The HALA rezone proposal has been all in the news since it was released on Monday and is city-wide. Here is the zoning change map, and here is that map overlaid in Google Maps. The key element of the plan is to expand urban villages and eliminate single family zoning near urban villages.
We’ve also been looking at the major U-District light rail upzone that will become reality this fall. Here is the 588 page Environmental Impact Statement for the upzone. Don’t want to read all 588 pages? A synopsis:
- Existing zoning in the U-District maxes out at 8 stories
- The rezone will either go to 16 story towers over a larger area or 34 story towers over a smaller area (the current UW Tower is 325 feet tall, close to the upper height limit)
- The goal of the upzone is to add 5,000 more housing units and 4,800 job spaces on top of what existing zoning already allowed (Wallingford currently has about 8,500 housing units)
- While the rezone impact area is generally constrained to being within 5 blocks of the light rail station at 45th and Brooklyn, there is some spill over north of 50th (none over I-5 into Wallingford)
The two U-District rezone options in the EIS are shown here in map form, which the council will choose between this fall:
The Seattle Displacement Coalition is a ragtag group opposing the U-District upzone. Their general argument is that by destroying neighborhoods with upzones, more middle and low income housing is eliminated than is generated. They’ve been good grist for the news cycle, but unable to apply any political or legal brakes to the upzone.
So, what does this mean for Walllingford, besides downtown getting closer? Well, Sound Transit says we are getting rail sooner or later, it’s just a question of when. Reports and conversations lead us to believe that Wallingford may get two Light Rail stations, one near Stone and 45th, and the other halfway to the U-District, about where the Wallingford Shell station is at now. That would be consistent with transit blog reports and existing spacing of light rail stations.
Most of 45th is currently zoned for 4 stories, but often in a narrow band along the street. If the city adds 5,000 housing units per station here then the net effect would be to more than double the population of our neighborhood overall. That would require that most of the region between 40th and 50th get upzoned to apartments and condo towers that are between 16 and 32 stories tall, just like the U-District.
One thing that is certain is that coastal neighborhoods with the largest lots and the lowest walk scores are going completely untouched by HALA or transit based density. We seem to be heading towards a Seattle where the richest 1% live on the coasts with spacious lots and fancy cars and private schools, private golf courses, and private pools. Everyone else, meanwhile, will be packed into towers along rail lines. It seems out of balance- why not add urban villages and divide lots in places like Madrona and Laurelhurst? Why not convert private golf courses to SF5000?
The situation is reminiscent of the 1960’s, when the solution to congestion and housing affordability was to build more roads. Opposed to a freeway coming through your neighborhood? You must not want to fix congestion. You must not care about the need for affordable housing. The future beckons and we must embrace it, quit being a NIMBY troglodyte, support new freeways!
In terms of local candidates in this upcoming election, the candidates that seem to be most in favor of neighborhoods having some say over their own development are Catherine Weatbrook in District 6 and Tony Provine in District 4, both longtime neighborhood activists and relative old farts. So I guess if you want to temper this density tsunami headed our way, those two would get your votes. To give you a feeling for the current balance, the 26 person HALA task force had a single person representing neighborhoods, everyone else was a developer or housing advocate.
This is awesome! My one complaint here is that the U-District zoning should be 16 stories over a larger distance.
Also, thank you for helping me know which District 4 candidate to vote against.
Finally, Eric, this does continue your anti-density reporting. Again, if you don’t like living in a *city*, and want a bucolic lifestyle in your own piece of pastureland, then you might want to look at a different address. I’d suggest you spend some time in Vancouver, BC (yet another livable, viable, dense city that I’ve lived in). They’ve gotten density, urban villages, and transit right. If only they had rent controls (whether via publicly owned workforce housing, linkage fees, etc.) they’d be able to better support lower wage earners.
You write “We seem to be heading towards a Seattle where the richest 1% live on the coasts with spacious lots….” Not only does that show a lack of imagination, but also creates a false dichotomy (oppose density or become the 1%). In reality, most of us who own homes in Wallingford are already part of the rich elite (top 10% at least). And without increased density we have one of these likely futures: become like San Francisco where NIMBYists have choked housing innovation and driven up prices to above $1 million (oh, hey! average Wallingford home prices are now $700k, so we’re on track!) or keep sprawling the city out past Duvall, Carnation, North Bend, Skagit Valley, and destroy the environment with a 24×7 gridlock of traffic.
And your comparison to freeway building in the 1960s……. sigh. Not even.
