From the BBC:

Three Chinese reporters attending a police briefing on the success of an anti-gun campaign were accidentally shot, media reports say. An officer picked up one of the weapons on show—a confiscated home-made gun—but it went off in his hand.

Another irony: Historians think gunpowder—lethal, lethal gunpowder—was accidentally discovered by Chinese alchemists searching for an immortality drug.

According to Wikipedia, the first reference to gunpowder is probably in the Zhenyuan miaodao yaolüe, an old Taoist text:

Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and saltpeter with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.

Then, last year, Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang flipped the equation again, turning lethal, lethal gunpowder into a 59-foot-by-30-foot banyan tree:

Several businesses on Broadway are vacating their spaces tonight to make way for construction of the light-rail station. As psyched as I am for real mass transit in Seattle, I’m really sad these gorgeous old buildings will be demolished. Most are two-story brick gents—the sort with details and materials too expensive for new construction. The most nostalgic of these losses, by far, is the space occupied by Vivace Rosteria.

So long, Vivace. And so long former site of Pizza Haven and that nail salon and the piroshky place... I don't think I'm just being sentimental about Capitol Hill, either. On Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street, the wrecking ball is halfway done leveling this old brick building, which is three blocks from this recently demolished brick building on First Hill. I know I do a lot of the cheerleading for new development here on the Slog, but it’s one thing when a '50s duplex is razed or a parking lot is transformed into something more useful, but it's pretty mournful when solid old buildings with local businesses are taken out. Even if losing these few spaces on Broadway was inevitable--I'm really excited for light rail--or if they could have been spared is a moot point. Seattle needs a better mechanism in the future for preserving these old buildings—the ones that wouldn’t qualify as historic landmarks but have the sort of character and quality new construction always lacks. Maybe disincentive to redevelop those sites through some sort of zoning penalty, a bonus for developers who renovate old buildings, or maybe zoning incentive to build somewhere else… Any ideas?

Mayor Greg Nickels stood in front of a bunch of town houses on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon to propose cures for Seattle’s ugly town houses. Among his ideas: the city would review designs for new townhouses. Developers say that would be an expensive hassle.

Miklos Kohary, who built 160 town homes in the city last year, said the mayor's "insane" proposal would add $30,000 to $40,000 to each home. He now spends that much on loan payments, he said, waiting for building permits to clear with the city, which takes seven to 10 months.

"We were doing what was the objective of the mayor: affordable housing," Kohary said. "My average buyer ranged from 22, 23 to 35. These were all young people who didn't want to have a big garden and a house. "[City officials] either want housing or they don't. If they want housing, this is insane."

Nickels said, "We don't think it will be a significant cost driver."

Nickels boldly went against the grain and stood up to the developers who build flimsy crap, who many neighborhood activists say he’s in the pocket. So rah rah for the mayor, right? Not so fast. In fact, really slow.

The first problem is that his big idea for administrative design reviews is an old, impractical one. Design review will take a long-ass time for each project, and still fail to address directly the biggest problems with town house design: banning four-pack housing and wide central auto courts with no pedestrian function. Those changes will be made, hopefully, after it gets to the city council, which will have to enact any zoning changes. Which will happen, eventually…

This multi-family rezoning package is the result of years of study by the Department of Planning and Development, which answers to Nickels. DPD handed the proposal to Nickels late last year, and it’s been waiting on his desk, as folks at city hall put it, since then. Meanwhile, Councilmember Sally Clark, head of the land-use committee, is waiting for the legislation to go through a SEPA review (an environmental impact review), which will take until September, before she can touch it. But by then the council will be working on the budget, and probably won’t get around town houses till 2009—and that process will entail more public comment, debate, revision, blah, blah, blah. If Clark makes any gutsy changes to the town house rules—changes that would actually improve them rather than just tweak the designs we have—the SEPA process could begin all over again.

Nickels could have expedited this entire process, and truly taken developers of the worst projects to task, by moving on the legislation promptly. Instead, those developers have another year to keep building the shitty townhouses.

I’ve got an article in this week’s issue about how the building bust will impact some of the glamorous projects in town. Lots of buildings—mostly tall fancy towers—are on hold or on the chopping block till the economy turns around. Meanwhile, the downtown skyline is filled with cranes for projects already under construction. So at least those glamorous towers are on schedule, right?

About 500 union fire-sprinkler installers have gone on strike, affecting work on several of the largest construction projects in the Seattle area.

[P]icket lines had gone up at about 25 sites in the Puget Sound area, including Olive 8 and 818 Stewart in downtown Seattle and the Bravern, Bellevue Towers and City Center Plaza in downtown Bellevue. Other union construction workers appeared to be honoring the picket lines for the most part…

David Thyer, president of R.C. Hedreen, Olive 8's developer, said only about 20 nonunion construction workers were working on the high-rise hotel/condo project today. Normally more than 300 people would be on the job, he said.

And if you thought it was dangerous living without fire sprinklers, consider the risk of living with cranes.

A transformer explosion has disabled our internets. Paul Constant is reading poetry aloud and we may soon resort to cannibalism.

Slog will be slow for a while. Please make a note of it.

Update: We're back.

It's easy to support infill density—like when a developer steps up with plans for a great building on an empty lot. But what if the developer wants to demolish a well-utilized building for an uncertain project?

Last week, Tara Hoch stepped outside her office in the Mercer Professional Building on 19th Avenue East to discover a small yellow land-use-action sign. A proposal filed with the city outlines plans to demolish the building—which currently contains 15 businesses—and replace it with a four-story, mixed-use development that would contain 52 condominiums and ground-level retail.

“They're destroying a beautiful building in excellent repair with no apparent structural problems whatsoever,” says Hoch, a massage practitioner.

The building also houses Monsoon restaurant. Says co-owner and chef Eric Banh: "It’s a business decisions for them, and it’s too bad we happen to be in the way." But it's not a done deal.

Murray Franklyn, the devlopment firm, hasn't yet purchased the property. For now, applying for the permit is only part of a feasibility study, according to Ron Boslcola, a company partner. “If we can get the permit," he says, "then we have a sale agreement.”

Although it would be unusual for a modern, three-story building to face the wrecking ball, this isn't Murray Franklyn's first proposal to demolish buildings currently put to popular use. The same developer recently tore down several neighborhood hang-outs on a beloved block of East Pine Street for a six-story building. But that project is being appealed, and the block is now a parking lot.

Wade Metz, who procures land for Murray Franklyn, says he doesn’t expect any hitches for this permit. (He thinks the existing structure is “small” and “not a very nice building.” And there's a parking lot on the site.) However, Metz says, even if the land sale closes, Murray Franklyn will wait to begin construction until "we perceive there is a market." He says, “The condo market is non-existent at moment... Our business is way off."

So how long until the market picks up and Murray Frankyn can break ground? “The soonest possible would be next summer, but no guarantee,” Metz says.

If finances are so tight that Murray Franklyn can't build on 19th Avenue for a year or more, the city should hold off on issuing a permit until Murray Franklyn shows it can afford to build on Pine Street. We don't need to demolish buildings just to make more parking lots.

