Apartments Are the New Condos
[ Rendering of Kinects Apartments at 1823 Minor Ave. ]
If you’ve been wondering how much the Seattle market has shifted from condos to apartments, check out this mountainous list of new and proposed downtown apartment projects recently posted by the ever-industrious Seattle Condo Blog.
As with the Denny Way projects, I can’t resist doing the math:
Olivian; 8th and Olive; 224 units
Aspira; Stewart and Terry; 326 units
Kinects; Minor and Stewart; 366 units
1200 Stewart; Stewart and Denny; 400 units (est.)
2000 3rd Ave; 3rd and Virginia; 431 units
2105 6th Ave; 6th and Lenora; 644 units
3rd and Cedar; 185 units
3031 Western Ave; 78 units
Landes; 8th and Marion; 81 units
Taylor 28; Taylor and Denny; 197 units
6th and Denny Apartments; 56 units
Expo 62; 2nd and John; 114 units
The Bernard; Warren off Denny; 62 units
Borealis; Denny and Dexter; 53 units
Grand total: 3217 units. And that’s only downtown — there are many more going up in the neighborhoods.
But is that a lot? For reference, as of 2002, downtown Seattle had 15,695 housing units (that includes apartments, condos, and everything else). So yes, 3217 new apartment units is a motherload to be coming online over a relatively short time period.
Many of these new projects are similar in design and amenity to typical luxury condos.  Does this mean apartments will start to receive some of the derision so fashionably dished out to condos? Unlikely.  Apartments are for the honest, hardworking, middle class backbone of America. And condos are for yuppie scum. Right?