I noticed that the Provine campaign literature recently left at my door mentioned that Tony Provine does not support “the War on Cars”. The phrase “War on Cars” is, of course, a way to belittle and demonize those who believe that good public transportation is essential to Seattle’s livability. When I contacted the Provine campaign about his use of the phrase “War on Cars”, he responded with the following:
“Even though we are trying to move away from fossil fuels and to utilize public transit more, there are not enough reasonable alternatives in place, and there won’t be until we build out more transit. So, knowing that the majority of people are unable to make use of other transit modes means that it is important that we do what we can to increase mobility for all. After all, we are funding our future transportation system with an appropriate increase in gas taxes. As we phase in future transit, we can begin phasing out our reliance on cars. In the meantime, let’s not demonize people who have no other choice.
Tony Provine
Candidate, Seattle City Council, District 4”
Given that Provine’s response did not disavow or apologize for his use of the phrase “War on Cars”, I am wondering who is doing the demonizing here.
Despite his attempt at spin, Provine obviously is pandering to those who cling to a vision of traffic-jam free, car-based transportation for Seattle.
I will not be voting for Tony Provine. Public transportation advocate Rob Johnson may be a better choice..
Paul- certainly anyone moving in now to Wallingford is well off, although that’s not the case for many that live here now. That’s the point of the Seattle Displacement Coalition, that redevelopment pushes out people that can’t afford to move. Also, I’m sorry that this post is being perceived as anti-density, the point I was trying to make is that rezoning should be happening in neighborhoods with low walk scores. If you look at the HALA map, all the impacts are in walkable neighborhoods. I tried to tweak the text to make that point.
But, Eric, these areas are probably where some of our new developer overlords and those that donate large $$ to politicians live. They don’t want to live in an overcrowded, over-dense neighborhood!
The HALA report claims that “single-family zoning is severely constraining how much the City can increase its housing supply”, yet under current zoning (with NO changes, including none of the proposed changes to multi-family heights) 280,000 new units could currently be built. No surprise that this line of bull would come up again by the pro-developer HALA committee and do an end-around restrictions to small lot development just adopted by City Council because of abuses.
The concept that one can tear down existing, older homes and apartments to build new, more-affordable housing is a fallacy. The upzone of single-family zones to allow one home to be torn down and three built in its place benefits speculators and developers. These will still be $600,000 homes, but with three units crammed onto one single-family lot. What developer wouldn’t want to pocket $1.8 million instead of $900,000? But the upzone will only drive prices higher and has nothing to do with creating affordable housing.
Note in their map that HALA also proposes expanding the Wallingford/Fremont Urban Village to cover the ENTIRE AREA essentially from Wallingford Ave to Phinney and from 50th to Lake Union. Also note that areas NOT proposed for changes include the well-heeled and well-connected areas such as Laurelhurst, Windermere, Magnolia, Madison Park, Mount Baker.
We were promised “no upzones” when the Urban Village boundaries were established in the 1990s. We were promised amenities and infrastructure improvements. Single-family upzones will have to affect 8 city blocks of homes to come close to equaling the housing provided by ONE apartment building… but at what cost, especially once the “bad egg developers” have the blessing of the City to squeeze three homes on one lot with no oversight or public notice.
I was wondering where you were able to find the 280,000 number? I am in Ballard and totally against this redefine of Single Family Zoning. I will be going to the meetings on this issue and would like that data to present at the next one if you can tell me about it.
Do you really think the people who live in Duvall, Carnation etc. are the people who want to live in apartments and condos? Granted I haven’t done any serious research but the people I know living there prefer to live in a single family dwelling with at least a yard if not more space. In fact, if we get pushed out where will we go? Perhaps we will be the ones clogging the roads.
The question is who are these people who want to move here to live in these apartments and condos? Is it that we will build it and they will come, whoever they might be?
U district is already a dense, education, employment hub. Wallingford is not. Why would we have similar up- zoning? Why not look at the zoning in Roosevelt, another neighborhood near U-district that’s a mostly residential neighborhood?
Roosevelt is already zoned for 6-10 story buildings around the light rail station. If Wallingford gets light rail they need to do the same.
Can the city take a deep breath and call a time out so the infrastructure can catch up to what is already being built?
I keep coming back to the phrase:” We had to destroy the village in order to save it”.
Let’s not take a deep breath and call time out. Instead, let’s redouble our efforts. Build a downtown-Ballard-U-District subway/light-rail loop in no more than 10 years!
We took a deep breath in the 70s and lost a great subway opportunity to Atlanta. We took a deep breath in the 90s and lost an incredible central park to Amazon office buildings.
I think you missed an opportunity for a thoughtful exploration of how light rail stations could result in more intense zoning with some fear mongering about density. The U District is a special case – your analysis could have looked at increased zoning around other stations rather than focusing on just the one station that is an outlier for both existing and proposed density. I also think by throwing in the number of stories of the UW tower you seem to be implying that the new zoning would allow buildings significantly higher than that tower – instead of about the same height (proposed zoning is 340′ and the UW Tower is 325′ – a 340′ foot tower could be 34 residential stories but significantly fewer office stories).