“I would like to stay near central Seattle," says Hoch, "but I look around and I don’t think I can afford it.” So, in an effort to dissuade the developers, she started gathering petition signatures on Monday from folks who “object to the senseless demolition of perfectly sound building” and “wish to reject the four-story condominium.” She plans to deliver the petitions at an early-design-guidance meeting next Wednesday, June 18.

Foss Village is where people go to die. But the non-profit nursing home, in operation since the 1920s, is ready to start a new life. Foss has plans to demolish its aging one- and two-story buildings and sprawling parking lot in Bitter Lake, and replace them with a modern nine-building campus and underground parking that fills almost a full block.

Mithun Architects

Talking with Foss CEO David Crouch about what will happen to the residents during construction was sort of depressing. “We will do a downsizing over time,” he says. “In nursing homes, people are pretty much at the end of their lives anyway.” He says that Foss will relocate those patients not lost to "attrition" to other facilities.

But from there, our conversation became uplifting. In a gravely cadence, Foss said the trend among elder care is toward “bringing services to where people live, and that’s what we’re trying to build here.” The new campus will support 179 apartments and 60 assisted living units. (It’s a block from this development.) He said, “Eventually I think you’re going to see nursing homes clean up their act and provide a nicer environment for folks."

Although Foss has filed applications to build the site, the project hinges on receiving funding from the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. Crouch says he’ll know whether construction can begin within 18 months. A design review meeting will be held tonight at 6:30 p.m. Ballard High School, 1418 Northwest 65th Street.

Andrew Taylor has detested the nefarious activity along a sordid length of East Madison Street through the Central District—a few blocks from his home of 25 years—until recently. “The greatest impact was the day that Chocolate City closed,” he says. In February 2007, the bar, formerly named Deano’s, shut its doors and the loiterers scattered. “With respect to street drug dealing and prostitution, the neighborhood has been remarkably quiet," he says. Last Friday, a chain-link fence appeared around the bar and about two-thirds of the block.

A tax affidavit filed with the state last Thursday shows the land’s owner, Dean Falls, sold the parcel to a development company for $7.5 million. The buyer, Jim Mueller, says he plans to construct a six-story building that contains retail on the street level and around 200 apartments above.

Model and graphic by Slater Partners. Photo by Andrew Taylor.

Demolishing several vacant buildings and acquiring a permit to build a massive development would ordinarily take several years, but this location is different. Falls had already received a master use permit to develop the site (which has been transfered to Mueller), so Mueller says that his company, JC Mueller, LLC, need only create detailed drawings and apply for a construction permit before breaking ground. “That could take 9-12 months,” he says.

But will the crackheads return when the buildings go up and the fences come down?

Mueller thinks not. “We own the site across the street—The Twilight Exit.” On that property, Mueller says he’s planning a similar project that will begin construction in the same timeframe. “The fact that we own the two pieces of property across from each other allows us to really change the feel of the location,” he says.

Taylor concurs: “I suspect that the owner of the building will be careful… and will choose businesses that fit in with his idea how the neighborhood should be,” he says. In lieu of their old haunts, he says, “More gang-related groups are outside Thomson’s [Point of View], but a lot of the older Deano’s crowd moved downtown.”

Dean Falls did not return calls before this story was posted.

Before we get started with today’s design meetings, let us all bid a farewell to a tired sight on Broadway.

Good riddance. The blank wall that extended for nearly a block down the city’s best pedestrian thoroughfare was, by far, more offensive than any new building that will replace it. The QFC is dead. Rejoice.

MLK, Jr. Way and East Union Street

Man, I can’t wait for this vacant lot to get developed.

Marty Liebowitz, of the Madrona Company, says he’s planning a four-story building that will contain up to 30 rental units in the top floors (several for low-income tenants), office space on the second floor, eight storefronts on the street level, and eight music-practice spaces in the basement.

“The rock-and-roll kids only make 10 to 20 thousand dollars a year,” says Liebowitz. “So we’re trying to create a scenario where they can live, a place to practice their music, and maybe a venue where they can perform.” He says the musicians can’t afford to live on Capitol Hill, so he’s building affordable rentals and spaces for inexpensive restaurants in the Central District.

What’s driving the 62-year old Brooklyn native? “I have three kids who love music and have a lot of friends in bands. The existing building [a five-plex next to the vacant lot that will be demolished] is filled with friends of my kids. They are nice people, they may dress a little weird and have purple hair—a lot of adults don’t understand. I’m an adult, but I do understand.”

I'd like to nominate Mr. Liebowitz as the coolest developer in Seattle. The design meeting, where he says he’ll have a model of the building, is at 8:00 p.m. in Miller Community Center, 330 19th Avenue East.

At the Foot of Her Majesty

On the base of Queen Anne, Avalon Bay Communities is planning a six-story, 196-unit residential building with about 5000 square feet of retail on the corner. It will also contain 8 live-work units and 245 parking spaces. The Mountaineers Club building will be demolished for this...

GGLO Architecture

Block-long developments are generally sucky, but designs for the ground floor here do a good job of breaking up the bulk to look less like that damn wall at the QFC. The recommendation meeting is tonight at 8:00 p.m. in the Queen Anne Community Center, 1901 1st Avenue West.

Valley Girl

In other nudes, a five-story office building in SLU, which I expose over here, has a design-recommendation meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Miller Community Center, 330 19th Avenue East. Sorry for the shameless sexification of an ordinary building.

Or maybe it will make them scream louder.

The South Lake Union Friends and Neighbors Community Council (SLUFAN) board is meeting right now to ratify recommendations for taller buildings throughout the South Lake Union neighborhood. According a draft letter from SLUFAN to Mayor Greg Nickels dated on the 5th of June—two days from now—the proposal sets forth three zoning proposals. (Lest it go unsaid, SLUFAN is a racket, really, because it's mostly a symphony of business interests that amplify the mayor’s goals to blanket SLU with new devlopment. For instance, SLUFAN’s Web site is sponsored by Vulcan, and the board’s appointed members include representatives of PEMCO, Sellen Construction, Vulcan, and the Seattle Times Company. But there are only two elected positions on the board from the SLU community.) SLUFAN, naturally, seems to be pushing the tallest upzone on the table.

Some neighbors at a meeting to discuss those proposals last month, which I wrote about over here, were upset they could lose their views from Capitol Hill. The upzone has also ruffled feathers at the Buck Law Group, which organized neighbors afraid of losing their view, and generated an image that ran in the Capitol Hill Times of an unbroken wall of buildings blocking everything west of Capitol Hill. However, the actual designs aren’t quite so imposing.

To provide some context for this diagram, the majority of the buildings in the SLU valley close to I-5 (and Capitol Hill) are 125-165 feet tall. In comparison, the grey-and-black-striped Metropolitan Park towers, the undeniable view-blocking eyesores that they are, stand 279 feet tall. The few locations where the buildings shown above approach that height are few and far between, and the tallest buildings, the handful at 400 feet, are narrow enough to preserve most view corridors.

