Homes sales are way up and home prices are way down. At least, they are in the nation as a whole.

Sales of new homes surged in April by the biggest amount in 14 years, but the median price of a new home dropped by the largest amount on record. The mixed signals left no clear picture of whether the worst of the nation's housing slump is over.

But here in Seattle, it's still, for the most part, up and up.

This is interesting: The rising cost of condos in downtown Seattle is driving single women out of the area, according to the Seattle Times.

Half of downtown condo buyers are couples, a third are single men and the remaining 17 percent are single women, condo marketer Leslie Williams told a forum on downtown living presented this morning by the Downtown Seattle Association.

A decade ago, single men and single women each were about 25 percent of the market, said Williams, president of Williams Marketing.

"Females just can't afford the prices downtown," she said. "The biggest issue is affordability."

Neighbors on First Hill are concerned about a new multi-use development planned for the former US Bank site at 1200 Madison. 5 years ago, Sound Transit had planned to use the site as a Light Rail stop when initial plans called for a line to connect to UW. According to Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray, the plan to stabilize the soil at the site - by injecting concrete 200 feet underground - was deemed too risky and plans for the site were scrapped in July 2005.
The current design plan includes 90 apartments, medical offices and retail space, with a massive, 403 vehicle, underground parking garage.

Standing in front of the 1200 Madison building, property owner Sam Robison tells me US Bank - who had occupied the building since 1957 - began looking for a new location when Sound Transit started talks to purchase the property. The 1200 Madison property - which has been home to gas stations, a hotel and the Tank and Tummy diner - is now drawing the ire of some neighborhood residents who are concerned about an increase in traffic in the area, as well as the size and scale of the project. Currently, the almost-was Light Rail stop is a pay lot, half filled by a giant dumpster.

First Hill Improvement Association Communications Chair Jim Erickson says that the Department of Planning and development "has done everything they can within the existing law to protect the [neighborhood]" but that FHIA is "concerned about pedestrian safety in the area." Erickson adds that FHIA "[does] not oppose" the project, they are only "trying to influence the design to make the best compromise for the neighborhood."

There's a new report out today on the Seattle-area housing market. What does the report mean?

From the Seattle Times:

King County home prices keep rising, bucking national trend

For the fourth month in a row, the price of King County houses has risen, reaching a median $465,000 in April, according to statistics released today by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Home prices remain steady

Western Washington home prices continue to hold up better than those in much of the country, but the latest numbers leave room for interpretation.

...

The number of closed home sales in King County last month was down 4.2 percent from April 2006, while pending sales, which can be a better indicator of the latest activity, were down 5.4 percent and the number of homes on the market was up 45.1 percent. This fits with a general trend of slower price increases, with increasing inventory and fewer sales, since last summer.

No bar has long endured at 332 15th Avenue East--which has played host to Cypress, Kozak's, Maguire's, Mango's, Jake's, and Hopscotch--and the space itself is not, in my opinion, at fault. The building, which is shared with a Starbucks, is no beauty, and the space is a little boxy. But plenty of successful bars are located in worse spaces. It's what's across the street that's cursed 332 15th Ave. E.

That's the Key Bank building at 15th and Thomas--and the parking lot that surrounds it. It's a huge pool of empty black asphalt and it makes that part of 15th feel empty, sad, and deserted. Tragically for the owners of all those dead bars, the windows of Cypress/Kozak's/Maguire's, et all, looked out over a narrow sidewalk and onto that empty parking lot. The late afternoon sun poured in to the bar, making it almost uninhabitable in summer. To block out the sun the bars' owners have had to nearly blacken the windows, making the space even less inviting than it already is. Bars and restaurants further north on 15th--where buildings line both sides of the street--do better. That end of the block feels cozy, contained.

Cutting through the Key Bank parking lot on my bike today I noticed one of those yellow land use permits--discretely tacked to a fence at the back of the Key Bank parking lot, facing Malden Ave., as far from the heavily trafficked 15th as possible. It announces that the empty parking lot and the current site of the ugly, ugly, ugly Key Bank building are the future home of a four-story mixed-use development. No other buildings are coming down--just the ugly Key Bank. And the parking lot goes.

This is a test for the knee-jerk anti-development crowd. How can you oppose this development? Capitol Hill loses a butt-ugly building--here's another pic--and big, ugly, empty parking lot. This is the kind of development we should welcome--nothing is lost, much stands to be gained.

This is yet another sign of how expensive it's becoming to own a house or condo in Seattle, and perhaps it's also a sign of how salaries in this city aren't keeping up with the cost of living here. But it's a good development for a few lucky home buyers:

If you're single and you make less than 80 percent of King County's median income (which means you make less than $41,700 per year), then you now qualify for help from this home-buying assistance program.

What would that help look like? A grant of up to $110,000 that doesn't need to be repaid.

This story is now a day old, but I don't think it got enough local attention (or any, as far as I can tell).

Yesterday, The New York Times announced that it had crunched the numbers and found that over the last two years, renting was a better bet than buying.

In a stark reversal, it’s now clear that people who chose renting over buying in the last two years made the right move. In much of the country, including large parts of the Northeast, California, Florida and the Southwest, recent home buyers have faced higher monthly costs than renters and have lost money on their investment in the meantime. It’s almost as if they have thrown money away, an insult once reserved for renters.

Granted, this finding represents a nation-wide view, and the Seattle real estate market, as everyone is always pointing out, is a bit anomalous. I don't have time today to parse all the nuances of this story or figure out how well it applies to Seattle (if at all), but I bet our commenters do.

