This bill creates a new state program by adding sections to chapter 43.21A RCW to establish a center for environmentally sustainable urban design, contingent on the department’s receipt of gifts, grants, or other nonstate funds sufficient to cover the department’s costs. The center is tasked with advocating for and coordinating environmentally sustainable design in first-class cities and other urban areas; encouraging workforce development; identifying priority projects; providing recommendations to state and local governments on request; running a biennial design competition for designated priority projects; awarding competitive grants for priority projects (subject to available funds); and studying design ideas that reconnect urban living with broader ecosystems. The measure also creates an environmentally sustainable urban design account in the state treasury to receive federal funds, gifts, or grants for the competitions and grants, authorizes only the director of ecology (or designee) to approve expenditures from that account, and makes the account subject to allotment procedures but not appropriation. The bill establishes procedural elements for the program: a 10-member advisory council appointed by the center’s director (with members drawn from each congressional district as of January 1, 2025) to advise on applicant selection and the annual work plan; requirements that competition and grant applicants be a designer or design team and demonstrate a clear public/elected leader vision, specific health and sustainability benefits achievable at the site, and documentation supporting outcome claims; and requirements that the center set competition and grant selection criteria and consider advisory council recommendations. The first competition is required to target a specified priority project site defined by several conditions (multiacre parcel within three miles of the state capitol campus, formerly used for beverage processing or manufacturing, unused for at least 20 years, and damaged by a fire). The bill defines “environmentally sustainable urban design,” references standards such as the US Green Building Council rating system and the International Green Construction Code, and requires the department to consult the department of commerce when approving equivalent standards. The legislation creates new programmatic and procedural authority and a dedicated fund but does not specify the identity of “the department” responsible for creating and staffing the center, the source or definition of the “environmental health disparities map,” the process for appointing the center’s director or the director’s qualifications, the center’s physical location or staffing levels, specific funding amounts, grant administration or monitoring procedures, or timelines beyond the biennial competition requirement. These details are not provided in the extracted text.

If the state receives enough outside funding, it will stand up a new center that runs a biennial design competition and makes competitive grants to support environmentally sustainable redevelopment of neglected urban parcels, gives designers and design teams a new funded opportunity but requires them to show clear health and ecological benefits, and produces recommendations for state and local governments. The first competition is narrowly targeted at a multiacre, long-unused, fire-damaged former beverage processing site within three miles of the state capitol, and spending for competitions and grants will come from a new account that the director of ecology controls. This will most directly affect the unnamed state department that must create and staff the center and advisory council, the center’s director and the 10-member advisory council (members drawn from the state’s congressional districts), designers/design teams who will compete for awards, and local governments and first-class cities that may receive design proposals and recommendations. The center only operates if sufficient gifts or grants arrive, so funding, the department’s workload, and grant availability are conditional; the bill does not say which department will run the center, how the director is chosen, where the center will be located, how large grants will be, or the source of the “environmental health disparities” map, so those implementation details remain unclear.