly, and attractive city in the future.
This element is complimentary to other elements of the Comprehensive Plan. Community character is addressed broadly in the Vision, Goals and Framework Policies Element. Specific aspects of community character are addressed in the appropriate elements. For instance, Redmond’s economic character is addressed in the Economic Vitality Element and locations for various uses under the Land Use Element. This element focuses more closely on design goals and the historic character of the City.
A. Community Character and Design
Community cohesiveness develops in many ways. It can come from a shared vision for the community. It can be nurtured by community events. It can be developed through the use of public places for interaction.
Successful public places have the following qualities: accessibility, comfort or image, activity, and sociability. Accessibility means having good links from surrounding areas, by foot, bike, transit, or other means. It also means visual accessibility. The comfort and image come from several characteristics, including a perception of safety, cleanliness, and availability of seating, both formal and informal. Identifying features, such as a fountain, artwork, or a unique building, may also enhance image. Activity may be a natural outcome from a collection of uses or may be programmed through music presentations or performing arts. Sociability is when a space becomes a place for people to go or to meet, usually because it has elements of the first three qualities.
The City can facilitate the success of public places by providing community events, promoting activities that enliven a space, and by ensuring well-designed spaces.
Maintain Redmond’s vision for its size and character while balancing its regional role in meeting transportation needs, caring for the environment, and meeting the demands for growth.
Recognize and encourage Redmond’s reputation as a center for intellectual and technological innovation.
Maintain the Downtown as a primary identifying feature in Redmond, setting it apart from the rest of the City through control of such characteristics as height, scale, and intensity.
Reflect Redmond’s heritage as a farming community by retaining and encouraging knowledge of and interest in sustainable agricultural and horticultural practices through uses and activities such as:
♦ Pea patch community gardens.
♦ Farmer’s markets.
♦ Education about composting and other sustainable gardening methods.
♦ Allowing agricultural related facilities such as small winery operations in low-density zones.
♦ Supporting educational and recreational programs related to gardening.
Preserve formal community gathering places such as the Senior and Teen Centers, Saturday Market, Old Redmond Schoolhouse Community Center, and Farrel-McWhirter Park, and encourage development of community gathering places such as the BNSF right-of-way, River Walk, and neighborhood community centers.
Preserve and develop informal community gathering places, such as the fountains at Town Center, local coffee shops, and neighborhood parks. This can include techniques such as:
♦ Requiring seating opportunities.
♦ Encouraging art or water features.
♦ Providing visual access to sites.
♦ Providing for active uses such as chessboards, skateboarding, or public performances in the space.
♦ Facilitating partnerships, where appropriate, to create public places.
Ensure that public places have the following qualities that create active places:
♦ Active uses are located in close proximity to the public place.
♦ The place fosters an interest in being there because of characteristics unique to it.
♦ The place is perceived as safe and clean.
♦ The place is convenient and readily accessible by multiple means including by foot or bike as well as by transit service.
Design and build Redmond’s public buildings in a superior way and with quality materials to serve as models to the community and to enhance their function as community gathering places.
Incorporate and provide display opportunities for art in and around public buildings and facilities.
Encourage and support traditional community festivals or events such as Derby Days and Redmond Lights.
Facilitate the development of a diverse set of recreational and cultural programs that celebrate Redmond’s heritage and cultural diversity such as:
♦ Community theater.
♦ Arts acquisition, recognition, and display.
♦ A historic society.
♦ An active parks and recreation program.
Provide links to public places from other uses to encourage their use through such means as:
♦ Providing safe and convenient pedestrian walkways.
♦ Providing bikeways.
♦ Developing nearby transit stops.
♦ Designing for visual access to and from the site.
View Corridors, Entrances, and Landmarks
People orient themselves by remembering certain features that include unique public views, defined entries, and landmarks. These features also can set apart one community from another and are part of what defines the unique character of a place. Preserving key features and creating new ones can help define Redmond and its neighborhoods.
Identify and establish gateways into the City, support neighborhood efforts to identify unique neighborhood gateways, and emphasize these entrances with distinctive design elements such as symbolic markers, landscaping, or monuments.
Identify public view corridors unique to Redmond such as those of Mt. Rainier, Mt. Baker, the Sammamish Valley, Lake Sammamish, the Sammamish River, the Cascade Mountains, and community landmarks and, when feasible, design streets, trails, parks, and structures to preserve and enhance those view corridors through such means as:
♦ Removal of invasive plants.
♦ Properly pruning trees and brush while including them as a part of the vista.
♦ Framing views with structural elements.
♦ Aligning paths to create focal points.
♦ Offering incentives to maintain public views when new development occurs.
♦ Requiring view corridors for new development.
Encourage schools, religious facilities, libraries, and other public or semi-public buildings to locate and design unique facilities to serve as community landmarks.
Prohibit billboards and other large signs and use design review for new signage to protect views of significant land forms and community features, avoid visual clutter, and ensure community design standards are met.
