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.

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?

diggum

It'll continue to totally suck?

@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."

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?

(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.)

That being said, a few of the units are rented out by another person, Tomie/Nicole Stone, who holds a lease with Matt Basta and then subleases his portion of the building to other tenants. Basta and Stone work together and Basta knows about everything that goes on in the building and about every person that lives there. In fact, his BROTHER lives in the building... Which is why the "fire or otherwise dismiss this obviously unscrupulous property manager" doesn't really apply here.

Keshmeshi @6- Ain't that the truth. Especially tenants that understand the law and have access to the resources it takes to get the law enforced.

A @8- It's not a recording studio, it's a practice space. It's called Cry Baby Studios and it's operated by Tomie/Nicole and Leigh Stone. It's in the basement, underneath the Crypt and Grey. The entire space was built without permits, it's not up to code and, from what I've heard, it's a giant fire trap. In addition, no soundproofing was ever installed and it's a huge noise issue for the street level businesses, especially Grey. (And the tenants upstairs, but to a lesser degree.)

John Galt @12- The lofts were not rented to us as "illegal squats." Rents in the building start at about $1,200 and go up to over $3,000 a month. The lofts all have bedrooms, full bathrooms, and full kitchens. There's a laundry room in the building. We all have leases and people have been living up there for nearly a decade. (At one point, the landlord even lived up there and the building owner's brother lives up there right now!)

They were rented to us as mixed-use live/work artist's lofts. We did not know that they had been built without permits, that they weren't up to code, and that the building was zoned only for WAREHOUSE (not commercial and most definitely not residential) space. They gladly accepted our VERY expensive rent every month and treated us like regular tenants (with leases and everything!) all the way up until this explosion.

The noise complaints were completely legitimate, with a NEW bar opening up and destroying the quality of life for people who had lived in their spaces, and paid massive rent, for close to a decade. The ceiling in Grey is, quite literally, the floor of the units upstairs. If a glass of water is dropped on the floor in the upper lofts, it spills down into Grey. The owner of Grey knew that there were units above him when he opened his bar and he chose NOT to install soundproofing and NOT to seal his ceiling. When we rented the lofts, there was a thrift store-- WITH SOUNDPROOFING-- in Grey's space.

If you had a lease, had lived in a space for six years, and were paying $1,700 a month for rent would YOU not complain when a nightclub opened up directly beneath you and mounted their speakers to your floor and proceeded to play crap like Elton John from 7:30 am until 4:00 am seven days a week?

Ya. That's what I thought.

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.

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

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.

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.