Like what you see? Hate it? SLUFAN will likely hand off these recommendations to the mayor's office in two days, but the changes would have to be approved by the city council. They would modify the neighborhood plan. You can find out more and rant at the city over here.

A block-by-block description of the proposed rezone in the diagram above—for the most intrepid land-use enthusiast among you—is after the jump.

Continue reading "Maybe This Will Shut Up Those “My View!” NIMBYs" »

Under a plan from Mayor Greg Nickels’s office called Liveable South Downtown, an advisory group has drafted recommendations to increase density—residential and commercial—in areas around Pioneer Square, the International District, and the stadiums. Tonight the city will hold an open house to exhibit the proposals and answer questions. Here’s a sneak peek at the presentation.

Existing zoning in the area:

Proposed zoning:

This how it could affect Little Saigon (I always feel weird calling it Little Saigon for some reason):

“The problem is that this administration is treating everything the same: high rises everywhere,” says Art Skolnik, an architecture preservationist in Washington for the past 40 years. “It destroys the character of micro-neighborhoods by encroaching on them,” he says. “You have to have a buffer zone.” Skolnik argues that the developers will give “sweetheart deals to incubator businesses” in new buildings. For example, “There are women-owned businesses that just started,” he says. “It sucks them out of the historic district, with no compensation [for older buildings], no guarantee that they will find other tenants and they will have to drop rents,” he says. “We are creating sprawl by pushing low income folks to suburbs because that’s what they can afford.”

“We’re not increasing heights across the board,” counters Susan McLain, the project’s senior planner for the Department of Planning and Development. She says the goal is to preserve the historic districts but add residents around those neighborhoods to “create more of a 24-hour presence of people who live and work in neighborhoods, and put more eyes on the street.”

Despite Skolnik’s desire to preserve historic neighborhoods—which I think everyone wants—increasing the number of available units won’t drive people out of town. That would defy laws of supply and demand. New spaces will cost more, not less, than offices in old buildings. And if additional vacancy does force renters to compete, that will drive rents down and create more affordable spaces in the city. Excellent. However, do share Skolnik's concern about the potential impact of rezoning areas that don’t have historic status, such as South Jackson Street in Little Saigon, where a number of small one-story businesses could be displaced by incentive to build large developments. There should be a provision to protect the mom-and pop, one-story retail that provides basic neighborhood amenities while allowing infill density in the parking lots that surround those blocks.

The open house tonight runs from 5 p.m. to 7p.m. in the Bertha Landes Room of City Hall. A short presentation will be given at 6 p.m. The city will accept written comments until June 30th, and the City Council will likely vote to modify or codify the proposal later this year.

New Village

Ah, University Village… a bounty of Apple products, flavored coffee, and family apparel. If only there were more of it. Pray tell, what is this: Plans for four more emporiums built in three phases over coming years? Yes, it’s all true.

One of the buildings by Perkowitz+Ruth Architects

In the design proposal, developer Blumen Consulting Group says the new plans are geared to “create an urban densification.” (Here’s a big diagram of the U-Village layout.) Some day, if U-Village keeps building, U-Village may feel less like a Potemkin Mall and just a teensy bit more like part of the city. Calls to Blumen with pressing questions like, “How big will Abercrombie Baby be?” have not been returned. Ask them tonight at an early-design guidance meeting at 6:30 p.m. in room 209 of the University Heights Community Center, 5031 University Way Northeast.

New District

Just look that these houses--rentals off the freeway in the University District.

They hold the ghosts of a million killed kegs. Base Capital plans to build warehouse-style apartments on the grave site, zoned for mid-rise development, using architectural precedent from the Agnes Loft on Capitol Hill. It will stand 6 stories and contain 24 units.

Shugart Bates

The decision to build the 47th and 7th Flats “was more opportunistic than anything else,” says Kevin Nagai of Base Capital, which notices the parcel was for sale while developing condos across the street. Most of the developer’s properties up to now have been built in suburbs and exurbs, he says. “We were actually looking for places to develop infill in the city,” says Nagai. “The land was just getting so expensive even in outskirts to build apartments.”

An early design guidance meeting is tonight at 8:00 p.m. in room 209 of the University Heights Community Center, 5031 University Way Northeast.

The most mind-boggling thing about the parking lot on 2nd Avenue and Pike Street is that there even is a parking lot on 2nd Avenue and Pike Street. This ideal downtown crossroads has been underused--and budding with potential--practically forever.

Greg Smith, developer and Principal of Urban Visions, had plans for the site a couple years ago, before downtown was rezoned to allow taller buildings. But last week, Smith was back before the city’s downtown design-review board to present a bolder vision for a geometric, two-tone tower that will stand 440 feet tall. It’s called the Candela Hotel and Residences.

Olsen Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects

“We recognize the intersection as one of the most important in the city,” Smith said. Bravely, the architects disregarded a design guideline that requests new buildings relate to the immediate architectural context—because, really, even one Newmark building is too many—in favor of adding something unique to the skyline. Portions of the pearly tower cantilever out over the rest of the building’s frame, and an arm of the hotel juts unexpectedly away from the body. However, the building encounters its greatest obstacles at the street level.

More after the jump.

Continue reading "What’s on Second?" »

From Slog tipper Mark: "Saw this land notice over on Madison and Pike, across from the Madison Market. Cracked me up."

"moat (filled with sharks)." Lovely. These signs demand modification. Someone should hold a contest...

(A friend of mine once proposed to his girlfriend by building a mock version of one of these boards, titled "Notice of Proposed Hand Use Action." He wrote his proposal in opaque, DPD-ese and drew a schematic of her hand, with the proposed ring. He planted it in a yard she usually passed on her way to work. She accepted.)

Whenever I hear about the West Seattle Junction (the intersection of California Avenue and Southwest Alaska Street), I get that damn "Conjunction Junction" song from School House Rock stuck in my head. But onward and upward or whatever…

Two proposed buildings at the Junction will contain a total of 200 residential units and a glut of retail on the ground floor. Since my last post about the project, folks in West Seattle seem to have warmed up to the idea after the developer, Conner Homes, released renderings of the buildings.

That's Alaska Street running from the top-left corner to the bottom, California Ave heads to the right

Weber Thomson

It would be difficult to make these buildings look any more ordinary, but at the end of the day, it’s about function. They are built to the curb and inviting (enough) to pedestrians. James Miller of Conner Homes was all platitudes when we spoke; when pressed for details on how this current proposal has changed to suit previous requests from the community and the design-review board, he said, “I’d rather wait until it’s presented tonight.” So go to the meeting but leave your bong behind. It’s at 6:30 p.m. in the Southwest Police Precinct, 2300 Southwest Webster Street. (PS -- Sorry this post is so late. I have strep throat and have been at the doctor's office. Cheers!)

Three large construction projects are slated for design reviews tonight. But the design proposals haven’t been posted by the city and attempts to get copies from the architects and city planners have proven futile. Sorry it didn’t work out, folks.