At the very least, I bet a lot of people will enjoy this fascinating online calculator, set up The Times to help you figure out if it's better to rent or buy at your price range in your particular locale.

The Seattle Condos and Lofts blog has a full report on condo prices in Seattle. The bad news: Citywide, the median condo price went up $35,000 from March 2006 to March 2007--from $280,000 to $315,000, or 12.5%. The highest increase was on Capitol Hill, where median prices increased 19.7%, from $281,698 to $335,985. The good news: March is apparently a good time to buy, with sales increasing even as prices dropped--by a statistically insignificant amount citywide, but substantially (more than 10 percent) on Queen Anne and Capitol Hill.

U.S. home prices, adjusted for inflation, 1890 - present, plotted to a roller coaster:

(Via Sullivan)

Here's an artist's rendering of the new development planned for Pine Street between Summit and Belmont on Capitol Hill (aka the Cha-Cha/Bimbo's/Man Ray block):

It's easy to see (UPDATE! now you can click on the link for a bigger version) that the development is going to be just as monolithic, standard-issue, and uninspired as neighborhood residents have feared. It lacks the architectural texture that architects Weber + Thompson assured the neighborhood it would have (larger, actually usable balconies would be a start, as would some recessed units and visible courtyards, like the ones at the Press Condos down the street). It's a block long and six stories high, with one small corner of sidewalk-accessible open space at the west end. The drawing shows eight storefronts, which would be an improvement on early plans to include just three large storefronts on the entire block; however, rents, at an estimated $30 a square foot, will still be out of reach for most independent businesses--and the developers have said bars aren't welcome, anyway. (Current rents are as low as $14 a square foot.) The project is going through design review at the city, but since that process has no teeth (the city can't dictate aesthetics), residents are left with little recourse to alter the plans for a project that, along with the six-story building planned for the plot behind Linda's across the street, will redefine the neighborhood.

As we've said before: We're not against density. What we're against is density that obliterates the very "vibrancy" that made the neighborhood desirable in the first place. Build your condos, developers, but put them on open lots first -- otherwise, you may drive a stake in the heart of the "vibrant" neighborhood you're trying to draw people in to.

Llyod's Rocket is dead again:
I think it died this year. But for much of 2005 it was slowly revived/remodeled, and for much (if not all) of 2006 it barely lived as a restaurant/bar and coffee drive-thru. I visited the Rocket once (it's across the street from a bar I love, Saba) and was impressed by its ghostly crowd of empty tables and barstools. Lots of loud jazz art covered its walls, and there were lots things to do (flat-screen TVs, happy music, a posh portico) for the lots of people who were not there. Instead, the place had five souls in it: three making up the staff; and two (myself and a friend) making up its customers.

Before Llyod's Rocket was restored in 2005, Diana George wrote about it in this passage from a longer piece called "Empty," which was published in The Organ, a now-defunct NW art journal:

On the tiny triangular plot formed by the three-way crossing of 12th, Boren, and Yesler sits the abandoned Lloyd’s Rocket building. From 1961 to 1995, it was a gas station run by Joe Lloyd. He closed the station a year before he died; his wife Erma owned the property until her death in 2001, when it passed to the Lloyds’ children. It was never more than a notional structure--some big-windowed walls; a flat, bi-level, stepped-down roof; two carport-like awnings; some columns. The irregular, sprawling building slid into decay over the years. Weeds sprang up, pigeons roosted in the empty service bays, tires were dumped in the lot. In 1998, a chain-link fence went up around the lot, to deter crime, and the empty building was boarded up with large murals painted on plywood. The murals, depicting Seattle’s African-American history, are said to have been painted by “kids;” a sign, now gone, labeled the effort the “Lloyd’s Rocket Beautification Project.” With its proximity to the Youth Detention Center (a little further up 12th), the beautification of Lloyd’s is ambiguous. The murals were only partly, if at all, an expression of community spirit; they were also graffiti control measures, and the same kids who painted them were also potentially subject to the sorts of civility laws that might have landed them in the detention center: laws against sitting, against postering, against graffiti. Nor did the murals halt or even slow the building’s decay, as they too grew bleached and weathered.

Entrepreneurs and developers of Seattle listen! Leave Lylod's Rocket alone. Just let it rot. The place is good for pigeons, good for graffiti, good for nothing.

When I saw this big sign for a future hotel and condo on the parking garage on Second and Pine, I panicked:

I feared it meant the death of one of the most striking pieces of architecture in our city. But the project, called "1” Hotel and Residences and priced at $250 million, will retrofit, rather than destroy the only building in Seattle that impressed the man behind the most important building in Seattle, Rem Koolhaas.

If this were the ideal city, the parking garage on Third and Pine would be closed and left that way, left unused, left to be just the beautiful work of architecture that it is.

On this site there will be at the start of the next decade a six-story, 75-unit apartment building and a four-story, 48-unit apartment building:
Presently you will find there a number of small businesses, the most notable of which is Twice Sold Tales. Jamie Lutton, the owner of that book store, moved into this location in 1990 from the Broadway Market. She explained to me yesterday that she is now looking for a new place to sell her books and show her cats. By her reckoning the relocation will occur along Pike.

I bought this book from her business:
I also bought a short book by Herbert Marcuse.

Looks like somebody doesn't like the planned Pearl Apartments at 15th and Pine:

Is this the anti-apartment version of this?

Hate the condos going up all over Capitol Hill?

You're not alone.