Thanks Dennis, I corrected the info about the UW Tower to focus on height and not number of floors. I picked the U-District station because of the proximity and the fact that it’s happening now, so it reflects currently politics. Is there a station that you think would be a better one to look into, that’s closer to what will happen in Wallingford?
If in my lifetime Wallingford actually gets light rail, there’s no way two stations will be located within 3/4 of a mile of each other, which is what you’re imagining here, Eric. More likely, there’d be a single station near Stone Way, which is already densifying.
Tony Provine is a fiery old fart, but his stance against bike lanes (like the one proposed for 65th where a cyclist was just killed) means that the odds I’d vote for him are less than zero.
Thanks Doug, I was going off a chat with Mike Ruby. Certainly if rail only stops once in the neighborhood it would be half the impact. I wish Sound Transit could offer some clarity on the issue.
Let me add… on the Nextdoor Wallingford site last night, a Jessica posted about the RV camp along Northlake and the efforts to push these non-10%-ers out of the neighborhood.
When we talk about land use and density, we should keep these working families in mind. Not just “What’s good for me and my fellow 10%-ers”, but how do we make Wallingford and Seattle viable for the working and middle class. And if you own a home in Wallingford you are almost certainly *not* middle class.
Maybe because I live in seedy SW almost-Fremont Wallingford, but public school teachers, off and on technical writers, artists, retirees? We own homes because we were lucky to get here before the bubble, that’s for sure, but that’s how it is – in this housing market, the new housing is for the affluent, and displaces affordable housing. One of the things we’re clinging to here in this seedy corner of Wallingford is a community of people who don’t all work 12 hrs a day at Amazon and have other priorities, including the neighborhood itself.
donn, while I get your point that not all Wallingford homeowners are 10%ers, at least you actually OWN your home. You don’t rent. I don’t care about housing prices, I’m never going to be able to buy a house in Wallingford/Fremont. But I would like the rent to stop going through the roof! I would like to move from my well below market rent apartment to a similar apartment with a washer/dryer, but that’s impossible in this neighborhood. My daughter has a dream of living in place with interior stairs. But we don’t want to leave the city limits. So we’ll stay in our nice below market apartment. Because it is rather nice. And just watch and wait and see…
that’s why we need rent control on everything that already exists as well as anything new that’s built, and maybe that will slow down the insane developers……we’re driving real people out of the city
Some of our neighbors rent, too – and ex-neighbors rented up and down the block, before the houses were torn down and replaced with pricy condos. Our neighbors are lucky, too, because their rents are still relatively affordable, but when that’s gone, there’s no way they could live here. Some of them are real treasures, too, I mean people who make it a great place to live.
First, Wallingford threw “West Wallingford/East Fremont” under the bus years ago when they shoved the “residential urban village” west of Stone. We’re feeling the severe impacts now. Second, and more important, Wallingford could add a lot of affordable density right now by 1) supporting incentives for owner-occupied accessory dwelling additions within current resident footprints. Not 3 townhouses on a lot, but a carriage house on or in an existing garage, a remodeled basement done to accommodate a small family comfortably (like the one we did that is keeping us in our home despite property tax increases). “Gentle” infill. And 2) building to capacity on and near N 45th, where most buildings are no more than 2 stories high but zoning is 4 stories. What about a 4-6 story residential building with parking on the QFC parking lot, for example? Behind the existing small stores on N 45th, whose preservation saves those small businesses?
Definition of a housing bubble: The increase of prices after I bought my house.
There isn’t any affordable housing for sale in Wallingford, let alone Seattle. Our task is to change that. Which means density, and rent controls, and public-based housing, etc.
Paul C, when the transients who are deliberately taking up as much parking space as they can along Northlake start cleaning up their disgusting garbage, stop being a nuisance, and start paying property taxes like those of us who have actually put down roots here, THEN I’ll give a crap about their needs.
hayduke …. may you never lose your job or make no more than minimum wage.
I’m totally against more density also…..why do the bigwigs want to destroy our neighborhoods and the wonderful feeling of lots of little different houses and yards and trees and flowers and neighbors who know each other…..Seattle has been a city of neighborhoods and lots of small houses close together and it’s wonderful that way….it means that all the hills still have trees and views. anyway, they are wrecking Seattle…..if it keeps going this way yes I will move to somewhere livable where quality of life is the most important thing…..not stuffing people into small cubes looking out at other tall lego buildings…it’s as if Seattle is building for all the people who aren’t here yet, people who can afford these horrible little cubes and like that lifestyle….why don’t they go live in New York and let us all stay here
Thanks Penny, although I’m not trying to be blanket anti-density. The point is that density should extend to coastal neighborhoods. I tried to tweak the article to make that clear.
There is a simple reason for not extending density to the coastal neighborhoods. You want high density to be around major transit hubs and job centers. That means the highway and lightrail corridors. Coastal neighborhoods are typically not good to be converted into hubs, since by definition there is at least one direction where it cannot be traveled and developed.
