It’s been quite a while since the whole hullaballoo over the the CVS going in to old Tully’s at the corner of Meridian and 45th Street.
So, how did that ever turn out?
Short story: CVS won, the project is continuing with a dreary design, scheduled completion date in mid-2015.
Slightly longer story: CVS started by presenting the Design Review Board with what was widely perceived as an ugly design, more befitting a suburban strip mall than our slightly crunchy, craftsman neighborhood. The board rejected the design, and when CVS returned with a second, slightly improved, but still dreary design, they rejected that as well.
CVS then took an end run around the board, resubmitting the second design as an “addition / renovation of an existing commercial building”, which is not subject to design review. Unburdened of pesky obstacles, the project is now scheduled to proceed as is.
Michael DeAngelis, a Director of Public Relations at CVS tells me “We hope to be under construction before the end of the year and open in the summer of 2015. We expect to be able to provide more detail later this fall.”
Queen Anne, we’re told, fared better. The Queen Anne Review writes:
We’ve been lucky on Queen Anne. Thanks to active residents and community groups like the Uptown Alliance and Queen Anne Community Council, the plans for the Queen Anne CVS were sent back to the drawing board. In addition to general design principles, the Uptown Framework provided additional guidance to ultimately create a building that fits into the neighborhood – and is more than just a one-story, one-use building.
The current design bySchemata Workshop is a big departure from the first, standard cookie-cutter CVS Pharmacy design. Instead, the Queen Anne CVS building is proposed as a three-story structure with 16,200 square feet of commercial use at street-level and 31 residential units above the first floor. A 62 stall below-grade parking will be accessed from an alley on the west side of the building.
Setting aside the fact that a lot of Wallingford residents would rather have not see a CVS in our neighborhood at all, I think that Wallingford did well in its negotiations with CVS. The company’s original proposal was to level the existing building and install one of its standard suburban store designs that can be seen in strip malls across the country.
The community objected and several members of the Wallingford Community Council’s Land Use Committee spent weeks with CVS working on alternative designs. Schemata Workshop was brought in by CVS to work with the WCC. Schemata has a good track record of doing restorations around Seattle.
As a result, CVS and WCC were able to agree on several important improvements. Instead of demolishing the historic building, CVS agreed to keep and restore the building shell. CVS and WCC reviewed old photos of the evolution of the old building, and decided which aspects should be retained and which past elements should be restored.
In addition, CVS agreed to a number of modifications, including the nature of the materials to be used in the remodel to blend in with Wallingford designs, limitations on CVS signage and lighting, Windows on street frontage to avoid long blank walls along sidewalks (which reduced interior display and storage space for the store), and a number of other design features which WCC land use folks would be in a better position to describe. CVS even agreed to include a brick wall where there is currently a Wallingford mural, and have a community contest to select an artist for the mural’s replacement.
As a result of the cooperation between WCC and CVS, WCC agreed to support the agreed design before the Design Review Board. The DRB turned down the project because it wanted to see several stories of residential development on top of the building. Since the long time local owners of the property would not permit that, CVS took its project out of the design review process. Whether CVS will now keep its commitments to the community when it no longer needs WCC support is unknown.
In my personal opinion, Wallingford’s ability to retain and restore an interesting old building is much preferable to the Queen Anne design which looks to me just like a standard new office building. The weeks of work contributed to the process by CVS and Schemata, and folks like Greg Hill, Vince Lyons and others for WCC should be commended as an example of developers and the community working together rather than at cross purposes.
Boo! 45th already has a 3 drug stores on it. I’d personally like to see something else there.
A couple more of the same renderings at Schemata’s site http://www.schemataworkshop.com/cvs-wallingford/ … so at a reasonable guess perhaps they’re sticking with this design, to the extent that they would have anyway (I mean, inasmuch as presentations made to the DRB are drawn in broad strokes.)
I agree that it could work out pretty well, considering. Enough of the look and scale survives, that it should fit in a lot better than anyone would have expected, and if it’s done well, it will be an asset after CVS has come and gone.
This project, in conjunction with the Mega-Apartments being built closer to Stone Way, is going to make 45th undriveable, unbikeable, and we are going to see gridlock until late 2015.
::sigh::
This could be the most amazing building in the history of architecture and I still wouldn’t shop there. CVS is a terrible company selling crappy merchandise, and a recent study revealed that CVS has the largest CEO-to-worker pay disparity among top grossing US companies. I hope their tenure in Wallingford is short-lived.
How has rising competiton on 45th affected Bartell’s? It is such a small store compared to others, now soon to be CVS. Might there be a future expansion opportunity for the QFC?
@JoeyD: Agreed! The ROAD TO BALLARD is eff’d up and will be forever. We need to start tolling it. They don’t stop to shop, they just clog up the roadway on their day-trip to Ballard.