The brick building (Neo-Classical, 1932), at 815 Airport Way S., has been junked by the feds and gifted (watch what you ask for) to the city. The mayor's office sent out a request for proposals today. Proposed uses include: "affordable housing (particularly for downtown workers), retail space, historical exhibit space, and space for agencies serving immigrants." But any new use must also be one that, according the mayor's office: "preserves historic building elements, remembers and celebrates the immigrant experience, and reflects the historic uses of the building."

So, like, we gotta keep the cells they used to lock up brutish feriners? That could be interesting. A BDSM bathhouse perhaps?

Share your ideas here: Public Meeting:
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Tashiro Kaplan Community Room
115 Prefontaine South

Serena Williams is back! She beat 16th-seeded Shahar Peer (3-6, 6-2, 8-6) to reach the Australian Open semifinals. Serena's stuff was all over the court for 2 hours, 34 minutes.

Carl Goodman over at Urbnlivn gives the latest details of the proposed new development at Pine and Belmont (the condos that will displace the Cha Cha, Bimbo's, and five other businesses) an unequivocally negative review, calling it "blocky and bereft of true design inspiration."

Skimpy, unusable, Juliet balconies adorn the elevations. An ineffective attempt at relieving the monolithic Pine Street façade is sought through the incorporation of a series of tiered shallow setbacks, allowing the sidewalk to become wider at the downhill Summit Avenue corner.

Goodman notes that the designer, Weber + Thompson, is also responsible for the sprawling, unpopular (among neighborhood residents at least) building at the corner of Broadway and Roy, a fact that has unnerved neighbors who are already alarmed at the prospect of losing seven local businesses. The developer has made clear that bars will not be welcome in the new building; independent retail, meanwhile seems unlikely since the rent in the large new retail spaces will be double what the current tenants are paying now.

Who am I? Why am I here? Am I a condo or a home?

The marketing scheme for this perplexed building is perplexing. Vaguely Gibson-esque. For the home investor who seeks the unknown. A little lack of clarity amid all this hyperspecific branding. Or maybe it just asks, Why? I guess it's not quite so deep. Just a little mystery to make us ask: What is it?

Of course I fell for it.

The Trace Condominiums have nothing to do with question marks or French philosophers. Scheduled for completion in December 2007, the units will sell for between $300,000 and $800,000. According to the PR rep for GTS Development, the lack of traditional advertising was intentional. She said advertising can "lessen the quality" of a product—so postmodern! So they're going guerrilla, apparently, with the vague building wraps and inserts fluttering out of alt-weeklies.

The website promises 142 "wide open living spaces," which I believe means open-floor-plan lofts. Also, "modern and historic architecture," which means they retrofitted an old industrial building and built another from scratch. Both sit at the jumbled intersection of 12th and Madison.

The first set of units—in the former industrial building—will go on sale in February. The ground floor will have space for five retail stores. Michael Klebeck, of TopPot fame, will open a bar called the Gun Club. The theme is midcentury Manhattan. No elaboration on what exactly that means in the press release I was just sent, which was titled, "Mystery of Trace Lofts Revealed."

To be continued...

I spent some time the other day in the giant, slanted roof building at Westlake and Denny--the sales office for three nascent Vulcan condoliths all either now or soon to be under construction. The building, in my opinion, looks like a giant toaster oven, ready for a big piece of French bread pizza. Maybe I was just hungry. Vulcan reps (could they have thought of a scarier company name?) say it's a green building, constructed in easy to move segments. If you are ever at Whole Foods, kitty-corner, and need a little walkabout to digest your overpriced deli fare, I recommend wandering through this ultra fancy toaster oven/sales building/gallery. It contains such marvels as a doll house-like model of the floor plans in Enso, the fanciest of the three new buildings, which includes miniature sushi and copies of Seattle Metropolitan magazine. It's kind of amazingly fastidious. I asked after the obsessive compulsive who built the thing and they told me it came from a company called Mice in the Southwest, but wouldn't tell me how much it cost. There is also a large model of downtown Seattle featuring buttons you can press to light up various neighborhoods and transportation lines. Giant touch screen tv monitors can show you the rooms, views, specs, etc. ad nauseum, for all of the fancy condos you will never be able to afford. It would be interesting to see how you get treated based on what you wear into the place. I was wearing a long wool coat, and about eight people rushed to help me.

Anyway, the condos:

Enso: Situated at the southwest corner of Denny and Westlake, across from Whole Foods. Two towers are already under construction, set to finish in early 2009. The north building will hold 12 floors of office space. The south building will consist of 135 condos, starting in the $400,000s and climbing to $1 million-plus. Retail on the ground floors of both buildings.

Rollin Street: Construction is set to begin next week on this building, being marketed as an "urban sanctuary," at the northeast corner of the same intersection. Like the Veer Lofts, below, the 208 "SoHo style flats" will have open floor plans. Prices start at $300,000 and go up to $1 million-plus. Expected to open mid-2009. Retail on the bottom floors.

Veer Lofts: Construction starts early next year. The Vulcan people think this will be the only building in Seattle with a bocce ball court on the roof. The 99 condos, on 9th Ave. North and Harrison, are geared "first time home-owners." First time home owners with at least $200,000. The tower is expected to open mid-2008. Also with retail on the bottom.

The Big Question: Vulcan's plans for South Lake Union were dreamed up with Portland's Pearl District in mind. Will the new neighborhood live up to its inspiration? Though viewed as a commercial success, the Pearl has its lovers and haters. The typical complaint is that it attracted a bunch of people with lots of money and zero cultural capital and limited civic engagement. One funny illustration: the childless hipsters in the condos surrounding a popular park call in noise complaints during the summer when poorer families bring their screaming children to play in the park's fountain.

