Transfer of Development Rights in King County - TDR

Today I stopped in to a Great City hosted brown bag meeting about the Transfer of Development Rights program in King County.

The TDR program is designed to promote responsible growth, while conserving areas like prime agriculture, forest, and environmentally sensitive lands. This allows growth to be steered into city centers, rather than limit or stop development. The end result is a direct link between economic redevelopment in cities and land preservation in sensitive rural areas.

An example is the most recent TDR exchange in Seattle between Denny Triangle developers and sensitive rural landowners of the Cedar and Tolt watersheds. Three landowners on the Cedar and Tolt rivers sold their development rights to the developers of the Olive 8, Aspira and 2201 Westlake projects located in the Denny Triangle. This allowed the farm owners to receive compensation for their development rights and preserve the farm land with a conservation easement at the same time. The developers that purchased the development rights were able to use the TDR credits to increase the density of their projects beyond the zoning based densities for that area.

The current market rate for one rural TDR credit that is equal to 2 additional urban units is $26,000. The TDR marketplace is somewhere around $4.9 million and growing. This marketplace is like any other commodity market driven by supply and demand. You can see the current TDR credits for sale on the TDR exchange.

This program is active in many cities in King County including Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond and even smaller cities like Maple Valley. The Cascade Agenda and the King County TDR department are working to preserve as much rural area as possible in King County. To date over 144,000 acres of rural lands with farm, forest, open space, or regional trail amenities have been protected.

The TDR program has been on hold recently in Seattle due to the former Mayor Nickels lack of interest in extending the agreement that ended in 2009. There is renewed hope that the agreement will be extended by the new Mayor Mike McGinn and the Seattle City Council.

A drafted proposal awaits the extension. The proposal is to transfer development rights to the South Lake Union and Northgate urban centers from King County farms that supply local food to farmers markets, retailers and restaurants. There are 59 identified King County farms that match that criteria, currently 48 of these farms are not protected.

From what I was able to absorb at this brown bag it seems obvious that we should be encouraging the new Mayor Mike McGinn and the Seattle City Council to renew the Transfer of Development Rights agreement in Seattle.  This will allow the continued preservation of areas like our local farms and encourage growth to be directed at urban centers rather than rural sprawl.