The University District is one of the first neighborhoods planned for rezones, and the city wants to go big. How big? Think the UW Tower big. Up to 320 feet, and that’s not including any possible height bonuses. Ten feet is roughly equivalent to one story, so 320 feet would equal about 32 stories. That’s about three to four times higher than what is currently allowed. The area planned for these massive rezones is roughly from NE 50th Street to the Ship Canal and from I-5 to 15th Avenue NE. All of this is in addition to an impressive addition of square footage planned for the university itself.
Want to weigh in on the massive rezones planned for the University District? What do you think about having 32 story towers just east of I-5? Concerned about spillover effects into our neighborhood? Please attend the public hearing on Wednesday, November 16th and make a public comment. Here’s the details:
Public Hearing on Proposed Zoning Changes for the University District
Date: Wednesday, November 16th
Location: Hotel Deca, 4507 Brooklyn Ave NE
Open house at 5:30, presentation at 6:00, public hearing 6:15
This is a divisive topic, and opinions vary widely as to whether the University District will lose or gain a ton of affordable housing with this massive rezone. A lot has already been said on this topic, so I will let you draw your own conclusions in regards to housing. But something that has not been talked about as much, is affordable rents for small businesses. The eclectic, funky, small businesses and cheap eats that make the University District so vibrant. While developers may be required to pay into a fund to have affordable housing built somewhere and sometime to be determined, there is nothing similar that I am aware of to help the small businesses. These rezones place the University District small businesses in jeopardy and with it the livelihood of a lot of people.
A letter signed by over two dozen University District small business owners urged the city not to raise building heights along the Ave and other key business areas. The letter stated:
We do not want 7 story to 32 story mid-rise buildings and towers to replace all the historic and charming one and two story buildings up and down the Ave., along Roosevelt Way N.E., and throughout the U District. Specifically, if building height limits do reach 85’ and higher; then likely nothing recognizable will remain in the beating heart of the U District, the District will lose its charm and its soul, the special small business culture along the Ave. and in the larger U District will be hollowed out, and Seattle will be very much poorer for all of these losses.
Personally, I can’t help wondering what the University District would look like if this upzone on steroids was approved. It’s a neighborhood I’m in all of the time. Unfortunately, I don’t have a crystal ball to peer into the future. But Seattle has seen a complete revision of another neighborhood recently, in the form of a shiny new South Lake Union. Of course the heights allowed in the University District would be much higher. So I’m envisioning a mix between South Lake Union and Downtown, right nextdoor to us. Downtown and South Lake Union are not cheap neighborhoods. If density fixes everything, well, it hasn’t happened yet. Indeed, I would bet you could hardly find a resident, barely even a building, that survived the South Lake Union metamorphosis. Are we ok with all of this destruction for the sake of our new urbanist ideology? Banishing from the University District anything that gets in the way of a bulldozer?
What do you want for the University District? Do you want a business district or a university district? A high tech hub or a funky, eclectic place for the students (and the rest of us) to hang out. Are you concerned about the spillover effects it will have on our traffic, our schools, our housing supply, did I mention our traffic? Or do you want the city to build, baby build? Whatever your opinions, if you want them heard then please attend the public hearing on the 16th.
For more information:
Click here for University District Urban Design (city webpage), includes information on the public hearing
Click here for more information on the University District Small Business letter
Click here for Outside City Hall’s take on the University District Public Hearing
And this grassroots organization is worth checking out, too: livableudistrict.org
I’m sure they’ll have lots of parking and won’t rezone our streets and turn them into an even bigger shitshow. Murray’s Nimby guilt-tripping is completely transparent. He’s starting to remind me of a developer version of Tim Eyman, but with direct power and somehow appeals to hippies.
Yes, I am very sure they will have adequate parking. I Why didn’t I think of building this megalith? No, I’m moving to a smaller town.. The words from a contirbutor long ago when I spoke against some development which blocked a view and concreted up what used to be a lovely area ” if you don’t like it, move!” while feeling unkind at the time were some of best life advice ever.
His public address in the U district September was classic. We have to talk about homelessness … so we’re so proud that we’re now able to get our “grand bargain” pittance of “affordable” housing out of this upzone. But
1) it will only make life worse for the homeless, for whom even the supposedly affordable housing is far out of reach,
2) it’s going to be offices and not much if any housing in 240 foot towers, because that’s expensive construction, and
3) that office space is there to draw more people to the area, to
4) make housing worse, there and everywhere in the city, along with traffic and every other infrastructure strain.