When I was editing Erica's excellent feature on the changes coming to Pike/Pine I asked her to give some context to one particular quote she had included. Someone was bitching about the building going up at Broadway & Pine. It was called out as an example of how developers are ruining our beloved 'hood. My God, a Walgreens was going in. And, uh, dozens of units of affordable housing—including three-bedroom units, designed to be big enough for low-income families. How awful, so much worse than what was there before... which was what again?

A gas station.

There used to be a Texaco sitting on that corner—one the same block with a Chevron. I'll be accused of being in the pocket of developers for saying this but, you know, I'll take a drugstore—even a chain—and dozens of units of affordable housing over a gas station any day. The development at Broadway & Pine is a net gain for the neighborhood, unlike the development planned for current site of the Bus Stop, Cha-Cha, Manray, etc. That development represents a net loss—of affordable retail spaces and character. And as Erica pointed wrote, it's a highly stupid move on the part of the developers. They can't simultaneously sell condos by promoting their proximity to lively independent businesses while also tearing down the buildings that house their businesses (and refusing to build new retail spaces small enough to host small, indy businesses). Or they can—just not for long.

Anyway, on my way to work today I passed the building shown above—it's at Harvard & John, behind the new U.S. Bank building. I've heard folks bitching about it too. Oh, look at those awful little balconies! (Erica, for one, really hates little balconies.) And look at that out-of-scale, out-of-place trellis! And the brick veneer slapped on the first two floors! Shit, there goes the neighborhood!

Yeah, it could be better designed. So could a lot of the housing around here—including buildings like this ugly piece of shit, which predate the condo boom by decades. But what was on this spot at Harvard & John before this building—apartments, not condos—came along and ruined the neighborhood?

A parking lot.

Surely this building—despite its manifest flaws—is preferable to a parking lot. I remember a time when city dwellers regarded parking lots as an affront to urban values, not something worth preserving or mourning. "Save the parking lots!"—or the Texacos—isn't a rallying cry that will bring me to the barricades.

Scott Engler's proposal to build 11 cottages on a vacant lot at Thomas and 24th Ave. E is "still in the massage phase.â€� The Miller Greens development needs to get the city's approval to rezone the land from single-family, which would only accommodate four homes, to L1, and intermediate classification that allows a buffer of moderate density. Engler submitted his application on Dec. 4 and is negotiating with the city over the last remaining sticking point, a community building on the lot that exceeds height limits. Engler says neither he nor the city want to give up the building, which would be open to the entire neighborhood. Once the city accepts his application, the approval process could take six months or more, and construction will consume another year. Engler, who has been a builder in Seattle for forty-plus years, says his dream is to "to build the most sustainable project Seattle has seen and make it marketable.â€� Here are some specs: At 1,100 square feet, the concrete and glass homes would have: 1.5 baths (with storm-water flushed toilets), green roofs and stained concrete floors with radiant heat. The single-story buildings will face a central courtyard, increasing, Engler says, the chances of accidental encounters among neighbors. An underground parking garaged will provide one and half times as much parking as the city requires — but some neighbors are still in a huff over that. The units will sell for $600,000-plus.

This just in from Slog tipstress Sara:

A few weeks ago the owner of Da Lat, that amazing little Vietnamese restaurant at the corner of Broadway/10th/Roy, told me and my companion that he would be closing early in 2007. Apparently the owner of the building, which also includes Elite ("Seattle's Oldest Gay Bar") and the now boarded-up convenience store next door to Elite, is upset that the parking lot behind his building is wasted space. (From my understanding, he currently rents out a few parking spaces to the individuals businesses for staff parking.) The Da Lat owner reported that the building owner believes he'll make more money by converting the 3 spaces into one mega-space, throw in the parking lot, and charge the new occupant a lot more that what he's currently getting from the current occupants. The owner does not own the building with Siam Thai (but does own the old Jade Pagoda) so it doesn't look like Brix2 will be going up anytime soon.

I'm devastated that I will no longer be able to get the Best Peanut Curry and Spring Rolls on Earth, but my gay friends are sad that they'll no longer be able to go to Elite at 10am on the occasional Friday morning. A friend in Chicago is considering a last minute trip to Seattle to say good-bye.

I won't even brief you on the fight over replacing one grocery store with another up on Queen Anne Hill, except to say that well-mobilized neighbors, replete with a website and 36 media hits, have been giving the developer hell over a plan to replace the small Metropolitan Market with a much larger QFC. I slogged about the second Early Design Guidance meeting over the summer, when hundreds of people packed Queen Anne Presbyterian Church to complain about... well, everything from the tragedy of a beloved local store leaving the hill to the noise the QFC delivery trucks will create. The ruckus has died down since the summer, but Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth (QANRG) is still determined to heckle the planners into creating a project that fits their community vision.

Now, finally, the last Early Design Guidance meeting has arrived: Tonight, 6:30PM at the Queen Anne Community Center (1901 1st Ave W). I expect it to be exceptionally boring seeing as the items of discussion, after months and months of hashing out other parts of the plan, loading dock and parking configurations. But, unsurprisingly, these are hot issues for QANRG, which predicts a major negative impact from most parts of the project.

After the first round of acidic public comment, the local family redeveloping the store went back to the drawing board and made a slew of changes to make the project more in line with the neighborhood goals -- including the addition of 55 upper-story apartments and two small retail spaces on the corners of the QFC. But the project is damned from the start, according to neighbors. "A lot of developers have been very proactive in their projects in coming to the community council and asking, 'What can we develop that benefits us and also works for the community,'" says Kemp Hiatt, a QANRG leader, "[These developers] signed the lease with QFC before they discussed it with anyone. So it's really put us in opposite corners and really given us no choice but to fight."