It seems for 100 years people have been complaining “it’s as if Seattle is building for all the people who aren’t here yet, people who can afford these horrible little cubes and like that lifestyle”.
Cities have two options: grow or decline. There’s very little chance of surviving stagnation.
The point of increasing density is to allow more people to live here (they’re coming regardless) and do so more affordably.
The question is: how do we engineer our land use, building codes, incentives, and fees to ensure that people can live here affordably?
In the current situation there’s a thin line between reporting on current happenings, and anti-density advocacy. It looks like the developers and their allies would love to get their work done quietly, because as Seattle residents start to think about what’s going on, the party might lose some of its fun. A lot of people had never heard of HALA until the Westneat article in the Times, and of course it was unfairly leaking draft recommendations that were watered down in the final report, but you now know who the mayor looks to for advice and what they really want. His followup article in last Sunday’s Times is worth reading too. There’s no evidence at all that the infrastructure is forthcoming to support all this, or any apparent political will to extract funds for that from developer revenues.
OK, strike that about the HALA recommendations being watered down. Apparently not so much, see Westneat’s latest, interview with David Neiman. Murray apparently lied.
Unless the State of Washington builds a wall around itself and enacts stringent birth control policies -OR- we do a really good job at crashing our economy, growth is inevitable and the only choice we have is how to deal with it.
We can either (A) try and preserve the status quo for density in stone…or we can (B) try and balance the growth so we all experience some pain and some gain.
Option A, stone, is a net loser for everybody…even the stubborn people who don’t want their lives to change. Why? because that growth will go to places where it is inefficient to travel or provide transit to – thus further mucking our our transportation system and making it impossible to provide efficient transit to (read: even if we get people on transit, it will cost us a ton per rider to provide). Everybody’s costs in terms of time and money will go up.
Option B, balance, is what I think HALA did a not so bad job of doing and what expanded rail systems would support. Not every individual wins compared to today, but I think everybody wins compared to Option A.
Eric, to your point about spreading the density around – I think that would only make sense if the transit options were there to support it. The last thing we want to do is build out density where it is very costly to provide efficient transportation. If given the choice of spending my tax dollars on transit to a single rich coastal village versus several centrally located urban village, I know which I would choose.
I do think that coordinated infrastructure investment is a big deal, which is why using opportunities where we ARE putting in major investments to upzone in that area are important.
As a previous commenter remarked, I doubt that there would be light rail stations spaced closer than a mile apart. A general guideline for rail transport is that people will walk about half a mile (plenty walk more), so a mile at the least is a good guideline. The Shell station is .6 miles from the U-District Station and .7 miles from Stone. Wallingford center is approximately 1 mile, so that might be an option (and would help revive that strip). Then again, lots of things will play into this – if there is a Shell LRT Station, then certainly Dick’s would need to do SOMEthing will all that asphalt across the street.
Density shouldn’t be spread evenly, but all neighborhoods should be walkable to an urban village. Once you accomplish that, you can network the urban villages with transit.
And why shouldn’t Wallingford be an urban village?
Wallingford IS a Residential Urban Village, the lowest level. When the boundaries were debated in the 1990s during Team Wallingford, we were promised that there would be no upzoning for any properties because Wallingford could meet and greatly exceed growth targets without any changes. The designation supposedly allowed us to receive mitigation for the growth (which we have exceeded at every step, and have again for the 2024 targets) in the form of amenities and infrastructure improvements. The City has yet to deliver.
That doesn’t make much sense. The Urban Village is not going to be very attractive without transit.
Where is this coastal scene? Only waterfront living I know of in Wallingford is in marinas, some of which are doing their part for density.
I don’t think anyone doubts that there’s going to be growth – it’s already here, as I think someone is fond of pointing out we’ve already exceeded our 2025 targets. The maybe 3 block radius around 38th & Stone will have thousands of new residents in short order. Seattle doesn’t plan ahead, so we’ll just have to see how that adds up, in terms of congestion on Stone, sewer loads, bus ridership, etc., and patch things up in coming years to fix the worst of the problems, on a shoestring of course since we’ll still be mulling over the pros and cons of developer fees.
We know we have to deal with growth, but personally I’m willing to hold off a little until there’s some evidence we can deal with it better.
Rather than saying No to growth, then, how about demanding a big YES to more/better transit, improved traffic patterns, better sidewalks & bike lanes, developer fees to handle sewer and power, etc.