A second South Lake Union.
This is a great article with informed comments, so let me undermine that with a flippant remark. We now have a developer for a president and a developer for a mayor. At least only one of them is a bigot.
Unneeded bit of hate spew, Eric. Maybe start a hate spew thread for yourself.
Hatespew? Since when is stating facts hatespew?
I don’t like Hizzoner either, but no need to call names. Tends to shut down thinking and discussion. After all, who’d want to discuss with someone you just label a bigot? Easier, but…
I do not regard that as hate spew at all. Based on evidence.
You’re not the only one to make this connection. In a Seattle Times editorial Friday, Brier Dudley outlines a few things we could be watching out for:
God, I can’t escape it on Wallyhood either.
“A second South Lake Union”
Thousands of high paying jobs, and thousands more good jobs in locally owned restaurants and other stores (like PCC and the Uwajimaya expansion in SLU)… God forbid.
If you want everyone but the techneau riche priced out, it’s a fine thing. That would make the restaurants nicer, too, eh? As long as they don’t have cars nor kids, and as long as you don’t care about anything but more density.
Right on cue. How’s the low income housing and homeless advocacy working out in South Lake Union?
What’s exclusionary zoning’s track record on getting the unemployment rate below 5% and the minimum wage up to $15/hr?
omg, there you go again BK, good job of finding another irrelevant application for your favorite buzzwords.
Bryan won’t be content until the Ave becomes downtown Bellevue. You know, soul crushing, plastic and sterile and utterly devoid of character. But hey, at least we’ll have a 320 foot tall canyon of housing. As for snall business owners and those of you residing in what’s left of the naturally affordable housing in the U District, well, you are SOL.
Not that it makes a difference to your point, but again, I don’t imagine 320 foot residential towers will be a very likely prospect, since I gather they allow 240 foot office towers. Better return for cost of construction. That’s still very tall.
Rezoning is a phenomenal opportunity to give small business owners a shot at land today’s single-family zoning declared off limits to them. More character, more jobs, more naturally smaller and lower cost commercial space big chains won’t want.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae464af9ddf4229fca922d4f6f502d7f7df92e37e365e34b39c1ae7cb9d87ab1.jpg
I’m amazed that a marketing blurb by made by developers actually contradicts the experiences of the 2 dozen real-live business owners who mailed the city a letter.
Bryan, I know you’re itching to get the land, but this comment is dismissive of real people who are going to be impacted. Why deny their existence?
And as you’ve admitted in previous comments when pressed, developers want to make money. They don’t actually care about affordability in terms that matter — i.e. paying extra to achieve it. In the same way, they don’t care about funky corner shops.
I am not. The city is owned by developers. Big 5 sporting goods was priced out and CVS will be moving in
gosh, sad to hear that. I feel good every time I walk by CVS in Wallingford. Most of the time, the only people I see are bored clerks. And no customers.
But they will happily create space for funky corner shops if they can make money doing so – as long zoning law doesn’t make it impossible.
Yes, obviously Starbucks can afford funky corner lots as they have taken over everywhere. But did you think that there may be a limit to residents’ desire to patronize them?
how 1984 can you get? force small business to relocate from their existing spaces to so they can have the “opportunity” to move to off-arterial spaces – spaces that don’t exist at this time, that would involve new construction, or remodeling, that would burden those small businesses with additional costs for relocating and give them the “opportunity” to be out of the main business districts and away from the concentrated pedestrian traffic that centralized business districts provide. Seattle Transit Blog is staffed by a bunch of software engineers who somehow think they are experts on everything, but don’t have enough integrity to mention that Roger Valdez, who writes pieces on land use for them, is a paid mouthpiece for developers.
No one is forcing anyone.
Option 1: A smaller amount of commercial space on an arterial near a light rail stop with nowhere else to go.
Option 2: A larger amount of commercial space on an arterial near a light rail stop with other off-arterial spaces to go.
Businesses with less rather than more money have a better shot at success under option 2.
Go tell the small businesses on the Ave – I’m sure they will be relieved to hear how bright their future is, in your economic analysis.
