Comments on The Press Condominiums

uh. all that shit that their ad mentioned is still there. there just isn't a janky convenience store or rat infested bars.

it's over. get over it.

Seriously. My friends who live there are thrilled Kincora and that nasty apartment building are gone. The neighborhood is still vibrant, it's just about to get a little more polished.

Fuck you 1 & 2. Move to Bellevue.

thank you, poe. more polished... whatever.

As much as I'd hate to see the old block go, from the angle the pic was taken, it's immediately obvious by the shape of the buildings those businesses were never intended to be what they have been for the last decade.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have been bars a restaurants, but when you look at a bunch of empty auto repair shops about to get torn down, it makes the 2000's feel like a transitional footnote to Pine st.

Does anyone know the actual demolition date for the block? The apartment and the rest of it?

I hear that the concierge on the ground floor has a hotline directly wired into the Police Department so you can phone in your noise complaints and get prompt service ...

What #1 said. The rest of Capitol Hill is still there, and the parts that are about to be gone will not be missed for long.

I loved the Bus Stop, and I had my coxucked and Pony a few times -- but yeah, old buildings die. So what. We'll find new ones. And ad-copy writers will write new shite.

Get over it, you fucking hippies. See you at the Moe bar happy hour in a few weeks.

My Girlfriend and I are real excited to see all the new development. I mean, gays are great (Neighbours rules!!!) but it's time to get some more professional types in the neighborhood.

And definitely more parking. It sucks that we only get two parking spaces. When we have company, they have to drive around forever to find a parking spot!

Boy, does the traffic suck! My girlfriend works at the WAMU tower, and it takes her almost as long to drive there as it does for me to get over to Redmond!

Art is cool and all that, but that's what SAM is for.

We like Pike/Pine. For us, it's a lifestyle choice until we have kids. But like Kim said, it will be great to have more polish in the neighborhood.

The condo surge is creating vertical suburbs, and like suburbs every where the inmates will have to travel some distance from their homes to other areas to shop, dine out and find entertainment. Mixed use seems to be very narrowly defined concept here.

So lame. And what's the bar under the press? Some bourgie joke of a place.

who wants to make bets that the condos will be apartments once they realize there is a small market for 300k condos in 2008-2010

Right. Because what CapHill really needs are MORE Pottery Barn-style trendoid home furnishing chain-retailers, restaurants that serve high-end pubgrub like $15 "wagyu beef" burgers, and overpriced "chocolatinis" or whatever the au currant cocktail-of-the-month is being touted in the pages of Seattle Metropolitan magazine.

I mean, isn't that precisely the DEFINITION of "a unique living experience that isn’t replicated anywhere else"?

Oh. Wait. No, it's not.

We should just change the city's name to "New West Bellevue" and get it over with already.

Are we still talking about this goddamn block? How small is this stupid town?

still trying to figure out if Condo Guy is for real, or not...

I'm not sure that a block of mostly vacant, ugly ass condos with empty retail spaces or at best, a Kinko's, a dry cleaners and a Starbucks are really going to add that much polish to that block...

Cap. Hill is dead. Andrew @16 is right, it is the "New Bellevue". Bring on Restoration Hardware!!!!

what is wrong with you people? "polished" give me a fucking break. if you don't like the funky artistic flavor that is the heart of capitol hill don't buy your ridiculously overpriced, poorly built eye sores in our neighborhood. i don't want to live in a polished neighborhood but thanks to yuppie scum like you i am being forced to....

i'm with mr. poe, fuck you.

@10

I hope you are trying to be funny. Otherwise dump your S.O. as they are going to be huge very soon if they can't walk from cap hill to 1st ave. Dan says it is ok.

Can someone else post some more fake comments so more lame-asses can take their bait?

Within a three block radius of Press one can still find all of those things. The sad part about that block's demolition is not that the ramshackle old buildings are being torn down, it's that they won't be replaced with space for vibrant nightlife.