How about a big ‘yes’ to (balanced/strongly managed growth) AFTER we get a big ‘yes’ (as demonstrated by allocated funding and actual progress on projects, not just promises or IOU’s) on more/better transit, improved traffic traffic patterns, better sidewalks & bike lanes, etc. This is the problem: we approve new construction and well overshoot housing growth targets, while we take IOU’s on the infrastructure that would balance the livability impacts to those that already live in the community (and those newly joining too!) Without a strong linkage, all we can expect is what we are facing now: lots of new housing, but with lots of growing pains (traffic jams, no parking anywhere, overcrowded transit, insufficient policing leading to higher crime, etc.) Until we have a plan to link these two areas, I would suggest sticking closely to the 2024 Growth Management Plan that all neighborhoods agreed to follow back in 2014 until the infrastructure investment catch up. Once there, we look at the numbers and renegotiate the targets.
I would add school overcrowding to your list of infrastructure items that need to be dealt with.
Agreed!
Thanks Eric. I also am aware that there will be more density. But I’m more into viewpoints like Ron Judd’s in the Times, July 10th “Why Stop at Getting Rid of Cars & Neighborhoods”…and most balancedly the 2nd of Danny Westneat’s articles (also on July 10) where he wonders “what happened to the management part of growth management?” and reminds all of us that we Do Already Have a 25 year old Law called The Growth Management Act that noone involved seems to be paying any attention to. That’s what I’m for. You can’t restore old ways so lets try to work in ways to make the future also livable before we wreck so much. As an example, Vancouver B.C. used to have livability and charm like Seattle and now it’s almost as plastic and sterile and boring as Bellevue. Let’s work for affordable housing for all while keeping our city livable and charming and green and neighborly.
The GMA requires every city to do their share accommodate projected growth. Projections are made by the state OFM, allocated to regions, suballocated to counties, and sub-suballocated to cities. Seattle is projected/allocated to grow by 120,000 people by 2035, but in reality we’re likely to grow by even more given changing demographics, preferences of living arrangements, and the growth in Seattle’s tech industry. So, Seattle has to provide not just the housing capacity for those people to live here, but also enough housing supply that housing prices stay low enough that people dont move out of Seattle and we can still hit the 120,000 or greater mark.
Cities change all the time. In 1880, Seattle barely existed. Then it grew incredibly up through WWII, adapting in transportation (horses, then bikes & streetcars, then cars & buses), and building types. In 1950-90, the city changed again as freeways eviscerated and divided neighborhoods and people fled by car to the suburbs. And now we’re in the era of the GMA, where cities are supposed to actually try to live within their means, enable population growth within their existing boundaries, and protect the environment both in and outside their boundaries.
So far from your characterization of the GMA, the GMA mandates that we accommodate more people, housing, and jobs within Seattle. It’s just up to us and our democratic process to figure out how to do it. HALA’s recommendations are one step that’s part of that process.
Having lived in Vancouver, and visited extensively, I can tell you its similarities to Bellevue are limited to being a place where people live and work. It is very vibrant, diverse, walkable, and close to nature.
I would add school overcrowding to your list of infrastructure items that need to be dealt with.
Oops, I meant to reply to Javier O.
Totally agree. Affordable housing – which shouldn’t mean the most the market will bear but rather a fair cost for working people who are not earning the tech style salaries. How many teachers could afford to buy in the neighborhood where they work? Affordable housing would cut transit issues. Big business should not be the community served by the council.
I’m having a hard time reading these maps. Is the implication that they would wipe out homes near 45th and create light rail/new housing? Or would this be more construction on 45th?
The GMA requires every city to do their share accommodate projected growth. Projections are made by the state OFM, allocated to regions, suballocated to counties, and sub-suballocated to cities. Seattle is projected/allocated to grow by 120,000 people by 2035, but in reality we’re likely to grow by even more given changing demographics, preferences of living arrangements, and the growth in Seattle’s tech industry. So, Seattle has to provide not just the housing capacity for those people to live here, but also enough housing supply that housing prices stay low enough that people dont move out of Seattle and we can still hit the 120,000 or greater mark.
Cities change all the time. In 1880, Seattle barely existed. Then it grew incredibly up through WWII, adapting in transportation (horses, then bikes & streetcars, then cars & buses), and building types. In 1950-90, the city changed again as freeways eviscerated and divided neighborhoods and people fled by car to the suburbs. And now we’re in the era of the GMA, where cities are supposed to actually try to live within their means, enable population growth within their existing boundaries, and protect the environment both in and outside their boundaries.
So far from your characterization of the GMA, the GMA mandates that we accommodate more people, housing, and jobs within Seattle. It’s just up to us and our democratic process to figure out how to do it. HALA’s recommendations are one step that’s part of that process.
They may have the ability to wipe out homes, via eminent domain, but I wouldn’t expect that to actually happen, and certainly not with many homes. There would be a lot of construction on N 45th if they chose an elevated design option, but that was one of several options and apparently not anyone’s favorite. The orange area on the map is what it says in the legend, an upzone with a question mark.
