If you’ve walked to the southern part of Stone Way anytime in the past several months, you’ve likely seen the white land use action sign in front of 3542 Stone heralding the arrival of a new development and the demise of another one of our neighborhood’s old, low-rise buildings. While Stone Way Cafe will remain, gone will be Hashtag and Sea Ocean Books to be replaced by Living Stone.
The new building, plans for which date back at least as far as early 2018, will consist of a five-story office building with retail shops on the ground level facing Stone and 36th Street. A three-level parking garage below ground will provide about 150 spaces for cars as well as parking for over 100 bikes, and a large cistern will be dug for storing water. Access to the parking garage will be via 36th Street (rather than the very busy Stone Way) while bikes will have their own access ramp from Stone Way along the south side of the building.
While this type of construction is not unusual for the city, what is notable is that Living Stone will join a growing list of green buildings under construction or already built. In exchange for “going green,” developers receive waivers from some of the zoning rules. Living Stone will be able to build 15’ higher than the zoning in that area would normally allow.
Living Stone is receiving this concession under Seattle’s Living Building Challenge. This lays out guidelines for developers to follow which are based upon 7 core design concepts outlined by the International Living Future Institute. These seven concepts, referred to as petals, are Place; Water; Energy; Health and Happiness; Materials; Equity and Beauty, and collectively they seek to guide builders to produce buildings that are:
- Regenerative spaces that connect occupants to light, air, food, nature, and community.
- Self-sufficient and remain within the resource limits of their site. Living Buildings produce more energy than they use and collect and treat all water on site.
- Healthy and beautiful.
Buildings can qualify as “green” and thus receive zoning variances by either satisfying all seven petals, or, as Living Stone has done, by satisfying any three (Place, Materials and Beauty in Living Stone’s case) as well as two other conditions imposed by the city:
- Reduce total energy usage by 25 percent, or more based on the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) targets in the Target Performance Path of Seattle Energy Code Section C401.3 and use no fossil fuel for space and water heating
- Reduce potable water demand by using only non-potable water to meet demand for toilet and urinal flushing, irrigation, hose bib, cooling tower (make up water only), and water features, except to the extent other applicable local, state, or federal law requires the use of potable water.
Living Stone is by no means a rarity in receiving concessions from the city in exchange for making their building green. One need look no further than the Brooks Building one block south. In that case, the developers were able to build 20 feet higher than zoning allowed by meeting the Living Building standards in place at the time.
The owner/general contractor for Living Stone is SRM Fremont. The architect is Weber Thompson which also designed the Watershed building currently under construction at 900 N. 34th street in Fremont (practically underneath the Aurora Bridge). This building is also taking advantage of the Living Building program.
The original schedule set back in 2018 was for demolition to begin in September 2019. Obviously, the schedule has slipped a bit. In October, the Seattle Dept. of Construction and Inspections determined that no EIS was needed. Also in October, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Board ruled on the structure to be torn down saying that it is “unlikely that the subject building would meet the standards for designation as an individual landmark.” So all the pieces now seem to be in place for work to begin. The Daily Journal of Commerce reports that ground breaking will commence in the 1st quarter of 2020 with a completion date sometime in late 2021.
Wow, awesome!
There are more and more offices being built between Fremont and Gasworks. With some condos being built around the neighborhoods, it’s quickly becoming another truly walk-able neighborhood where people walk to work.
Seattle commute-by-walk rate has been increasing, and things like this should help.
I was initially surprised by the ones coming “up Stone” northbound but now it kinda makes sense – with Google and Tableau along 34th in Fremont, I could see businesses that serve those companies or tech companies that recruit ex-employees of those companies chomping at the bit. Easy commute versus their old one (and of course from SLU the 62 is an easy ride and the bike lanes are decent).
Nowadays more and more jobs can be done on the internet, that leads to many jobs being feasible at any location. The high-value ones among them will then concentrate at great living locations, with the low-value ones moving to cheaper living locations. Seattle is a destination of the former, and Fremont is definitely an attractive neighborhood among all neighborhoods. It’s easy to recruit people to work in Fremont with all the bars, restaurants, cafes, a brewery, and a PCC, all walkable from office and from any of the condos around. It’s also water-front with a bike trail through it and Gasworks. It also got a lot of characteristics help make newcomers feel they really moved to a place that’s not just another city.
Google has been hogging all this and elbowing out others for office space in Fremont, so there should still be room for growth.
Just wish this project left more sidewalk space for sun. I love the design of the Brooks Building. That was a win for how people can interact outside of it.
Density is great, but in Europe they leave plazas and open space for gathering, cafe’s, and sun. Our planners don’t do that, and the code doesn’t require it.
Yeah, and I think by far the most wasteful design in this neighborhood is the backyard. We should start to convert them into jointed court yards and community spaces. With that every block would have its own park. We all love our neighbors and we can mingle and gather much easier.
Let’s change the code for backyard and ban backyard fences!
Talk to the police! Probably not wise to create a parallel escape route hidden behind new construction. The other problem is that when the City allows elimination of ground-level open space (replaced by an individual roof deck), developers usually fill the space with building, not park… one might also argue the wisdom and affect on affordability when the City mandates the tear down of our older, most affordable Craftsman homes for replacement by single-family towers.
If you worry about escape routes, I don’t know why you like backyards to begin with. If that’s the worry, then the solution is to not have single-family houses. If all houses are built connect to each other with the space left in the front, you’d still have the same shared space idea I stated and with no “escape route” issues.
What older and more affordable craftsman houses? Craftman houses are always more expensive comparing to condos of the same age.