I for one would much rather see the historic existing building repurposed and spruced up a bit than have another multi-story residential/commercial complex, so I think this is a win-win. That said, it seems odd for them to want to put in another drug store when the Payless a few blocks to the east went belly up not so long ago. Walgreen’s has a huge advantage over Bartell’s and the proposed CVS — easily accessible street-level parking.
PS: Crappy merchandise? Maybe in some departments, but I’m fairly sure all these places make most of their money off prescriptions anyway, so it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other for most folks. Convenience and service will be the deciding factors most of the time.
I think it is a lose/lose. In every single way. I went to all the Queen Anne meetings re CVS. The one big thing they have going for us, that Wallingford does not have, is the
Queen Anne Community Council’s Land Use Review and Planning Committee (LURC) will include two presentations; one by the developer of the CVS Project…
This a group of around 5-6 members, chair is Marty Kaplan, who is an architect. Other members include-I’m not sure of all their professions- but attorney, engineer and more. We have NOTHING like that. And we had nothing like that when we could have really used these skills to help us with CVS. The way Wallingford is growing, I think we should consult why the QA LURC, and try to replicate their committee. I think we have skilled folks in our area, too.
Agree with Doug, it is a crappy mega-store selling crappy merchandise. Walgrens a close second.
Hey Y’all – though I love my well-meaning, super-progressive Wallingford neighbors, the idea that a boycott will have any effect on CVS’ viability on that site is ludicrous. CVS couldn’t care less about a bunch of hippie pedestrians – with a big sign and 10,000 square feet of surface parking, this store is geared to the single passenger vehicle travelling along 45th Street, to-and-from I-5, and it will be there FOREVER. What, is it 1955 and nobody told us? If I were one of those money-loving MBA types, I would be in awe of the sheer, diabolical, Emperor Palpatine-level cleverness of this project: a one-story, single-use building with a giant parking lot (can you say suburban strip mall?) in the middle of an urban village, on a major commuting route. Its pure genius!
In response to iowagirl, I would like to point out that the Wallingford Community Council has had a very active land use committee for decades comprised of a number of architects, planners, land use lawyers, designers etc. Without exaggeration it is easy to say that they have contributed thousands of volunteer hours to Wallingford land use issues over the years. Our community would be a much different and far less desirable place without these dedicated folks. The list of their successes is a long one and extends into many parts of the neighborhood.
For many years, they have met with developers and community members to guide development; helped develop neighborhood plans; and represented neighborhood interests before Design Review Boards, city agencies, the city council, and when necessary through litigation.
As mentioned, this is a volunteer effort. If iowagirl or anyone else would like to get involved, please attend the next meeting of the Wallingford Community Council at the Good Shepherd Center (which was saved from becoming a shopping mall in the 60s by community efforts) and volunteer. It meets the first Wednesday of every month at 7:15 PM.
Very good advice Lee Raaen.
Dreary design? Did you see their original design? It looked like something from suburban LA transported onto our doorstep. The reworked design takes only the best parts of the current building such as the stone cornice and facia and preserves them and are restored to how they once were, an improvement over the current building which was partially bastardized I’m guessing in the 1970s. I prefer the reworked design over the Queen Anne design which looks identically to buildings in Bellevue, and the new plasticized Capitol Hill and Ballard. At least we get the building restored back more closely to what it looked like than the tacky changes which were made to it over the years, rather than this cookie-cutter cubist Bellevue vision of Seattle’s future.
Hi Lee,
I am aware of the individuals who did make a difference in the CVS design. And I am grateful to them. And to you! Point taken, well deserved. I did miss the one when Greg Flood presented, which I really regret. Don’t recall for sure for sure how you voted on that one, Lea. Thank you for being not he council.
I went to every single CVS meeting at U.Heights building, but did miss a great presentation at WCC. But I really did not know it was an established land use committee with a “name.” And it certainly does not have to have one. Regarding, involvement in the community, I have spent countless hours at meetings regarding the Wallingford Playfield (thank you so much, Greg Flood, for all the time you spent on THAT one!) I attended, and was on the original committee for Lincoln School use. plus working with all the representative of each school as they flowed through Lincoln. Those went on forever! And working with SSD Facilities,and the school board. How frustrating that was! I worked so very hard on the impact the FPA would have it it came, and the parking issues, playground issues, etc., related to Lincoln and the FPA. I guess, when I went to the Queen Anne meetings, I misunderstood the similarities of WWC and QAC, because of the QA stand-alone committee which I saw there. Sorry.
I was also WWCC secretary in (I think) 1989 and 1990, but those years might be wrong. And I do not recall how many years it was. I think I stopped when I started working evenings at UWMC.
Typo Thank you for being on the council