Eric, tell us how to make ourselves heard at the city level. Other than voting for our new council person. What can we do, when can we do it, and how can I help get things organized so we have a voice that will be heard. Growth is not always beneficial, and I’m fed up with my neighborhood getting trashed for the corporate benefit.
Wallingford Community Council has represented us in these matters, a lot of expertise there and it’s for us, so drop by a meeting. That’s how we get things organized so we have a voice that will be heard.
As individuals you can write to elected officials.
Not part of the light rail related discussion, but much more near term, the mayor and city council are in a hurry to pass HALA recommended changes to the zoning code that will allow 3-pack condos in (used to be) single family zoning that comprises most of Wallingford. Council committee next to consider this, I think, is O’Brien’s “Housing Affordability” (“linking affordability to growth” is their motto, not making that up.) You can get agendas mailed to you. I’m not sure there’s time to even organize against this, it may have to happen spontaneously.
If you want to see what this means, cruise the neighborhood looking for 3 story grey boxes. These developments, many from Blueprint Capital (Duffus) are the cheap way to maximize floor space, they have roof decks with excellent views over the villagers, and they sell for $600K to a million. Three would replace an existing house.
Thanks Donn, your comments are always so spot on. The WCC is a great place to learn about what’s going on, but they have very little influence these days in terms of policy. The only way to change the overall trajectory at this point is through the ballot box.
Why MUST the neighborhood be rezoned for blocks in either direction in order to have increased transit? That’s ridiculously destructive. And, yes, I live in the red zone.
We’d been planning on living the next 20+ years in the home along the street we love between 45th and 50th and investing in the home, land and community. Now we’re putting a hold on anything further until we get a better read on how this will go – why invest heavily in the home with our hard-earned dollars (no, we don’t work for Amazon or Microsoft, etc.) if we’re going to be forced out as ugly triplexes etc. creep inward from those main streets?
Maybe we’ll have to see if we can sell high before our neighbors do and live closer to green lake outside the red zones. And this reaction is what a lot of people will have, which is why the neighborhood will disappear and become just another place to live near mass transit. Blow up the community that was there because they happened to be there first – their dreams matter less than someone else that wants to live in area (rather than equally).
In case anyone is laboring under delusions of permanence or control, I’m just gonna leave this here…
The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one?mbid=social_twitter
We are getting rather ahead of ourselves. Until rail is actually officially proposed for Wallingford, talk about potential transit up zoning is pointless. And by the time rail happens, if it does, zoning can change again. Or our robot overlords won’t care–because Wallingford rail is that far in the future.
But I voted for the monorail THREE times and I take it to work every…. oh… wait….
At least there seems to be time to fight against the wholesale ruination of the existing Wallingford neighborhood by overreaching politicians and greedy real estate developers. It can’t be stopped, but perhaps we can shape it so that, as has been said elsewhere in this thread, we bring back some planning to “urban planning” rather than the haphazard approach currently in effect.
These discussions are really important. How we live, where we live, and what lies around us is crucial to our quality of life. There is no rule that says we must live with increasing density. In fact, increasing density may be very detrimental to our health and safety. We need green spaces, neighbors, access to wild things. There are those that would propose that increasing growth is inevitable and desirable. I would ask, where does that leave us? At what point is enough? When does growth circle around and devour itself? Where do we draw the line?
Good points. Cities are for density, which does not rule out green spaces (parks yes!), neighbors (even more of them!), or access to wild things (oh, look! there’s mountains!). If you don’t like density, there are far flung leafy suburbs that are even closer to hiking opportunities.
Increase density can be good for our health. Let’s raze all houses in Wallingford and build only on 10% of the land with highrises, while converting the rest back to the wild. We’d be living in forests.
The two candidates LEAST likely to upzone a private golf course, Laurelhurst, Madrona, or the Gold Coast are Catherine Westbrook and Tony Provine. So if you want a more equitable city where more neighborhoods embrace people who are new & different, then vote for someone (anyone) else.
Great discussion here.
Wanted to let people know that the monthly U Dist Conversation on Homelessness meets on Wed. 7/22, and we’ll have a panel and Q&A dedicated to HALA. Our group is interested in securing low income housing and alleviating homelessness.
Members of the public are welcome.
Wed. July 22, 11:30am-1pm
Univ. Lutheran Church, NE 50th St at 16th Ave
TOPIC: HALA Report Recap and Discussion
The Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) report was released on July 13th. Join us for a discussion of this agenda, what it means for the U District, and for the outlook of low income housing in our city.
Our panel:
Alice Woldt, member of the Community Housing Caucus
Esther Handy, City Council Staff, a representative from the HALA group.
Michael Ramos, Church Council of Greater Seattle
http://udchseattle.com/
Also, Mayor Murray is going to meet the public Saturday in Greenwood:
I don’t know if DPD, HALA and changes to zoning are what he had in mind to talk about, but it might be on people’s minds.
