The Other Missing Middle: Bringing Small Businesses Back

After the pandemic, most communities are grappling with a desire to have more amenities and gathering places closer to home. Recent Washington State legislation requires the city of Bellingham to permit significant middle housing in all residential neighborhoods. The city’s 2025 Comprehensive Plan Periodic Update (Bellingham Plan) is reimagining those neighborhoods as complete ones.

An important component of this work included researching examples of what has worked in other jurisdictions. While none of these precedents went as far as the Bellingham community desired, each had an important lesson.

This project has garnered significant public support for reintroducing small-scale commercial uses into all Bellingham neighborhoods. Through a series of surveys (including a statistically valid survey that produced significant remote-work and neighborhood-preference data); large, in-person events; and online engagement, staff heard nuanced and surprisingly consistent views. They developed policies allowing small-scale grocers, businesses, local services, medical clinics, and child care outright in previously single-family neighborhoods. Leave with insight into the project’s equitable outreach efforts and solutions.