There is a high expectation for quality design in Redmond. A set of design standards has been adopted as guidance. The commercial or multi-family projects receive a higher level of scrutiny than single-family homes. Most projects are evaluated by a design review board. Some projects with nominal impacts are reviewed at an administrative level using the adopted design standards.
Maintain a system of design review that applies more intense levels of review where the scope of the project has greater potential impacts to the community. Implement this system through a formal design review board process and in some cases through the use of administrative review.
Use design standards and design review to accomplish the following:
♦ Ensure the three key elements of design, proportion, rhythm, and massing, are correct for proposed structures and the site.
♦ Retain and create areas in the City that have unique features.
♦ Ensure that building scale and orientation are appropriate to the site.
♦ Encourage personal safety.
♦ Encourage the use of high-quality and durable materials.
♦ Minimize negative impacts, such as glare, view blockage, or unsightly views of utilities and parking.
♦ Provide transitions between dissimilar uses and intensities.
♦ Incorporate historic features when possible.
♦ Maintain integrity of districts or sites with unique qualities such as Old Town.
♦ Ensure that the design fits with the context of the site, reflecting the historic and natural features and character.
Encourage high-quality, attractive design that promotes variety between different developments and different areas in Redmond to maintain and create a sense of place.
The National Crime Prevention Institute endorses a set of guidelines called Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED). These guidelines illustrate how design can affect the safety of a site or building. Clearly distinguishing between public and private spaces makes it easier to identify intruders. Graffiti and poorly kept properties can affect the perception of safety and encourage activities that threaten personal safety. There are methods to allow easy removal of graffiti and materials that will withstand heavy use and avoid a run-down appearance. The ability to easily observe activities helps parents and caregivers keep sight of children and helps neighbors or workers identify activities that should not be occurring. Areas with little or no use are typically not cared for and can offer areas for unwanted activities.
Ensure safe environments by requiring building and site design to use techniques that:
♦ Provide clear separation of public and private space;
♦ Provide vandal resistant construction;
♦ Provide opportunities for residents and workers to view spaces and observe activities nearby; and
♦ Reduce or eliminate “unclaimed” areas.
Citizens of Redmond have expressed that stewardship of the natural environment is important to them. Although Redmond continues to urbanize, many features of the natural environment can be preserved, enhanced, and restored. Design of landscaping and the built environment can reduce the impacts to natural systems. At the same time, well thought out landscape design can enhance a site and create unique character.
Foster care for the natural environment and maintain the green character of the City while allowing for urbanization through techniques such as:
♦ Encouraging design that minimizes impact on natural systems.
♦ Using innovations in public projects that improve natural systems.
♦ Preserving key areas of open space.
♦ Creates character and a unique sense of place.
♦ Retains and enhances existing green character.
♦ Preserves and utilizes native trees and plants.
♦ Enhances water quality.
♦ Minimizes water consumption.
♦ Provides aesthetic and recreational spaces.
♦ Unifies site design.
♦ Softens or disguises less aesthetically pleasing features of a site or reduces glare.
♦ Provides buffers for transitions between uses or protects natural features.
Streets can be more than just a means of getting from one point to another. They can define how the City is viewed as one passes through it and create a sense of unique character. Elements of street design, such as width, provisions for transit or bikes, and pavement treatments, affect the quality of a traveler’s trip and the sense of place. Those design elements also can affect the behavior of the motorist such as their speed, their decisions to yield or take the right-of-way, and the degree of attention that is paid to pedestrians, bikes, and other vehicles. Likewise path design affects usage by bikers, walkers, or equestrians. Both streets and paths are a means to link activities and uses and the way they are designed can affect the functionality of various places.
Design and create trails, sidewalks, bikeways, and paths to increase connectivity for people by providing safe, and direct or convenient links between the following:
♦ Residences.
♦ Schools.
♦ Recreational facilities.
♦ Workplaces.
♦ Shopping and service destinations.
♦ Neighborhoods.
Preserve and enhance primary equestrian connections needed between the equestrian centers established in Kirkland and Bellevue, the Sammamish equestrian trail, and the rural area areas adjacent to the City to the north and east.
Identify and create “great” streets such as Cleveland Street for special treatments such as:
♦ Particular species of street trees.
♦ Specially designed landscape islands.
♦ Unique crosswalk treatments.
♦ Character defining materials and accessories.
♦ Pedestrian scale in street elements.
♦ Pedestrian scale lighting.
♦ Sidewalk design that allows and encourages activity.
♦ Allowing access by street vendors.
♦ Placement of kiosks.
Evaluate current City street standards for design, fire safety and street construction to determine which ones discourage active urban streets, especially in the Downtown, and implement changes as reasonable to encourage more use of public spaces and walkways.
B. Historic Resources
Historic resources offer a way to connect with the City’s past and provide a sense of continuity and permanence. Those resources represent development patterns and places associated with Redmond’s notable persons and community events. The historic fabric together with unique qualities of new development patterns defines the character of a City. It is essential to preserve some historic resources to maintain the character of Redmond and distinguish it from other cities.
Preserve, restore, and encourage adaptive re-use of historic, archaeological, and cultural resources to serve as tangible reminders of the area’s history and cultural roots.