Too bad the (de)Press(ed) condos are at like 40% occupancy. $1800 for a 2bd with no carpet and a hotel-like layout? screw that. I DJed at the Kincora for years and just loved that block - but we got to carry on.

condo guy is a joke character, certainly.

"polished" is just code. it means the same thing as "new west bellevue" or "vertical suburb" or "safe" neighborhood.

fnarf, the worry is this block's demise -- as it had many local and unpolished places -- and the trend. this block is just a huge step in the TREND that is bothersome.

we need more developers that take the neighborhood's character into consideration if the character is to remain. but, as you would say, developer's don't control the market, they respond to it. too bad for neighborhood's with character, diversity, and community.

It can be hard to tell the difference between real assholes and people pretending to be real assholes, SOMETIMES.

In some cases, Frederick R., I don't have that problem...

right, because you have to walk really far to find another bar.

if you dont want yuppies from Idaho or Montana buying condos in Cap Hill, you should make living on the hill unbearable for them.

Preservationists masquerading as the avant garde are sad. Instead of clinging to the past, go where the real action is (Georgetown) and do something new.

Is Georgetown where the action is now? Oh wow! I have to tell all my friends at Microsoft and Amazon. We'll get big, cheap houses there and hang out with hipsters. It'll be great! Of course, the neighborhood could use a bit of polishing up ...

Infrequent: stagnation is a much more deadly threat to neighborhood vitality than a few new buildings. Change or die.

What a bunch of whiners.

Pool your money, buy some land, and let it sit if you want. If any of you losers actually owned property, you might see things a little different.

But since you capital hill cocksuckers are far to obsessed with anything other than being a productive member of society, chances of you ever participating in the economy is minimal.

So quit your whining and be glad that some one is out there making things work. Let the rest of us get the job done why your whine about a few less toilets going downhill.

@28...i love this plan and will now dedicate my life to making the hill unbearable for anyone who doesn't understand its charms.

finally, i have found my life's work

No one cared when Olive died. Everything after that just feels like a wash. Besides, the Puss Puss had goddamn Swastikas in the linoleum, that building needs to be razed to be sure we got the bad vibes all the way out of it.

TEAR THAT SCHIT DOWN!

seems like all the cool stuff is already going on in other neighborhoods anyway. luckily the bitchy ones clinging to their pseudo-divey haunts haven't found 'em. I quickly got over waiting forever to order a drink after all of the bartender's friends (/Stranger writers apparently?), then waiting forever on the blow (/blowjob apparently?) bathrooms at the Cha. And yeah, Man Ray, that's going to leave a huge hole in my heart.

@32...yeah, because owning a condo will make me understand the appeals of driving a mercedes, buying a $10 cocktail and having lots of white babies.

@32 - you can have brown babies, too.

@38

Ecce's a racist. He'd never go for that.

Okay, so when Ballardites bitch about condos taking over the entire neighborhood, it's NIMBYism. But as long as it's Dan Savage, and the condos are on the beloved Capitol Hill, it's a valid concern? Condos are unholy no matter where they are, but I have little sympathy for Capitol Hill when compared to high-rise abominations taking over Ballard.

@39 i heard everyone who has bought one of the new condos is racist and participates in gay bashing rituals.

Ideas move from the creative to the hip to the mainstream. By the time the mainstream gets there, the creative people are long gone. This is a natural process. The ones bitching about the lamers moving in aren't the ones with original ideas, they are the hipsters. The funny thing is that neither the avant garde nor the mainstream consumer are uncomfortable with their own identity, or the way this process works. It's only the hipsters, awkwardly hovering between the two, who don't create but don't want to call themselves consumers, who complain endlessly.

If you are afraid of the future it's probably because you aren't one of the ones making it.

See, this is why keeping Georgetown gritty and industrial is important. As @42 says, it creates art. And elechos is right about that.

Elenchos: right on, beautifully written.

@42

Did you know I am the editor of the Bishop Blanchet High School literary journal, Skribe? I would love to publish your post alongside our other important works! Contact me offline.