Somewhat belatedly, I looked at the zoning maps linked out of the beginning of the article. Proposed Areas with New Mandatory Affordable Housing – upzones. I guess this is R.1 in the report, which also mentions “mandatory” in its title but doesn’t as best I can make out explain what that means.
The map overlay is very helpful, worth a look. In Wallingford it looks to me like the most grievous impact is on the area north of 40th and west of Wallingford N, which is a pretty quiet little neighborhood now.
I wondered though about the strip along Pacific, which on the map extends out to the shoreline. There’s some kind of water-related use restriction that I think would rule out apartments, and I don’t find anything in the report about overriding that, so probably this is just map fuzziness, but something to think about.
Note that this is just the nominal upzoning, which the mayor was apparently talking about when he said only a small percentage of single family would be affected. Actually all single family would be affected by another provision, which redefines single family to not mean single family. Seattle Times mentioned this today in their editorial suggesting that the HALA proposals wait until the next council is seated.
upd: According to O’Brien, what’s mandatory is 5-7% of new construction, affordable to households at or below 60% median income.
So those in favor of the upzoning as part of the transit plans, I’m curious to know how you rationalize giving more weight to the hopes and dreams of people who don’t yet live in the area, or not even in the state yet, to, say, a couple that have worked hard for a combined 50 years in order to buy a small house in a great neighborhood of their dreams. Is there no equality? Should that couple have not worked so hard, rented somewhere and just wait for upzoning to destroy a bunch of 100+ year old homes to make way for overpriced, cheaply built condos that sell for maybe a $200k less (if lucky) than the house that was destroyed? Why is that couple penalized just because they worked hard and got invested into the neighborhood first?
They don’t see the penalty, because they don’t see the value of what’s lost. In the HALA cartoon, single family neighborhoods are an exclusivist blight that has a stranglehold on Seattle, standing in the way of greatness.
That’s one of the points we need to sharpen up, the value of this form of housing, to people who live there and to everyone. Some of it’s pretty obvious – trees and open space for example, but even that could use some development, e.g., compare with park space. Some of it could use numbers, e.g., my hunch is that term of residence is much longer, which means more invested in the neighborhood. Some of it’s pretty hard to even explain let alone prove, but when your family has been solely responsible for that house and yard for many years, doesn’t that affect your relationship with the community in other positive ways?
It isn’t going to make a dent on some of the people we hear from here, but this “urbanist” passion is really deeply held by only a tiny minority, they just have a huge budget to spread their “must grow more now” message.
People in high density areas are more likely to be liberals, and people in low density areas are more likely to be conservatives. Yes, density impacts a person’s relationship with the society.
People living in high density areas favor government solutions over private solutions more often also, because they have to compromise more by living around more people. They understand how government resolution can be inevitable at times. This is opposed to people who live in less populated area where they tend to believe things can be easily settled among a few most likely similar people.
Sounds reasonable. But what is the operational definition of “high density area” from which the research studies those conclusions are drawn? And what is the name of the study or studies?
Without an operational definition people can’t speak of the same thing.
There are different studies on this. Simple charting of population density vs. party vote in the US has shown the cross point of Republican vs. Democrat support crosses at the point of 800 people per square mile. Jonathan Rodden did more detailed studies.
Thanks!
In fact, Seattle’s a notably liberal city with, they tell us, a singularly large percentage of single family residential.
Trading in urban/rural stereotypes and simplistic private/public analyses has been a blight on the US political landscape for decades. Let’s not go there.
I am not exactly talking about urban rural. I am also talking about how the least dense developed countries, USA, Australia, and the likes, are also the least socialists. This is not stereotyping. When you are forced to live in a condo where resources are shared, you learn to cope with others much more than you ever will by living in a single family house.
Don’t forget Canada, eh?
Anecdotal:
* renting an apartment for years on Cap Hill – didn’t really know anyone in the building or area
* bought house north of 60th in mid century suburb with no porch – hardly saw people
* bought house in Wallingford with front porch – see and talk and know lots of people
Always vote liberal on issues.
Density made for a much worse living and communal experience, as did more modern homes with large back yards and no front porch
Yes, Canada is more liberal than the US, and happened to live in smaller homes and more crowded together. Quite a coincidence.
One of the good things driving around the city trying to figure out where to live is it gives you a fresh perspective about transit, housing, safety concerns, livability and where the planners and developers like to focus on. The intense focus is pretty much closest to SLU, downtown, and peripheral areas like Capitol Hill and anything just just north of the ship canal. It makes sense for SLU, UW, and downtown worker bees as these areas already came with desirabilty, pretty good transit, hipness, and SAFE! Driving on Capitol Hill, First Hill, parts of CD and checking out possible rentals was interesting. These areas have streetcars, bike lanes, ST, buses and frankly are pretty walkable to and from downtown area. Begs the question why is the city throwing so much public transit in these areas?? Does the New Yesler Terrace or Jackson really need streetcars? They are well covered by bus lines. It’s redundant, creates more congestion, and wasteful.