City planning isn’t a developer issue. It’s a government issue.
Hi TJ, guess I do not understand how anyone can feel that tearing down everything and starting over from scratch will make anything less expensive. If wishes were fishes, I suppose, but not a very realistic proposal…
The key phrase in TJ’s response appears to be “of the same age”. It appears that there is agreement that OLDER = MORE AFFORDABLE, yet City policy seems to constantly return to the false mechanism that NEW = MORE AFFORDABLE, which runs counter to what everyone (other than developers) understand to be reality.
The key to affordability lies in preserving precious resources and energy. New construction creates far more toxic waste, expends huge amounts of energy to create and transport new materials, log new wood while tossing old-growth fir in the trash, and pollutes the air with processes during two years of construction.
Repurpose and Reuse. Don’t Pollute. New is generally neither better quality nor more affordable.
Absolutely. The City has yet to consider how the current design propensity to move what used to be “front porch” and other garden or yard social spaces up to individual roof decks will affect the social fabric of our neighborhoods and communities. Isolating people on the roof of their home, rather than connecting folks with each other at street level and in their yards, whether sitting on the porch or working in the yard, is simply not equivalent. One is isolating, the other, connecting.
Also, it is my recollection that the Brooks Building did not comply with the Living Building standard. I believe the City created a new relaxed “living building” version that Brooks was able to meet and was awarded the height bonus and other goodies, regardless. Not sure which “standard” the Stone building intends to meet.
Regardless, the City needs to follow through on collecting the data from these “living” projects in order to close-the-loop on which strategies are most effective and to renew the project’s operating and maintenance procedures and make sure that the “paper models” actually track reality in terms of actual lower energy impacts. ‘Nuf said.
Actually it’s the opposite. Single family houses, a strong feature of the US, is the reason why Americans are most isolated. Tiny apartments with no storage space and tiny fridge is what makes people connecting. That kind of setting forces people to go out instead of staying home. You’d bump into neighbors daily if you have to go grocery shopping everyday. If you don’t have a yard you’ll have to take your kids to parks everyday. People who live in tiny studios are much more likely to hang out at bars and cafes.
There is a reason why higher density leads to people being more liberal: they are more exposed to different people sharing space and therefore more used to think for and think about others. Lower density means people are more often with themselves and more often only thinking about themselves.
Oh, baloney. There is a way to encourage increased density with much less of the social nasties of increased crime, increased homelessness, increased gentrification, increased displacement, and increased economic pressure to the cost of living. Incentivizing teardowns of our older, most-affordable housing stock to build massive, bleak, cheaply-built, dorm-size apodments (SEDU) is simply NOT the way. Housing needs to be humane. Families need homes.
Currently* the most affordable family sized homes in Seattle are, by far, in triplexes. So it was probably a bad idea to ban them anywhere, and we ought to want more ASAP:
Among Seattle triplexes sold in 2018, the average individual unit size (assuming each triplex was divided equally) would be just over 1,000 square feet and 81% have more than 2,500 square feet of total living space.
The median rent for a home in a duplex or triplex in Seattle is $1,575 per month, more than a thousand dollars less than the median rent of $2,800 per month for single family homes. (Even for small houses, the monthly cost of rent and tenant-paid utilities for two bedroom rented single family houses in 2016 was $2,163.)
The median income of households living in 2-4 unit apartments is 1/2 that of the median income of those living in single family detached houses ($50k versus $100k)
*Q4 2018
All these homes have at least 2 bedrooms. SIngle family large lot zoning is decidedly not the best way for more families with smaller rather than larger budgets to be able to afford homes in Wallingford.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d490f9592fa69ef88a8d47fc631fb4ccfe952e4aa8b48980838c716dea5313e7.jpg
Tokyo. Huge amount of houses being built all the time therefore housing price hardly increases despite huge influx of people. Always some old condo available as affordable housing. Low crime rate. Incentivize tearing down IS the way.
Or the Finland way, where people who can or cannot afford the house get to live the same housing with the same look. That’s the socialist way.
Both of those are much more humane than what we have here, where people with existing houses refuse to change to help those needing help.
This was all one awesome neighborhood plaza in Madrid – had it all: cafe space, kids’ playground, open space, trees (and it was pretty clear they intentionally made it hard to get a car into pedestrian-only and play areas). https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a7252beac9e2e2747befdab0795ddec53ed6e2fd6d8aa9e816b696ae50731a9.jpg
nice, but it wouldn’t look like that here in seattle…
TJ, would you also say that we should ban backyard Trees, shrubs and plants?
That is the downside of these big buildings and density, we lose all the Greenspace in the city 🙁 Now, if you propose requiring developers to keep Geenspace::? And no, that’s not a planter, or “Green Wall”.
The city, if we bill ourselves as “Green” need to actually have the teeth to preserve, protect, and add to our tree canopy.
I am saying quite the opposite. Today with backyards being tiny segments, there is less chance to have larger plants. If backyards are all joined together, we’d only need a deck every five houses and a pagoda every twenty houses, and way more room for trees.
I’ve talked about my radical solution for trees many times already: if we tear down all the single-family houses and build only high density resident buildings, you can use half of the land to house five times the population and then leave the other half to be forest lands.
Well, if Seattle starts requiring that half the city land is re-developed into forested areas/parks, and the other half is high density, that’s not a bad solution. BUT, that will never happen.
We can at least start by building up more in Seattle, so they can stop putting up single family houses outside of the city and remove the nature there. That has been the problem in many places in the US: city grows with limited increase in density therefore using up more land. People spend time commuting and then isolated in their own big houses.
lol great idea. derrrp.