That said, there's a great noodle place near there.

But ... zoning is there for a reason. People who live in units tend to complain about the gangs of Drunk Santas and people dashing out of Moe Bar from the Washington Bus event (tonite 6-8pm) and the SIFF pre-film (5-7pm next week) and post-film (all night long!!) parties.

So you don't want to have residential units unless it's supposed to be mixed use. There's usually an exception for building managers, of course.

There are zoning rules for recording studios?! Who knew? I bet that poor book-reader who died when her home basement recording studio flooded was in violation. Funny how city officials didn't cite her widowed partner while she was on TV being the govener's poster-child for gay marriage in Washington.

Just curious, how does this impact Grey Gallery, if at all?

@2:

The home recording studio to which you refer wouldn't fall under these zoning regs because the studio in question was used solely and exclusively by the owner of the home. In that sense it's no different from any other home office not subject to DPD oversight.

And @3 I wouldn't expect this to affect Grey one whit, since they would seem to be exactly the sort of establishment for which the building actually IS zoned.

But, it does beg the question: why in the world doesn't the landlord fire or otherwise dismiss this obviously unscrupulous property manager?

David Wright @2, don't let your ignorance of zoning laws stop you from asserting their application in a dissimilar case to support a cheap shot at the expense of a woman grieving her partner's sudden death.

There's a lesson to be learned from this. When renting out an illegal space, don't do anything to piss off your tenants.

Weren't the restrictions on live-work spaces relaxed a few years back? I seem to recall that almost any building could be live-work provided there were operating businesses at the street-level front facing part of the building.

diggum

Are they talking about recording studios in the basement, or rehearsal spaces? Anyone know?

@3:

It'll continue to totally suck?

Anyone else concerned that the owners may say fuck it and sell the building?

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@6 - The lesson is, if you're in an illegal squat, don't complain about noise to the police. Which is to say, if the bar is legal, and you're not - you've got to suck it up.

@7 - Yes they were, for "light industrial" artists. I had that category explained to me as "anything you couldn't do in a regular apartment due to noise, smell or otherwise disturbing your neighbors."

More apartments are needed.

2Why can't people live in this particular site??

The renters want to. The landlord wants to.

Zoning in general is good but in this specific case, what is the point of prohibiting consenting folks from doing what they want?

I wouldn't be surprised if it was old neighbors versus new. People have lived in those spaces for years without much trouble.

(There used to be an afterhours party in the basement of that building that at times was so unattractively sordid it cured me of afterhours parties for life.)

@15 wins.

Displaced,

I appreciate the clarification, as Jonah's OP seems to indicate the "property manager" and building "owner" are different people.

As to the issue of your tenancy, while it's regretable that you and others were mislead with regards to the legality of your occupancy, that's NOT the fault of Grey. Your landlord is the one who knowingly and illegally leased you an apartment in a building that wasn't zoned for such occupancy, and they should be the one(s) held solely accountable in this matter.

No, @15 almost wins, but the post was too long for the win.

Which leaves @12 and @14 battling it out for the win.

@Will,

You couldn't be bothered to read the explanation at @15, but you think people give a fuck about your social plans @1?

Eat a box of thumbtacks, you tragic creature.

Comte @17- While I agree that it's not Grey's fault that the landlord rented to us illegaly, it doesn't change the fact that he was less-than-neighborly.

He moved into the building with the full knowledge that an entire community of WORKING ARTISTS lived above his proposed bar/art space. Since even the City of Seattle didn't have the building on their radar, as far as he was concerned, our tenancies were legitimate.

With that knowledge, he failed to install any soundproofing OR to cooperate with the upstairs tenants when they requested a compromise.

Instead, he actively sought to have working artists evicted from their live/work spaces, the spaces that they'd lived and worked in for nearly a decade.

When the landlord came to deliver the eviction notices (the ones that set this massive chain of events in motion), the tenants were told that the SOLE REASON for the "evictions" was because of the noise complaints and that if we stopped complaining about the noise, we could all stay in the building.

The problem is, the noise was so loud and went on for so much up the day (upwards of 19 out of the 24 hours) that the spaces had been rendered not only uninhabitable but unusable for ANY purpose, even commercial or as an art studio.

So, while it's not his problem that we were rented to illegally, it IS his problem that he was a shitty neighbor and decided that, as the new kid on the block, he would fuck over all of his neighbors. And that's not cool. Not cool at all.