The City of Seattle obtained review of a decision of the Court of Appeals affirming the Superior Court's grant of a summary judgment in favor of Michael Hayes and against Seattle. We affirm the Court of Appeals, albeit for reasons that differ from those given by that court, concluding that the Superior Court correctly determined that Hayes should be awarded damages pursuant to RCW In November , Michael Hayes applied to Seattle's Department of Construction and Land Use DCLU for a master use permit in order to allow Hayes to remove an existing single family residence from a lot that he owned and to replace it with a three story, mixed use apartment building.
Hayes indicated in his permit application that he intended to construct a building on his lot that would be feet long and feet wide. The lot, which was zoned "Neighborhood Commercial," was contiguous to land that was zoned for single family residences. A homeowner who lived near the subject property appealed the DCLU's decision.
The neighboring homeowner then appealed the examiner's decision to the Seattle City Council. On December 18, , the Council adopted all of the hearing examiner's findings, except for the finding that the height, bulk and scale of Hayes's building would produce "no materially adverse edge impact. It approved issuance of the permit, subject, however, to the condition that the proposed building be no more than feet in length.
The Council did not explain why it added the restriction on length, other than to indicate that "[p]ermitting a building 80' in length and 40' in width will clearly leave bulk and scale impacts insufficiently mitigated. Hayes timely filed a "complaint" in King County Superior Court for judicial review of the Council's action. Upon review, the Superior Court ruled that the findings of the Council were "conclusory" and remanded the matter to the Council with instructions to "identify, if any, the specific adverse impacts of the bulk of this project, and to further identify the manner in which the proposed condition would mitigate any such identified adverse impacts.
On November 26, , slightly more than three years after Hayes initially applied to Seattle for the master use permit, the Seattle City Council reconsidered its earlier decision.