So will the fight stop after the Early Design Guidance period is over? Of course not. Next up, it's the entirely more cumbersome State Environmental Protection Act review process. Yeeha.

Meanwhile in local news: A 96-unit condo development is reportedly planned for the block of Pike-Pine that includes Kincora, the Cha-Cha, and the Bus Stop. I'm going to a meeting tonight on the development and will report back later with details.

So long, Pike/Pine.

The P-I had a lengthy story yesterday about the scarcity of families with children in downtown Seattle—just four percent in the urban core, compared with 20 percent in the city as a whole and 37 percent for King County outside Seattle. Among the reasons the P-I cites: few larger (three-bedroom-plus) units, no downtown schools, few amenities like grocery stores, and a lack of "kid-friendly outdoor space."

I'm not sure grocery stores, parks and a downtown school would make downtown "friendly" to families anyway. For one thing, almost none of the condos that are going on the market now offer floor plans with more than two bedrooms; the few that do charge a million dollars or more. Families that could afford that kind of condo are pretty rare in Seattle; and they're unlikely to send their kids to public school anyway. Cold, ultramodern downtown condos feel like high-end bachelor pads or empty nests, not places to raise kids and grow old. Finally, and more tangibly, downtown condos generally lack private outdoor space; having a yard is one reason many people cite for moving to the suburbs. I'm not suggesting that encouraging families to move downtown is a bad goal for the city to have; but there are large, structural issues preventing that from happening now, which market forces alone will never address.

Wandering aimlessly around the Central Library a few weeks ago, I saw this slogan on a construction fence for the new 5th and Madison development: "Condominiums with a Conscience.� My first reaction, of course, was to snark. Environmentally friendly, LEED-silver certified condos for the very wealthy? Sounds like a marketing ploy to soothe the liberal consciences of those who consume the most.

But I had nothing else to do, so I rode the elevator up 25 floors to the 5th and Madison show room and now I'm sold on the whole green condo idea.

Since 2000, the City has required Seattle public buildings to be green (City Hall, aforementioned library), but in May our esteemed City Council passed the Downtown Livability Plan which forces big private downtown developers to go green as well. Thus the rise of the Conscience Condos -- expensive, elite and eco-friendly condominiums where the building's environmental qualities are marketed and appreciated as part of the overall sophisticated package. Forget composting toilets and peat-moss houses, between Denny Way and King St., even the exclusive and elegant can enjoy luxurious living with a clean, green conscience.

Here's the mock-up of 5th and Madison from where the library is now (so looking west from Madison, with 5th avenue to your left). All 24 stories of glass are insulated for energy efficiency.

And from 5th Avenue you can see their plaza, which counts as green space.

Buyers even get to customize their condos with earth-themed color motifs -- storm, dawn, etc...

There's six residences per floor and most are priced between $500,000 - $700,000, with higher ones going for up to $900,000.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, some of you may deride the people who buy 5th and Madison condos (or those at the also LEED-silver certified 1521 2nd Ave development, whose website opens with the phrase "Designed exclusively for the confident few�) as yuppies trying to buy their way into environmentalism, but is there anything really wrong with that? Having people willing to shell out a little extra for some eco-friendly refinements is what makes green building attractive and viable.

"Initially, when this happens, you need the right people, the right politics and the right place,� explains Tony Gale, who was on Nickel's green building team and is now the corporate architect for Starbucks. "There needs to be a mindset that can allow it to happen, a real world-view in the general populace, a ground-swell in interest from the general public.�

Even if the condo builders and buyers are motivated (like Gale) by a well-intentioned desire for a cleaner world, their decisions are founded on good financial sense. The 5th and Madison brochure makes sure to mention that green condos have a higher resale value than standard gas-grubbing homes and in Seattle, flush with money and liberalism, there is a definite and growing market for conscience condos.

"Five years ago, people wouldn't have noticed, really, if it was green building,� says 5th and Madison public relations manager Pam Perry, "The market's on a tipping point." According to Perry, the buyers are people in 30s, 40s and 50s, a lot of single men who "urban-oriented people comfortable with living downtown, a little more sophisticated.� She explains:

That's the whole shift in green, people think it's yurt-like living, but of course the new green doesn't look like that at all. You can't really look at that building and go, "Oh, that's a green building,� The green part is all in the innards. A lot of people don't necessarily walk in and go, "I'm buying because it's green.� It's a bonus, they know their energy bills will be less.

So are green condos going to spread to all of Seattle or stay only downtown where they're mandated? It'll have a lot to do with how successful 5th and Madison turns out to be.

"You better be careful what you propose in the private sector,� says Gale, "it better work.�

Rising from a hole in the ground on north Capitol Hill: Harvard and Highland, with 38 luxury condos ranging from 1,670 to 3,800 square feet, each with two, three, or four parking spaces. Starting price: $995,000.

The barebones promotional web site calls the development "a private enclave of five intimate boutique buildings, beautifully landscaped gardens, picturesque courtyards, and artistic water features." Unfortunately, there are no pictures available online, but the sign in front of the property showed a multi-family version of a suburban McMansion, complete with prominent garages and a great-room-style central foyer.

Ugh.

Word is: Capitol Hill's hipster drag, the stretch of property along Pine St. that houses The Cha-Cha Lounge, Bimbo's, The Bus Stop, Man-Ray, Harry's Market, and Kincora's has been sold. (This is on the North side of Pine between Summit and Belmont).

Reportedly, all the business owners along the block will be getting letters today telling them they can stay through November 2007 (the businesses—who'd been aware of a pending sale—were nervous that they were going to have to split by next April).

