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RSS icon Comments on CoCA, ConWorks, Vital 5, Artist Housing: All Gone from South Lake Union

1

Good thing we didn't build a big, public park where all those condos and biotech offices are going. Good thing we "saved" that neighborhood for the small businesses, warehouses, and artists that have all been forced out or sold out.

Posted by Dan Savage | August 14, 2007 1:59 PM
2

@1, Yeah, but NOW the mayor is going to listen to the neighborhood. You know, after all the new people who have moved into the new $500K and up condos are settled in. And by neighbors Nickels mainly means Paul Allen. Seattle is getting what it asked for. Fucked up the ass without lube or apparently even a rubber.

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger | August 14, 2007 2:06 PM
3

Sucks.

Vulcan, as a name, just SOUNDS evil if you ask me.

Posted by mr. ryan | August 14, 2007 2:08 PM
4

Vote for RTID. Seattle taxpayers pay through the nose. A big chunk of that gets spent to repave the SLU area so Vulcan's developments get good access to I-5. Billions of Seattle taxpayers' dollars then get shipped to Bellevue, to improve eastside SOV throughput.

Vote no in November. It does not matter if you think shiny trains are REALLY, REALLY cool.

Posted by ernest blofeld | August 14, 2007 2:10 PM
5

911 Media has an exhibit by Gary Hill!

One of his installations inspired a piece of mine back in '98, perhaps the first work I sold! The cubic forms must of been it. Twas a horizontal swath of Style Council's 1st album. Acrylic, pennies, thick glass both sides (the hand with cigarette Josh, you followed Weller after The Gift?).

The owner has moved probably 5 times since then. It would be awesome if he dropped and cracked it at a point, sort of homage to Duchamp's "Bride Stripped Bare..."

footnote- for a while the piece hung in the living/practice room studio for City of Subarus. Welcome back from Athens!

Posted by Garrett | August 14, 2007 2:12 PM
6

They're trying to tear down the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library down there, as well, 'cuz, you know... the property's hot right now. I guess a "World Class City" doesn't need things like that. Fuck the blind.

Posted by JC | August 14, 2007 2:17 PM
7

as the stranger would say: density is the answer people. density, density, density.

Posted by density | August 14, 2007 2:17 PM
8

There are developers who work with the city and the neighborhoods?

Who?
Where?
When?

For supposedly being such a liberal hip city, this city has the WORST city planners...neighborhood by neighborhood, the developers are uglifying this town while the city encourages them...

time to move to Portland...

Posted by michael strangeways | August 14, 2007 2:21 PM
9

Is there even a good reason to stay in Seattle anymore?

Posted by FredE | August 14, 2007 2:36 PM
10

The ConWorks example is a little disingenuous. ConWorks knew that its lease was temporary there, and Vulcan was clear from early on that they were renting out space to ConWorks to help gentrify the neighborhood before its first major round of SLU construction went online.

Vulcan hasn't been anti-art as much as it has partnered with art-- you get cheap rent until you make the neighborhood sufficiently profitable that I kick you out. Kind of like NY, where developers turned Brooklyn warehouses into cheap artist lofts for ten years, then booted everyone out to make way for condos after their property value improved (though SLU was on a much much smaller scale). I don't know about the others, but the folks at ConWorks knew what they were getting into by locating themselves in a Paul Allen building.

Right after his election, Vulcan sponsored a major fundraiser for Greg Nickels, four years before his next election. Where? ConWorks. How hip!

Posted by Trevor | August 14, 2007 2:57 PM
11

What OMG you mean that neighborhoods in cities change. The hell you say. South Lake Union was always just the way it is now and will be like that for ever.

Posted by Giffy | August 14, 2007 2:59 PM
12

Dan Savage has it right @1. But didn't The Stranger vocally oppose the Commons proposal because they feared artists being forced out and corporations taking over the perimeter of the park? (Not that Mr. Savage was editor then.) Now we get the worst of both worlds. Oh well, hindsight's 20/20.

Posted by marmot | August 14, 2007 3:13 PM
13

Unfortunately, developers do not respond to the "trickle-up" wishes of artists and the local community to maintain deversity. It is really up to the city planners to implement building codes that require developers to include a certain percentage of lower income residential units and business spaces in each new complex. It is important to increase the density of people living in the city and decrease urban sprall, but this type of regulation is the only way to insure that new development includes artists or other folks with lower incomes. This issue needs to be taken to the City Counsel over and over to make it happen and to keep it happening. Developers "loose track" of the early promises they make to locals. It's not really their fault, they are brain impaired. They need building codes that are based on sustainable principals and principals that planners already know promote quality of life in a community in order to do the right thing when the profit motive is degrading their memory banks.

Posted by Kim | August 16, 2007 6:30 PM

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