the Burj Alki

I giggled.

This is great news.

And a minor point about the unlimited heights allowed downtown: you probably can't build taller than the Columbia Tower. They tried to build the CT taller than it is, but the FAA put a cap on the height thanks to nearby SeaTac. It seems crazy that an airplane couldn't avoid a building that far away from the airport, but that was the decision. I guess you'd have to build the Burj Alki starting well over a thousand feet underground.

It looks like Vulcan did a pretty careful job writing this one. If I were them I woulda picked this as the one to make the mayor put his name on too.

It's easy to say that when it's not your property that's affected.

Just remember: who were the NIMBYs when they were going to tear down one of the Stranger's favorite bars within the golden two block radius? So take whatever these people tell you with a grain of salt.

But, what if there's a small, old, one-storey building that would be demolished to make a high-rise? What if that small, old, one-storey building houses a coffee hangout? What if Bauhaus were in SLU? Would it be ok to bulldoze that?

Where were the NIMBYs when these condo owners with the soon-to-be-blocked views were building their condos? Everyone blocks someone else's view.

Cities grow. This is a good thing.

Like the Roosevelters, @4 and @5 continue to seem unable to distinguish between "protecting views" and valuing actual uses.

SLU has benefited from the rehab of many of the older buildings along Westlake Ave N (which thankfully escaped the wrecking ball of the dumbass Seattle Commons plan) into thriving small businesses, shoehorned in between newer structures. These provide valuable stitching to the urban fabric.

Parking lots on 9th and abandoned auto showrooms on 8th provide nothing.

The best way to ensure that the smaller buildings and businesses of Westlake and Cascade remain is to amend the zoning not only to "limit development to two towers per block," but to limit single projects to less than whole blocks as well. We can't afford any more "setback towers on a useless podium" megablocks in this city.

@4) You miss the point entirely. Opposition to taller buildings is primarily aesthetic. Opposition to razing the most densely packed, commercially active, culturally vibrant blocks in the city's most active neighborhoods are about how the city functions. Show me a block in South Lake Union that plays such a vital role in the neighborhood's commerce and pedestrian activity that risks demolition for a bland, thoughtless building, and I'll be first in line to defend preserving the function of that block.

I talked about this in my April story about the so-called Bauhuas …:

The important thing in Pike/Pine is maintaining a mixture of uses from high end to low end (fancy new condos, affordable lofts, upscale restaurants, cheap cafes, etc.). But as developers home in on Pike/Pine, they threaten to displace the very things that make the neighborhood so attractive to renters in the first place.

@5) It's not, and never was, about one coffee shop. See above.

Owning a property does not entitle you to maintain surrounding properties in stasis in perpetuity for the sake of your own property value. Appreciation is not a human right. Buyer beware. Etc.

@8

I get it. Drinking in a bar with your friends and buying a rusty fixie in a second hand shop is "culture" and that's privileged over things other people say they value. Like their aesthetic experience. Aesthetics is stupid and the Stranger would never defend public art. If you want to look at something pretty, get a TV, am I right?

And because people with views move in different social circles than you, and so their lives and their desires don't count.

You know people walking down the street have a view too? Or no view, as the case may be. Just saying.

Oh, my god.

What part of altering a view does ≠ tearing down a building do you fucking assholes not understand?

Seattle: retards with money.

Note that if the views were so important to those developers, they *could* have bought the air rights over the neighboring properties to protect them.

@7 - you're missing my point. I realize sarcasm, when in written form, can be difficult to discern.
My point was that there were several posts on the Slog decrying the demolishing of the building housing Bauhaus to create density. Admittedly, I don't recall who wrote the articles, and they may not have been written by Dom; nonetheless, they were on the Slog. And I love Bauhaus.

My point was that it would appear at times that Slog writers favor density and development, but only when it's not in their backyard.

Because I am far too lazy to read through the links, are there any provisions in the code changes to create healthy street life? 1st level retail, cornices that frame the street and are consistent with the height and context of nearby buildings, that sort of thing?

The main problem with the Nickels zoning changes were that there was a 14-story pedestal, above which the building needed to be slender. In Vancouver BC, the pedestals are only about 3 stories. So can you clarify whether this has changed to require that buildings over 160' must start out at ground level with only 10,500 square feet per floor?

There is a concept called Floor Area Ratio (FAR). In Vancouver, they've found out that to have a healthy, livable neighborhood, one must limit the FAR to between 5 and 6. That means that even where you might have a bunch of 40 story tall buildings, the average residential and office square footage to ground area averages out to having lower buildings built out with heights of 5 or 6 stories. The Nickels proposal seemed to violate that. If downtown Vancouver is successful with that density, there's no reason that Seattle officials should push for greater density -- especially in this special part of the city.

@14: I got the sarcasm, and I also got your underlying accusation that defenders of the Bauhaus block were hypocrites.

What such accusers routinely fail to understand is that the Bauhaus block is already an example of functional density -- in fact, it was likely that the wholesale replacement of the block would have yielded a density decrease, from 8 storefronts to 1 or 2, and perhaps with fewer units of housing thanks to increased per-unit size and much of the redeveloped space wasted on parking.

Dominic addresses your attempt to NIMBY-fy him @8. I myself cited the mixed-use, mixed-scale, mixed-age hodgepodge along Westlake Ave N as worth maintaining, and I expressed trepidation about this city's habit of confusing verticality with "density improvement" (the same mistake you seem to have made about Bauhaus).

But trying to conflate nuanced differentiation of circumstances with NIMBY-ism, no matter your rhetorical approach, just makes you seem reactionary.

(p.s. Speaking of lacking nuanced differentiation: None of those opposed to development at the Roosevelt subway station has ever been able to name one thing "special" about Roosevelt High School that would warrant "view protection" on the order of the U.S. Capitol building or the Acropolis.)

@18: You people need to get your story straight on whether your obsession was about the view of the high school (perfectly nice, hardly exceptional) or the view from the high school (a mountain hidden behind clouds 9/10 of the school year, which former students have told me they barely noticed).

Both are stupid reasons to spend $500,000,000 on a subway station and then make sure no one's around to use it.

NIMBYs are o.k. by me as long as they all stay out of my back-yard.