With no further ado, tonight’s meetings:

On the Lot

Can it really be true? Seattle’s most tragically underutilized space—the parking lot on the southeast corner of 2nd Avenue and Pike Street—is the site of a proposed hotel-residential thing!

Plans from the Department of Planning and Development don’t reveal the height of the residential-hotel combo, but the zoning there allows up to 400 feet of vertical gain and the architect’s name is Jerry Garcia. That’s pretty high, brother man. Please, let’s all hope the building doesn't look like one of those Jerry Garcia ties.

City land-use planner Jess Harris says the designs aren’t yet available because “This is a very large file so there is some technical difficulties occurring.” However, you can check out the design proposal at tonight’s early-design-guidance meeting at 5:30 p.m.
in the Boards and Commissions Room, L280, at City Hall, enter at 601 5th Ave.

In the Valley

This proposed building will be six stories tall, contain 75 apartment and six live-work units, and a bunch of retail. The early-design-guidance meeting is tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Rainier Cultural Arts Center, 3515 South Alaska Street.

By the Tracks

This two-story commercial building is another development budding on MLK, Jr. Way South--along the new light-rail link between downtown and the airport. It will replace a house. The early-design-guidance meeting is 8:00 p.m. in the Rainier Cultural Arts Center, 3515 South Alaska Street.

The design review boards will consider these proposals tonight.

Where’s the Outrage, Madrona?

When a developer announced plans for a three-story, mixed-use brick building on the site of a parking lot on 34th Avenue, neighbors in Madrona lost their shit. Fifty complaint letters were filed with the city, according to an article in the Madrona Community Council newsletter, which then printed names and email addresses for the city and architect to complain about the project. And the lead story in the newsletter had this to say about losing the parking lot:

Many of us in Madrona fear that this development will negatively impact the open spaces and vintage character of Madrona and set a precedent for future structures on 34th Avenue.

So--shit the bed—when the announcement came that an adorable vintage gas station pictured on the front page of the community council’s web site (a bonafide neighborhood landmark) would be demolished for a new building, the newsletter was sure to come out guns a blazin’. Right? Wrong. The newsletter this month is neutral, and folks from the neighborhood group haven’t returned my call or they declined to comment on the new building.

ateliarjones

The building will contain seven units; six of them are live-work units. “There were a few [concerns] about parking because at the first meeting there was no parking,” says Susan Jones of ateliarjones, the architecture firm designing the project. “Now there are five spaces,” she says. But did Jones or the property owner, Tom Flood, receive any complaints from neighbors about losing the neighborhood's vintage character when it lost a nice old building?

“We didn’t,” says Jones “I can’t totally explain it.”

A design recommendation meeting is tonight at 8p.m. in room 102 of the Seattle Vocational Institute, 2120 South Jackson Street.

Valley Low

Remember when the city bent over backwards to rezone land in South Lake Union to allow taller buildings for Amazon? Now we’re seeing the designs of those buildings. The current proposal, for phase four being developed by Vulcan, will stand 12 stories tall and contain 16,403 square feet of retail space. I’ve said it before, the buildings are fine: They relate well to the street, they reinforce some of the warehouse themes of the SLU neighborhood, and they provide open space. But considering we’re making special accommodations for one of the city’s economic powerhouses, it would be nice if Amazon made a special contribution to the city. The campus—which occupies nearly six blocks and will define the area—should be awesome. Instead, designs, rather than looking like a landmark, look like a hospital wing.

Callison Architecture

“They are asking for all the development candy and not much is going into public benefits,” says Lloyd Douglas, president of the Cascade Neighborhood Association and member of the SLUFAN board. “I don’t know if [only] Class A luxury office buildings are a public benefit,” he says. A design recommendation meeting is at 8:00 p.m. in room 1 of the Queen Anne Community Center, 1901 1st Avenue West.

Beside the Brownout

This is what's on Bellevue Avenue now.

It looks like it could be flattened in a gale. Here’s a drawing for the proposed building that will replace it, including part of the design for the proposal next door.

Roger Newell Architects

The new building would stand six stories, contain 23 residential units, and about 1,300 square feet of retail at the sidewalk. The design-guidance meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. in room 102 of the Seattle Vocational Institute, 2120 South Jackson Street. It'll be fun.

Once new construction occupies the hundreds of empty lots in South Lake Union and the Denny Triangle, Denny Way will essentially run through the middle of downtown. Cranes flanking the street, and design proposals filed with the city, show that Denny will be home to thousands of new residents and office workers. One of those proposed buildings, 1200 Stewart, being developed for Lexas Companies, will be a giant among them, standing 400 feet tall with twin towers on a block-long podium.

Thoryk Architecture

The big problem with block-long developments is their tendency to have massive unbroken faces with few or zero urban amenities, which turns off pedestrians. A lack of sidewalk activity makes for a dull and dangerous street. That’s why the downtown design guidelines' number-one requirement for the streetscape is to “promote pedestrian interaction.” Another guideline, for public amenities, is to “design for personal safety & security.”

In practice, this means providing retail at the sidewalk. Shoppers and workers make the street lively and keep an eye out for public safety.

But the latest designs for 1200 Stewart provide no retail along Denny Way, and only a couple of small retail spaces off Denny. And the downtown design-review board approved the latest drawings on Tuesday for the next stage of review with no requirement to build any retail.

“Denny is not going to be coffee shops and newsstands,” said downtown design-review board member James Falconer. “You’re not going to saunter down Denny. You have to accept it for what it is.” (Whether the Department of Planning and Development has officially provided an exemption to the design guidelines for Denny is unclear; calls to DPD for comment haven’t been returned.)

Falconer excused the lack of retail on Denny, saying that there was no place to park cars. But with 800 (!!!) below-grade parking spots in the proposed development, his assertion seems ludicrous.

Malaika Lafferty, who has lived for 11 years in the Cascade neighborhood, which borders Denny at the site of 1200 Stewart, says, “I think honestly, if we’re talking about improving the density in our core, I don’t know how one can do that without providing amenities at street level. It’s about what the neighborhood needs, and we need retail down there.”

I know, I know—Denny is clogged with cars and isn’t a very hospitable place for pedestrians, so building for retail in its current state seems unrealistic. But here’s the thing: Traffic on Denny is fucked—and will only become more fucked—and most of the thousands of newcomers will have feet. So they’ll be walking up Denny to get to Capitol Hill, crossing Denny to go downtown, or walking down Denny to go shopping. It's the only street that functionally connects South Lake Union to Belltown and Capitol Hill. It will be a pedestrian corridor regardless of what we build, so we should plan for pedestrians.

More after the jump.

Continue reading "City Design Review Board Undermines Denny" »

Oh, dear Slog. I’ve been derelict in my duties to post about three design-review meetings tonight. My shitty excuse? Apparently there’s a print edition of this paper, so I’ve been tapping away at my keyboard writing words for those paper pages. Hardly any time left now, so here, in truncated and abridged form, are summaries of tonight’s meetings.