Don’t be so glib – of course a business is forced to relocate (or close) when the building it’s in is torn down. Maybe instead of looking up soundbites on the internet, you should try talking (and listening!) to some actual humans for once – I’d suggest talking to the folks who own Sock Monkey or Kids on 45th or one of the small restaurants on 45th, and ask them what the impact would be if their building is torn down. Ask them how they would feel about an off-arterial space or being the only business on a block that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic. Ask them what their profit margins are. And maybe give some thought to how often retail spaces in these new mixed use developments stay empty, long after the buildings are completed.
Any moment now, Bryan will be posting an article from The Urbanist or some other pro-density blog to show us all just how smart he is and that he and the rest of the HALA agitators knows what’s best for small businesses and the neighborhood.
There is no scenario in which more people, making more money, living, working, and taking light rail on by don’t attract more businesses–not necessarily chains, but local businesses as well–totally jazzed to grow and prosper in that environment.
Look at restaurants. Rachel Yang & Seif Chirchi, Ethan Stowell, and Maria Hines and many more are all local Seattle chefs who are kicking butt and for the most part occupying prime space.
If your business isn’t as competitive or high margin or gun ho, your only option is more affordable space in less premium locations.
Ditto for any business.
If you zone commercial activity into a small part of the land in a city that is a GREAT environment for small business, then the smallest least skilled guys will always lose–and will have nowhere to go. We need to give them somewhere to go.
I repeat my last comment here. And add: what planet did you say you live on?
A few weeks ago I walked by “The Big Butt Bakery” on a street in Chelsea in Manhattan. It was in one of the ubiquitous ground floor commercial spaces in 4-10 story buildings throughout the neighborhood. I am pretty darn sure The Bigg Butt Bakery is neither a national chain nor able to compete with Starbucks for prime retail space. The secret to how massive numbers of small local businesses like florists and nail salons and bakeries and all sorts of funky places exist in Manhattan? Allowing lots of commercial space everywhere, not just on Park or 5th.
This is a bogus analogy. New York has several million residents, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that visit Manhattan daily. Seattle has 650,000 and few tourists during the off season. There is no comparison between the two cities.
I asked you a question. Answering one with one is a rhetorical feint. As I’m sure you’re aware.
I don’t know anything about the status of homeless advocacy in South Lake Union if that’s the question you’re wanting an answer to.
High paying jobs. Do you know anyone who works for the UW? Not many high paying jobs there, even for faculty.
Yes I do, but a cursory look at their website confirms working there is way the hell better than a lot of places. How many people do you know who enjoy a retirement plan, dental coverage, and long term disability coverage even in lower-level jobs? (No tech sector folks allowed):
http://hr.uw.edu/jobs/
UW makes sure you have what you need from day one, with an array of comprehensive medical and dental plan options, life insurance, and long term disability insurance. We have you covered for anything life could throw your way.
All eligible employees enjoy a generous retirement plan. Plus, you can grow your “nest egg” even more if you choose to enroll in our tax-deferred Voluntary Investment Program.
Save money on your medical expenses with our tax-exempt Flexible Spending Account. Use our Dependent Care Assistance Program to take a pretax salary deduction to pay for dependent care expenses.
And we know it’s not easy to solve all of life’s challenges, so with UW CareLink, our employee assistance program, you have a number of options to help you better manage it all. Get free and easy access to a variety of resources such as confidential counseling, child and elder care referrals, financial and legal services, and more….
The UW tuition exemption program gives you the chance to go back to the classroom. Use the knowledge you gain to make an even greater impact or to explore something new. Your options are as vast as the University itself.
I just had a thought: since the DIMBY’s claim to be so concerned with the poor and downtrodden and affordable housing (nevermind the fact their agenda wouldn’t do squat and actually make life harder for them), how fun would it be to recruit some of the homeless kids on “the Ave” to come to this meeting? Just ask them what they think about the prospect of a bunch of high rises going up on their turf, and tell them, come tell the powers that be what YOU think of their Grand Bargain!
Who knows, maybe a little civic involvement might help them turn their lives around.
There were actually some people from the homeless community who came to a meeting hosted by several of the U District neighborhood organizations a few months ago. They all spoke out against the upzones. I think everyone effected should be given a chance to voice their concerns and I think telling the homeless & homeless advocates about the public hearing is a great idea.
Though with the homeless advocates, you can expect them to weigh their desire to “get a seat at the table” with the city, against whatever they’d hope to gain by fighting them at this point. The city gets a lot of mileage out of these captive social justice organizations.
