“It’s like having the city come out to the suburbs.”

Like Northgate’s Thornton Place, but twice as tall and probably about twice as expensive: Nouvelle at Natick. This is the mall I grew up with, in Natick, Massachusetts, a town of 32,000 people, located 15 miles west of Boston. When I say town, I mean town: it is still governed by representative town meeting. Three things:

1) How is it that this little town was able to accept 12-story condo buildings, while back here, within Seattle city limits, at a supposed major transit hub, in the midst of giant parking lots and mall buildings, all we could muster is six stories?

2) The Nouvelle at Natick condo buildings are actually connected to the mall, and this is touted as a selling feature. Owners even get access to a private mall entrance, not to mention the private parking stalls that will forever save them from the drudgery of searching for a space among the huddled masses. So then: Why do I find it so hard to imagine that there are people who so highly value these things?

3) This development is being marketed, of course, as combining “the best of urban lifestyle with the comforts of suburban living.” For some reason the word “vomit” comes to mind.