Wallyhood doesn’t have a forum section (we’re a bit envious of the West Seattle blog in this respect), but we do have some healthy commenting, and the post with the most was the recent news that new condos may be in the offing for the Tweedy & Popp / Rusty Pelican / Murphy’s / Kill My Lanlord Dry Cleaner corner. It’s worth bubbling them up:
On the nay side, we’ve got “more soulless depressing boxes”, “Go build your crappy condo on one of the festering holes left by QFC” and “Boo for condo development on 45th”.
On the yay side, “Housing is expensive enough around here and more supply could drive down the prices enough to make permanent living affordable.”
While both sides have good points, Wallyhood prefers the more colorful arguments of the naysayers compared to the cold rationality of the yaysayers (mmmmmm….”festering hole”).
There’s another element here, though: drivers in Seattle are the proverbial frog in pot: things have become become terrible, but slowly so, so slowly that we hardly realize it’s become intolerable. Remember when you could drive up 45th Street? Remember when there wasn’t bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-5 on Sunday afternoon?
Throw in $4 / gallon gas (oh, don’t think it’s gone for good) and an economic meltdown, and there’s really only one solution: stop driving!
But how? Bikes are lovely, but Seattle weather renders cycling impractical as a 52 week / year solution for all but the nuttiest. The Seattle bus system is…in need of an upgrade, shall we say? And please, if we see the word “monorail” in the comment section, we’ll have a conniption.
No, the solution is walkability: live near where you work. And that means building denser residential neighborhoods closer to urban merchant districts.
In other words, condos.
We know, it’s an ugly word: Soulless, depressing boxes. Artless, cookie-cutter shells made of pressboard and caulk. Condoms without the ‘mmmmm‘.
But it doesn’t have to be. Imagine if the condos built on 45th were high-design, beautiful green homes like these.
OK, maybe it feels a little 70’s, but at least its more practical than
Or perhaps more reasonable is something like what is being proposed in Ballard (via My Ballard)
The point is, housing can be beautiful and interesting and architectural, a magnet for arts and creative thought, a badly needed upgrade from the linoleum and decay that is devouring the buildings that stand there now. And the more dense the housing, the more land is left for green space, which we all love.
Plus, we could look out our windows and see manta rays!
I agree with this in theory, except for two major caveats:
1.) What happens to a couple with two spouses who work in different locations? What happens when you lose or change jobs?
2.) Wallingford (for example) doesn’t have much walkable industry aside from UW and maybe Adobe/Google in Fremont. How do we encourage job creation to go along with the condos?
Condos and density alone aren’t complete solutions — we also need to work on our transit infrastructure to allow practical commutes by bus or light-rail.
when the huzbeau traded his work at home job for a go to the office one, we moved from Bainbridge Island to west wallingford so he can walk to his job at Google. It’s lovely, we love it.
Except for the rows and rows of god awful condos that are now on our block. just when you think you’ve seen the ugliest one, the next one is worse. and since they sell for $500 – 700+ K a pop, I don’t think they qualify as “affordable housing”. The oldest ones on the block, built about 5 years ago, are already in need of a paint job – but the worst aspect of these is that almost all of them do not have adequate parking spaces. Yes, we wish everyone walked to their job, or worked at home, but the reality is that there are two or more cars associated with each of those condo units, and they typically have one tiny almost-impossible-to-get-into space. One of the condos boasted “2 car garages”. Those puppies sold like hotcakes. Condos typically do not keep people out of their cars.
I think better transit options keep people out of their cars. It’s a tragedy for Seattle neighborhoods that there are not more stringent design guidelines for all the “density”.
I had written a whole response to the condo thing but it got lost somehow. Now instead I will saw that I have web hosting and could easily set up some forums for wallyhood to use if you’re interested. Jordan let me know: I’m aocole on twitter.
Yeah, what work is there in Wallingford to walk to besides the occasional office? Please….do tell.
Why not just send all of the autos down to 40th street, where the other 7 million go through, right alongside the kids going to school and the coffee shop. Oh, and we cannot forget the bus system – exchanging 50% emissions with 500% noise pollution. Anyone know the decibals the seattle buses give off when they start/stop? I would be curious to find out for when I sue the city. I swear when I moved here there were very few buses on this street.
eM, it sounds like you may be talking about townhouses and not condos if you’re referring to something with a 2-car garage. Townhouses are different than condos, particularly within the city of Seattle. (I live in one.)