@43 - Georgetown's day will come, too. From Airport Way, you can hear the Lexus SUVs driving around in the distance, lurking, seeking a playground of twentysomethings to crash ...

There's a hot-dog stand outside Chop Suey where you can a great polished sausage late at night. Isn't that enough glamour for one neighborhood?

There is still no shortage of places on the Hill where you can find polished sausage, Spoogie.

42, 43, 44:

that may be true. but don't you want the art, the new ideas, to be appreciated? the "hipsters" who appreciate it as it is instead of dumbing it down and cleaning it should be of some value.

but i'm only speaking for myself, as i've lived in seattle for some time. queen anne, u-dist, magnolia, and the hill. i liked the hill best.

stagnation is a much more deadly threat to neighborhood vitality than a few new buildings. Change or die.

and as i've said before, i'm not against change. i just want the artists and those with new ideas to still have influence in the neighborhood. i can't keep moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, even if i'm just a "hipster poser".

but there are developers on the hill and in georgetown who are approaching the problem with the neighborhood in mind.

st. ecce pwns.

#42, nicely done.

#45, I promise I'm not being intentionally facetious, but I just can't stop laughing at what you just posted.

The creative types always move to the cheap and unhip places in town. So your future is going to be out up north, like Licton, Bitter Lake, or even out of city limits in Shoreline.

i just want the artists and those with new ideas to still have influence in the neighborhood. i can't keep moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, even if i'm just a "hipster poser".

infrequent, this isn't part of some grand plan to turn the Hill into Bellevue. The problem is that people want to live in Capitol Hill, and there isn't any way around that demand. It's going to drive your out one way or the other - if you refuse to build new, larger complexes in the name of "maintaining character", you'll just have even higher real estate costs.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm with Poe... and kkl.

FUCK the yuppies and their "polished" look. You want polished? Move the fuck away from our neighborhood. Move to the east side where everything is fake and polished, and take your vapid shallow existance with you.

I've lived in many major cities in the US, and abroad, and never have I seen such bullshit, and a "polishing" of a city.

Let me put it real simple for you condo people.... WE DON'T WANT YOU ON THE HILL!

Let me say it again, maybe another way so it will sink in... We like those clubs, WE live here. WE don't want YOU in OUR neighborhood.

I'm not against change; I'm against BAD change; I'm against rampant gentrification by developers who don't give a shit about the neighborhood they're building in and a city government that doesn't seem to care or have any sense of vision.

Except for the cool shape of the Kincora's building, all those Pine Street buildings DESERVED to be torn down; they were ugly and unsafe and a bad use of space. But, the building that will replace all those buildings is a badly designed mess and the retail plan for the ground floor is unfriendly to the neighborhood. It's a typical Seattle story. It's happened in Belltown, and Fremont and it's underway in Capitol Hill and Ballard.

Bland, poorly conceived design kills the vitality and uniqueness of urban neighborhoods. It's that simple. It's one of the main reasons most of us in Seattle moved from Omaha and Peoria and Encino and Levittown. And eventually, all the unique 'hoods of Seattle will be as bland as a suburban mini-mall but at twice the price.

I just had to jump in and add mad props for #42. Well said.

yeah, fuck home ownership! rent 4 life!

@33, you can start by becoming an operator for "ride the ducks"

skye, renting is way more attractive than owning right now. do you work for NAR or are you just ignorant?

@42: Smart

@54: Sad

@58 that is the opposite of his aim, he wants to intimidate the asshole east-siders out of the area, not to scare away the timid native Capitol Hillites

Um, I'm sorry, but do people really move to Seattle to hear DJs from New York?

I have a better idea, why not just move to, um, New York?

Point being that if you want to promote the specialness of a place, you shouldn't include all the wonderful things it has that come from other places.

@62, that was actually one of the funniest and strangest parts of it. Isn't it sad that Seattle would have to gravy train a NY DJ for culture instead of promoting one of it's own?