Frankie, I don’t get the “appeals to hippies.”
I’m of 2 minds on this one. The Ave has some serious crime going on. My dentist said he saw a guy take out an enormous brick of pot right in front of Pagliacci. They don’t even hide it. I love Floating Bridge Brewery, but I’m really not likely to go there at night. I’d be wandering the dark streets getting back to my car and it doesn’t feel safe. Something has go to give.
Alternatively, the special assessment is going to force any small business to sell. They are asking business land owners to pay money upfront for the increased value of their property that increased heights will bring. Value they will only see if they sell. To developers. This is incredibly unfair.
It’s something to think about. For one thing – if that activity is displaced, where does it go? Adjacent neighborhoods, which would be us? More generally, I think the University District has been struggling with its atmosphere for years, with limited tools to work with but with some success. Wallingford like any neighborhood is looking at the same problems. High storefront rents, national chain tenants, along with the crime and vagrancy. Maybe problems that could be solved without destroying the neighborhood, if the city really cared.
What I would like to hear addressed at this meeting, and every other HALA/zoning meeting, is how the city is planning for schools. How many new students are expected to accompany the upzones of so many neighborhoods? How many new schools will be needed? Where will these schools go? How will they be paid for?
Great comment, Lisa. Without a state income tax (yes, I am supporting this idea, despite the fact that it has been voted down a couple times…) the school district cannot do long term planning for buildings. They are dependent on bond issues for a school, and levies for teacher salaries. This is my understand ing.
WEDNESDAY! This is happening!! Please come out and make a public comment!
It seems many of the commenters have not been to other cities around the world. If there is a will to prevent zone up in Wallingford, pushing for zone up in U-District would be a must. You want zone up around the light rail station, so people don’t spill out to places further from it. The main reason for not supporting zoning up in U-District would be push the Wallingford property-price higher. When there are a lot of housing available 10 minutes from the light rail station, places 20 minutes from the light rail station wouldn’t be as attractive.
This upzone is about development that will require much more housing than it creates. A net loss, because the money is in office buildings, and each office in those buildings will require multiple housing units. Where will those units be built? Wallingford. Like the new buildings lining Dexter north of Mercer, presumably filled with people who work in SLU (and I suppose all over lower Queen Anne, I just happen to see Dexter more often.) Wallingford could fulfill your dream of block after block of 5 story apts, it could go the way Ballard is going, but don’t kid yourself, that won’t get us over the curve. Housing cost will continue to go up, and the more we feed the fever, the worse it’s going to get. The U District upzone is the worst example of this. Sorry UW, I know you want to catch the wave and get in on the high tech ferment, but it’s already way too much.
Housing cost will definitely continue to go up, but your reasoning is what gives us the nightmare in Bay Area. San Francisco would be a much better place if decades ago they started building up.
And of course existing small business owners need to be worried. Zoning up means more business opportunities, which means the existing ones are more likely to be elbowed out by new comers attracted by the increase in businesses. Rent would go up accordingly. Somebody doing a low margin low volume business based on low rent would be forced to close, and be replaced by somebody with higher margin.
The gain for small businesses can’t be measured by the gain of existing businesses. The gain of the new small businesses that replace the old ones need to be measured also. Just look at Ballard: lots of old businesses closed, but overall there are more businesses.
What this comment thread lacks is an acknowledgement that there are 2 dozen small business owners who wrote to the city opposing this change. They are real people who are doing something most of us don’t do: run our own business. It’s a hard job because there is no safety net. I couldn’t do it.
And unlike the pejorative “NIMBY’s”, you can’t accuse small business owners of wanting to protect their views or of being opposed to change. You can’t say they are lavishly living in a world of “I’ve got mine so who cares about everyone else.” No, they are none of these things and they are opposing this development. It’s real and we need to stop pretending they don’t exist.
All this wonderful advice on how to run a business from people who obviously have no clue. What a joke.
You are giving small business owners too much credit. As I said, just go look at the small businesses in Ballard before and after the density increase. There are more small businesses now, but most of them are new. If we listen to the old small business owners for development, what you have wouldn’t be better, just something that maintains the status quo. This is the problem for many of these discussions: the participants are mostly people with existing interest. People who will start new businesses in the future would be much less involved because they are not here yet.