In Washington State cities such as Woodinville are required to prepare and ratify a 20 year Comprehensive Plan (a "CompPlan" for short).  This document captures the status and plans of the city on Population, Housing, Transportation, Jobs and more.  It also defines the structure of the city planning (ex: Zoning maps) which are designed to meet the State & County defined goals for Jobs and Housing growth.  

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Although many claim Woodinville is required to take a particular growth path this is false.  The CompPlan must only show a plan to for certain goals, the how remains up to Council.  In terms of the raw Jobs and Housing number, Woodinville's previous zoning already meets the goals.  

The driver of zoning changes is an added calculation of potential affordable housing units (based on a 2023 law from Olympia).  This could have been achieved in a number of ways (see the online calculator).  Yet, the City Staff and Council majority have pushed an interpretation cheats - by counting newly rezoned land as if incentives will always work.  Even still to make these numbers work the rezoning must create nearly 10x the necessary growth.  Meanwhile as the calculator proves a required 15-25% affordable units and a few additional policies tweaks would meet the goal with fewer zoning changes.  

As it stands the proposed approach overshoots housing goals massively by up-zoning the city's commercial zone into bedroom area with a bit of retail.  This "mixed use" model will displace iconic businesses (see below) in favor of apartment blocks in the style of Redmond and Bothell downtown models.  A preview of the future is already visible in the recent development on 175th street from the developer called "MainStreet LLC". Further the land owner of McLendon's is asking for 85-90 feet of height.

It is worth noting, all neighboring cities have "inclusionary zoning (requiring a % of units be affordable).  Only Woodinville has given developers maximum tax breaks with minimum affordability (by a 2023 vote of five councilmembers).  Today even that is entirely optional for developers.