PUBLIC HEARING MARCH 31 at 5 PM – CITY HALL Sign-up starts at 4:30. If you can’t make it, you can watch it on the Seattle Channel 21, but please be sure to write your Councilmember.
Entries from March 2008
Who sets Seattle Comprehensive Planning agenda?
March 30, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Categories: Government · Land Use · Neighborhood · growth management act
Tagged: Government, Land Use, neighborhood plans
Manhattan SLOG in Seattle (…and who the h.ll is Will?)
March 28, 2008 · Leave a Comment
“When will this idea die?” asks Dominic Holden on SLOG in Towers in the F..ng Park . You owe it to yourself to check out the discussion on SLOG. 97 comments hours within posting.
In the comments thread of almost every Boom post I write, regardless of the development at hand, Will in Seattle remarks that what Seattle really needs are 100-story residential towers to provide affordable housing. He’s also suggested they should be surrounded by green space.
Sorry, Will, nothing personal, but towers surrounded by green space is one of the worst urban planning concepts ever conceived. Buildings 100 stories tall – parks or no parks – cost a ton of money. When subsidized to make low-income housing, towers have resulted in slums in the sky and urban decay on the ground—because people will choose to live in isolation when packed into dense artificial “communities.” Slog comment hero Fnarf, thankfully, has rebuked the notion again and again. I agree with Fnarf’s indictment over here, and I really love this one (even though it’s kinda mean) over here. The old idea, pushed by French architect Le Corbusier, is now widely discredited.
But that doesn’t mean developers have stopped pushing towers in the park. New York’s MTA chose Tishman Speyer to develop the West Side railyards. The buildings aren’t quite 100 stories, but here’s the towers-in-the-park proposal.
The NYT doesn’t mince words about the project today, in an article titled Profit and Public Good Clash in Grand Plans.
The full article is over here.
Categories: Housing
Tagged: affordable housing, green space, Media, ugly buildings
DPD Decision on 6017 Roosevelt subdivide: Record easements and DNS
March 27, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Land Use Application to subdivide two parcels into 10 parcels of land (Full Subdivision). Parcels range in size from 739 square feet to 2,159 square feet. Related to projects 3004435 and 6108603. Proposal address: 6017 Roosevelt.
Categories: Housing · Land Use · Neighborhood
Tagged: Land Use
Knowing Cause from Effect in Housing Policies
March 27, 2008 · 1 Comment
A commentary on complexity in government The Cost of Complexity -from the Free Enterprise Forum Weblog dedicated to discussing local policy issues in CENTRAL VIRGINIA – raises some excellent questions on Seattle housing policies in the context of a well publicized UW study on housing prices. “The creation of laws and ordinances has often been compared with sausage making,” writes Neal Williamson;” “In reality, it is nowhere near as organized or efficient as your typical pork packaging plant.” The policy-making process, he explains, rarely includes clear communication of how eventual change in local ordinance or regulation will impact the involved community.
From Williamson’s blog:
In a February 2008 paperon housing prices, University of Washington Professor Theo S. Eicher used regression analysis to study housing prices and their relationship to regulatory environment in five major cities in Washington State (Everett, Kent, Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver). His findings, reprinted below, are not surprising but are eye opening.
“Aside from demand factors, housing prices are found to be associated with cost-increasing land use regulations (approval delays) and statewide growth management. For example, after accounting for inflation, regulations are associated with a $200,000 (80 percent) increase in Seattle’s housing prices since 1989, while housing demand raised prices by $50,000. This constitutes about 44 percent of the cost of a home in 2006. Cities with less stringent land use regulations had significantly lower price increases due to regulation.” Emphasis added – NW
If we accept the conclusion that an onerous regulatory environment increases the cost of housing, is this perhaps the true goal of such regulations? Each time housing affordability comes up in meetings when regulations are being considered, such concerns are quickly dismissed because the homes that are being built are not designed to be affordable.
If we fail to recognize the impacts of regulation on affordability across all price points, we will end up with government induced housing inflation pushing the working class even further out creating increasing demands on our transportation infrastructure and leaving only the very high end and the very low end in our urban core. Complexity breeds bigger government and bigger government breeds increased complexity. It is in everyone’s best interest to strive for clarity of intent and implementation at the front end of the sausage factory.
What do you think?
Categories: Housing · Land Use · affordable housing
Tagged: Affordability, Housing prices, Land Use
Ballard, USA!!! Effort to Save Denny’s is National News…even in Farm Country
March 24, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Meanwhile, after very little checking, I realized that Knute Berger on Crosscut had the Ballard Denny’s rising national news star in late February. Knute notes:
Newsweek.com has weighed in on the controversy over the Ballard Manning’s/Denny’s diner that recently was designated a landmark by Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board. The story, “Is Googie Good?” by Sarah Kliff, gives a rundown on the affair, which has gotten attention on blogs and in major newspapers (the Los Angeles Times), particularly because of the eyebrow-raising notion that a boarded up “Denny’s” could be worth preserving.It’s not unique, however. There’s a growing trend to honor mid-20th century architecture that was designed for regular folks. A couple of examples: The oldest McDonald’s restaurant in the county (1953) was found to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 after being determined to be of “exceptional significance.” A 1959 Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, California was made a California Point of Historic Interest in the 1990s. And Alan Hess, architecture critic and author of the book Googie Redux: Ultra Modern Roadside Architecture says that there are several, yes, Denny’s diners that are being researched as possibly historically “significant” in the Los Angeles area.Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that landmark’s board chair Stephen Lee says the Ballard diner controversy has generated “‘the most excitement’ he has seen during his six years chairing the board.”