6th and Lenora Apartments

These twin 24-story towers of--as the name suggests--apartments by developer the Pine Street Group would rise from the former site of the UA 150 theater. Ah, memories. This project is among several twin towers slated to be built downtown over the next few years. I write about them here.

The question for tonight’s meeting: How will GGLO Architecture design the block-long podium (the six stories that fill out the block’s footprint) so that it looks like something pedestrians will want to stroll past and draw people inside? The meeting begins, like now. The info is here.

1200 Stewart

The developer hasn’t provided renderings for this second early-design-guidance meeting. For more info about the project, check out my post about it over here.

The question for tonight’s meeting, which begins at 7:00 p.m., is: Will this thing really going to get built? Considering it's still in the early-design-guidance stage in the middle of a building slump, completing a twin 400-foot tower project before 2011 seems unlikely. But it would be groovy if Lexas Companies pulls it off, so my fingers are crossed. No renderings yet; I hope to snap some photos at the meeting tonight.

MLK, Jr Way South and South Snoqualmie

This might look like a great design, but—as if time weren’t short enough—I don’t know what it looks like because the .pdf design proposal has crashed my computer three times. So the question to ask at tonight’s meeting: What’s wrong with the design file?

The proposal is for a four-story building containing 83 residential units of affordable hosuing, 8,000 square feet of retail space at the ground level, and parking for 24 vehicles. Info about the meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m., is right here.

The Department of Planning and Development has conditionally approved plans to demolish the Goodwill building on South Dearborn Street and rezone the area to allow a 10-acre mixed-use development. To seal the deal, a city hearing examiner must approve the proposal, and then the city council must rezone the multi-block site to allow buildings 85 feet tall. The hearing examiner will hold a public hearing on June 9th and is accepting comments till June 6th.

The project, called Dearborn Street, would contain 565 residential units and 700,000 square feet of retail space. To give some context for the size, the PCC in Fremont is about 20,500 square feet. So this is like 34 PCCs worth of one-stop-shopping.

There are two valid sides of the debate over this project. In the corner opposing it, neighbors hate the cookie-cutter style of development and worry that big-box retailers like Target would siphon shoppers away from the mom-and-pop shops a few blocks away on Jackson Street. There are also 2300 parking spaces, and if you’ve ever been stuck in traffic on Rainier around Dearborn Street, this won’t make things any easier.

In the other corner, supporters say that the project would provide 200 low-income housing units and support lots of mom-and-pop stores. At the heart of the pro-side, adding a ton of new residents and businesses makes more sense in the middle of the city than just ten acres of parking lots and a second-hand warehouse. Goodwill would remain at the site in a new building.

Thanks for the heads up, hugeasscity.

Couldn't sleep last night, so I sat up and read the new New Yorker. It's the Innovators Issue and there's a Malcolm Gladwell profile of area innovator Nathan Myhrvold. Myhrvold's a Microsoft millionaire and, you know, all innovative and and shit. I'd never heard of Myhrvold or his innovations or his hundreds of millions before... and, in all honestly, I didn't make through the piece. (I skipped ahead, I'm ashamed to say, to a dishy review of Barbara Walters new autobiography.) So I can't tell you just what innovations Myhrvold is busily innovating away at. But I trust Gladwell: If he says Myhrvold's an innovator, that's good enough for me.

But this detail, which comes early Gladwell's piece, stayed with me...

He started Microsoft’s research division, leaving, in 1999, with hundreds of millions. He is obsessed with aperiodic tile patterns. (Imagine a floor tiled in a pattern that never repeats.) When Myhrvold built his own house, on the shores of Lake Washington, outside Seattle—a vast, silvery hypermodernist structure described by his wife as the place in the sci-fi movie where the aliens live—he embedded some sixty aperiodic patterns in the walls, floors, and ceilings. His front garden is planted entirely with vegetation from the Mesozoic era.

I was speaking with a friend this weekend about two couples who, like Myhrvold, worked in tech, got rich, retired, and built insanely elaborate mansions—excuse me, houses—in the area. Microsoft and Amazon and other tech companies, which are all located here for entirely arbitrary reasons (and could pick up and move tomorrow), created hundreds of millionaires and a quite few billionaires. My friend—who isn't rich, but associates with richies—figures that two hundred or more these tech-money mansions—excuse me, "houses"—have been built over the last twenty years by tech millionaires with more money than taste.

Hey, it's their money, and they can spend it however they like. God only knows what kind of monstrosity I'd build—or have built—if I had Myhrvold's money. Probably something like this on top of Beacon Hill.

But here's what I wonder: What is going to happen in twenty or thirty years when the tech booms millionaires start to die off? Who is going to buy all these sci-fi movie mansions with Mesozoic gardens? A lot of insanely elaborate, insanely expensive houses are going to come flooding onto the market all at once—places that cost tens of millions of dollars to build—and there's no guarantee that our region will have the millionaires—billionaires—it's going to take to buy up all these houses when they come up for sale in twenty or thirty years.

So who's going to buy up all these houses in two or three decades? Who's going to live in them?

Queen of the Hill

The last time a developer proposed a block-long building at the site of the Metropolitan Market on top of Queen Anne, neighbors lost their shit. They didn’t like the size and they didn’t want to lose their neighborhood grocer. QFC later scrapped the proposal. But now, there’s a new plan for the site.

“This is better than the QFC proposal,” says Craig Hanway, chair of land use review committee for Queen Anne Community Council. “This new development is a similar scale but the developer is proposing a smaller grocery store, and they are working actively with Metropolitan Market to maintain them as a tenant.”

In addition to housing a grocery store and a few small retail spaces, the proposed four-story building would contain about 105 apartments above, and parking below grade. But it’s still a massive block-long development.

Tiscareno Associates

About 100 people attended an open house on Monday. “Some people had concerns about traffic, some had concerns about noise associated with truck traffic,” says Jeff Smith of the developer, Emerald Bay Equity. “We’re doing our part to mitigate noise.” A meeting tonight for early design guidance—the first for this project—will begin at 6:30 p.m. in room 1 of the Queen Anne Community Center, 1901 1st Avenue West.

Bottom of the Hill

At the other end of the community-involvement spectrum, a proposed apartment building at the southwest foot of Queen Anne is getting no love. A report after the last meeting said: “There were no public comments received; no one from the general public attended the meeting.” Aww.

However, the design board members did attend: “Improving the quality of the streetscape is of utmost importance,” they wrote in a report. “The Board felt that that architectural statement could be simpler.” Here’s the design criticized by the board.

And here’s the "new-and-improved" design they’ll be reviewing tonight.

Nicholson Kovalchick Architects

I think I liked the previous version more. But anyway, the site is currently used as a parking lot with 26 spaces. The new building, if built, will stand six stories, contain 40 apartments, and 20 parking spaces. That’s half a space per unit—the undignified horror. The public meeting—which will be more fun than rolling in the ocean surf with otter pups—is at 8:00 p.m. in room 1 of the Queen Anne Community Center, 1901 1st Avenue West.