More condos on Capitol Hill?

No word yet on who's buying.

As $1 million is beginning to look like a cheap price tag for a downtown condo — where are all those reasonably but not outrageously well-paid professionals going to move in search of affordably classy living?

Looks like: The U-District.

Four major market-rate apartment buildings are currently in the works around the Ave... though market-rate is a questionable term, since rents in the U-District are lower than much of the city and county. Several dust-ups occurred this past year over whether higher rent apartments are good for the neighborhood and what qualifies as "affordable.�

Harbor Properties is constructing two big projects (the 73 unit Ellipse and 78 unit Helix) at the corner of 12th and 50th NE. The Ellipse originally caught my eye because the foam core advertisement posted on the fence around its construction area promises a free Feng Shui consultation with move-in. Between the night club names and the yuppie nod to eastern spirituality, I was highly skeptical about what sort of people the developers were hoping to attract to the U-District.

Well, explains Harbor Properties project manager Amy Baldwin, young professional types. "There's not a lot of quality housing for people who can afford it,� she told me. In June, the vice-president of Harbor Properties wrote an article in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce called �Urban Core too Pricey? Try the U-District� which notes that the time is right for constructing upscale apartments in the U-District as "graphic designers, researchers, nurses, artists and other `creative class' members� get priced out of downtown.

The exact rent in the new buildings has not yet been decided, but Harbor Properties says they'll be studios, one and two bedrooms and rents will be in line with those of similar buildings in the U-District, like the Kennedy. In that complex, studios go for $950 a month and two bedrooms for $1,585. Here's a rendering of the Helix, with the main building entry on 12th and the cross street being 50th:

and here's the Ellipse, which is on 12th (for context, this is next to a Walgreens and across the street from a Safeway):

So they're not building affordable housing. But at least they're not jacking tax-payers while they do it. Two blocks over, an apartment complex with an even more cringe-worthy name —- the Lothlorien -- is taking a $1.5 million property tax break for renting three dozen units at $914 to $1,112 a month. Although the average one bedroom in the U-District rents for $750 a month, the Lothlorien's rents are technically "affordableâ€� since they're within the city-defined means of people making 70% of Seattle's median income (or $38,150 a year).

Baldwin says she and other Harbor Properties planners heard the onslaught of negative community feedback about the Lothlorien's "affordable� development and decided NOT to seek the tax break for the Ellipse and Helix, even though they might be able to qualify.

So it's inevitable that the U-District is going to see more upscale renters moving in (with just the Lothlorien, Ellipse, Helix and long-planned Unico building, the district will see 302 new apartments priced over $900 on the market in the next five years) but since these projects can fit through the affordable housing tax break loophole, the hot question is what affordable housing advocates should do next. Fight to change "affordable" to be defined on a neighborhood, not city-wide basis? Mandate contributions to an affordable housing fund at the risk of scaring developers?

Kian Pornour, a board member for Roots homeless shelter -- which is adjacent to the proposed 26 market-rate apartments of the Unico building -- had an interesting response when I asked him whether he was nervous about the new class of people moving in so close to the shelter. He believes the shelter and the neighborhood will benefit from more upscale renters. "We're counting on people who are moving there volunteering at the Shelter," he said, "The best way to get them on your side is to recruit them and make them part of your family. Recruit them! Ask them for money!�

A focus-group questionnaire distributed recently to prospective condo buyers at First Church Seattle , a sanctuary undergoing redevelopment at the intersection of 15th Avenue East and East Denny Way (right by Group Health), posed the following question: "If you are buying a $1.5 million unit, would having some smaller 750K units in the building be a drawback?" How the definition of riffraff has changed on Capitol Hill: from drunks and vagrants to folks who can afford to spend $750,000 on a condo.

Last night was the long-awaited public meeting on Queen Anne Hill where architects unveiled their new plan for the transformation of the Metropolitan Market on Queen Anne Ave. into a block-long QFC and housing development titled "Queen Anne Place.�

The tension in the room was more than palpable — it was audible. An estimated 150 people of all ages filled the seats in the oven-like Bethany Church and when a community council member announced that QFC donated bottled water for the meeting, many audience members actually heckled, "BOO!â€� The Cox family, which owns and is developing the property, was brave enough to show up and a property manager made sure to mention after the family's brief introduction, "The Coxes are not `property developers,' they inherited the property.â€�

There's nothing like an architect's 30-minute description of massing studies to bore an audience into a submissive lull, however. After seeing the new plans for the project, many people took the time to thank the building owners for working with the public instead of just building an ugly but sellable monstrosity. This is the second time the "inheritors-not-developers" have come before the Queen Anne public and audience and community council members alike commented that the new plan looked much better than the one presented in January.

In response to vociferously expressed community concerns about the removal of apartments and a pedestrian-friendly environment, the architects reconfigured the four-story building from retail only with second-story parking to having only retail on the first floor and 55 housing units on the other three floors.

As Scott Smith, of Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth, said, "We presented six points specifically, this plan addresses two, borderline three, of them.� QANRG is upset with the basic plan of the development: replacing the local Metro Market with a QFC.

The main issues community members take with design of the project all stem from its size. This QFC is going to be 43,200 square feet and most of the comments made at the meeting regarded the Queen Anne Ave façade of the building — break it up! But not disjointed! — and the traffic/noise/pollution created by the QFC delivery trucks.