Coordinate the development of parks and trails and the acquisition of open space with the preservation, restoration, and use of heritage sites.
Acquire historic or cultural resources when feasible. Consider cost sharing for acquisition, lease, or maintenance with other public or private agencies or governments.
Incorporate interpretive signage, historic street names, and features reflecting original historic designs into park projects, transportation projects, and buildings on historic sites when feasible as a means of commemorating past events, persons of note, and City history.
Identification of historic properties and archaeological sites is an essential step towards preservation. This includes evaluation of the historic and cultural significance of a property and the extent to which it has maintained its integrity. Property evaluation forms, deed documents, news articles, and other information may all be used to evaluate a property. Knowing the history and significance of properties can foster stewardship by owners and the public.
Maintain an ongoing process of survey and evaluation. After an initial survey is completed, conduct a follow-up survey approximately once every 10 years. Protect inventoried sites only when designated as a landmark.
Maintain and update the inventory as new information arises to guide planning and decision-making as well as to provide a research resource for the community.
A Historic Landmark designation is the most common method to identify which historic and cultural resources to protect. Designation of a property can occur at three levels: local, state, or national. The City of Redmond, the State of Washington, and the United States through the Park Service all maintain registers of Historic Landmarks. In 2000, the Redmond City Council designated 16 landmarks for protection called Key Historic Landmarks. In addition, with the owner’s consent, other sites can be designated as Historic Landmarks.
Maintain a set of criteria for local Historic Landmark nomination.
Encourage and allow nomination of historic resources that appear to meet Historic Landmark criteria by:
♦ City-authorized boards or commissions;
♦ Individuals;
♦ Property owners; and
♦ Community groups.
Require consent of the owner before proceeding with the landmark process.
Notify and involve the property owner and adjacent properties when nominating historic, archaeological, or cultural resources for Historic Landmark status.
Keep a register of designated Historic Landmarks and take other steps to inform developers, the public, and appropriate government offices regarding which properties have been designated.
Historic resources reflect a use of certain materials, an architectural style, or an attention to detail. Improper alterations or additions can eliminate the very reason that the structure gave character to the area. Incentives actively encourage both preservation of existing structures and restoration of structures to more closely resemble the original style and setting.
Provide incentives, such as tax reductions, current use taxation, technical assistance, and transfers of development rights, to encourage the preservation of Historic Landmark properties.
Qualify the City to act as a Certified Local Government to broaden the range of incentives available to properties.
Support programs that encourage restoration and maintenance of historic properties.
Without special code provisions for historic or cultural sites, adaptive reuse (placing new uses in a building once intended for another use), or even modification of a building to make it more functional or economically competitive usually triggers a requirement to bring the structure up to existing codes. The economics of bringing older construction types up to modern ones can be prohibitive to the point that the owners often choose not to make alterations. The resulting effect may be that owners allow the building to deteriorate because of its inability to draw sufficient income to cover adequate maintenance. Alternatively, the property owner may be inclined to tear down and replace the structure.
Waive the application of or allow modifications to current development requirements, building and construction code, and fire code to encourage the preservation and historically sensitive rehabilitation of historic properties.
There may be instances where alteration or demolition of a Historic Landmark is reasonable or necessary. In these cases it is valuable for later researchers to have records of the modifications or past use.
Protect designated Historic Landmarks from demolition or inappropriate modification.
Protect significant archaeological resources, when known or discovered, from the adverse impacts of development.
Mitigate demolition or significant alteration of a designated Historic Landmark or archaeological sites by such methods as integrating elements of historic materials or style into the new structure, documentation of the original site, or interpretive signage.
New land uses and more intense development can have adverse affects on historic resources. Sensitive design of new development can allow new growth while retaining City character.
Ensure the compatibility of development adjacent to Historic Landmarks through such measures as design standards.
Use Design Districts as a means of retaining the general character or elements of the character in those areas with historic significance or cultural identity.
Require documentation and support interpretive signage for non-residential sites that meet landmark criteria, but have not been designated when those sites are to be demolished or significantly altered.
Regional and Community Involvement
Survey and evaluation work is time intensive. It is not efficient to duplicate such efforts. There are financial or other limits to maintaining or contracting personnel with technical knowledge of preservation. Through cooperation, knowledge can be shared.
Historical preservation efforts work best when the owners of historic properties and the public are involved because they become a partner in such plans and programs. Working with private corporations or businesses and non-profit agencies could broaden resources to more effectively enhance preservation goals.
Preservation of historic resources may not always be practical and may conflict with other goals such as accommodating housing or job growth. There are alternative means of making the community aware of its heritage and preserving community identity.
Cooperate with regional preservation programs and use technical assistance from other agencies as appropriate.
Share survey and inventory information with King County, the State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, federal agencies, the public, historic societies, and local archival museums as appropriate.
Work with residents, property owners, cultural organizations, public agencies, tribes, and the school district to develop an active preservation program.
Encourage public awareness of Redmond’s history through educational efforts and visual reminders.
Partner with or provide staff support, when possible, for private businesses and non-profit agencies in preservation and educational efforts.