Between the Hills

Two back-to-back meetings tonight will review portions of a bio-tech campus envisioned by the Blume Company, one of the largest players redeveloping South Lake Union after Vulcan. To the south, a four-story, four-building complex filling the entire block at Yale Avenue North and Mercer Street (map); to the north, along a winding tree-lined avenue called a woonerf, two more buildings (map). Behold.

NBBJ Architects

The glitzy new buildings—characteristic of the glass and concrete buildings coming to define SLU—will replace several light-industrial and storage warehouses.

“We don’t have any signed leases and we are still in the planning stages,” says Blume’s Tara Raymond. “If we had a medical or biotech company come along that would be fine, or if one of Amazon's partners came along, we would be thrilled.“ But will such a tenant be looking for spendy new digs in this mopey economy? “Actually, its interesting because the need [for office space] is there, unlike the residential decline,” says Raymond. “I actually think that things are getting better. Knock on wood, of course.”

The meeting for the larger southern portion begins at 6:30 p.m.; the second meeting begins at 8:00 pm.—both in the library at TOPS School, 2500 Franklin Avenue East.

A meeting of the South Lake Union Friends and Neighbors group (SLUFAN), a community group loyal to the mayor’s and Vulcan’s development agenda, last night was supposed to accomplish, among other things, two goals: to hold an “urban form discussion” about its rezoning proposals for neighborhood growth, and to choose between two candidates tied for a board seat in a neighborhood-wide election. Easier said than done.

PART ONE—A room in the South Lake Union Armory building was stuffed with people who had read an article about SLUFAN considering recommendations to allow 400-foot-tall buildings in the neighborhood. The topic was allotted 50 minutes on the agenda; a gigantic portfolio that contained diagrams of the proposals leaned in the corner. But after a quick announcement that two future meetings would be held to discuss the plans, the board President, Dawn Oliver, noting the large turnout, simply asked if anyone had any comments. “What’s this I read about 400-foot buildings?” asked a man in the audience. The board members began to debate—was this or was this not the appropriate time to present the plans? Jim Holmes of the city’s Department of Planning and Development inched toward the diagrams—which he’d obviously brought to show the group. Each time a board member voiced support for showing the proposals, Holmes reached to open the portfolio, but then, as another member would oppose the presentation, Holmes would retract his hand. The board exchanged furtive glances; the crowd looked expectant. Vulcan’s Phil Fujii, one the SLUFAN’s board members, finally took a stand in favor of showing the drawings. And out they came.

Three rezoning proposals are on the table (all still in flux) for the roughly 66 blocks of the South Lake Union neighborhood.

1. This would be the highest-density scheme, containing about 25 blocks where commercial buildings could reach up to 240 feet and residential buildings up to 400 feet. The remaining blocks would allow mostly 125- to 300-foot-tall buildings (a few blocks would be unchanged). In effect, downtown would stretch from the northern border of the International District to the southern shores of Lake Union. I know, right.

2. This would be the lowest-density upzone, with heights peaking out around 160 feet (catching up with the recent zoning accommodations for the planned Amazon complex), but many of the blocks would maintain the existing height limits between 65 and 85 feet.

3. The final proposal is a compromise between the height limits of number one and number three.

The notion that 400-foot towers could blanket a traditionally low-density area—predictably—raised hackles in the audience. “Just because you have that height limit to the south [of Denny Way] is not justification to do that to the north,” said a white-haired woman. She complained the buildings would block views: “It is going to depreciate the value of that property [with a blocked view].”

A tense moment after the jump.

Continue reading "Awkward Moments in South Lake Union Planning" »

Third Avenue and Cedar Street

The end is near for the one-story, wooden building owned by the Musicians Union of Seattle since 1948 on the southeast corner of Third and Cedar. Harbor Properties plans to demolish and replace it with a 17-story, 185-unit apartment building with 3,000 square feet of retail at street level. According to the city's recent notice, parking would be provided for 86 vehicles—egads, that’s less that one car per unit! How will the city function? Ahem. Here’s the design:

Hewitt Architects

The Musicians Union will be displaced during construction, which they expect to commence this fall, but plans to return after construction is completed. The meeting is at 7:00 p.m. in room 1600 of the Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 5th Avenue.

Eighth Avenue and Stewart Street

The intersection will be unrecognizable in a few years. The old Greyhound Bus station will be replaced by this, up the block to the east is this, and to the north will be this. And on the corner, Schnitzer West will demolish the 5-story Watermark Credit Union building and replace it with a 14-story office building with 10,000 square feet of ground-level retail.

The downtown design-review board will hold a guidance meeting for the project—no images yet—at 5:30 p.m. in room 1600 of the Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 5th Avenue. This is a very different (that is, smaller) project that originally proposed for the site in 2006.

"Chipotle Launches Naturally Raised Chicken"

[A] South Lake Union group is considering new proposals that would… seek zoning changes to allow 300- or 400-foot buildings in response to business interest in the growing area.

That has some residents, business owners and concerned citizens crying foul. They fear that if the new heights are ultimately approved, views from every neighborhood around Lake Union would be blocked, beloved parks and P-patches would lose sunlight to shade, and any vision for a walkable, "livable" South Lake Union would be destroyed.

"Any way you look at this, 400-foot height limits is very scary," said [Diane] Masson, regional marketing director for Mirabella, a continuing retirement community run by Pacific Retirement Services.

"I favor a few, tall narrow towers. ... It's not true that 400-tall buildings will block views," said [Queen Anne Community Council member John] Coney, who favors concentrating jobs, buildings and residential density in South Lake Union. "The principle behind urban centers is ... that you provide people the opportunity to live near where they work."

"Building 400 feet and out to the lot line could create a concrete jungle and blot out the sun," [Masson] said.

Concerns about darkened sidewalks and unwalkable cities are understandable--nobody wants a dark, desolate city--but they're unfounded.

Under this proposed zoning change, the rules that would apply to SLU would undoubtedly reflect the zoning regulations that apply the parts of Seattle where 400-foot construction is already permitted. Towers are restricted to around 11,000 square feet per floor, preserving view corridors and letting in light. The rest of the building that abuts the curb would be mostly limited to six-to-eight stories; that’s the same height as most buildings in Paris, where streets are walkable and bright. (Filling out lot lines with mixed-use buildings creates walkable, livable cities--not dark, unwalkable cities.) Even in the business district of downtown Seattle, where the towers are 500-900 feet tall, streets are still walkable and bright. Perhaps not bright enough for a vegetable garden, but it is downtown, and, really, SLU is destined to be part of downtown, too.

But even where the zoning allows it, not every block supports a skyscraper—some squat old buildings remain and developers choose not to fill out the zoning envelope for economic reasons at other sites. The market creates a mix of different heights.

And I've tried, but I cannot muster sympathy for the “I’m losing my sacred view” crowd. Views of skyscrapers are awesome. In fact, that’s what you should see when you look out the window in the middle of the fucking city. If you want to see the water or mountains, Seattle will always have plenty of those views—just not from the middle of downtown. Suck it up.

