Building Connections Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections

Building Connections

Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections news and events

Fremont Watershed Building Fulfills Living Building Pilot Program Requirements

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The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI) is excited to announce the Watershed building in Fremont is our third Living Building Pilot building to successfully complete the pilot program green building requirements. The Watershed building recently received Petal Certification from the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and met the requirements to reduce energy and water use.  Only two other pilot projects have successfully completed the process—the Bullitt Center and Stone 34.

Priority Green Expedited Saved Applicants Time During the Pandemic

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Priority Green Expedited offers faster building permit review and processing for new construction projects. We do this by prioritizing your application for initial and corrected plan review. Additionally, we give you a contact person to help you solve problems during the review process, provide permit status updates, and answer questions. We recently evaluated data for the last two years to find out if Priority Green Expedited met the program goals during these unprecedented and difficult times. Our evaluation found that we issued Priority Green projects over 4 months faster than non-Priority Green projects.

Updated Green Building Incentives

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SDCI’s green building permit incentives aim to create more efficient buildings that center around clean electric energy, water, and resource conservation with a focus on human health. Projects can gain additional height or floor area or a faster building permit in exchange for meeting specific green building goals and certification.

SDCI updated the Green Building Standard and Priority Green Expedited on March 15, 2021.

Proposed Changes to the Green Building Incentives

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We are seeing drastic signs of climate change in Seattle and throughout Washington State. Smokey summers and droughts are becoming more common and snowpack and stream flows have been altered and are decreasing our future water supply and hydropower production. At the same time, energy and water demands are increasing with population growth. We must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change and to achieve the City’s transition to a clean energy future. Our buildings make up about one-third of Seattle’s emissions. SDCI offers three incentives to help solve this crisis.

Changes to Requirements for Green Building

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On April 19, citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) legislation became effective, implementing affordable housing requirements throughout the City of Seattle. The legislation amends the Land Use Code in many ways, but specific to the green building standards, it changes the triggers for when the green building requirements apply. The Land Use Code does not make green building mandatory. The code does make green building a requirement when a project exceeds floor area ratio (FAR) thresholds, and when gaining extra floor area and height in specific zones. 

Green Building Incentives

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We are seeing drastic signs of climate change in Seattle and throughout Washington State. Smokey summers and droughts are becoming more common, snowpack and stream flows have been altered and are decreasing future water supply and hydropower production, all while energy and water demands are increasing with population growth. We must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change and to achieve the City’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. Our buildings make up about one-third of Seattle’s emissions.

Living Building and 2030 Challenge Pilots Effective August 1

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Seattle’s buildings produce about one-third of our greenhouse gases. Reducing these emissions are critical in achieving our goal to become a carbon-neutral community by 2050. To help achieve that goal, SDCI’s updated Living Building Pilot and new 2030 Challenge Pilot go into effect on August 1. The Living Building Pilot can be used for new and existing buildings. The 2030 Challenge Pilot is focused on development that includes existing buildings.

Living Building Pilot Program Lives On

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The City Council approved and the Mayor signed legislation that continues the Living Building Pilot Program (LBPP) until 2025. The law will become effective on November 6, 2016. The updated Living Building program legislation expands on a pilot program started in 2009 and increases the number of buildings that can participate to 20. To date, two projects have met the Living Building Pilot Program requirements, the Stone 34 project in Wallingford and the Bullitt Center building on Capitol Hill.