I'm secretly hoping for a Crate and Barrel.

I'm secretly hoping for Poncho Villa from San Mateo

Snore........

Elenchos @42, that might be the best thing I've ever read on Slog. Spot on.

Y'all should move to nice, cheap, quiet Shoreline.

I'm not against change, or condos on the hill. I'm all for the Brix development, and want to see something similarly massive go in across the street. If you follow to the jump you'll find a quote from ECB's piece about the block. It's not a diatribe against development. It points out that you can't market condos based on what makes a neighborhood unique if you destroy the stuff that makes that neighborhood unique in the process. The Brix took out an ugly, empty store and a parking lot. The Walgreens/affordable housing building at Pine and B'way took out a gas station -- that's good, in-fill development. Welcome to the neighborhood.

I just felt it was ironic for the Press to be trumpeting in its marketing materials -- just this past Saturday -- its proximity to the kinds of businesses that the condo going in across the street took out.

That is all. We are still against NIMBYism and for density. But we are also against dumb, self-defeating development. But we accepted the demise of the block with grace -- we didn't call for protests, we're not laying down in front of bulldozers here. We're merely taking note.

Dan... You conveniently cropped out the BUTT UGLIEST part of that block.

Jeez, some of you are bitter and/or mean-spirited...

I live two blocks from there, and Bus Stop was my preferred watering hole and the site of a lot of birthday parties and the like. It was a cool, vibrant block and it will be missed by a lot of those that call the Hill home. (as I have for over a decade)

It's fucking depressing to walk up the hill past that block now. It just feels so dead.

Bleh.

@71

Get a life or get the cancer!

Georgetown is alright if you are a lesbian steel worker or someone going thru a retro-1950s rockabilly revival.

There. I said it.

The Stranger's position on density ("We're pro-density, but against self-defeating development") is silly. Isn't this nothing more than "we prefer an urban environment that caters primarily to our tastes"?

Would Stranger writers argue that Belltown's development was self-defeating because the stores, clubs and restaurants cater to a different (meaning decidedly less hip) crowd than it did fifteen years ago? Or is Belltown's density a good thing because it reduces environmental impacts?

Belltown condos were sold with the same marketing message that's currently being used on Cap Hill- that is, "you can live in this hip, artsy neighborhood," but I bet you won't hear many B'towners complaining that the neighborhood isn't what it was marketed to be when they bought their condos. The stores, clubs, restaurants adapted to what the neighborhood wanted. Capitol Hill will do the same. While those businesses might not be what we prefer, the end result is a lot more density for the city. And isn't that good? And if density is good, won't it be good if the hipsters follow the creatives to G'town with the mainstream (and greater density) tagging along a few years later?

How does one create significantly greater density in a neighborhood without changing the character of the neighborhood? Are there examples of that in other cities? The NYT seems to run an article every week about the yuppification of the Lower East Side.

I was out of town for a couple of months on a job in montana....cap hill is dead as far as i can see it....now where am i supposed to score happy powder from realitly unshifty people.....DAMN YOU DEVELOPERS!!!...seiously any suggestions?

You are all a bunch of fucking hypocrites. Your lousy "vibrant" businesses will just relocate to some other 'depressed' neighborhood, displacing the older businesses in that neighborhood - businesses which had formerly made that neighborhood "vibrant". The old timers in that neighborhood will whine and complain about how the newcomers changed 'their' block. Then they'll die, and someone will build condos on top of them. That's just the way it has always been, and always will be. Get over it.

Kudos to Dan Savage for standing up against the "Old Seattle" idiots who would have us living in two story tall buildings that are one hundred years old.

I moved here from Manhattan to live in a real vibrant city. To make Seattle more like Manhattan or even Portland's Pearl district, a lot of ugly old crap has to be torn down. Good riddance. I can't wait untill Capital Hill is like the Pearl District. I'm a foodie and love fine dining. If you want to drink beer and eat corn dogs, move to Burien.

Please. Good riddance.