Here’s where I totally agree with the anti-density folks: 400-foot buildings shouldn’t be built right up to the shore of Lake Union. 85-foot zoning in the block-and-a-half back from the water’s edge (like what’s already being built around West Lake Union), provides density while leaving bright spaces and pedestrian-friendly boulevards. That’s an easy compromise.

In the next 32 years, 1.7 million people are expected to move to the Puget Sound region. Those people have to go somewhere. Sprawl is bad land use. Neighbors in single-family housing neighborhoods would have kittens if development one-third this density were proposed near their homes. If not South Lake Union, then where?

Two projects between Fremont and Wallingford scheduled for design reviews today would bring lots of residents and business to the area, but residents are concerned they could also bring more traffic problems.

Stone Way Village

The corner of North 40th Street and Stone Way North for years has been home to a despairing pit, but several months ago Prescott Homes announced plans to build a five-story, mixed use development containing 155 units.

Alicia Van Buskirk organizes a committee of neighbors that has met with the Department of Planning and Development several times over the past few years to discuss plans (originally QFC planed to build on the site but then dropped its proposal). “This is already a very traffic intensive neighborhood—they just need to make sure the traffic doesn’t make it any more dangerous,” says Van Buskirk. “They are going to put 150 homes in a half block… It seems like new projects should be able to keep impacts on their site—that means providing enough parking for residents and customers.”

After an early design-guidance meeting in February, a report from the Department of Planning and Development quoted neighborhood comments: “190 parking spaces are not enough for 160 proposed units. (This was mentioned by several speakers).”

Another issue regarded the scale of the project, which stretches a full block from 39th to 40th. Michael Derr, Director of Development for Prescott, said after the meeting, “We’re trying to make a design that is not monolithic… and design in a way that villages tend to grow, breaking it up into two distinct sections.”

But that wasn’t enough for the design board: “The four Board members unanimously urged the architect to reduce the overall massing of the project… [the design] should resemble a village of four to five structures rather than the three shown in the design review packet,” said a recently released report. So tonight’s proposal attempts to satisfy the board’s request. Here is the preferred scheme:

Baylis Architects

“I’m worried that it’s just going to be one solid box,” says Van Buskirk, who hadn't seen the designs. “They said they wanted to make it look like different buildings, but I think it’s just going to be one bulky piece with a few indentations.” The design meeting is tonight at 8:00 p.m. in room 209 of the University Heights Community Center, 5031 University Way NE.

Union View

TSA Architects

The second development is kitty corner, at North 39th Street and Stone Way. The proposal is for a four-story residential building, containing 62 apartments and 3,500 square feet of retail on the ground floor. Parking spaces for 78 vehicles would be inside, however, after some of those spaces are used for commercial vehicles, that would “leave only one parking space per residential unit, and that’s not enough,” says Van Buskirk.

“We’ve had a traffic study done, and we’re looking to accommodate the parking required within the project,” says Kent Smutny of TSA Architects. “As far as those [vehicle] trips, we’re looking at reducing those best we can—getting credit for bus service, that type of thing—that’s where’s we are right now.” The design meeting is tonight at 6:30 p.m. in room 209 of the University Heights Community Center, 5031 University Way NE.

Remember that British one-hit wonder Living in a Box that performed the song Living in a Box off the album Living in a Box? I know—you were trying to forget. But Mithun Architects is keeping the memory alive. They wanted to live out every vagabond’s dream of converting an old freight container into swank digs. But there’s one catch to the metal cargo-conversion fantasy.

“It’s hard to beat the cost of wood in the Pacific Northwest,” says Joel Egan of HyBrid, a Seattle-based construction firm commissioned to build prototype residential units. So, rather than steel boxes like some pre-fab projects in Australia and England, an apartment building with ground level retail proposed for Dexter Avenue North will contain about 60 boxes built from wood (a pop-up about how they're built is here).

Two stacked units, at approximately 675 square feet each, look like this:

Together in an apartment building—after being assembled in a warehouse, delivered by truck, and plunked down by a crane—they will look something like this:

The greatest benefits of pre-fab apartment buildings are for the financiers of development. Although the construction costs, according to Tammie Schacher of Mithun, remain the same as on-site construction (the goal is $80-90 per square foot), the construction time decreases by three to six months—reducing the window of investment risk and adding months to collect rental fees. One hopes the savings are passed down to renters.

On the con side is the potential for flat-faced, dinky-looking buildings. The boxes don’t lend themselves to the variety of shapes to create interesting visual relief as on-site construction. However, there are examples, such as one in Manchester (pop-up), which looks quite dashing. In the preferred scheme of the proposal that went up for early design guidance this week, the boxes stood clustered together like several World’s Fair motels connected by pathways through the air. This has roughly the same esthetic effect of giant hamster cages connected by Habit Trails.

We’ll hold out opinion on the appearance until more designs are in, as the city needs more inexpensive apartments and Mithun fucking rocks. As for the dream of converting a cargo container into an upscale slumber tube, “All of us are hoping we can [eventually] get to a metal frame building,” says Schacher.

In the ballroom of the UW Husky Union Building yesterday, at a daylong “Reality Check” event put on by the Urban Land Institute, about 300 development professionals, public officials, and land-use and neighborhood activists stood around 30 enormous tables, each with a giant map of the Puget Sound region. A box on each table contained LEGOs—each yellow block represented 2,000 new residents, and each red block represented 2,000 new jobs—and pieces of colored yarn, which represented new roads and mass transit lines. Each group was tasked with placing the blocks and string to accommodate the area’s projected population growth.

Although the tools were elementary, the exercise was serious: According to an estimate released last month by the Puget Sound Regional Council, King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish Counties are expected to grow by 1.7 million people—roughly the entire population of greater Portland—by 2040.

“No challenge in our region is greater than the challenge of growth,” says Pat Callahan, senior vice president of Seattle-based Equity Office Properties. “We’re taking this bold step to ensure that the significant work that lies ahead starts now.”

Three trends emerged across the room as the game proceeded: dots sprawling into the green foothills of Snohomish and Pierce Counties; a fairly level swath of density along the I-5 corridor from Everett to Tacoma; and another strip of density hugging I-5, this one peaking sharply in downtown Seattle. Virtually all the plans would have focused growth in urban areas and limited it in rural and suburban areas--however, because none of the plans included rules for making that happen, they were more like guiding principles than specific prescriptions.

Most of those participating in the exercise agreed that there are limited options for growth in the region: Grow up or grow out. "There is a real division of interests [here],” Seattle City Council president Richard Conlin said. “This puts groups together to agree on the facts.” But putting those facts in practice will entail accepting some unwelcome realities.

“It’s hard for elected officials to think beyond their terms,” says Conlin. “But when we are looking at 20-, 30-, 40-year projections, it forces us to start thinking in that way.” He has asked the ULI to make a presentation to the council on the findings from the exercise.