In response to this, the architects reduced the size of the QFC and made room for three small retail units on the ground floor. The 360 ft. long side of the building facing Queen Anne Ave is going to be broken up with modulation and entrances into the upper story apartments. Architect Lee Page said the building would look like it was owned by three different owners, though still allow for continuity. Here's a picture of the second-story apartments that gives you the jist of the modulation:

To see more pictures of the proposed project, or to marvel at the bitter fighting between Slog commenters, check out last week's post.

Next up: the design gets reviewed by the city. As Monday's meeting proved, every single step of the way on this project is going to be arduous.

There's a familiar fortress sitting at the summit of Queen Anne Hill, right next to the television antennae: the old Queen Anne High School, at Galer Street and 2nd Avenue North.

This subject seemed to lend itself to video presentation. Unfortunately, our Stranger videographer won't be starting for a few more weeks, and until then the camera is in the hands of rank amateurs. Like me.

Note: If you use Firefox, you'll need to download QuickTime to view the movies.

Before I nauseate you with my video, let's take a look from the sky, using Microsoft mapping:

We're looking from the south. That's 2nd Avenue North on the left side. You can see part of Galer Street along the picture's top, and that's 3rd Avenue North on the right side. That circular shape on the bottom is a fountain in a courtyard.

Video after the jump.

Continue reading "The old Queen Anne High School" »

The planned transformation of Queen Anne's beloved little Metropolitan Market into a city block size QFC has gotten tons of media coverage — mostly due to the persistent and vociferous anger expressed by the Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth, who aren't letting their corner specialty foods store go without a fight. In addition to saying that the QFC will create a less pedestrian-centered village and replace a small local business with a "giganticâ€� chain store, the neighborhood group takes issue with the destruction of an apartment building and two homes to make room for the planned 35,000 square foot grocery.

A new development in the dramalicious project, though, has as of yet gone unreported:

In response to this community hostility, the developers have changed their plans for the four-story building. The new plans will be presented at a community meeting next Monday that QANRG member Audrey Wennblom promises will be "bulging with people who have concerns.�

The old design positioned retail and parking above the first-floor QFC, the new plan replaces this second floor retail and parking with apartment units — 55 of em! — on the top three floors and places at least 158 parking spots underground.

And now, some context. Here's the site (in dignified, classic black and white):

The architect is required to submit three different design proposals for the building and I'll post about the differences of all the designs after we hear from the developers and the community on Monday. Style-wise, they all look pretty much like this:

While QANRG members say the replacement of lost living space is an improvement, it doesn't fix their root complaint of wanting to keep the little market in and the big QFC out. "This is radically different,� said member Kirk Robinson, "but not radically different enough.�

What the feisty neighbors hope now is that QFC will for some reason decide to get out of its lease... or even if the project goes through, to have sent a direct message to the city and developers about the ferocity with which the neighborhood will cling to its local businesses. The group plans to make the development process as costly as possible for QFC, via the land use lawyer they've hired.

"We want them to reconsider. Period,� says member Nancie Kosnoff.

Check out the meeting: Monday at 7pm in Bethany Presbyterian Church on Queen Anne Ave.

A 6-story, 75-unit condominium with ground-floor retail will be built on the land now occupied by the B & O Espresso, at Olive Way and Belmont Avenue, but for now it appears likely that the owners will sign a 2-year lease for their space, after which they will leave for a new Capitol Hill location.

Majed Lukatah, who with his wife owns B & O, told us last May that he was looking to buy a new building and relocate in advance of construction. The developer, John Stoner, has expressed his interest in selling the roughly 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space to B & O, but the construction would have forced the coffee shop and bakery to take a costly sabbatical. "I don't see how (I could have stayed) if they're taking the building down," says Lukatah. "I don't want to be on the street for a year."

But Lukatah says that during these intervening months he hasn't been able to find a site as good as the one he has now. By signing a the two-year lease, he has more time to devote to that search. Construction, then, appears likely to begin on the mixed-use project about this time in 2008.

[NOTE: It was late Wed night by the time I posted this Boom column on a recently announced major mixed-use development in Capitol Hill . I hope to update it today. In the meantime, I thought I'd move it up for some morning discussion.]

I'm recently returned from the first design review meeting for the sprawling 6-story mixed-use building proposed for the BMW property in Capitol Hill. I wrote a brief about it in this week's issue, which I somehow forgot to mention on Slog. Sorry to those who wanted to attend the meeting but didn't know it was happening. Still, the Seattle Central Community College lecture hall was so packed with neighborhood activists and adjacent property owners that the review board barely had time to finish public comment.

I'll try to atone by posting a short summary. We have to start with a picture of the site, which architect Clayton O'Brien-Smith aptly described as "somewhat irregular." Take a gander.

Now let me describe the adjacent properties. We'll go around the diagram clockwise. Starting in the upper left corner, that's the mini-mart, Pine Food. To the right of that is Linda's Tavern. Next to that is one arm of this development.

I should probably mention, by the way of context, that the developer Pryde + Johnson can build to 100 percent of the lot, according to code. And the company's preferred design calls for 208 condos. The condo-owners' windows would be right next to the Linda's patio. Linda herself was there to remind the architect that her patio can hold 100 and it's open till 2 a.m. every night of the week.

Back to the diagram. On the project's other side, at Harvard and Pine, is Bill's Off Broadway. Another popular bar with outdoor seating. Continuing down Harvard, you see another arm of the development poking out, and next to that is the War Room, at the corner of Pike. The War Room has that popular rooftop bar, and a partner from the bar attended the meeting to suggest that the architect and/or developers visit the site from the hours of 12-3 a.m. if they want to appreciate some of the challenges, noise-wise. Continuing down Pike, that's Maharaja Indian Cuisine, which has a liquor license, too. The owner of that property (and, I believe, the War Room) attended the meeting and at its conclusion expressed his support of the project, mainly because he was glad to have more residential development near Broadway.