Look guys. Professional is right. Dont you jerkwads realize we are going to get mass transit up there? You think we can justify the 4 or 5 billion dollars it took to built if all we did was keep around single story bars? You all want lightrail? Well... this kind of stuff is the "price" you have to pay to get it!!!!

So come on guys... Look at the picture and pretend it was anywhere but Captiol Hill. Pretend you never lived up here. And never went to any of the places in that picture. Seriously. Is that not a dump?

Things change. You cannot change that. Change your reaction. If you dont like what capitol hill is becoming either assist its constructively assist its growth or move the hell out (georgetown is showing signs of hipster v2).

You cannot stop the growth in our neighborhood. All you can do is help transform it to keep Captol Hill awesome.... just bigger :-)

I love Capitol Hill. I've lived here for five years and this is my home. I welcome all this new construction and I welcome all the new thoughts, ideas and culture that comes with it.

And by the way....

Fucking seriously. Look at the picture!!!! Those single story buildings look like slums! They aren't even cute in that picture!

Is it me, or does The Press apartments really not look bad? It casts a perfectly welcome face to the block. They dont look expensive. They dont look yuppie. They look like modest apartments for the everyday joe!

Now look. The Press are six story buildings. They match the surrounding color schemes. They incorporate brick and in that shot, at least, they cast a yellow that almost matches the pain color of the 3 story building on the left. Their ground level pays respect to the blocks around it.

I don't see a subway in that shot, do you? I dont see a pottery barn, do you? I dont see a kinkos, do you? Heck, isn't rudy's in that building? Isn't some independently owned dry cleaner in that building? Isn't Papya (sp) in that building? Does any "evil corporate chain" live on the ground floor of that building? No!!!

Now look at the single story buildings in that picture. They look like an evil joke! I mean seriously! Who the fuck do those piece of shit single story building think they are? Sitting there next to that six story building and that three story building on the left. What a bunch of lame squatters! Bastards! They look like shit! Get a life you single story bastards! Out with thee!

@47, @48 Huh huh huh, he said, "polished sausage"!

I'm a Republican, so I end all my arguments with, "Get over it."

all I want for xmas is for Fnarf and elnechos to start a blog. It would be the smartest in the city, by far.

I'm trying to figure out where all the displaced hip and arty and boho businesses and non-profits that have been displaced from Fremont and Belltown and South Lake Union and so on, have moved to...

oh, yeah...PORTLAND, probably.

It's odd that Issur mentions Portland's Pearl District because it's an example of SMART DEVELOPMENT; tearing down a few bad old buildings and some smart new construction, and lots and lots of rehabbing of old buildings to create a new vibrant neighorhood. It's something I've yet to see happen in Seattle, and I'd welcome it.

And pointing out that Belltown is an example of "see, what development can accomplish" is ludicrous. Block after block of ugly ass buildings, very little street life along those new buildings, the new residents constantly bitching about the noise, and the gradual squeezing out of any interesting streetlife with shops, restaurants, bars and cultural/entertainment destinations worth going to. The vibrant, interesting unique part of Belltown is pretty much down to the block or two where the Rendevous and Roq la Rue and Lava Lounge are. The rest of Belltown is a boring, bland series of cold, windy concrete canyons. That's really something I'm excited about happening to Capitol Hill and Ballard.

wow, obviously #79 hasn't walked past the Press lately...

Rudy's is NOT in the Press; it's up the street in an OLD building.

I believe the dry cleaners is gone, and papaya is long gone, replaced by the lame Kurrent.

And pretty much everyone on here has agreed there's nothing wrong with tearing down those old, nasty buildings and replacing them. What a lot of people have problems with, is the monstrous design of the building and the fact the developers and building managers are replacing 7 retail spaces with 3 or 4 huge spaces which will be out of the price range of nearly all small and independent businesses, which means chain type stores, (and there's nothing wrong with chains, but if you only like shopping at chain stores, move to the burbs), and NOT allowing bars/nightlife businesses to be tenants.