Now compare that to areas north of 85th or 90th for example, on either side of 99 and I 5. Once you hit those areas where the sidewalks end and ditches begin, you see many more older homes and apartments. Cheaper ones too. What it doesn’t have is good and fast transit. No streetcars or light rail (except for Northgate along I 5). It has the rapid ride, but from chatting with locals and friends who live there, it’s getting to the RR and how crowded that can get for the rush hour home. Bus is the main mass mover, but not frequent enough if it comes every 20-25minutes in the outer neighborhoods. All it takes is a bus delay or a no show and you are looking at 40-50mins. No wonder people drive in. We also looked at south of downtown. A little better bus service, but given all the mugging and recent shootings, the walk and wait at bus stops and light rail makes my niece nervous. Also, rent goes up once you are closer to light rail or in trendy Columbia city. Buses like #36 are more frequent as in every 10 minutes or less.
Anyway, all of this makes me want to know, why not spread light rail (better than streetcar) with more frequency out to the periphery first. Up into Shoreline, Lake City Way, Bitter Lake, Holman and 15th, W.seattle first. Bring livability and desirability along 99? Do like what DC metro does. Use those finger ends as major bus transit stops. Bring people closer to right rail from outer areas by bus and load them onto light rail downtown the rest of the way. In the meantime, focus on making bus routes closer to downtown (Ballard to U district and all the other E-W routes) more efficient. I think this would lessen driving considerably into the city and around downtown?Stop with the wasteful and redundant mass transit as planned on the Hills -too much given the need for those transit $$ elsewhere. Which is why I think we need to think this Ballard to UW through in terms of ROI. I rather we had ST go up 15th or greenwood and up toward 99. You’ll need parking built in the outer ST stop areas as well, something riders asked for.
It’d be interesting to see how GMA compare growth projections and current developments by neighborhood in the city. I bet you’ll find unequal distribution. If city planners and HALA are interested in affordability and livability, it’s funny how they doesn’t ask people what would make this city more livable and affordable all over (not just focus on selected neighborhoods), and follow through on those ideas. Finally drop this SF home rezoning. What a huge, overreaching decision by just 29 people which will affect us all.
Good points here. Food for thought!
In addition to transit issues, what must be considered with increased density is the effect on schools. Seattle public schools are already overcrowded and getting much worse. What is the plan? Is there a plan???
Can anyone find the ST light rail most recent route proposals for the city? I tried at the ST site and all I get is route planner and alerts. This is the best without much spending too much time hunting it down. From 2013 though.
http://www.westseattleherald.com/2013/10/31/news/does-west-seattle-need-light-rail-sound-transit-w
Old as it is, it shows how much blank spaces there are in terms of no coverage in north, south, and west Seattle. Contrast that to the proposals where upzones are ongoing now and planned for the future. Is transit planning really about moving people through and around the city? It seems more like built up the density, then bring in transit, in some cases – too much of it, to those areas.
Just think if Amazon stayed in north Beacon Hill, what the spillover effect that might have had to the economy and development in S. Seattle neighborhoods. How about building a new convention center and hotels in Northgate area with light rail link to UW and downtown? That would help spread economic development and density around. Some areas are loved to death while others are neglected.
Most recent route proposals – would that be the Sound Transit 3 Draft Priority Projects – http://soundtransit3.org/shaping-st3 ? I don’t know of anything better. Appears to map existing and in-progress rail in the same color as freeways, so it’s kind of hard to tell what they’re up to.
Thank you for getting this discussion going but I wonder if we could have a separate thread specifically addressing HALA and the loss of single family home zoning in Wallingford versus having it lumped in with upzoning in the U District and light rail plans. The loss of single family home zoning would affect a large part of Wallingford and I think many people in our neighborhood are not even aware of this issue.
Agreed. About 30% of Wallingford’s single family areas will be rezoned to low rise LR1. That means condos, townhomes, and apartments up to 30 feet tall. Most of the neighbors I’ve spoken to didn’t even know about the change.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and one thing that keeps popping up in my mind is that Wallingford and other neighborhoods are not maxing out their existing zoning on the commercial corridors. We have single-story buildings and parking lots along 45th that could be redeveloped (through incentives and requirements) for mixed-use commercial and residential housing. We’re seeing a lot of this on Stone Way and somewhat on 45th. There was a lot of push for the CVS site to have residential units but the developers worked around it. Maybe if we focused on more housing along these corridors (and allowed MIL and cottage or carriage-house units) we could lessen the impacts on the single-family zones. This could add hundreds of units fairly quickly in our neighborhood and thousands in underdeveloped corridors throughout the city.
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