I’d just have liked to have seen my sister’s face, and heard the comments she made to her husband, when she saw the Ballard Denny’s on TV. She thinks we’re a litte strange out here in the Pacific Northwest… Nothing strange about cutting off a 1.5 lane county road and driving a five-mile shortcut on a cornfield dirt path though! Talk about zoning…
Categories: Land Use · Media
Tagged: Ballard, Crosscut, Historic Preservation, Media
Livable Seattle Movement to Council: Keep Pact with Neighborhoods
March 22, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Livable Seattle Movement in a March 6 presentation to City Council expressed deep concern with a draft update of the Multifamily code and zoning written by DPD. The draft MFU, which contains major and minor changes to standards adopted in 1989, like the Planning Commission’s Affordable Housing Agenda, is written to accommodate population growth in Seattle; however, no such growth in population has occurred nor is realistically expected.
The Livable Seattle Movement, in an effort to spotlight political mythmaking including the notion that density equals affordability, assembled a team of planning professionals, architects, and citizens – many involved in previous planning efforts the data back decades.
In its March 6 presentation to Council, LSM notes:
Reviewing the changes we find that both inside and outside the urban villages, the [proposed] MFU changes would produce buildings even bigger and uglier than the code of 1982, a problem code that resulted in a citizen revolt. [See Seattle PI, "Revolt of the Neighborhoods,' 1/22/87 by present Councilmember Jean Godden.] It will also heat up the view capture, sunlight capture, and other capture problems we seenow with the monster houses in other zone. (See Appendix C.) We have no doubt that this MFU update will be equally unpopular this time around.
Revising the standards will also change the neighborhood plans to something new and unpredictable – veering far from what people thought the standards were when they OK’d their plans. In 1994, the City Council made a compact with the neighborhoods, which every neighborhood honored by developing neighborhood plans that accepted the conditional urban village designations and boundaries of the 1994 Comprehensive Plan. No grounds have been put forward to justify breaking this compact. None exist.
Adopting the MFU as written would destory the urban villages strategy — the essence of our present comprehensive plan – and would instead scatter new pockets of density randomly around the city….
See 21 pages of changes Seattle needs to make to its zoning code. Lots of photos of ‘zoning gone wrong’ for an excellent write-up by Greg at SmarterNeigbors.
Thanks to Kent Kammerer of Seattle Neighborhood Coalition for photos. Find more at SmarterNeighbors and Livable Seattle Movement.
Categories: Housing
Tagged: Afforable Housing, Land Use, Multifamily Update, Urban Villages
Mayor, Police, and Dept of Neighborhoods at Saturday’s Farmers’ Market, March 15
March 11, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Having a problem with University District crime these days? Are you afraid to park your car, bike, or scooter in your building’s alley parking garage at night or even take out the recycling? What’s up with all the open dealing on the Ave at all hours of the day and night? Is that why minimum wage workers at Walgreens, Safeway, and other local businesses wait for late-night buses on the Ave at bus “shelters” with no seats in fear?
Both the Roosevelt Neighbors Alliance and the the University of Washington’s North of 45th Crime Watchdawg List are promoting an appearance by Mayor Greg Nickels, the Police – Seattle and UW – and others at this Saturday’s Farmers’ Market. Bring your questions, and come hungry. Stop by Patty Pan Grill for some awesome grilled tacos, quesadillas, or take-home rellenos. Check out the blog at The Quirky Gourmet for recipes and much more. Now here are the details on the Mayor’s deal..
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Categories: Housing
Tagged: Crime, Events, Police, Politics, Utilities
Comp Plan Amendment Proposals
March 6, 2008 · 2 Comments
Here’s the list and it looks smaller than one might have expected, only 21 proposals on the “matrix” to use a poor word choice. Number two is kindof interesting, proposed by DPD,
Remove the Sand Point policies from the Comprehensive Plan. Policy language incorporated into another planning document.
The Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods Committee is holding a public hearing on comp plan amendments March 31 at 5:00 in City Council Chambers. BTW, my guess is DPD is clarifying that the Sand Point policies are already incorporated into another planning document. Does anyone think that’s a neighborhood plan?
Categories: Housing
Tagged: City Council, Comp Plan, Land Use, Neighborhood Planning, zoning
SIDEWALKS AGAIN!
March 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Ferguson Property Management opened access to the Ave sidewalk between 47th and 50th in front of The Lothlorien and attached four important numbers – street address 4730 – to the front of the mixed-used retail apartment complex its been developing five feet north of The Wilsonian, the mixed use retail apartment complex it reportedly sold to Denver-based Wilsonian-UCAL LLC in October 2007. Those bright-orange markes on the sidewalk are a bit of a curiousity. Hope they don’t have anything to do with title insurance…
From the files -DPD permit to adjust boundary, and addresses, from 4710 through 4730, granted November 2005.
No doubt Rudy’s Barber Shop, Mr. Lu’s Fish and Chips, and the Korean Noodle House on the (far) north side of the Lorthlorien are glad to have that sidewalk open again. It’s been a long two and change years for them and everyone else on the block.
Categories: Neighborhood
Tagged: affordable housing, Density, Land Use
