Chair Riley asks how DCP will assess infrastructure without environmental review

With the changes to SEEKER, many private applications will skip environments.

With our environmental review, how would DCP be informed on whether there is sufficient open space, sewer capacity, school seats, pre-K availability, public transportation access, and other infrastructure to support development?

Thank you for your question.

So there are a subset of projects now that are exempt from CCRA based on recent passage

at the state level, which really is exempting projects that are relatively modest, 250 units to low to mid-density districts, 500 in higher density districts.

This exemption really came from a 10-year analysis that showed us that across all of these projects, less than 1% produce an environmental impact.

And so these were projects that were previously really held in about two years of review where there was no impact produced, which obviously is adding time and cost.

Based on our analysis, we saw that it added over $80,000 in additional cost per unit.

And so we will certainly continue to move those projects forward as they are seeker exempt, but they are still subject to land use review, right?

That does not change.

The ULERT process doesn't change either.

And so questions about high density, bulk, all of the relation to the neighborhood, public realm, those questions will still come up and are part of our land use review process.

What has changed, however, is the EAS process, which, again, based on 10 years of analysis, was not producing an impact or requiring mitigation.