Comments on Rezoning South Downtown

Dominic, those units actually have to fulfill a demand. 20,000 100 sqft units will drive people away from the area if there isn't a demand for 100 sqft units.

Right on the money. Established 1-story buildings with sidewalk frontage and a variety of uses are part of density. Parking lots and strip malls are not. Until we figure out a solution to the practice of single developers doing massive projects that take up whole city blocks (hi, old broadway QFC), the smaller buildings are going to provide that essential mixture of building sizes, ages, and uses going on in the buildings. Even in NYC you find little one story buildings squished in with the nearby taller buildings. Way to call it.

How would you protect the "mom and pop" operations? Rent controls? Direct subsidies? Who decides who qualifies for support? And why should the property owner not be able to develop their lot as they see fit within the zoning laws--this is the very definition of a "taking". And while were at it, what about property taxes? Should the city forgo an increase in the tax base, which benefits us all, so that the neighborhood dry cleaner or bodega can continue to operate in their old building? Nobody seemed too bummed out when the city used eminent domain to condemn small business on the monorail route--that is until we got no monorail and the SMB sold the property at a profit.

All you have to do is limit the number of new mega-developments. No development over X sq. ft. within Y yards of any other development for a period of Z years. Something like X=100,000, Y=1000, Z=10. First come, first served.

yeah, I'll be racing to live in mid level high rises built on earthquake prone land...

Westside stole my line!

Buildings! In MY Seattle. Say it ain't so.

Manhattan by 2050!

Interesting. This proposal looks much more thought out and comprehensive than the SLU proposal.

just about anything would be an improvement for the development mess that is Little Saigon. It is sooo underparked, and so much arterial traffic flows through there. I think the small scale mom-and-pop development there needs some serious traffic-calming measures

Correction: It's ART SKOLNIK not SAM Skolnik, the journalist!

And, your quotes of my statements are disjointed and somewhat out of context. Please do a better job next time.
Art

I'm sorry, Art. I fixed your name. My most humble apologies.