The tallest stack of downtown density was at table 1, where towering LEGO buildings had lost their footing and tumbled into Lake Washington (the group later tied the towers together in a makeshift retrofit). The ringleader of the group, which called itself “Up Not Out,” was Al Clise of Clise Properties, which manages three million square feet of real estate downtown. “Seattle [will be] the preeminent center of commerce in the region for the next 100 years,” he said, explaining why the group elected to focus on central Seattle and avoid rural areas.

Richmond and Clise

“I think the government has been slow to get it,” said Clise. “It’s been so expensive to build in cities, developers go where there are no fees and create sprawl,” he says. “I just hope that the people who do the zoning and planning listen to this.” Clise would like to see more incentives to build dense urban developments, rather than penalties for not doing so.

But that vision of density, while increasingly recognized as the model that will reduce traffic and decrease carbon emissions, raises questions about how focusing the entire region’s development in Seattle will change the city. “The problem is when you get into north and south of the core,” Clise said. “The neighborhoods that will not change dramatically are those representing wealth. Those that don’t represent wealth and power— those neighborhoods will feel the effect of more change.”

Irene Wall, president of the Phinney Ridge Community Council, was a lone voice for neighborhood preservation at her table, where LEGOs were piling up around North Seattle. “If this is about coloring and staying within the lines, we’re wasting our time,” she snapped at the other players, mostly suit-clad developers. Growth shouldn’t have to sacrifice what we love about a city, she told me to the side, “but that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“Along every arterial in the city, you can kiss your ass goodbye to sunlight at every bus stop,” says Wall. “One-point-seven million is too many people. We need to look at directing growth across the entire state… looking at Spokane, Wenatchee, and maybe even Leavenworth.”

Although Wall’s point about scale is valid—planning needs to happen everywhere, not just in urbanized areas like Seattle—it’s not clear neighborhood groups will ever agree to the level of density we need across Seattle. You can’t just wish that people who want to move to Seattle will move to Wenatchee instead, nor can you expect arterials within 10 minutes of downtown to stay single-family forever. Nor should we want to.

It’s part of Seattle’s culture to simultaneously “hate sprawl and despise density,” said Mayor Greg Nickels. But “you can’t have it both ways.”

Sprawl!

The underlying problem with regional planning is how to translate the emerging trend on the tables, which leaned toward dense construction centered around Seattle, Everett and Tacoma, to a land use policy the region can actually put into place. For instance, Bremerton Mayor Cary Bozeman delivered a bitter pill to Clise and other developers at an afternoon forum in the afternoon, when he explained the reasons for the nickel-and-dime taxation of urban development. Without fees and taxes, it would be impossible for cities to provide the services that dense urban areas require.

“As long as we have a regressive tax system in this state, we’ll have a hard time controlling growth,” Bozeman said. And despite the state’s growth management act, which is geared to limit sprawl, there is currently no policy or enforcement body that could enforce the plan set forth at yesterday’s exercise.

Continue reading "Prescription for Regional Growth Could Be a Bitter Pill to Swallow" »

First Things First

The only thing missing from the northeast corner of 1st Avenue and Stewart Street is, well, everything.

It’s been a parking lot as long as I can remember. To see that corner used the way a downtown corner should be used, you’ve got to flip the calendar back 80 years, when it looked like this.

Touchstone Corporation plans to fill out the site's zoning envelope, which limits buildings to 125’. The proposed development would stand 11 stories, contain 75 apartments and 100 hotel units, operating as a sister hotel with the Inn at the Market.

“We’re going to have a tall wall of buildings behind us,” says Paul Schlachter of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. The zone is a strip between the 65’ height limits around the Pike Place Market and the 400’ allowances on 2nd Avenue, where three buildings are slated for construction.

Images via Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen

“We have an opportunity to celebrate the corner and make a landmark as you ascend 1st,” says Schlachter. He envisions a restaurant on the top floor, satisfying Seattle’s pining for a restaurant with a view of the skyline and Sound, a la Cloud Room. He plans to include a courtyard connecting 1st Avenue to the alley, the location of the hotel’s main entrance.

Tonight’s meeting marks the first step of the design process with the city. Why build now, I asked Schlachter, considering the forecast of a stormy economy? “The timing just seems right. This piece of property is one of the most prime pieces in Seattle. Nothing has been done with it. It’s a mystery to us why this signature location hasn’t been used before.”

Cheer them on at 5:30 pm in the boards & commissions Room L280 at City Hall, 600 4th Avenue. After-hours access info is here.

Second Try

Environmental Works goes back to the design-review board tonight with a revised proposal for Bakhita Gardens on 2nd Avenue. It’s low-income housing for women and it rocks my casbah. You can read more and see the design’s previous iteration here.

Environmental Works

“[The design review board] liked the building for the most part but had a couple design suggestions,” says Brian Lloyd of Beacon Development Group, which is developing the project for the Archdiocesan Housing Authority. He says the board members asked to change the shape of the windows (less narrow), integrate the brick and the rest of the façade (no color-band between), and unify the roofline (remove the jagged lines). “I was a little frustrated… because you go into the meeting and don’t know what the concerns or objections are going to be,” says the affable Lloyd. “Upon further reflection, there are some good ides that are going to make a better looking building.”

The design board’s second recommendation meeting will be tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Seattle City Hall. More info here.

The Great Technicolor North

This looks like a promising development. High density. Underused area. Please, almighty Lord in the heavens, may it not be these colors.

A couple hundred feet from the Seattle-Shoreline border on 15th Avenue NE (here's a map), Jackson Square, LLC proposes what it calls Jackson Square Multifamily. The six stories would contain 65 units and 88 parking spots.

Does "multifamily" in the name mean the units could contain two or three bedrooms for families—a welcome relief from the one-bedroom apartments for singles and couples that dominate the market? Kelly Shyne of the Justen Company, the architect, said it’s too early in the process for her to know how many bedrooms would be in the units. That’s really weird. Last night’s meeting was the second recommendation from the design board – the third meeting in all – a year and a half after the first payment to begin the design process with the city. Calls to Jackson Square’s Jim Abbot haven’t been returned.

Another life-changing experience after the jump.

Continue reading "Design Reviews: A First on First, a Second on Second, and the Great Technicolor North" »

Do you need a dozen swirly-patterned bowling balls, a rotating refrigerated pie display case, or a feeling of profound emptiness that takes you by surprise and doesn't let you go for a long time? The auction of the contents of Sunset Bowl in Ballard is tomorrow morning, and the heartbreak is free.

(This time last year I went to the last night at Leilani Lanes in Greenwood, where the woman who bowled the ceremonial last ball turned and said, "Now I can cry," walked into the arms of the closest human, and started weeping. The last ball was a spare. The closest human was me. The auction, too, was destroying, with big boxes of house shoes sitting on the polished lanes as if all the bowlers had been exterminated in order of foot size. I had every intention of going to the last night at the Sunset a week ago Sunday to pay my respects, but then I just went to bed instead.)