You can see the project's Pike extension. And that's a parking lot, I believe, at Pike's corner with Boylson. It would also be part of the development. The project would build around both sides of the Starbird Apartments on Boylston. A resident of that apartment building attended the meeting simply to ask by what method he could access his building during the roughly 18-month construction. The DPD planner, Michael Dorcy, suggested parachute, but I think he was joking.

Another nightclub, R Place is just across Boylston, and management from that club attended the meeting, too.

The project calls for 50,000 square feet of retail space at the ground floor and below-grade parking for 190 cars. And if there weren't enough concerns already about how prospective condo-owners would cope with noise, one resident close to the project also warned the architect about the semi-trucks that make loud deliveries at the QFC (diagonally across the intersection from War Room) during the wee hours of the morning.

The architect, O'Brien-Smith, didn't have renderings yet, but he said the finished product would look a lot like other recent Pryde + Johnson developments, like this one, The Hjarta, in Ballard.

Bad idea. A woman who owns a 4-plex on Harvard Avenue told the architect that there's a "proliferation" of buildings like that one in Seattle and that "they'll all look awful in 10 years." Judging by the nodding heads, most everyone in the room seemed to agree with this sentiment. Also, there's no rooftop culture with this project, which puzzled some.

Generally speaking, it seemed that neighborhood activists liked to see the aggressive residential development, but they were having a hard time liking this project. Personally, I'm having a hard time picturing something that doesn't look like a college dorm. And while I'd love to believe that the real estate agents can find 208 buyers capable of coexisting happily with all five neighborhood nightclubs, that seems unrealistic. Maybe in Chicago or Manhattan or San Francisco, but there isn't that much of a premium on space in Capitol Hill, is there?

I had a call into O'Brien-Smith in advance of the meeting, but didn't hear back. I'll give him another try tomorrow. I would like to post the graphics that he presented today and give him a chance to tell us how his design can deal with the surround sound.

Post your questions in the Comments thread and I can put them to the architect and developer when I talk to them.

The Seattle Displacement Coalition fired off a press release today, timed to this Seattle Times story about how the downtown condo boom might be coming in small part at the expense of rentals, especially low-income rentals.

I have to dash off for an interview, which by coincidence, deals with one case of rentals converting to condos. But let's start the debate now. Press release after the jump.

Continue reading "Renters being routed?" »

Today's Boom column on development near Qwest Field has been updated to accommodate the remarks of John Chaney, executive director of Historic Seattle. His organization is involved with the renovation of the Johnson Building, which will be one of the first in a wave of condos and apartments built atop old Pioneer Square warehouses.

As residential density increases downtown, new Seattle neighborhoods will rise up alongside the old ones, and with recently announced developments near Qwest Field, a stadium district appears to be taking shape. Approximately 1,000 residential units will be built over the next few years -- "That's a brand new neighborhood," said King County Executive Ron Sims, who held an informal press conference Monday morning to present the projects to reporters.

I've got pictures coming, but first here's the statistical picture: The big project on Qwest Field's north parking lot will be 956 residential units, with the majority portion being apartments, 140 of which will rent as affordable housing, within the price range of people making roughly $35,000. The market-rate condos will cost $500 - $600 per square foot. There will be 34,000 square feet of retail and roughly 1,000 parking stalls. The small project is the renovation of the Johnson Building, a storage facility at 1st Avenue South, Occidental Avenue and Railroad Street. There are 69 units planned, including three live/work lofts on12 of which will be affordable to people within range of people making up to 115 percent of Seattle's mean income, which is roughly $63,000 for a single person.

Before he got into these specifics, Sims talked about the cities that in his opinion represented the best integration of sports stadium and neighborhood -- Yankee Stadium in the Bronx; Fenway Park in Boston; Wrigley Field in Chicago. Kevin Daniels, president of Nitze-Stagen, which has a hand in both projects, drew his inspiration from San Francisco, where AT & T Park (formerly PacBell Park) complements the Mission Bay neighborhood.

Sims talked about how in those cities and others, cameras showing nationally telecasted sporting events would venture outside the stadium to show distinctive parts of the neighborhood surrounding the park. "Impressions of a community are always drawn by what you see on TV," said Sims, who imagines more pedestrians in the blocks circulating through the stadium and through brightly lit stores and restaurants. "That's a shot that you can't pay enough money for."

Today, if a cameraman were sitting above the north end zone of Qwest Field, and he whirled around to look for an outside-the-park shot, here's what he'd see:

Photo courtesy Weber + Thompson

Acres of asphalt: Not much of a "money shot." It's even more offensive from a bird's eye view:

The project planned for the north lot does not completely eliminate that parking lot blight, but it drastically reduces it. Here is a computer graphic that shows how it would look if we were hovering above I-5, again looking north.

Graphic courtesy Weber + Thompson

Now let's switch to an artist's rendering of the new mixed-use project, from the same perspective but closer:

Courtesy Weber + Thompson

[A dozen pictures after the jump, along with consideration of the projects' impact on Pioneer Square and the opinions of downtown real estate mogul William Justen.]

Continue reading "Stadium District" »

Wondering how Ken Hutcherson spent the Fourth of July? Wonder no more...

July 5, 2006

Dear Prayer Warrior,

Please pray for me as I re-injured my chest last night when I fell on a propane tank. I will be going in this morning to make sure I haven't cracked some ribs. Pray that I will recover quickly from this, and I will be ready for Gideon's Posse this Friday night!

Your Pastor,
Hutch